This looks impressive! please don’t stop.
Your project looks a bit crazy 
But that’s the kind of project that can give the most impresive result, so go on \o/ 
It’s nice to see you have a detailed animated storyboard 
Thank you, rore.
Finnaly I’ve translated the main story plot of the Morevna Project. I hope someday I will finish the translation of screenplay, but for now this might help you to put into the picture.
I tried to supplement story with some animated shots. They could scary you, but those shots were made many years ago by my students, when Morevna Project was no more than a childish idea. Don’t take them too seriously.
Are you ready? Here we go…
[size=150]Morevna Project Story Plot[/size]
Once upon a time in some government laboratory a secret research was started. A group of scientists, leaded by genius cybernetist Baba Yaga, developing a technology of nanomachine networks.
Nanomachine network is a giant collection of very small robots which are works in cooperation and could act as a single solid organism. Such solid construction have significant advantage - in case of damage it is capable to autorecover its main macrostructure (if sufficient amount of reserve nanomachines available). But to compose solid mechanism nanomachines needed to be programmed in a special way. In nonprogrammer form they looks like glossy thick liquid and often referred as “Death Water”. Nanomachines network also could be programmed to compose different forms. Thus how transformation of macrobody is achieved.
Government planned use nanomachine technology to made a special battle machine, a versatile robot with a wide fighting abilities. They started its development in parallel with the development of nanomachines technology and called it “EVNN” - “Electronic Versatile Nanomachine Network”. Baba Yaga - the main nanomachine technology developer - didn’t knew about the real appliance of her work for a while.
The main problem in battle robot (EVNN) development was to give him a life. It was planned to made EVNN controllable by particular persons, but it was necessary to provide some kind of consciousness to it. All attempts to enliven machine were failed. Then scientists found extraordinary solution. They found a way to transfer a some person’s death to machine. Thus existing of the death in the robot automatically imply existing of life. To be more precisely, the person not loosing his death, but shares it with the machine. Such person called “Death Carrier”.
Dying of Death Carrier imply death of the machine because it means loosing the source of its life. Destroying of Death Carrier seems to be the only way to destroy EVNN-like robots because of they self-recovery features.
Also another interesting side effect was discovered. It was found what “Death carrier” in exchange of his death could receive additional power from the machine with the help of special electronic device (Power Amulet). It results in increased vitality, strength and energy of a person.
Researches related with transferring death from human to machine took place in small separate laboratory far away from main development center. All supplement for transferring death to machine and delivering EVNN power to “Death carrier” also were produced there.
When development of EVNN was close to finish, Baba Yaga becomes aware how government planning to use her technology, she demurred against that. Her protest wasn’t considered seriously. Then she hired a biker band, leaded by Marya Morevna to attack the laboratory where research of EVNN’s life and death takes place and destroy all results of research about ways to enliven machine.
While the attack all biker band members was killed. The only one who survive was Marya Morevna, but she was deadly wounded. She managed to reach the main storage of laboratory. There, instead of destroying the equipment for death transferring, she activated it. Silver Needle was passed into her body and she became a Death Carrier.
At the same moment EVNN at the main development center received death and awaken. The development of main control core of EVNN wasn’t finished at this time and robot refused to receive any control commands. He destroyed all laboratories in development center and leaved with hunger to annihilate everything. That’s how Koschey the Deathless was born. Government abandoned the project and refused to get responsibility. A years of fear and destruction begun.
But with becoming Death Carrier Marya Morevna gained a Power Amulet and was able to recover her vital powers and continue living. By that time Koshey have no idea about concept of his existence and his Death Carrier. Marya Morevna received a great power and used it to take over the Koschey. She shut Koshey at the underground basement of her mansion.
Of course, the goverment wasn’t happy to have a powerful lady with a beast in the boxroom on the territory of the state. They constantly making efforts to destroy Marya Morevna (and thus EVNN at once).
Holding war machine in secret inside her mansion soon become painful burden to Marya Morevna. She cheated on death and that’s not counts for free.
A few years after in the Net she met Ivan and found some commons with him. Brother of Marya Morevna - Nazar the Brave - noticed her interest and decided invited Ivan to meet Morevna in real life.
That’s where our story begins.
Ivan lived in a small house with his three sisters. One sister was mechanic, the other one a doctor and the third was priestess. But soon three handsome mens appeared - the Businessman, the Rapper and the Rocker - and sisters gone with them. When Ivan received invitation from Nazar the Brave, he already lived alone. Invitation was really original and was accompanied by a cool BMW automobile.
But while Ivan was on his way, government made another attack on Marya Morevna. The battle took place at the small town on the road. In despair Marya crashed all soldiers, but completely lost her faith in this world and her vital forces faded. Ivan passed by the town and found a road awashed by lots of soldier’s bodies. Nearby at the road podium he found a lifeless body of Marya Morevna. He took her body and made attempt to carry her to the car, but suddenly a few regained soldiers blocked his way and ordered to give Marya Morevna to them.
Ivan refused and soldiers beaten him. By this time Marya Morevna waken up and saw a bunch of soldiers beaten young men. She draw their attention and begun to crash them.
Next scenes are dedicated to project demo:
Ivan lies on the ground and meets Marya Morevna alive face to face for the first time. By this time more soldiers raised up. They begin fighting and managed to escape. For the first time for a long Morevna see someone fighting for her. Thats reveals her lifepower. The fragment end up with their wedding.
Marya and Ivan lived happily for some time. But then Morevna decided to go to the bikers meeting. She gave all keys from her mansion to Ivan and told him: “Walk everywhere, and keep an eye on everything. But one thing you must not do: you must not even touch the key from the boxroom”. Then she left. But soon Ivan, passing near the forbidden door, heard a call for help from there. He opened it and found a robot-transformer - Koschey the Deathless. He was really impressed by such machine and technology and when Koschey asked to give him a benzine to drink, Ivan not refused. When Koschey drinked, all his former strength was restored, he shook chains holding him, and snapped all twelve at once. ‘‘Thank you, Prince Ivan,’’ Kashchey the Deathless said. ‘‘Now you will never see Maria Morevna again any more than you can see your own ears.’’ He transformed into the flying machine, flew out of the window in a fearful gust of wind, overtook the beautiful Queen Maria Morevna on the road, caught her up by surprise, took away Power Amulet and carried her off to his old fortress located on the Buyan Island.
youtube.com/watch?v=7I73boWU6os
Ivan, being horror-stricken, immediately made ready for a journey on his BMW to find Marya. During the travel he met his sisters and their suitors.
Meanwhile government noticed Koshchei’s revival and decided to made attempt to destroy him. Ivan passed the bridge to the Buyan Island and found a government aviation attacking Koschey. Koschey easily defeated battle helicopters, but at this time Ivan managed to take away Marya Morevna.
Koschey got his favorite-heavily-tuned-jet BELAZ (belaz.minsk.by/production/series … 560&page=0 ) and ride in pursuit after Ivan. He overtook Ivan, took away Marya and said: "Well, this first time I forgive you. But if it happens a second time look out for yourself: no quarter will be given.’’
But soon Ivan stolen Morevna again. During the second chase Morevna told Ivan what she is a Death Carrier and there is no way to destroy Koshey, but to kill her. Ivan shocked and scared. At the same moment Koshey smashed the left part of the car where Ivan sat with the wheel of his BELAZ. Ivan was killed and Koschey took crying Morevna away.
youtube.com/watch?v=6CJyPB3pC6I
At the morning three cars appeared near the place where Ivan was smashed. Three Ivan’s sisters and their suitors come out from them. They revived Ivan. Body was restored, but his right arm and left leg became mechanic and head became surrounded by metal ring. Ivan, aghasted by his own look and completely desperate, bawled to his sisters and run away. Depressed he stayed at night at the old ruins.
youtube.com/watch?v=RbQAfxb1Rfc
At the ruins Ivan meets The Guy-In-Black, who forces him to recover himself from bygone shock. Ivan decides to made another attempt to free Marya Morevna again. He received advice to get cool new car at the Baba Yaga’s automobile showroom.
After unsuccessful attempt to destroy results of her work Baba Yaga was haunted by the goverment and finally settled at the silent place. She founded her own buiseness and continued her research of nanomachine technology by herself. From time to time she made raids to ruins of destroyed laboratory to get Death Water or some other artifacts. Secretly she enhansing some automobiles with nanomachine technology and recieving much money for it.
Baba Yaga agreed to help Ivan and gave him a Zaporozhets (ZAZ-968M en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporozhets ). He ride to Koshey’s fortress on it and takes away Marya Morevna again. Marya Morevna wasn’t scared by his look, but just glad to see him alive.
youtube.com/watch?v=hkOhhv2p3m0
After Koschey overtook them again, Zaporozhets transformed into the robot. Robot, piloted by Ivan started to fight with Koschey. During the battle Morevna (in her mind) called Guy-In-Black asked for forgiveness and begged to take her life but save Ivan. Guy-In-Black agreed and took a Silver Needle from her body away. At the same time Koschey was defeated. But Guy-In-Black was touched by Morevna’s penitence and left her alive. Also he has another reasons to do that.
Then Morevna and Ivan ride to their home and lived in happiness till the end of time.
I’d appreciate it if you could tag new Morevna videos with ‘synfig’ so that they show up in the Youtube rss feed for synfig.
I am sorry, but the plot is too detailed to be effectively transported in a short animation movie. For this whole text, you need a narrator to tell all the background to the viewer, so they could understand what the story is all about. And in my opinion the death water is not easily animatable and sounds a little bit like liquid metal from the t2000 (Terminator). Also, i don’t want to make advertising for BMW. Please think about how to make your story simpler to animate in 2D.
I disagree with vonhalenbach. People usually underestimate their audiences - you can get a lot more across than you think you can. As long as you don’t make the mistake of trying to get it all over in one long spiel at the beginning, it’ll be fine. The usual trick is to space it out as flashbacks over the first half of the film.
I mean, people are pretty familiar with nanotech, so there’s one bit that doesn’t have to be explained. The ‘Death Carrier’ linking setup isn’t that tough a concept to understand -> big bad machine only works if a person’s mind is linked to it. Easy. The rest is a pretty simple story that can be interwoven with the main one without too much problem.
I agree with the BMW thing - unless you’re hoping to get them to pay for you. This is especially jarring as this was marketed as an Open Source affair (but there are plenty of other good reasons not to have commercial icons - for example, it’s very likely to look incongruous and anachronistic.) Plus, no matter how much you like BMWs, you could whip up any number of seriously cool and original cars in blender and get a better look (and one that won’t date the finished show.)
I find the plot… confusing at best. But that’s sort of par for the course when dealing with nursery stories, which tend to produce plot twists out of nowhere, and science fiction, which tends to dress these twists in a large amount of technobabble. One thing I will suggest (I don’t know if you’ve already done it) is that every plot-critical object or concept (Death Carrier, Power Amulet, Silver Needle, etc.) should be fully explained early in the film - long before it’s used. The audience should be told clearly what each thing can and can’t do, so that it doesn’t appear to ‘break the rules’ later on and come across as a deus ex Machina.
I won’t comment any further except to ask: how do a businessman and two musicians possess the resources and inclination to turn someone into a badass cyborg?
I like that my post got so much feedback. 
I’m sorry but videos in my previous post not made in synfig. As I said, they made long time ago (in 2004, IIRC) and i didn’t knew anything about synfig then.
The plot is_already_transported into screenplay. Screenplay contains a lots of cues and hints. Do you like Neon Genesis Evangelion? I like it so much, and especially because its not uncover whole story to viewer. You need to think to understand parts of story, which was imply but not shown. That’s what I like in anime. There is not just story what telled now, but also exists a story about something what happen before . And it is often not a simple story.
The text above is the first time when I describing whole picture and uncovering all secrets. Maybe it was a mistake - to disclose all concepts from beginning, - but I thought what people working on the project must know whole picture. Anyway, people who read the screenplay never saw the text above but they liked the screenplay. I think you could judge it for yourself, when I will translate it.
BTW, whole screenplay is not a short movie.
Death Water in unprogrammed way almost not appearing in movie.
I agree about advertising of BMW. But I need some car to start from. The “BMW” trademark can not appear at all. I just wanted to concretize some kind of machine.
evilkillerfiggin:
You got the idea about flashbacks and BMW right! 
I understand what the plot is really confusing. ^_^‘’ But in screenplay everything looks pretty solid, and some other people thinks same too - this winter one Russian movie studio suggested to sell them screenplay, they wanted to made a live action movie after it, but I didn’t wanted to sell it to anyone. I wanted to direct it by myself. But this attention was a good sign for me.
Well, the one who revived Ivan was his sisters, but not they suitors. One sister was a doctor, other one - mechanic. Remember? They was able to restore Ivan’s body. Death water you could easily get from old research center ruins, as Baba Yaga do. But to return Ivan’s soul to his body they neded the third sister - the priestess.
Those concepts are not appearing directly, but their meaning described along the screenplay.
[size=150]Task-3: Soldier’s uniform (update)[/size]
Hey! I’ve got a first picture for the uniform layout sheet:
You could also notice a logo which appears on the arm.
I need someone to make a cleanup on this draft.
Also, to complete this task I need:
- draw aside view
- draw back view
- draw close-ups for some meaningfull details of uniform (boots, shields, shirt area)
And finnaly, here’s the video of the drawing process: zelgadis.profusehost.net/files/m … t-draw.ogg
BTW, video is distributed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
I can provide a mature male voice in English if you ever need one.
Thank you! I will bear in mind your kind offer. The sound recording planned after the demo will be produced and after storyboard for whole movie will be finished.
[size=150]Task-2: Helicopter 3D model (finished)[/size]
helicopter.zip (512 KB)
Changes:
- assigned some materials
- doors fixed
- fuselage fixed
- IPO drivers added
- model scaled to conform size template
The model is not completely tuned, but it already could be used in animation. Other stuff could be fixed during animation process.
No, we are not dead.
Much things prevent me to pay more attention to the project development itself, but we are still moving! Shortly, here’s the things happened:
- Project got its own domain name morevnaproject.org/ . No design, no content yet, but just be patient.
- This weekend profusehost.net was hacked, that’s why some links from zelgadis.profusehost.net wasn’t accessible that time. Currently I have restored some of them, but latest entries in my in my blog (including drafts about animation techniques in synfig were erased). I not sure I could completely restore them in nearest time.
- I made a short video demonstrating IPO drivers of helicopter model in action: zelgadis.profusehost.net/files/m … s-demo.ogg (4Mb)
[size=150]Task-4: Morevna’s bike.[/size]
bike.zip (257 KB)
Here’s the model of Morevna’s bike. Some parts are missing, but it will be something like this.
Assigned to: ByeZif.
Wow! This bike absolutely rocks! It reminds me of the bikes from the game “full throttle”.
Quite cool!
I wonder how would you integrate a 3/4 view of Morevna (2D) with the motorcycle (3D)… 
-G
Thanks. “Full throttle” gave me much inspiration to build this vehicle. It was my favourite game in childhood!
Good question! The solution depends from situation.
One of the possible ways is to render bike two times - one render with full picture and one with partially masked picture (see scheme below). To mask picture I placed a surface which “cuts” the part of bike. Then both animations imported into synfig as layers. Between them placed another vector layer, where morevna is painted and animated.
Notice, what we will need fourth layer for hand over the handle:
Other more complex ways including importing rendered synfig layers back to blender and projecting them to cutting surface with the help of UVProject.
[size=150]Task-3: Soldier’s uniform (update)[/size]
Side view added.
Here’s the video about drawing process: zelgadis.profusehost.net/files/m … e-draw.ogg
…or you could just rotoscope morevna so that it looks like she’s on the bike - it’s going to be 2D in the end, after all…
Chris
Report about our new studio:
morevnaproject.org/2008/06/10/working-studio/
Demo - Scene 24 preview:
youtube.com/watch?v=-t-S_9Wyljk