The Demon Machine (D3mons) - Unfinished
 

Hey all. I’m taking a cue from my buddy Red Venom and releasing the unfinished work for my 3rd Doom movie, which I originally called “D3mons.” And then it was “Demons: The Distant Worlds,” and then after a very long break and some heavy changes it became “The Demon Machine.”

It’s been a long while, and a lot of the time I spent on the movie is a complete blur now, but I’ll try to piece things together...

I was really attached to my Doom stuff, and super flattered that people really liked ‘em. I had my heart set on making one more. Even now, it pains me a little bit to throw in the towel without having finished D3. But, y’know, I’ve grown up a lot and my priorities have changed.

Doom:
http://3dmm.com/showthread.php?t=42614
http://3dmm.com/showthread.php?t=14485

Doom 2:
http://3dmm.com/showthread.php?t=14486

I was really loose with the scripts for those movies. Even as I began work on D3 and was soliciting my friends for contributions, the story was never all-that solid. It was essentially a rough outline. Maybe that’s what did me in; the scope of D3 was too wide for me to take the same approach as the earlier ones. The idea for the 3rd one was to act as a prequel, then put a slightly different spin on the story you saw in D1 and D2, and then wrap it up with material that took place AFTER D2. Yeah. Today, I have a firmer grasp on reality.

During that time, the following directors contributed 3dmm bits of varying lengths/detail:

Redwampa
Gorosaurus
Aaron Haynes
Anders Borg
Beast
Mike Storch

(Sorry if any of you go by different names now. Let me know and I’ll update. I’ll also make it a point to show which segments each director worked on soon.)

I eventually wrote an entire feature-length “Demons: The Distant Worlds” script which changed some of the major details of the series, as I was trying to distance it from the games and thought I could submit it to some screenwriting contests. In retrospect, the whole thing is pretty bananas, and I’m willing to bet it’s not all-that well written, but it’s kinda fun. Plus, there’s a ton of original content in case I ever need material to practice making comics or something. I’m holding onto that one.

Years later, Red Venom contacted me and asked if I’d be interested in helping him work on his Doom movie. I said sure, but I could only do so in a limited capacity; mostly, in writing. I took a look at the work he’d done on The Phobos Anomaly and was impressed. It got me thinking. Maybe I could come up with a new story based on the work he’d already done, and combine it with the work I’d done on D3, and turn it into one thing. So, that’s what I did; I wrote a new 40-page script and titled it “The Demon Machine,” which I’ll include here.

http://www.jpmazzaro.com/uploads/2/3...monmachine.pdf

The idea of the new script was this (and you’re welcome to stop reading here if you’d prefer no SPOILERS before you check out the PDF): Venom’s story and mine run simultaneously, but in the timeline of the full story, his story about the space marines takes place before my 2 main characters, the “diplomats,” arrive on an empty Mars. It flips back and forth between the space marines battling demons on Phobos and my stupidly-ambitious end-of-the-world story. By the end, the Earth in my story is obliterated. On the flip side, Red Venom’s marine manages to stop the demons from spreading to Mars, and (hopping on the JJ Abrams/Bryan Singer trend of writing myself out of a corner by simply jumping timelines) my story then flashes back to the very beginning — and instead of the characters landing on an empty planet, it’s full of life, and the diplomats are free to proceed in their original mission. Following this, we return to Venom's story and the marine runs into the mysterious monolith gateway on Phobos. And that’s it. That was my way of ending my story while giving Red Venom a proper bridge to continue his.

[If anyone reading this, now or in the future, would like to take a crack at finishing the movie, you have my permission. Between the script, my material and Venom’s — there’s a wealth of stuff to use. I just ask that you give us credit for what’s here.]

Although it wasn’t terribly long, the script called for some new material, and I guess that wasn’t in the cards for us. I did add some new content, but the process wasn’t so fun for me — and sadly I can’t make 3dmm a priority nowadays. I gather that Red Venom shared a similar predicament. So, we stopped.

The pieces of my work are attached here. It’s a lot of fragments, but I’ll try to cut it so that sounds and music don’t overlap into a big mess. You’ll notice it’s all pretty old-school 3dmm. I never really embraced the more advanced mods. To me, this feels like a bit of a time-capsule.

That’s about it. If anyone’s curious about what I’m up to now, I work for a great company called Pixton, which encourages young people (and everyone else) to make their own comics. It actually reminds me a lot of what the 3dmm community was back in the day, minus the nutty and antagonistic bits (which added a lot of color, obv). Expressing one’s self via art and storytelling continues to be a big part of my life, and I’m really grateful for my time here; I was a lonely kid going through some stuff all those years ago, and this software and this community helped a lot. Thanks, guys.

Cheers.


Special thanks to Supacat for the video.
Note: Some fonts are missing.

Update 1: Added fonts and compressed file.
Update 2: Added vid upload by Supacat.
Update 3: Added links for Doom 1 & 2.

Nice movie! but it's unfinished, but you did a good job!

It's been an honor to work with you dude, you have amazing skills in both animation and writing. Thank you. I'll have to see this if someone can convert this into an avi hopefully soon. Wishing you the best in your career path, I'm incredibly happy for you! Keep us updated man 😇

Thanks bud.


Thank you, and will do, man. Let's keep in touch.

wow the set design, and cinematopgraphy, and the simplicity of it all was genius. Also great choices for music, the mood was consistently creepy. A lot was hard to follow, but it was extremely beautiful to watch!

Thanks man! I appreciate you taking the time to watch it. I imagine some folks might get frustrated because it's fairly slow and choppy, and won't be able to sit through the whole thing. That's alright. Thanks for the kind words.
I guess people should know going into this that beyond the opening scenes, it's a mishmash of dialogue-free moments. I was never great at making these in a linear fashion.

Thanks Supacat! Very helpful. I'll add the vid to the main post as soon as I get back to my computer.

Loved it man, knowing the script I already sorta knew in my head what the dialogue may have panned out like 😏 The final shot at the end was my fav, kind of made me wonder what sort of frantic fighting must have been going on with the demons and UAC. One day I swear this will be finished.. maybe if 3dmm2 comes out.. we can really redo this entire project. Its been a blast dude, you need to turn this into a comic series if you haven't yet 😇

Incredible! I think that the Doom series was a turning point for the community (especially in the respect that it never intended to be revolutionary-- that was just JP's unique style), where atmosphere was valued over raw animation or (gotta tell the truth!) music. 3dmm has these goofy, cartoonish figures. Either you go full HMC or you don't get taken seriously without some serious forgiveness of the sillyness; JP's mastery of atmosphere added a new spin--one that worked with the program's strengths.

While it was still a bit fantastic and impressive to create such worlds entirely out of '3d Words,' the underlying key was that it still looked and sounded cool and cohesive. Doom and, moreso, Doom II, worked as animations.

It was an honor to be asked to contribute in some small way to D3mons. I tried my very best to bridge my style (which used few if any 3D words) with JP's, and I'm proud of the result. It still resembles a poor copycat style to my eyes, but it represented some of my own most mature and thoughtful directing to date. Each frame and movement had to be carefully thought out before the characters were made, and that was something I had little experience in.

The idea of releasing unfinished movies is a sad reality of our time. We became too eager, shooting for the stars. I loved the work, I really did. But it was a lot of work and a lot of time, and that sort of commitment just can't be sustained after the college years are over.


Thank you, JP, for showing us what awesome new worlds could be explored with 3DMM. I look forward to your continuing career with great anticipation! I hope that we can again collaborate for future projects (Nerve Endings must just be a beginning!)

Sheds a tear .. Beautiful.. indeed what a time.

Thanks man! It was fun while it lasted. We'll have to wait and see what the future holds.


Very flattering, I really appreciate it. It's wild to think of how long it's been since we first got started here. Many thanks to Space Goat and those who continue to share their work, 3dmm-based or not. It's awesome to see how people have developed and pursued different creative formats.

I hope that other old directors will come across this forum in time and are encouraged to post their unfinished work. There were quite a few movies in progress while I was working on mine, and most of them (I believe) went unreleased. I know a lot of work went into those.

Goro, I'm always around for collaborating. I know it can be tricky being at a distance, but I have no plans to stop making new, original work. I may have to scale things down a bit, though!

Hi again. If any oldschool 3dmm dweebs like myself are still around, here's an abbreviated breakdown of who contributed what on this movie.


Slick opening by Redwampa.


Floating spaceship shots by Aaron Haynes.


Martian city shots by Mike Storch.


Sunset shots also by Aaron.


Ghoulish demon eye by Beast.


Wicked escape & chase scene by Gorosaurus.


Grand-scale fight scene by Anders Borg.

Amazing shots, I’d glad your still around man 😎
Still working on Doom 4s Snapmap builder, it sort of reminded me of 3dmm’s simplicity yet potential, as far as creativity goes. I was thinking about adding lore into each mission based of some key plot elements in the script 🤙

Thanks dude. Feel free to shoot me an e-mail whenever (same goes for anyone else). I may pop into the Art Gallery from time to time, but I think my time around here may be up.

all these slow pans must have taken so long lol

I read the title as
(Fucking lol)

Wow. I had no clue this was out. A 28 minute unfinished 3dmm movie? Wow. Yeah I remember how fucking good Doom 2 was back in the day. Shall give this a watch shortly.

I watched the beginning a bit and then skimmed it because I don't have time to watch the whole thing. Actually I'm pretty sure I remember seeing this movie being advertised (with a poster?) waaay back in the day.

Anyway, seems like this has some really nice shots, scenes, and music sequences... Impressive stuff as far as 3dmm goes, and it doesn't look like v3dmm was used for too much of it. A movie that has contributions from Redwampa, Gorosaurus, Aaron Haynes, and Beast? Wow. Back in the day this would be the kind of thing we would go nuts over.

I have to say, thought, it really irks me that the scene missing voices were just left that way. How hard is it to get somebody to record the lines? Even if all the voices were done by one person it would have still been way more watchable. (edit: I'm going back and reading the post and seeing that this is probably a movie that has just been sitting in storage, and you haven't been actively working on it for years, so I do get that.)

I really have no room to gripe about this because I let the same thing happen in that Chain Movie I was a part of 10 years ago... But, yeah. I think this should be remade with voices. Maybe even let somebody else who is interested do it. Because surly there's a script?