Moho Forum

Before I can I can Hayao Miyzaki's "Spirited Away" justice, I need to prepare myself. I need to do a series of small projects to hone my skills in animation and in art in general (unless someone is nice and talented enough to help me out for free, but I'm the only one with that mentality). I take the "animate for fun" ideology seriously. I literally animate for fun and would help anyone with their projects without payment (not that it's bad to ask for payment).

Well...here's my work and I hope you enjoy it. Please leaves critiques because I can really use them. Thank you

Work-https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... eMyFYDFYv8

Work (newgrounds version)-http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/647362

If you hover over the youtube tab it will show you that you only need the video code that comes after the = sign to paste in between the youtube brackets

Interesting blend attempt, keep working at it. I stopped watching after a bit, but the live car sequence with the animated windshield needed some more transparency, play with the blurs and opacity for light sources a bit more.

LY

the voice work needs more soul and emotion

OK -- you did ask.

The commentary is poorly mixed and the dialogue is robotic. The car animation is too clumsy to be convincing, especially when shown inside a live action environment containing real cars. There is no chance of empathising with the characters, as they are faceless and charmless. There is no discernible plot and the ending is arbitrary.

There is nothing happening here which could not be better done as a live action film. Sorry to be so negative, but that's the way I see it.

This is a really ambitious project and you have a good start! There are definitely audio issues, the biggest one for me is that the music is so loud and the voices are so quiet. So the viewer has to adjust their volume every time you switch between dialogue and music. Was not having faces on the characters an important part of the style? I think faces would really help improve it, even just to know what we are looking at. For instance, I think in one scene there was a guy with a black mask or bag over his head, but I wasn't sure if it was that or if it was the back of his head and he had long hair? Some of the shapes are just too simplified to read clearly without some more visual clues. But if for some reason you really don't want faces, I think putting the faces in shadows, as is sometimes done in animes, would be more compelling. The concept is cool and I think you are establishing the right mood for your story. So once you address some of the technical issues, you'll be on your way!

Little Yamori wrote:

If you hover over the youtube tab it will show you that you only need the video code that comes after the = sign to paste in between the youtube brackets

Interesting blend attempt, keep working at it. I stopped watching after a bit, but the live car sequence with the animated windshield needed some more transparency, play with the blurs and opacity for light sources a bit more.

LY

Thank you for your comment. I added the live action car scenes to take up space in the project (to make it longer time wise). But, you stopped watching after a bit. what can I do next to help capture your attention?

jahnocli wrote: The commentary is poorly mixed and the dialogue is robotic. The car animation is too clumsy to be convincing, especially when shown inside a live action environment containing real cars. There is no chance of empathising with the characters, as they are faceless and charmless. There is no discernible plot and the ending is arbitrary.

There is nothing happening here which could not be better done as a live action film. Sorry to be so negative, but that's the way I see it.

Thank you for your comment, jah, it's greatly appreciated. I made the characters faceless on purpose because that's the style I wanted for this project. And, I don't it's a necessity to add faces in order for the audience to empathize with the character, but I'll look into that. The dialogue will certainly be looked at. The car animation was for mostly time management, nothing really to be taken seriously. Thanks again

lwaxana wrote: The concept is cool and I think you are establishing the right mood for your story. So once you address some of the technical issues, you'll be on your way!

Thank you for your critique, Wax. I should have all technical issues fixed in the next project and I will certain take the animation clues in terms of character design into consideration.

LightYagami123 wrote:I added the live action car scenes to take up space in the project (to make it longer time wise). But, you stopped watching after a bit. what can I do next to help capture your attention?

You should NEVER add scenes to only take up time in animation. The viewer senses that you are trying to waste their time if the scene does nothing to either move the story forward or visually impress (neither of which was done here).

synthsin75 wrote: You should NEVER add scenes to only take up time in animation. The viewer senses that you are trying to waste their time if the scene does nothing to either move the story forward or visually impress (neither of which was done here).

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Yes, that was poor planning and execution. When I did this project, I had the mentality of a newgrounds user and was mostly concern with publishing than the the actual thing that I had to publish, but the project itself is decent enough to hold criticism to be used as a template for later projects. Thank you for your critique.

But, you stopped watching after a bit. what can I do next to help capture your attention?

First, make it a lot shorter, maybe like a 45 sec commercial at the beginning of a anime DVD. Work on your techniques and edit your scenes in a compelling fast pace way. We all get excited when were able to make the software work, like beginning to ride a bike, but Miyazaki is the Tour de France, so be patient before jumping in to race, get your basics down, and put something together that if you saw it, and it was made by someone else, you would say, "wow" and want to check out more.

Keep at it

LY

Pacing and editing... sooooo important.

Unless you need to "pad" or add time for a specific purpose or requirement... don't... actually there is no reason to add in filler for ANY reason.

I know your story is more... dramatic than comedic, but check out this video. It is VERY short, it has ALMOST faceless characters and tells a very long and complex story quickly.

p.s. I had nothing to do with this, just found it on Youtube.

heyvern wrote:...this video ... tells a very long and complex story quickly.

Well, yeah, but the crucial thing is, everyone already knows the story. If the story was unfamiliar, it would look a whole lot more confusing.

The music was overpowering and cut around a lot. There were also sudden shifts in volume to accomodate for the speech but they were too abrupt. There's no real story that I could discern here and the acting was really quite bad.

But really, the thing that must be addressed is the camera work. If this were an actual cameraman I'd ask if he were drunk. I guess it's supposed to add to the style or atmosphere or something but mostly it just looks like a mistake through the whole thing. Lots of modern movies do that same drifting and bobbing. They're all terrible. Don't take your cues from them.

I personally didn't mind the faceless characters, I just wish I had some reason to care what they were doing. We seemed to kind of jump into the middle of a story none of is already know.

Don't give up - it's clear you have talent and are at least trying to tell a visually appealing story.