I made a cartoon... any suggestions

[janssenpayne]

I've been trying to figure this whole animation thing out and so I made this quick animation for school and i wanted to see if you guys had any suggestions..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXcmxX3iR 3Y

I'm thinking about creating a new video every week until I get the hang of it

[Kurai-Samurai]

The characters need to blink, if they did blink I didn't really see it so they need to blink more often. As you know, it's a basic reflex movement to keep your eyes moist with fluid (from my understanding). Anywho, in terms of animation, you probably know this, but the most important thing to making short animated films is firstly story, and secondly the acting. By acting, I mean how you animate the characters so they seem realistic, so they seem alive, seem as though they think. I don't really know if any animator in the whole history of animation has ever actually accomplished that feat, but the best animators always aim to. It's not that hard to animate a character in an everyday situation, for instance, if you were one of those guys and you heard something that you thought was impossible, you might stick your head back out in shock, or fall of the sofa. Just think how you would act (that is, if they're human, and it's an ordinary situation). Story wise, you just have to have the creativity to come up with a good, immersive, interesting story. Even the shortest of stories can make the audience feel happy at the end, and as a result they might tell there friends and suddenly we have an animation that has spread to thousands, even millions through viral communication.
Anyways, if you want anymore help, P.M. me. If this didn't actually help you, or you knew all that already, sorry in advance.

[janssenpayne]

Thanks a lot for taking the time to watch my video and write to me, and thanks for your advice. I guess I never really thought of it as acting, but you're right why wouldn't it be? i just finished a video last night that had the blinking on it and he moves a little more, even though it looks like the characters could be thinking what they are saying i don't have the acting thing down just yet. I'd post it but I don't want to be a spammer or anything but it does show a little progress from the first. If you'd like i could PM you the video, if not thats cool. Either way I really appreciate the advice.

[EKublai]

I liked it. In fact, part of the appeal of it is the limited animation. Reminds me of something on Adult Swim. Which is why I disagree with some of the first responder's comments.

The voice-acting is nothing to call home about but it helps in making each character distinctive. Each character has a reason for being there and has something unique to contribute. The hick character is probably the weakest, but I like the narrator and the... um... nerd? Josh, whatever.

You have pretty good direction, but there's nothing that really makes this stand out besides the writing and character design and this makes the flaws stand out.

Take the line "I always wanted to be a registered nurse." Followed by the pause and then the "What it's my dream."

Besides being a cliched joke structure, its also ineffective because there's no visual reaction. There's nothing to emphasize the awkwardness.

Just a few pointers. Also, I discourage the use of sound effects like that cat sound just because the sound quality doesn't match that of the voice acting. The added static stands out.

[janssenpayne]

At 10/23/11 10:49 PM, EKublai wrote: I liked it. In fact, part of the appeal of it is the limited animation. Reminds me of something on Adult Swim. Which is why I disagree with some of the first responder's comments.

The voice-acting is nothing to call home about but it helps in making each character distinctive. Each character has a reason for being there and has something unique to contribute. The hick character is probably the weakest, but I like the narrator and the... um... nerd? Josh, whatever.

You have pretty good direction, but there's nothing that really makes this stand out besides the writing and character design and this makes the flaws stand out.

Take the line "I always wanted to be a registered nurse." Followed by the pause and then the "What it's my dream."

Besides being a cliched joke structure, its also ineffective because there's no visual reaction. There's nothing to emphasize the awkwardness.

Just a few pointers. Also, I discourage the use of sound effects like that cat sound just because the sound quality doesn't match that of the voice acting. The added static stands out.

Thanks for all your feedback, yeah this had a time limit it HAD to be 2 minutes long, so i added that joke in at the last minute to fill 10 seconds. I also did it in 3 days so two minutes of animation in 3 days working around school and work, it had to be a stand still picture more or less. I really thought the cat sound would make it just a little funnier but i couldn't find anything that was more than 15 k so I just used it and hoped no one noticed. Sadly the video is set in stone now and I have no way to change it because I just lost everything on my hard drive an hour ago, so I guess I'll just move on to the next project. Thanks for the compliments, the "writing" was really just me recording my voice over and over without any real specific idea of what I was going to do next. It was all a very fast process. It was for my school, so I didn't have too much freedom with what could be said it pretty much had to be an advertisement for community college.

[Kurai-Samurai]

Sure man, send me the vid in a PM if you want and I'll try and make some more suggestions. Although, I personally wouldn't really see it as spamming if you posted it on here, after all this is your thread and it'll allow more people to critique and help you.

Oh, and I actually agree with EKublai's points as well. It really depends on which style of animation you want to adopt. To be totally honest, the most important thing when it comes to short films in general is their story or message, and how you appeal to the audience through humor or feeling and generally manipulating the consumer of the media to get involved in your work.

You can have a really short film, maybe 15 seconds long, with limited animation, which really entertains the audience because of it's humor, or shock, or any other appeal, which will go viral. Whereas you can have a film which lasts for 5 minutes, has the best animation, but has no story and appeal so the audience basically just quits after 30 seconds, and the film goes no-where.

From my limited understanding, I think that's what makes being a free-lance commission animator so hard, pitching the balance between appeal and good animation and everything else in a very limited amount of time.

[janssenpayne]

sent! if anyone else wants to see just PM me :D