Score: 8
"Story-driven... what a concept."
date: November 20, 2005
I'm going to hack this to pieces below, so let me get something out of the way first:
The story for this is amazingly good. There are lots of pieces on here with better graphics and better animation, but not many that have me following the storyline the way this one did.
Also, the music choices are really good. They fit nicely with the action (and/or lack thereof, during some bits) without being distracting or calling attention to themselves.
Nitpicking begins now.
The artwork quality is all over the map. Some of it (like most of the facial closeups, and the silhouette of the girl sitting up in bed) is quite good. Some of it is less good... the shot from near the guy's feet while he's sleeping in the truck bed, for instance. It's never actually BAD (all of it is better than I could do), but the inconsistency is a bit jarring.
The animation isn't as good as the art. That walking animation near the start looks weird (the buttocks don't move at all, and the legs seem almost they're made of rubber). The breathing/panting bit when the girl wakes up seems off also... I think it's that the shoulders are moving too much, and the head and chest don't seem to be moving at all. In the silhouette of the same scene, her top seems to either be missing or fit a lot tighter, and her breasts move straight up and down with no chest expansion. There are things like that throughout, I'm just mentioning a few that I can remember as being strange.
The style of the piece seems to change from "cartoony/stylized" to "realistic/representational" and back a lot. I've never cared for this, though I realize a fair amount of anime uses it, usually during the "comic relief" bits. In this piece it's not quite as overdone as the sudden shifts to SD usually are and it doesn't seem to correlate to a humorous bit, so I'm not sure if it's intentional or not.
Author's Response:
Thankyou for you input :)
Yes, it does likely jump around alot in style. I mostly worked on this in bit and pieces spread out over 2 monthes time. For instance I add maybe two scenes one day, then 2 weeks later Id come back in and add another two scenes. How I was feeling seems to show in the certain scene. Ill pay careful attention to my style consistancy.