Score: 7
"Great with a grain of salt."
date: October 12, 2009
First off, I made the mistake of watching the latest flash before everything else. I believe I gave that a ten. So I've seen how your style, story telling, and voice acting have all improved. I'm writing this review so that hopefully you will be reminded not to make the mistakes in this cartoon again.
I did like this cartoon, but again, there were a few problems. The thing I noticed first was the voice acting. Now most of it was good. Who ever did Blues' voice was great. Still, having a 16 y.o. sound like they're 36 is bad. You might have managed if the voices just went up an octave. Also, who ever voice Kiara's "boss" did'nt do such a great job. It sounded like he read the words. It didn't sound natural; as if the words were coming from his head not a paper.
The animation was good, and yes I did think of the boondocks. I didn't find anything wrong with the style of animation other than it looked immature. As I have seen your latest work I know it has developed since then. It's gone from rather basic shapes to far better detail.
I know this is just a flash and they tend not to be very long, but the story seemed kind of thrown together. What made it great was the preface while preloading, giving form to this instance played out in the movie. If I didn't read about the characters first I would have been lost.
Another little blip in the story was the overlapping of comedy to drama. I liked the burger argument, but then the characters broke in and everything got all Matrix-y. A little too serious for the situation. If it was an attempt at humor, it failed. The way the characters handled the fight made it seem as if they had a lot of experience already. Like it was no big deal to kill a horde of demons with a few bullets, a little swordplay, and a magic spell here and there. I'd compare the situations to the Matrix, but I'm on a character limit.
There's nothing wrong with comedy and drama overlapping if done right. I believe the key lays in mastering the art of subtlety. You need to pick one and learn how to integrate the other. Just try not to counter the genres. The only way I can describe this is by comparing it to Scrubs. Hopefully you've seen it. If not, it's not hard to find. Just watch a few episodes and you'll see.
Basically, Scrubs is a sitcom that takes their special brand of drama and wipes the floor with it's comedy. For example, you find that Janitor is mean and picks on people using a series of pranks and some hard-to-explain reason for a grudge. This is funny. Later on, one episode points out that he does this because of a failure to be more successful than the life of a janitor. That one episode takes all the humor that rises from one character and his ongoing antics and flushes them down the toilet. That is not funny. To be honest, I love and hate the show.
I know I split of into a tangent there, but I'm an anecdote kind of guy. Sorry.
Anywho, those are all the major problems. There some little ones I'll discuss briefly.
There were a few spelling errors. Just go back and check your work. Or because this is a "In the future" story, you could use the 'evolved language' angle. Just say that's how the words are spelled at that time, you know? I only went through it once before I began writing this so I didn't see any grammar problems. Oh, on the profile for Blues what did you mean that he's behind everyone by three years? Was that three years of age or training? If it was age, then he's four years behind. I'm sure you know how to count by now. So I won't be too mean.
Okay then. I think that's it. Again, this is meant has a helpful reminder so that you don't go backwards but forward. I'll shut up now and watch the other flashes.
