Score: 7
"Well-made, but not quite polished or compelling"
date: January 17, 2009
After watching your stick movies, I read you were planning to work on more projects like this one. I thought your animation RE: was the best of the lot, on account of its creative use of superpowers and surroundings, but, if you're tired of working on stick fights - even the really imaginative types you are able to produce - that's your decision. The reason I did not rate this animation a ten was mainly that it was not particularly moving. I've watched a lot of experimental Flash submissions, and I feel that the best convey a message of some sort by centering on some aspect of life people can identify. I didn't find your animation moving not because it wasn't well-drawn- in fact, it was better in that regard than some of the cartoons in collections - it just failed to get across any emotions to me due to its lack of focus. If you'd like to tell me what it means to you in a PM, I wouldn't mind, as I'd like to appreciate it more, but I believe a top-notch piece of art shouldn't need an explanation from the artist to get a point across, or fail to send some sort of message to a careful viewer. I'm not saying this to discourage you; in fact, I doubt I would have bothered writing this if I didn't think you had the potential to improve a great deal. The next time you work on a project like this, try to keep your mind on exactly what you want your animation to tell people. People who make top-notch Madness flashes will actually try out a lot of the movements they plan to draw; when I'm doing writing with the intent to get published, I hold the idea I want to get across in my head - I also try to imagine I'm in the same emotional state as a character when I'm working on fiction. As far as I know, focusing on a goal is always important in projects, regardless of the field you're in. I can't promise you that you'll be a better artist if you do that, but I doubt you'll get worse - you're already working on finishing tasks now anyhow, so you being well-aware of that shouldn't be a problem. I also thought your animating had some minor flaws, the main one being that parts of your images change without transitions. Your terrain, for example, will go from flat to having a cliff even though your 'camera' does not move, and the ground does not 'grow' over several frames. Similarly, you tend to make objects simply appear in your animation, instead of working them in using 'openings', 'transformations', or 'drops'. This is a problem even in your stick fights - if you look carefully at, say "Shock2" by Terkoiz1 (or terk0iz1?), you'll notice that streaks are used to indicate the teleport-like 'faster-than-the-eye-can-see' action had to do with momentum; you do not put the effect in consistently. Another area you could improve on is the smoothness of movements in your works. Your ideas for motion - the 'choreographic components' of your pieces, I suppose - are actually rather clever; you know how to make stylish scenes through positioning and timing. Unfortunately, your animation comes off as jumpy due to minor errors in frame transitions which make objects that should be solid seem to constantly change shape at times when that doesn't help the progress of your work. That said, in this Flash and "RE:", you demonstrated that you had the ability to make very smooth, flowing, scenes. The final issue I think you should know about is that you don't seem to stick to any particular style. This could be funny in some situations, but if you want to put out polished pieces, you need to make sure that any changes in the types of your visuals are for the sake of improving the message of your artwork. You will need to figure out how you want your work to look on your own, but I would suggest you play Armed With Wings 2 (only hard mode has all the boss moves, which are extremely stylish), while seriously considering shooting for similar visuals yourself - Aerodyn. already has some of those, and you pull them off beautifully. I'd be curious to know your take on all this- by PM if you want -but more importantly, focus on consistency! GL!
