A group of ragtag friends set off for a new land!
Alternate title of this review: Just because you're making a cartoon doesn't mean you have to emulate a Disney movie in every bad way.
Starting with graphics is the easiest. There are two distinct graphical styles in this flash that contrast like nothing else. There is the backgrounds, which are unanimated and not interacted with, and the scenery that is animated. Already this is a problem, because the black borders on everything that is animated and the comparitive lack of detail to the backgrounds make watching this flash quite the eyesore at some points. In a vacuum, the animated graphics and animation wasn't too impressive, either. The rabbit and frog had weird anatomy problems, and the bird's head kept changing, particularly the beak. On the upside, the backgrounds were very well done. Work to blend these in with the foreground animation and the flash looks much nicer.
The quality of sound and voice acting was interesting, because there was really good parts and parts that made me want to claw my ears out. The good parts were the voice acting for the scarecrow and the bird, and some of the ambient sounds at the beginning of the flash. The bad parts were the rabbit adding a "mm" before every phrase and the way-too-loud background uplifting music when the frog joins the party. Oh, and you've really mastered the whole slow scene transition coupled with a character's monolouge fading in volume thing. You don't have to use it all the time
Substantively, this flash was unimpressive. I find that I'm predisposed against serieses in general, because they are often driven by the unnecessary want of the author to produce some sort of work for public consumption. However, a series in this case is a particularly bad idea because the story does not start and end at each episode; it's like there's a half-year waiting period between scenes. Therefore I'm stuck reviewing a flash with no ending, which kinda hurts the storytelling aspect of it.
The story isn't really one I want to hear, however. The flash is character driven, meaning that the story isn't something I should care about too much, but it's still doesn't help matters. It reminds me of something I'd see in some children's RPG, and I get the feeling I'd have a better time watching Arthur. Which isn't really saying much, given how awesome Arthur is.
So, the flash being character driven should mean that I like the characters. Not so in this piece. Generally, the characters are the sort of one-dimensional stereotype that usually accompanies this kind of story, and I don't really care about any of them. Sure, they aren't objectionable (well, maybe the frog who talks alot and knows fashion is because she's a woman is), and perhaps the bird is even kind of cool for using "hardcore" that one time, but they've all got personalities as deep as the pond that the frog tried to drown herself in, and I don't see that changing over the series. My guess would be that, in place of actual character development, they pick up a new party member each episode, but thankfully I won't be watching the future episodes to see if that's the case.