Reviews for Scarecrows

[Jped]

Wow!

First of all, i just wanted to say that it was very good animation. While in some places it way have seemed slightly rigid, which you have explained, i still felt that almost all of the scenes moved very nicely with a good mixture of western and eastern animation. The character design's were very impressive! My only issue was with the sound quality and the length in story. It felt a little as though you had to cram a lot of information and backstory into such a short film. Also, the scene where the small scarecrow and the crow become friends is a little hard to read although i appreciate how difficult it can be to show relationships without dialogue. Very nice anyway mate, i can only hope you make a sequel or something just as eye catching! :]

[danomano65]

nice job.

i am digging the character design. You did a great job with lighting and shadow on the character itself, just be careful on light direction and implementing characters into the background. I agree with IamZavok on a lot of things.

my main thing is that most of what you have accomplished to me seems like keyframe animation. With a little more time and inbetweens I believe this would be a more successful piece. The animation would be smoother and give you more opportunity to show character through body language and facial expression. I felt like there wasn't enough time for the scarecrow to bond with the bird before he gets owned. Perhaps they can witness the big one ransacking something and he tries to get the bird to safety, not just having the bird stand behind him. There'd be more time for the big one to move around as well. Once again, character designs are awesome. Good work on the mood and everything. When the crows ate him up, I couldn't help but be reminded of "We're Back!" a dinosaur movie from a while back where the villan is messed up by crows and all that's left is a screw he used for an eye lol

Good job tho.

Kaloian responds:

I was totally thinking of "were back' when I made that scene and yes I agree to everything really. The story felt rushed and I should have put more time into things but it seemed to me like people would be looking at it going " GET ON WITH IT!" so I decided to go for a bit rushed compared to boring and dragged out. Also, the animation is very choppy in places and that mostly do to how tired I was when finishing this. I would check scenes and be convinced they were done when I needed to do a pass of in betweens.

Anyways, thanks for the nice comment and such.

[gooofie]

awsome

kinda cute

[IamZavok]

jumps in quality

first off, you have a great grasp of flash and you are obviously a very good artist. However, a good artist =/= automatically equal a good animator. While all of your characters felt like they had weight and volume (they felt real), they moved kind of stiffly and it felt very off, like an uncanny valley effect. You were close but you were in the valley and so the animation was slightly painful to watch for me just because of the irritating nature of being so close to awesome. I'm saying that your motion needs words and make your movement less jittery. Other than that you are golden my good man.

as far as the story goes, it was simple yet fell into cliches and didn't explain things very well. You are relying to much on your audiences willing suspension of disbelief, as in, you're leaving to much up to them to just go "ok well I guess that makes sense".

one last thing, it seemed like the movie's quality of animation jumped at times, going from being very disneylike(fluid and motion focused) to very anime like (keyframes and pose focused with minimal in betweens). That actually made my head hurt from the transition, I'm not saying either of those styles are bad, I'm just saying you need to stay consistent. Look at the old Looney Tunes, they sacrificed detail for fluidity and poses, anime sacrifices fluidity (keyframes) for detail and poses (or any other manner of match up depending on series).

other than those few gripes, I enjoyed it. Good job and I hope you keep animating.

Kaloian responds:

I totally agree with the story comment but I didn't want it to be all exposition because it would be too boring and frankly too much work as the animation would be incredibly long. The animation jumps like that because i had to prioritize scenes to get it 'done" and to do that I animated things to a certain degree and finished off the more important/ cooler scents this left me in a "that looks done" stage and so it is what it is now. I personally think the film could be livelier as they tend to stick to certain poses which makes it very "cut out animation" which it isn't. But thanks for the comments and that was actually a lot of help, thanks.

[Maltokimbooth]

Fantastic animation, but story and sound lacking

First thing to say is that the animation is absolutely top notch.

However, as mentioned below, the story is a bit thin at times, and the ending is a bit anticlimactic. I mean, at the minute it's neither happy nor sad, as it isn't clear if the little scarecrow survives, and if so, how. The characters were interesting, they just need a more coherent plot to develop in.

The sound quality on this animation is really poor. I istenened to the other version that you linked to in the description, and the sound quality was really good (apart from possibly the noise of the crows flying out of the tower). Why the discrepancy?

But as I say, fantastic animation and interesting characters.