Reviews for Alive (NATA Finals)

[Ericho]

It really does seem like you deserve to be the winner. You already won Daily Feature. I thought it was just going to end with the gags of the guy dying over and over. It actually turned out to be a lot more philosophical than I thought. It does make you wonder, what would it be like if you couldn't accept your own death? You know, 250,000 people or so die every day.

And you thought Santa Claus was busy. The animation is a bit off, though. It looks like this guy has two faces with a different shade. Yeah, I bet that was intentional, but it just comes off as strange. The voicework is adequately done too.

[spoiler911]

I was waiting for a puchline.

still good though.

[FallOutFox]

How sad...But funny at the sametime.

[Luis]

I usually dont like alot of dialogue in animations I like. I did end up enjoying this at the end. It took a few tries to get through it. I think its slow to get going at the beginning. Dont know if its too chatty or stalls too much, I think the real milk in the titts of this movie late in the movie.

Execution wise, I was used to more polish from your past stuff. Not sure how much of that was experimental and how much was pressed for time, or how much of it was mistake(?). Either way, some stuff felt rough. Some walk cycles didnt have the charm you usually breathe into your characters.

Would have liked to see more experimenting on handling characters that have alot of drapery to them. Felt like Death would have been a cool character to animate and experiment some neat fabric handling. I did like and DO like your constant desire to push your frame by frame stuff. Hopefully you take that with you on your adventures beyond NATA.

I wont address the sound issues, though i DO think that still falls on the animator to work out. At the end of the day its your piece and you just gotta figure out ways of making the sound compliment your work and not hinder it.

Lookin forward to more stufff

[DamonandSky]

You know, it's you make it rather hard to critique you when you already have listed the issues and already have learned your mistakes; so I can't help you constructively; but I can definitely say what you did right.

This to me was very meaningful and smart. At first I kind of just saw the same old "death needs a break" sort of deal that I always see, but by the end of the film the points you make and the sort of way the story unfolds meant a lot. I loved how you handled the plot and the humor wasn't over kill, in fact it better exemplified your points without damaging the plot in anyway and that is fantastic for a flash. I think now I can honestly say this flash now has some of my favorite dialogue pieces, particularly the end where Calvin tells Death to join the other souls. That was touching, and that is a rare; yet beautiful gem.