don't think you needed to include a long narration at the start. use your writing skills to tell the back story as you go along.
Reviews for "Shattered Heaven Ep. 1"
3:30 Cameo!! XD That just made my day, nice first episode, I can't wait to see how you improve in the future.
I wanted to enjoy this, but the dialogue is cliche. None of it felt organic. Animation was fine. Is there such a thing as too much character exposition? It is when its forced. The first episode of a series should focus on the world. A spot for the characters to start.
It turned from an action scifi to a basic television drama way too fast.
I have a couple of questions:
I haven watched them, but I also are not all to motivatzed to spend the time researching it, but: There are a hell load of videos of you since 2008 about this series. Is this the remake? The intro is the story that passed by in the first series, eh? Interessting. Surely the story has potential. I concure though that you have to improve the character development and the voices to make it intersting enough to follow it.
You should check out this series. http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/116666 Flash selfmade y someone who started less skillfull as you are right now, but the dramatics are just better. The characters are shown one at a time, the sounds are confident and suit the atmosphere and the viewer is motivasted to watch even though some huge animationflaws
Though I enjoy the lenghts of the conversation in the party. It takes alot of bravery to make such a long conversation. And hell yea, I really do. Dramatirgicly you should consider though that you can start small. Littler bits af information and some riddles to the charactes. Maybe consider let the viewer dive slowely thourgh them, not let the characters introduce them entirly and then look where they leed. But well. Consider and make your choises.
AdamTilford responds:
Chronologically, this takes place before the previous ones. This follows the first novel. The first series I started with was a sequel to the 3rd book. It was stupid to present something visual to a new audience without explaining the characters. But I look at it as practice at animating since I'm a writer, not an animator. I'm aware of Xin. This episode is really the only episode like this, I should have cut out some of the character interactions, but what's done is done. And I am happy with how this came out overall as it's a big improvement to how I used to animate.
The intro is pretty much the prologue from the actual book, it's more of a history of the world that they're in. But there's a lot of reasons as to why it's set up as it is. Since this is based off of a novel, everything is already set up and I'm not writing things as I go. While it is mecha, and there will be plenty of action, it is a character drama. Where it's shown how they start off and how they change and grow to where they end up by the middle and end of the series. Only 2 characters really had development or introductions in this episode, Adam and Amy since their conversation had the most actual depth. While there were others introduced, they were just sort of, there as foreshadowing for future things.. The issues that were present in this episode won't be in the following ones. I feel like the first episode was the biggest hurdle to get over.
It's like watching a poorer version of Gundam SEED. The voice acting was shit. Your opening narrator had the worst British accent I've ever heard. As far as animation goes, I'm sure your just starting out so there is no need to harp on that. But your mech designs are awful. Your angles need to be sharper and shades NEED to be improved. Also the color scheme on the mechs are just bland for their kinda flashy details. Finally the plot is paper thin and the characters are introduced almost all at once. Don't pack the first episode with character crap in an attempt to get viewers to care. Also it's even worse to hear one dimensional characters explain other one dimensional characters. If ALL of these fuckers are as important as you make them out to be then develop them over time. Also dude your ending screams Gundam SEED.