Just curious: what do you need to do an episode in 1 month instead of 6?
Reviews for "Arc Infinitum 3"
Kel-chan responds:
The voice actors and a bigger HD
I can do an episode in one month but- I need the voice actors. For this particular one, the character of Rolon/Amata are the same VA. He basically took forever and set me the lines 2 weeks ago when I had bee n 50% done with this for 6 months.
I sent out the lines for Ep 4 of this at the beginning of this past week and only need 2 more VAs to send back their lines which might happen this wkend. Then I'll be in business since it can take 2 to 3 weeks to make an Ep. Ep 4 will be quicker since its all plot centric and not alot of fight stuff.
I have a bunch of backlogged stuff to release too but I'll be staggering it so people can get time to watch em all.
Next animation will be Gunmetal Black ep 24 in about 2 weeks, then Arc Ep4 in the following 2-3 weeks. Ep 5 will have more action and maybe if I'm lucky it'll be done around Thanksgiving. I could just get new VAs for every episode on the Voice acting alliance forum but I think that'd screw up the production and whatnot.
It's all basically on how fast the VAs get back to me. I always seem to be missing 1 person for every project I work on and then it seeems like everybody sends their lines all at once.
I guess if more ppl donate to the patreon, then I can actually pay the Voice actors which would help motivate them to send their lines much quicker
I hate to say, it's a pretty good product in many respects, but lacking in a few that stops it from being a potential masterpiece or high caliber piece, if nothing else.
To start with the constructive here:
-High quality and fairly well known voice actors. Always a plus to have those around.
-3d animation and according cell-shading style, both of which have potent punch for a unique and high quality style.
-Really good processing of said art, so it comes out nice and crisp. Further compliments the art style in and of itself.
-A universe with enough interest and things being juggled to keep the viewer in for the unique world they are curious to learn more about, or at least enough to keep their attention.
-A solid amount of length and good frame rate as well, meaning this is a platform reading to go for extremely high quality art and animation as a whole. I cannot emphasize these 2 key points enough to mark the difference between something that's fun for a couple of goes and something that people come back to again and again.
That being said, there are a handful of things that lack polish or may, dare I say, directly need improvement to play catch up to the stunning fields already presented. I should emphasize that half the reason these bug me some is because of the overt imbalance between various qualities, making the goods still good, but the bads fairly exaggerated.
Anyways:
-While the voice acting was of quality, there was a lack of immersion into a considerable few of the lines, which held back the ambiance from being more complete and the atmosphere from holding more direction and interest, compared to the potential clearly carved out. On a related note, a handful of lines feel less inspired or poorly written, or maybe just poorly timed. I would argue the writing is the strongest point in which this lacks, as it holds back the story telling considerably, which is the main focus. That being said, the writing isn't too obviously flawed or filled with gaping holes, either, and that counts for a lot on the other side of the scales.
-Some animations produced by characters seemed unnatural (less to a point of "not superior quality" and more of "slightly below desired quality") and some seemed a tad choppy, though they were few and far between, I'm glad to be able to say.
-The way the action and its conversations near the action were placed against another really ruined the flow of the action scenes, or at least for me. Usually a good style of cutting between the relevant story info and the threatening action relies HEAVILY on fluidity and pace to keep them pressed against another in truly satisfying matter.
-In some cases the choreography for the action felt less inspired and more rigid. There were considerably good concepts in play, but once again this is one of those delicate borders to mind if one hopes to nail quality right on the head for the legendary quality level.
-While I'm not too anime educated, I was able to pick out a handful of characters that were directly ripped from popular animes/mangas. I feel like there was a strong vibe of "paying homage to inspiration" or "references placed in the mix for fun", but the overt way it was portrayed draws 2 issues from my point of view. Firstly, it means a handful of characters are being designed purely by the artist, and one sees much of the other work that makes them love the artist's style, direction, and creations... only for a couple of areas to lack the completeness of that quality the fans become attached to. Secondly, and this one gets me slightly more, for the sake of paying homage or fun references, subtle is usually the way to go. Not only do fans love finding the little things for picking through their favorite pieces and shorts, the delayed discovery effect increases the humor and enjoyment of the bit almost exponentially.
I want to take time and reemphasize that there are some very well done fields as a whole for this bit, as are many of your bits I've seen in passing. If the other fields are be better handled (not that the handling was BAD either) or are able to do some catching up, your work would be simply explosive in enjoyment factor AND quality. As much as I enjoy the things going right here, I find myself being disappointed more because it IS that close to being a knock-out product.
I might catch some more of your works in the future, as they come. We'll see.
7/10, 4/5 ~WCCC
Kel-chan responds:
All my life until the day I die, I will always have "potential" and it will never be honed into anything amazing or explosive. Just have to settle for mediocrity or averageness.
These works will always be intermediate, I just dont have ability to master anything- writing, animation, staging, choreography or whatever. I've already had 3 decades of potential without mastering anything.
If I had that ability, I wouldn't be posting vids on newgrounds at my age. I'd be making tv shows and feature films and getting paid accordingly for it.
This is great, but whats with the naruto characters? i know your using MMD, Why not make some characters of your own instead of using official ones?
Kel-chan responds:
I did use my own char models previously but the naruto base's have a better rig setup. Don't worry, I usually swap out character models as I tweak the character rigs from ep to ep and only 2 characters were made from the naruto bases to save time
I have to say, this was interesting plot wise. To be honest, the plots of initial episodes were very difficult to put into any meaningful context. You had a basic idea of what was going on, but didn't really have enough information about the world or anything else to make meaningful determination of what anything meant long term. In other words, we couldn't see much pass the individual missions. The only exception for that was the arms dealer they caught who seems to hold important information relating to something big. Not that this was a bad thing. That is the style you are going for and the nature of this kind of series. But now we have just a bit of direction. We finally get to understand a bit more about things such as the hierarchy of the organization, potential motives, and the situation of the wasteland people referenced briefly in the first episode. It is starting to tie together and this is a good thing.
Speaking of plot, how about that blue Tobi mask? I was not impressed by it, but I did find it interesting that the "purge west town" douche bag has a red eye thingy in the exact same spot the masked thing had. Regardless, I get the sense that he is clearly not the friend of the protagonists.
The blatant Naruto models were somewhat disappointing. You have done it before and I do 100% understand the reasons why you do it. But when it becomes too obvious, it takes away from the video. If it was better hidden then I wouldn't have a problem with it. But you do have to hide it. And then there are the inevitable changes and improvements that come, but even more so if you start with a copied character model. While I greatly encourage trying to improve things such as character models, I also find the sharp changes in character that sometimes occur between episodes to be a bit hard to stomach. A bit more subtlety over time would be easier on me as the viewer to keep up with. That can be hard to do when you start with copies from well known shows and work from there. It almost requires drastic change from the start.
But to be fair, this has not been much of a problem in this series so much as it has been in other series. In fact, I would say continuity despite improvements has been an overall strength of Arc Infinitum so far. I just get worried to what things like this might lead to, as well as what it takes away from the experience when I see things which I cannot possibly look past like Tobi's mask.
Anyway, I thought the episode was overall pretty solid. It just wasn't spectacular. Like it was missing the life almost. To be clear, you have improved a lot from the first episode. The beginning sequence was really nice. This had good plot development and the action sequences were for the most part set up pretty decent. I really liked the use of the duds (is that what they are called?) in this one. It looked much more believable, which is (again) different from realistic. The Tobi's mask fight looked a bit odd, but only a bit. I'm not going to nitpick like I have in the past because A. there's much less to nitpick and B. everything I could bring up has only improved over time.
But at the same time, this episode was lacking that feeling. I don't see the edge I saw in the first couple episodes. While the voice acting is good, it feels like there isn't a lot of life to it. The episode is well put together and organized, and yet it just doesn't quite flow. I can't even put my finger on it exactly. There just needs to be a better job at selling the drama and the tension in general so that I as the viewer don't stay emotionally detached for 9 plus minutes. As interested as I was in the plot. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but I think I read you saying that the next episode is a plot driven one. If that is true, then this aspect becomes even more important.
All in all, though, I am encouraged by the episode because you are steadily improving at pretty much everything and it does not go unnoticed here. Many of the individual aspects are better. It's just that tying everything together (even if it was individually mostly better) was a little weaker in this episode. Something that is very important to me as a viewer is the feel of an episode or series. Generally, I find this to be an overall strength of yours so I don't think it's really a long term issue. It is kind of an abstract concept, but your first two episodes had it despite having larger flaws at spots than what I could find in this episode. It's not that the feel is bad here. It's just not as good a feel as the first two episodes, and I think that is what takes away most from it despite many things being better here.
So I gave you an 8/10 or a 4/5. Pretty solid video with many individual improvements. Just bring back a little edge and fluidity to it and I see no reason why the next one can't be damn good.
Kel-chan responds:
Already remodelled the characters. I'd re-upload the video but the video is 230mb and I can only reupload 100mb. It's funny everybody mentions that tobi char which was not even supposed to be in this episode at all. I only put him in because the one VA missed a couple lines and this was already delayed a couple of months so I wanted to wrap it up so I basically created that whole hallway scene which was not originally in there just to fill the time or where the lines wouldve been.
I think the main issue with this was the huge fap from not havng the one VA which basically broke the momentum and flow of the work Its also hard for the VAs to have an idea of whats going on exactly. I can write the character is out of breath or something in a scnen but they wont's really have an idea as to what's exactly happening.
The next one will be a little easie since theres no action. I find its hard for VAs to give a goo sense of immersion, specifically with action scenes when they dont know exactly what the char is doing or where they are in the space without a visual aid. This probably won't be an issue in the next ep since its all talking.
Or maybe its just the different background music. I only used one Ed harrison song as opposed to before and all his songs are very moody and atmospheric and music plays a big role.
As for other character models in things... Lol you won't like Gunmetal Black ep 24. I basically redid every single character. The base looks are the same, cept for Su which..has totally revamped but well. It's like recasting main characters, but with using better character rigs, I can do better animations, more facial emotions, better bone skeletons etc.
Also frankly, alot of the naruto model bases are closer to what I would naturally be drawing if I drew this so, alot of stuff was placeholders. But now I pretty much have the rigs customized like I want so I wont be changing them much except for their outfits but their faces and what not will be the same
Cool animation, nice job :) The character's motions seemed a little unnatural at times and I feel like the visuals could use a lot more work, but overall I think this has a lot of potential to develop into something very interesting. I'm not terribly familiar with 3d animation but I can imagine that it's considerably more difficult than traditional 2d animation, so props to you on that front. My suggestions are:
* Work on the character motions - make them a little more fluid and natural.
* Add a little more emotion (there were some scenes where the characters seemed unnaturally expressionless)
* Work on the art and throw in some more cinematics. There is definitely a lot of room for improvement on this front. Could use more detailed textures, backgrounds, etc. It feels like some of the scenes in this animation were too close together. Add some cinematic, transitional sequences inbetween them to add a little more depth to the story. Would be really cool to see an intro sequence like the one in the original GITS. I'd recommend checking out the movie "Blade Runner" for some additional inspiration.
Overall I thought this was pretty cool, so good job. Definitely a lot of potential here. 4/5.