that ahole
Author Comments
This is my submission for the novice round of NATA. The topic for this round was "the elephant in the room".
Where I come from, we have an expression that roughly translates to "an elephant in a glass studio/shop", and it is commonly used when talking about very clumsy people that might be in the wrong place. What I did, was to use this expression as the set for this story.
I focused on using this task to get better at animating. It's my dream to become an animator (and at the same time make my own movies), but so far, the animations that I've been making have been very stiff and lifeless, and the movements pretty unrealistic. I wanted to see if I could overcome myself and combine my original drawing style with more dynamic animations. I studied a lot of movements, and positions, but of course, not everything went as well as I could have wished for. There are a number of scenes that I would really like to redo, but a deadline is a deadline, and time is short. But that might as well be a good thing. Before this competition, my only real projects had been taking up to a year to finish, simply because I wasn't effective enough. This animation may only have taken me 25 days to make, but I find that the quality has risen from my earlier flashes. I hope that I'm not the only one who can see the improvement.
One regret that I do have with this project though, is the planning, which may have gone a little too fast. I had a lot of symbolism thought out for this story, but the delivery could have gone alot better. I guess I'll just have to take things one step at the time.
For now, I feel the rush of victory, having won both against time, as well as against myself. I hope to join this tournament again next year if everything goes well!
Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed.
Sometimes the best planning comes in a time of rush )
Great music and animation skills, but the music itself ends faster than the animation, plus it ends even faster when I change tab to view other things, there is no voice act in the animation too. :/
Your style is very interesting and the concept was good. However, as others said, the story needs a little clearing up. A little vagueness is nice and leaves it up to interpretation, but in this case it was just confusing. After watching it several times, I'm still trying to decide if the girl was a daughter, wife, employee or someone else. But 4 stars overall.
I'll give you a full four because I love the animation. It reminds me of the sort of thing I do with my cartoon strips -especially the eyes.
Favoritism aside, I'd give it a 3.5 because this is certainly a lovely short, but as you say, the delivery wasn't executed quite as effectively as it could've been. The first time I watched it I thought it was great. The whole package was somewhat mesmorizing, but watching it again... it feels rushed. The animation certainly conveyed what you were trying to get across in each scene, but one thing weakens it -the jump to the woman telling off the manager.
It didn't seem out of place the first viewing, but it does now. It doesn't feel as though the manager has been ignoring her enough to warrant the blowout. It seemed like her first day on the job. If you get around to editing this or redoing it try to put it in a later event in time, she's been working for him for awhile or montage the seasons along with the clock.
As it stands, it doesn't hold up to multiple viewings for that reason. The dread she feels just isn't strong enough to warrant telling him off. Neglect takes time to fester.
I really do hope you do more of these though. I really do like this one. :)
Credits & Info
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Daily 4th Place June 5, 2012
