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Blasting Space-O-saurus and melting Steel

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Blazemoon is my ca. 3 minute short movie project that I have been working on for almost 10 years now. Yeah, I know, that's a little bit too long for just 3 minutes, but let me explain:


First, what even is Blazemoon?

In this 2D animation we follow Solveig, a space warrior of alien origin who is trying to rescue her green-skinned girlfriend Bonnie from the clutches of an evil general who is trying to harness the girl's hidden powers for his own gains. Nothing too special on the surface, but as it so often is with these kinds of projects, over the many years of production the original story changed a bit and became more complex.


Besides producing Blazemoon digitally by using a drawing pen monitor, the whole thing is as traditionally animateed as possible. Every frame a new drawing, no shortcuts with adobe animate (flash), no automated line smoothing, no CGI, just a good ol' waist of time in photoshop. Sounds kinda stupid, but I like it that way. That process paired with plenty of real life interference and a shrinking of motivation due to almost zero clicks on Youtube hopefully explains why it takes so long for me to finish.


Over a course of 10 years I obviously learned a few things and (hopefully) improved my art a bit. The first cut in the sequence I chose is one of the oldest that I finished and in my opinion, it shows. The Spinosaurus jaw is just an unmoving drawing and Solveig's leg movement looks very choppy. On the other hand, fhe final cut in the sequence where Solveig blasts through the gate and kicks some ass, is one of the newer ones (around 3 years old) and I'm still quiet pleased with it.


At this point I completed around 60% of the project and once I finished everything I will probably go back to some of the older cuts in order to touch them up. But yeah... the motivation. By posting this sequence here I make another attempt at getting more views (maybe) and regain some of said motivation. Can't get any worse than YouTube... right?


Please tell me your opinions in the comments. Is this any good? Should I continue? Did I waste my time?

By the way here is my YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDI5mo26NXi2QERpb3DPtxg/videos

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This is an interesting watch! The inner mouth camera shot of the character's leg getting licked was questionable ;) however the whole concept of the space dinosaur existing out in a water bubble in space was really cool! The follow up action scene was also really cool! But none of the people on the bridge are paying attention to this threat so I can only assume they're not aware of it?

These scenes don't make any sense without proper context so I can only wait to see if there is some sort of explanation before this scene or after it.

I enjoy the animation especially with Solveig burning through the vault door. General audiences will just say that the animation looks good and like it for being so complex and smooth, but there are a few animation errors here and there as well as a lightning fast timing you're going for which does work for a fast rescue scene, but may hurt the flow if you suddenly slow down at any point. Once again this requires the rest of the context but my advice is too keep up that pace if you're going to finish the whole thing.

The tone feels inconsistent as well? Showing the Dinosaur get half of it's face blown off then having people get sucked into space to showing aguy get buried in the ground Looney Tunes style with his eyes rolling around in his head and then the other guy gets vaporized to bone and muscle in a grim fashion? I don't know it was kind of jarring from point to point, but it might be what you're going for so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

There was also a continuity error that bugged me when I watched this:
Why didn't the other area depressurize at 0:20? If there was a direct path to space that section would suck out too.

All in all this project has a lot of work behind it and while it is sort of worrying that this took 10 years to make, it seems that it all boils down to your motivation to work on something to show people and not having anyone to show it to. This isn't a waste of time if you finish it!

I would like to see it in it's entirety so I can understand what's going on in with the story and what the conclusion is. It's up to you what you do from here but I would suggest finishing it in the next year or so and not spend anymore time on it if you can't get it done by the fall next year 2023 but that's just some so in so's opinion so take it with however much salt your body can handle.

Everdra responds:

Thank you very much for your very detailed response. I'll make sure that the guy's reactions will make sense in context. I already have another shot that establishes that these guys are kinda bad at their job and also bored out of their mind and don't pay much attention. The only exception being the female lieutenant who actually looking out of the window.

About that guy who get's stuck in the ground: Yeah that's kinda silly. Maybe I'll do something about that. Let's see.

You are right about that continuity error. I also noticed that. I will probably add some sort of bulkhead closing in one of the shots. As for the 10 year thing: This is by far not all of the footage that I have completed. There is around 2 minutes of done shots for this project. I am slow but not THAT slow ;)

It's nice to finally get some feedback for this. I'm about to finish another pretty lenghty and complex shot. I might post more here in the future, but I don't want to give everything away before it's all done.

Great work, I like your style.

What is your YouTube channel???, I want to suscribe, this is the kind of animations what deserves many views

Everdra responds:

Hi, it's this one: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDI5mo26NXi2QERpb3DPtxg/videos
Happy that you like it.
Probably should have put the channel into the description.

Credits & Info

Views
553
Faves:
9
Votes
88
Score
3.39 / 5.00

Uploaded
Jun 16, 2022
3:04 AM EDT
Genre
Action