I admire the ambition here...
.. but I'm afraid the actual animation chops just weren't there to make the story compelling and real. Also the voice actors pretty well blew, but I won't focus in on that.
The breakdown:
The art, though decent, was far too bland and uninspired to match a fantasy universe. You've obviously put a whole lot of thuoght into this project, and thoroughly stretched your imagination to its limits. So if you're going to ride the ways of high fantasy and make something extravagant in plot and idea, the art and direction should match. What I saw was some browns and greens making vague shapes. Really get in their and design unique and interesting characters who are distinct and relfect your own flavour and match the universe they live in. Whatever you do though, don't pull a Jazza and make the most generic fantasy characters ever.
The animation was tweenfilled, which is fine I guess as a beginner, but if you're going to take animation seriously I reccomend going out and grabbing The Animators Survival Kit by Richard Williams. It's a fantastic book that goes into great detail outlining the principles of tradition and frame-by-frame animation. If you start learning from the classical formats you'll pick up how to make gravity and weight and balance feel truly real in your animations. Then you can learn the tricks and gizmos of Flash such as easing and shape tweens and you'll be able to really grasp tweens as their own art form. As is you have a few symbols getting dragged around in motions that barely resemble the actions they represent.
The direction was the biggest problem for me. You angles were just flat on and didn't really ever change. We never get close ups, or tracking shots, or any such things. Try and really mix things up and give up some shots that aren't pedestrian and textbook. As is this looks like a bad John Singleton attempt at directing. The "camera work" fails to generate any interest and just leaves the viewer staring blankly and a couple of side-scrolling characters from a distance where you can hardly learn anything about them at all. I know you aren't Rtil, but take a look at his work, especially GUM if you want to see a great example of how you can use simple view angles to really spice up your work.
Keep at it, and massive kudos for the effort you put into this. Great to see that even if this isn't the best, at least your producing unique and original content. Work hard and you'll go far!
