Reviews for Across the Universe Ep.2

[Van-pl]

Damn

I'm sad beacuse of the enormous wasted potential in this movie.

I became fan of it since your first installment, "Delusions of Grandetur". But since then, you propably got lost in the snow with the concept. The plot of your film was painfully standard, shallow and turned to some random shit happening. You didn't really managed to recreate all that atmoshpere of melancholy and soliture from the first episode. All that was left was supposedly "thickening" plot and action.

I didn't liked that this guy and him being extremely naiive. The girl was smug and arrogant, but i pretty much disliked all that boasting about how the gravity suppresing gun is fucking awesome,OMG OMG I JUST CAME. Meh. Let the watchers develop their own opinion, don't force it into them.

So, summarizing, plot was pretty pointless, it lacked the cause-effect link. The acting was horrible, the voices were good, but totally unfitting to what we saw. All that running into window and other quick action scenes lacked the speed, and "kick", i didn't really felt those scenes.

Going to animation/gfx, i found this massive amount of 3D really fucking repulsive. I mean, srsly. Movements were choppy, the people sometimes looked more like a dolls, you really need to work on recreating emotions, lip synch and all that crap.
What hurt my eyes mostly was inconsistency of character drawings and overall lack of detail in scenes. One time they looked nice and stylishly posed, while in others they lacked anatomy very bad.
Backrounds really could use some polishing, buildings didn't have almost any details, and looked more like a bunch of boxes, it was especially painful on the close-ups.

But you had some virtues in your movie. The voice acting was pretty decent, the music was really awesome. Also, i bet your story is really good and could kick some balls, but so far you didn't really let us have a taste of it. You barely and vaguely introduced the watchers into the Outerverse and its creatures, but still it don't make any sense, more than "I don't know what the fuck is going on, but hell, as long as we're running it doesn't matter".

I'm pretty disappointed at this third installment of your series, but it doesn't mean i'm not curious and won't watch next ones. I really belive in you, that you can make it a great series, but you need to really work on it. I'm still looking forward into next one :)

good luck!

3/5

crystalpencil responds:

Thanks for the review! Based on what alot of people have said here, the story needs some revamping. I'll definitely take that into consideration for the next installment. As far as the 3d goes, this would not have been made if I had not gone in that direction. In all of my previous submissions the comments were about the lack of animation etc, so with the introduction of this method the majority agree it has improved a little bit. For now its back to the drawing board.

[Letiger]

Hmmm...

I have to say, I'm not quite as impressed as I thought I should be. Let me explain.
First of all, I'm gonna start with the story. It's simply ok. I'd assume you're releasing these epidoes in the form of "shorts" in order to get them released faster, but it's not working for me, who atleast is interested in what's happening. The whole thing, guestimate,was around 3 minutes.

Which was around the same for the other, episode 1 and possibly Delusions of grandeur, which is still my favorite one after 4 years now? The voice acting, sub-par. For the girl's, which I think is still unnamed, it's slightly above average for me. Not the most perfect thing, but it'll do. However, the man's is slightly below. I don't know, it just dosen't feel right, they way he sounds. Maybe I'd need to watch episode 1 again, but I'm rushing this review.

And now, the worst part (but it's not bad!) for me, the graphics. The first thing that caught my eye to this, was how their head moves. When they talk, or in the begging when there was a lot of "action" it felt really wrong. It gave me the impression that they shoudn't be moving like that. Personally, the way you did it in episode 1, with real pictures and not drawn backgrounds, was better.

For a giant step up, I'd like to see how it was done in Grandeur, but I can't expect it all. Then there's the running scenes. I can't quite remember what he said, but I got the impression that the animation did not match what he said, in mouth and character movement, right before they lept out of the window. And for the last part which was quite obvious to me, was when he ran from the cyclops?

Anyways, whilst he was running from that, it felt slow. You know, when the camera panned way back and it was leaping from bulding to building. The legs on the man just felt like he was running through mud, not in the street as fast as he can.

I would wait 2 years, maybe 2 1/2 at most, for an ATU 3 if it had the same feel as Grandeur, was longer, say 10 minutes, and overall, looked better (^). It felt more "Deep" when there was no dialogue, but I'm more interested long term when there is.

Maybe you can find a happy medium?

6/10

crystalpencil responds:

Thanks for the feedback! Alot of people seem to prefer the Delusion of Grandeur installment, stylistically and conceptually. I need to reexamine it again. Although i find it hard to watch sometimes, it's like looking at an old awkward photo. Im still trying to discover what it is Im doing here, so with each episode this series will morph. Into what, I don't know, but I'm hoping to make progress either way.

[MrWolfman]

truly amazing animimation...

but man the dialogue was shit. i am sorry but it was pretty bad. it was just very cliche and and seemed very forced. most of it made me roll my eyes. i think this had exponential potential but the script was a real downer.

[banegame]

Indeed, there is a light

Good concept even though it's pretty much been told 'exactly' the same way, what with dreams and cellphones and all. Anyway, I agree, the story is a bit abstract and fragile, while the animation looks like a cross between rotoscoped/cgi. It's kind of wild and unorthodox which keeps it fresh while the plot, characters and story seem like grey fish in a blue pond. Keep at it buddy!

[crazyartist1000]

Not bad, needs work.

Work on the follow through on you character animation. The part were the robot is jumping lacks secondary motion and the part before that were he is running needs to be sped up. Are you animating the cameras or are you using flash because it tends to get shaky at some points and takes away from the animation. It seems like a great idea but needs improvement. I would recommend getting Maya 2011 it is a lot easier to work with and is to convert to other file types.