AMAZING!
Ever plan on showing Talbain's human form? He is a werewolf after-all. I hope we dont have to wait long for
the next episode.
Reviews for "VG Exiles - Episode 3"
R1665 responds:
I suppose this version of Talbain isn't technically a werewolf because he does not have a human form anymore. His curse manifested as a permanent change in his adolescence and he has lived 24/7 in his current form ever since.
This gives him a very different perspective from his canonical alternate.
R1665
Good but eh
Nice animation and voices, the fight scene was awesome but I wish it was drawn out more.
But overall the flash was awesome keep it up
Great fight.... but the rest...
Rare are now the days I even bother to check on newgrounds, but I'm glad I did it for this animation deserves a review :P
I'll start with the bad:
This animation has 3 major problems: sense of pace, history and voice acting.
The animation starts on a slow pace, but increases until the begining of the fight.
During the battle, you have a lot of action going on, long fight, yet it never lets the viewer bored.
However, once the battle is over, the animation nearly stops and everything runs soooo slowlly.
The story is usually the least important on this sort of combat animations and, although a little of story is always welcomed, in my opinion, seems this tries so hard to be taken seriously that ends up being a negative point on the overal animation. Maybe because of the overflow of info? ( I'll get there soon).
Additionally, it kinda seems that without reading the extras, some people will hardly have a good understanding of the story.
Also, another problem with the story, that kinda mixes with the pace is the giant amount of information that is given to the viewer after the fight.
Imo, most of that info could be probaly mixed and removed, example1: after the fight there is a huge dialog between cage and wolf dude, followed by Jill's monologue. While SOME of Cage/Wolf's info was revelant for probably any future events, MOST of Jill's was not. So an alternative could be keep switching between Cage/Wolf scenes and Jill's shower scenes. Less info on less time, the same amount of fan-service, but on a more enjoyable pace.
Example 2: change all the "I see how he looks at me yada yada" by a small comment (maybe a "spicey" one) on Jill's Striker 1st communication (even if a lot were given)...maybe a blush?
The voice acting... well I'll just quote FightningSeraph on "all characters having no emotion or specific traits". I just mention this, because I strongly believe that the voice actors can do much better, though I felt no emotion, I found the voices fit well the various chars.
As for the good...
First of all, the battle is really really really badass.
I'm no fan of bison, I'm no fan of striker (nor most of the mk cast actually) yet the battle was really good and on a certain way it is particulary cool not seeing all the same chars over and over again (ryu*cough*ken*cough*chun li*cough*random mk ninja*cough*).
Good sound, hit/sprite effects, nothing I wasnt expecting after watching the previous episode. Also, great choise of music!
Another strong point is, obviously, the comics.
Though they were probably one of the reasons for the awkward chance of speed on this animation, most drawings were really really really good, if someone doesnt want to pay attention to the story, can just pay attention to the drawings lol.
Hoping to see more of it, who knows if some of those drawings can't be used during all the sprite animation scenes (like in MvC 2 supers?...idk just brainstorming).
All things considered:
+ great fight scene
+ great drawings
+ originality
- too much useless info (remember, 1 pic is worth a thousand words, and sometimes just a small sentence can say a lot)
- smooth HELL YEAH FAST sloooooooooooooooooooooooow
- comme on people, use those great voices you have!
Good work :)
When you've worked that hard.. why...
The art and voiceacting is good but the animation on the Nash scenes needs alot of work. It would be easy to animate the characters talking. Then before entering the portal look at the bison cape loop for instance, moving from left to right because you couldn't line up the pixels. It also goes on a bit. In alot of areas it's brilliant but the flaws bring the whole thing down. If it was just the stryker vs bison scene it would be a flawless victory.
R1665 responds:
The pixels are lined up just fine. The problem is on your end with your connection and/or flash player. Were you watching it full screen? That can heighten mathematical display issues with the VCAM in flash.
I can see that you are also a flash animator and have done some lip-synching of your own. Many kudos to you. However, please refrain from calling it "easy" for my movie until you can do it while also cramming thirty minutes' worth of movie into a thirteen-minute autoplay timeline. Not all flash is built alike.
R1665
Mixed feelings
As much as I liked the first two episodes of this series; this one and the one before it have left me with mixed feelings. To Ce-Rap: Good job on the stills, but I never saw the appeal of video comics. I found them to be too static for my taste.
Aside from that, let's get started...
Animation: I liked the use of custom sprites even though most of them are just recolors. Plus, The stills looked better than episode two. Unfortunately, due to the comic approach, there wasn't much animation aside from the sprite segments and makes this very inconsistent in style and quality. I mean, the comic parts seem to be better imported than the sprites. Are you sure that you're importing and resizing them properly? For future episodes, I second Dark Karate's suggestion on making sprites completely from scratch.
Sound: Great usage of various videogame sound effects (finding "free for everyone to use" sound effects that are just as good as professionally made ones is hard as hell) and clever music selection. Bonus for not using some stale/overhyped mainstream song like MaelstormM or the All Fads Die game. That and using Audacity to edit the sound. However, I think you should get Xarnor, Hades, or Xenogenocide to make some music for this because you can only go so far on music taken from various games and bands. By contrast, the voice acting is horrible with almost all characters having no emotion or specific traits aside from Tomamoto's parts, especially his Ron Perlman* impersonation. (*He was Stryker in MK: Defenders of the Realm.) Plus, why did you have Rina-Chan in this considering that it was going to piss off the Street Fighter Chode guys?
Content: Last, but not least, the content of this is one step in the right direction, and two steps in the wrong direction. On one hand, I enjoy your fight choreography and timing. One thing that sprite movies usually get right is staging, something that people here should study. On the other, the plot, the pace, and the dialog are just execrable. The story, is not very cohesive, needlessly slow/drawn out, and littered with plot holes. Plus, the script is unintentionally funny due to how badly written it was. (Why would Stryker use internet slang? It's never a good sign when people use internet slang as character dialog.) May I also recommend that you get a co-writer/editor? By contrast, SMBZ, Rick's Adventure-Legends, and Final Fighting Fantasy were better written and directed.
The Good:
-Nice drawings
-Great fight choreography
-Fitting music and sound
-Not another SMBZ clone
The Bad:
-Not much animation aside from the sprite segments, and they could have used more polish.
-Horrible voice acting except from Tomamoto
-Badly written and directed
-Needlessly slow (Slow pacing is fine, but only when it's done right.)
-Inconsistent in style
Overall: R1665, CE-Rap, here's a seven for both of you and I hope you take these (mostly) constructive crits to improve on this so you don't end up like certain has-beens on this site.