Sadly disappointing
Honestly with all of the hype leading up to this episode(an entire half hour!), it only having one fight scene, and no real story to speak of, it let me down. I realize how much time and effort was put into this flash. While the voice acting and graphics are smooth and very nice, there was very little meat to the episode.
Hopefully the next will deliver.
Congratulations!
I've been watching your series since the episode 0. It's clear the evolution your going as a story-teller as well as a flash animator. It's unfortunate that one must be ready to read all those extras to get deep into the settting of this reality (which by then it is curious to even call them "extras, but that's off-topic). I am a fan of deep tangled plots and I've worked on several RPG plots, as well as story-telling. I've got to say I can see potential in your story-telling abilities, but still a lack of efficiently profit from that talent. The fights keep getting better. I like how you slowed the pace of the fight just a little bit, comparing to episode 2, where I had to watch the fight a couple of times to figure the moves. This one is a well-thought coreography (the must was the falling sequence: "Open wide!" That was just brilliant). The fight was really good. About being short, well I don't know. If it getts long it'll feel repetitive and will lose it's beauty. I think you measured well how long you could extend the fight with the moves you had available for the characters The artist CE-Rap did a great job, I loved the Panaptichron setting, it was mystic and unique, really got that "nowhere palace" thing to it.
I won't suggest anything, has what you should or not do with the flash, I'd rather slap that sentence from Stryker: ..."Do what you gotta do." I just wonder, when you want to do a finishing signature move of a character (like the gambit throwing cards), you normally black the screen a bit and have some specific special effects. What about having an image of the character doing the move, cutting half of the screen (or a desired space). Why? Because when the character is going for the move the rest of the screen is just frozen... looks empty. It could give also a good challenge to CE-Rap making him do some art of mid-fight images.
As for the stars, I'll give you both a 7 (while my heart gives you a 10). But this is not a normal seven. It's a seven that knows you going to get better, a seven that understands the levels you both can still achieve. It's a seven that hunger for more! Why, it's your lucky number 7.
I wish you both the best. And good luck for your future projects.
Sorry for the long review, I kinda have a thing for writing.
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.
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.
I jumped into this with no prior experience.
I have not seen the other episodes. Yes it has amazing animation and effects. It reminds me of another SF vs MK video with Akuma vs Chameleon. However, what bothered me was how that non-super police man Stryker killed Bison. I don't know much about the story, but that seems very wrong. BIson. The KING bad guy of all SF gets killed by that loser cop?
Everything else was very good. The drawings, the animation, the voice acting, the atmosphere.