Not bad
I really enjoyed this, the animation is punchy but, it seems to fit well with the music and the action so it works really well. Also, i love the graphic coloring style you utilized with the black shadows... but I think the proportion problems are a little bit jarring and your character designs need a bit of work. Overall, this was good and I'm glad to have watched this :)
pretty awesome
but one thing, did the operative die as he got the intel?
...
... this is going to sound harsh, so please bear with me, but this is almost a very good movie, but only almost. It has a great deal creativity and originality and good overall flow and timing, but it's basically let down because you overuse some animation short-cuts and/or animation style that simply wasn't as good as everything else. Allow me to explain:
- The drawing quality is pretty good and I do like the overall style you use, especially for the characters. It's quite original and everything has enough detail so as to stand-out nicely, although because you only use very muted colours throughout, you might have taken advantage of that to be able to highlight anything of interest by giving them bold colours, although that's only a suggestion.
The problem here is the animation itself. Firstly, there are several noticeable off-model drawings of yours characters that are very jarring, especially given the overall serious tone that you went for, as they sometimes suddenly look fat or very distorted. But not only that, you overuse several animation short-cuts, such as having a semi-static scene, that requires very little actual animation, last for too long and then have scenes that have real action in them, last way too short.
A perfect example of the latter is the corridor shooting sequence; you focus far too long on the defenders shooting whilst standing still and the initial reaction of the attacker, but when the attacker finally does get to cover, the sequence is so short that we barely understand how he moves.
I know that this is also down to a conscientious style choice that you went with, that does give a certain punch to the more 'animated' sequences, but it's not one that I like, so unfortunately, I felt a little let down by the movie in this aspect. But, to make it 100% clear, doesn't mean it was bad, far from it, it's just that compared to the quality that's visible in everything else, the only 'ok' animation stands out as the worst aspect of the movie.
- The music was pretty good and it fits the movie's tone well, it has some nice 'crescendo' parts and is just fun to listen too. Overall coordination between the on-screen action and the song was pretty good too, you made good use of the song.
- The story isn't really anything special, but that's besides the point; this is an action movie where what matters are the set-pieces. And the set-pieces, although a somewhat cliche, do have plenty unique twists to make them genuinely interesting (such as the faces, the way 'rage' is created, the interface instructions, and so forth).
So, overall, this is a good, but only good movie. It has a lot of things going for it, such as very creative twists, interesting character and overall design, really good soundtrack and good flow, but it's let down by some unpolished animation and the by the use of too many animation short-cuts.
But, to end in a positive note, this animation does show a great deal of potential and I can honestly say that I am looking forward to seeing what you'll come up with in the future!
^_^
Thanks very much for the detailed review!
I think it looks great
The only real problem I see here is that you need to work a lot on your proportions. The bodies of your characters are really abnormal - legs constantly change size, torsos differ etc. You need to work on the anatomy of the human body in order to get it right.
But the rest was excellent! I especially liked how you used shadows - really impressive! Waterflame's tunes are always great to use in action scenes, too. I noticed a minor Madness influence sometimes which is always fun. And like people said before me, the frame-by-frame animation itself is superb. Overall, work on your anatomy and body proportions and you could be one of the big ones. Good work!
Gangster
Dude that was pretty sweet.