Stick Nodes®
A stickfigure animation app created for mobile devices!
Create your own stickman animations on your Android or iOS device!
Explosive Bullet
Stick Nodes®
A stickfigure animation app created for mobile devices!
Create your own stickman animations on your Android or iOS device!
PL Team Slave OwnerAh. I remember how brutal it was to make this. Not only was I using a brand new base, I was unloading on stickfigure effects which made it really hard to animate. This was made largely by add tweened framing stuff since I didn’t know how to work with a base that is thicker than the usual stickfigure. This episode was very rough in animation and pacing to me. That and the text wall problem was really big here. Pacing really sucked since this was a time where I religiously put frame delay at the start of the individual shots. This was a big stepping stone for future animations though. I learned alot because of the problems in this animation, despite all the problems though, the visuals are just so good. I did a fantastic job there which is what really make this animation still pretty good. That and I built quite a setting. Never really noticed it until now. But I did.
All three categories are applicable to this animation.
This, unfortunately, is not the greatest of starts to a series. The story itself is quite interesting, but the problem is certainly the pacing and exposition dumps. The detail in this animation is especially commendable, but the real emphasis of a story is the story itself and how it is executed. This animation certainly struggles with pacing. Characters themselves are very distinguishable by looks but unfortunately not by personality. There need to be some characters that talk more and some that talk less, with Gemini being the main concern. He does not particularly look at the role of a chatterbox. Looks in a story often tell the audience a lot about that character in particular, and a V for Vendetta look does not scream casual to the audience. Trope-breaking is useful if done right, but it’s clear this wasn’t done for trope-breaking and is just a case of underwhelming personality. The humor itself, which I guess is just the scarf figure scene, is pretty bad I have to say. The thing is, in any other animation, it would be completely fine and even funny, but self inserting this take on scarf-figures into this series didn’t help progress the plot in the slightest. Jokes are fine and meta-jokes are great if pulled off well, but sacrificing the story, plot, and pacing for the sake of including a meta-joke does not help in the slightest.
In general, I think the series has a lot to work on. This current episode wasn’t the greatest in quality and the 30-minute watch time is pretty huge. The exposition dumps can be especially overwhelming, and the characters themselves aren’t that memorable for their personalities. The pacing needs some serious work as well. There are some clear aspects of this series that could be capitalized on, but this episode doesn’t do it too well. There is great potential and ideas behind this, but this episode executed them poorly.
2/5.
PL Team Slave OwnerFirst sentence and you’re already saying what I’m thinking. This certainly was a rough start to a series. Solely on the amount of exposition dumps that was quite blind to at the time. In all honestly I think I was biting off more that I could chew with this first episode. I should have spent more time on it rather than trying to get it out quickly. And when I want to make progress, often times I would resort to dialogue since at the time it was frame delay and some text. Now I know I need to think out the text a little bit more to convey the personalities of characters more clearly. And pacing was no doubt bad. Your right. The frame delays I religiously used messed up the pacing and made everything slow and odd. While in the project preview it seems right, it the final product, it did not. Still to this day I am quite impressed with the visuals that I managed to pull off with this but then again there’s way more important pieces in this whole thing. You’re description of what Gemini should be too is exactly how I kinda want him to be. Talks a lot less but isn’t mute. Which is something I’m focusing more on showing in the next parts to the series. The point about looks showing what a character is like too, that’s something that is quite interesting actually and I haven’t really thought about that. Will definetly have to look more into that. Humor is something I haven’t cared about too much in this really, but I knew it’s quite a nice thing to have so I thought I’d give a shot at making a little joke scene with a scarf figure, but the scene alone to me is just out of place and plays nothing to the story. If it were shorter, then it would likely work, but the length and focus and references put into that scene alone, it would have been better of as an alone animation. Overall though, this gives me a lot to go on, this outlines everything that really needs focus on and needs to be fixed. And for a while I have been wanting to remake this since a good first episode gives a great impression on the rest of the series. Which I think I have what I need to go off of here to lay out what the first episode should be like.
the story was good, but i don’t really feel like reading a novel today so 3/5 on that part. lighting was also ok, i mean some of it was good but a lot of the light effects were weird, so another 3/5
overall 3/5
30-minute episode, however, that must have been a pain so good job sticking with it