This is one of the worst things I've watched. Imagine making something outside the industry just do you can make something exactly like the industry in every way. The art style, the humor, the bland pose-to-pose on-model animation with no special poses or facial expressions, the squealing plodding nasally voice acting, it all REEKS of corporate theories. Those hacks are really doing good to keep weak-willed artists in their place if their bizarre demands are becoming standard practices of good art even outside the industry.
agreed. The animation and production values in general were much higher. Zeurel just can't seem to find his audience for some reason. Episode 1 barely broke 1 million after over a year of being out.
>Zeurel just can't seem to find his audience for some reason.
The key to most indie projects being recognized is the creator building an audience elsewhere before producing a pilot. Like what Vivzie and Zach did for an example (although granted, Smiling Friends is on a network).
Show this to anyone who thinks that A level voice actors aren't worth the money. People complain about some actors always sounding the "same" but they ignore the actual acting part of the job. This is awful. The acting, the pacing...everything is just off. Also, I don't know if the actors were responsible for recording themselves, but they shouldn't because they never know what the frick they're doing and whoever did the post processing on the sound is either some director playing it by ear, or an "engineer" who has no fricking idea what they're doing. The girl sounds like she was recorded via zoom with scooped mids, the three eyed guy desperately needs compression because his voice keeps peaking and dipping which makes it hard to hear yet simultaneously hurts, and that purple guy needs to learn proper microphone technique because his intermittent shouting fricking ruins takes when those sections need to be suddenly ducked in post. The landlord is completely inaudible unless you had the episode cranking. In general, they all needed a bit more pep to their performance. That multi-eyed devil guy is probably the worst, but animation tends to need a little bit of overacting to help sell the illusion of life.
They also really needed to spring for some music to help push things along. They either found random royalty free stuff or got the SFX person (or random crew member) to do some shit because the music was too sparse and the few sections that did exist did almost nothing to help support the narrative. The chore montage should have been a bit more slapsticky, I dunno what the intent was at 6:54 but it didn't add anything, I don't know why it was randomly cut at 7:20 but there was no narrative reason driving that decision, 7:28 should have been more driving instead of the weird chill hop we got. Either play the music from the trio's perspective of fear, the Red Guy's perspective of anger or disbelief, or the audience's perspective of "hilarity". We got neither. The score should have built up the tension or mystique before they destroyed the heart thing which would have been an okay bait and switch gag but without the build up it just kind of washed into that section. Build up a little uncertainty and fear, then kick into something really really bouncy and joyful. The emotions of the characters could have been pushed in that montage. Instead they just smile. How do your characters feel? Happy. Not ecstatic, not a little unhinged with power tools and the prospect of destruction, not nervously shielding their eyes from shards...just...happy. Musically they went with a weird synthy thing with some syncopated arpeggios that kind of sound like it was ripped from a page of Joplin ragtime (with a godawful mix so the pad synths just wash over the arps and there's NO melodic focal point...in a fricking montage...where there's no sfx or dialog. The music is just there and boring. Its a montage sequence...music should be front and center.
The final mix is atrocious. Not even touching that.
What was up with the final tchotchke that bought off the landlord? The purple guy swiping it should have been more of an event earlier on so him bringing it back was more of a callback, but as far as I can remember, we never fricking saw it before (and no, I'm not rewatching this shit to try to see if maybe I just missed it). If I DID miss it, then the event wasn't highlighted enough to be significant.
I respect the fact that someone actually made something and that on an indie budget you take what you can get, but in the event that Mr. Alistair Boubli is reading this, if you want to move forward with this project, I'd get rid of Fraser Henderson because he's lifeless in both characters, try to get someone who knows audio to actually record the dialog for Hugo, Sam, and George (if you can swing it, recording with a similar setup will be huge for consistency), get an actual sound engineer to mix all the dialog and balance everything (all the actors audio needs work), work on tightening up the pacing of radio play so the jokes land better (study other comedic animation to get a sense of how that timing works), and replace Dylan Wesch and Joseph Fresi because regardless of how much you may like their music, they don't know how to support an animated story. Get someone on board who has directed voice actors before and get multiple takes of each line so you can have more options in the editing room. What might seem like it works in session might not work when you're putting everything together.
It is impressive that the animation seems to have mostly been done by one person so major kudos for that. I honestly don't have much critique when it comes to actual animation or backgrounds.
>What was up with the final tchotchke that bought off the landlord? >we never fricking saw it before
Not that I'm trying to be "that guy" but it was like the first thing they showed (around 1:30). Still, the rabbit probably should have made a bigger deal about how stupidly worthless it was so his 180 at the end felt like a little funnier. That moment wasn't nearly the ironic payoff that it was probably supposed to be.
I think the director was listening to a lot of retrowave and lofi hip hop songs to <do whatever> to and thought that because he liked that stuff, it would be appropriate for his short. There's a huge difference between music you like and music that works for a score. The problem here is that the director probably didn't really know what the pilot needed and the musicians didn't really understand what they needed to do. They just made stuff.
I would make a joke about wanting to frick the robot chick but it's not worth it.
This shit is like a mish mash of tropes and jokes from popular mainstream animation rolled into a 14 minute pilot. You can easily see his inspirations but not in a good way.
Also it's crazy how TV animation ruined a whole generation of animators who think that dialog is the only way to move a story foward or to tell jokes. Nobody really gives a rats ass about animated acting anymore.
It's crazy how there are a shit ton of better more imaginative pilots and shorts made by young animators that don't have a fraction of the views this has. And just one look at the like to dislike ratio and comment section will make you realize that people really just want more slop in their lives. It's depressing.
I'm not hating on the guy kudos to anyone who makes the effort to try and create something. But work like this is not going to take him anywhere and maybe he could learn from his mistakes and improve but with comments like this he probably thinks he's the next Alex Hirsch.
it has promise. I think it needs a better premise than just doing odd jobs in wacky dimensions, but I guess it's different enough from rick and Morty that the obvious comparisons won't be too abundant
I think the premise is almost precisely Rick and Morty, but they take artifacts at the end of the adventures. The only difference is that the dude has 3 eyes and a british accent instead of a labcoat and roiland's old man, and the portal is a zipper instead of a glowing green disc.
No hate. Emulation is part of the educational process, but it's hard imagining this going anywhere without *constantly* being viewed as an R&M ripoff.
The writing is just really, really bland. There wasn't a single character or joke that I haven't seen done a million times before.
Pic related sums up the entire 14 minute experience
>muh capitalism
the purple dude is by far the worst.
the only fun part is the artefacts and that is just Gravity Falls. none of the humour is unexpected, the only jokes are simple remarks that don't add anything
This is one of the worst things I've watched. Imagine making something outside the industry just do you can make something exactly like the industry in every way. The art style, the humor, the bland pose-to-pose on-model animation with no special poses or facial expressions, the squealing plodding nasally voice acting, it all REEKS of corporate theories. Those hacks are really doing good to keep weak-willed artists in their place if their bizarre demands are becoming standard practices of good art even outside the industry.
>no special poses or facial expressions
Well even that can be done shittily.
This was absolute dogshit. If the creator is reading this, please NEVER make more
how much does it suck that this is doing better than Monkey Wrench did in the first few months?
Monkey Wrench isn't without its flaws, but that certainly deserves more recognition than this, even if it may be discount Cowboy Bebop.
agreed. The animation and production values in general were much higher. Zeurel just can't seem to find his audience for some reason. Episode 1 barely broke 1 million after over a year of being out.
>Zeurel just can't seem to find his audience for some reason.
The key to most indie projects being recognized is the creator building an audience elsewhere before producing a pilot. Like what Vivzie and Zach did for an example (although granted, Smiling Friends is on a network).
I don't get my generation
Show this to anyone who thinks that A level voice actors aren't worth the money. People complain about some actors always sounding the "same" but they ignore the actual acting part of the job. This is awful. The acting, the pacing...everything is just off. Also, I don't know if the actors were responsible for recording themselves, but they shouldn't because they never know what the frick they're doing and whoever did the post processing on the sound is either some director playing it by ear, or an "engineer" who has no fricking idea what they're doing. The girl sounds like she was recorded via zoom with scooped mids, the three eyed guy desperately needs compression because his voice keeps peaking and dipping which makes it hard to hear yet simultaneously hurts, and that purple guy needs to learn proper microphone technique because his intermittent shouting fricking ruins takes when those sections need to be suddenly ducked in post. The landlord is completely inaudible unless you had the episode cranking. In general, they all needed a bit more pep to their performance. That multi-eyed devil guy is probably the worst, but animation tends to need a little bit of overacting to help sell the illusion of life.
(cont.)
They also really needed to spring for some music to help push things along. They either found random royalty free stuff or got the SFX person (or random crew member) to do some shit because the music was too sparse and the few sections that did exist did almost nothing to help support the narrative. The chore montage should have been a bit more slapsticky, I dunno what the intent was at 6:54 but it didn't add anything, I don't know why it was randomly cut at 7:20 but there was no narrative reason driving that decision, 7:28 should have been more driving instead of the weird chill hop we got. Either play the music from the trio's perspective of fear, the Red Guy's perspective of anger or disbelief, or the audience's perspective of "hilarity". We got neither. The score should have built up the tension or mystique before they destroyed the heart thing which would have been an okay bait and switch gag but without the build up it just kind of washed into that section. Build up a little uncertainty and fear, then kick into something really really bouncy and joyful. The emotions of the characters could have been pushed in that montage. Instead they just smile. How do your characters feel? Happy. Not ecstatic, not a little unhinged with power tools and the prospect of destruction, not nervously shielding their eyes from shards...just...happy. Musically they went with a weird synthy thing with some syncopated arpeggios that kind of sound like it was ripped from a page of Joplin ragtime (with a godawful mix so the pad synths just wash over the arps and there's NO melodic focal point...in a fricking montage...where there's no sfx or dialog. The music is just there and boring. Its a montage sequence...music should be front and center.
The final mix is atrocious. Not even touching that.
(cont.)
What was up with the final tchotchke that bought off the landlord? The purple guy swiping it should have been more of an event earlier on so him bringing it back was more of a callback, but as far as I can remember, we never fricking saw it before (and no, I'm not rewatching this shit to try to see if maybe I just missed it). If I DID miss it, then the event wasn't highlighted enough to be significant.
I respect the fact that someone actually made something and that on an indie budget you take what you can get, but in the event that Mr. Alistair Boubli is reading this, if you want to move forward with this project, I'd get rid of Fraser Henderson because he's lifeless in both characters, try to get someone who knows audio to actually record the dialog for Hugo, Sam, and George (if you can swing it, recording with a similar setup will be huge for consistency), get an actual sound engineer to mix all the dialog and balance everything (all the actors audio needs work), work on tightening up the pacing of radio play so the jokes land better (study other comedic animation to get a sense of how that timing works), and replace Dylan Wesch and Joseph Fresi because regardless of how much you may like their music, they don't know how to support an animated story. Get someone on board who has directed voice actors before and get multiple takes of each line so you can have more options in the editing room. What might seem like it works in session might not work when you're putting everything together.
It is impressive that the animation seems to have mostly been done by one person so major kudos for that. I honestly don't have much critique when it comes to actual animation or backgrounds.
>What was up with the final tchotchke that bought off the landlord?
>we never fricking saw it before
Not that I'm trying to be "that guy" but it was like the first thing they showed (around 1:30). Still, the rabbit probably should have made a bigger deal about how stupidly worthless it was so his 180 at the end felt like a little funnier. That moment wasn't nearly the ironic payoff that it was probably supposed to be.
I think the director was listening to a lot of retrowave and lofi hip hop songs to <do whatever> to and thought that because he liked that stuff, it would be appropriate for his short. There's a huge difference between music you like and music that works for a score. The problem here is that the director probably didn't really know what the pilot needed and the musicians didn't really understand what they needed to do. They just made stuff.
You're unironically better off watching Saving Me, BYU's Rick and Morty.
I would make a joke about wanting to frick the robot chick but it's not worth it.
This shit is like a mish mash of tropes and jokes from popular mainstream animation rolled into a 14 minute pilot. You can easily see his inspirations but not in a good way.
Also it's crazy how TV animation ruined a whole generation of animators who think that dialog is the only way to move a story foward or to tell jokes. Nobody really gives a rats ass about animated acting anymore.
It's crazy how there are a shit ton of better more imaginative pilots and shorts made by young animators that don't have a fraction of the views this has. And just one look at the like to dislike ratio and comment section will make you realize that people really just want more slop in their lives. It's depressing.
I'm not hating on the guy kudos to anyone who makes the effort to try and create something. But work like this is not going to take him anywhere and maybe he could learn from his mistakes and improve but with comments like this he probably thinks he's the next Alex Hirsch.
This feels like a bunch of other (better) cartoons mushed together to create some kind of unholy homunculus of a show.
it has promise. I think it needs a better premise than just doing odd jobs in wacky dimensions, but I guess it's different enough from rick and Morty that the obvious comparisons won't be too abundant
I think the premise is almost precisely Rick and Morty, but they take artifacts at the end of the adventures. The only difference is that the dude has 3 eyes and a british accent instead of a labcoat and roiland's old man, and the portal is a zipper instead of a glowing green disc.
No hate. Emulation is part of the educational process, but it's hard imagining this going anywhere without *constantly* being viewed as an R&M ripoff.
The writing is just really, really bland. There wasn't a single character or joke that I haven't seen done a million times before.
Pic related sums up the entire 14 minute experience
>muh capitalism
the purple dude is by far the worst.
the only fun part is the artefacts and that is just Gravity Falls. none of the humour is unexpected, the only jokes are simple remarks that don't add anything