MBR: BrannyMannyBee vs Drew Theme: Boss Battle Due Date: October 14th (Extended up to 4th November) BrannyMannyBee: Notes: i want to thank drew for the challenge because regardless of the result, the MBR made me push myself and right now all i can do is hope i put on a good enough show to make everyone happy Drew: -Forfeit- Notes: Yup. Not the most favorable turn of events. Some factors I hold myself accountable for, such as spending more than half of my run tackling the challenge of spriting my own beast from the ground up, and not having a character spritesheet prepared beforehand. Trying to tie up those loose ends whilst juggling work, well, I’ve had brighter ideas before. Sadly it’s placed me here now, up the creek without a paddle. Not to worry, however, this project will be merely shelved for the time being, and completed when I find the right time. Regrettably, I couldn’t give Branny the challenge we were both waiting for. But I wanna thank him for coming through, and delivering regardless. As well as you guys for understanding.
I vote @BrannyMannyBee, Animations Work and Fighting style is enough to proud of you for making fantastic MBR Drew: I hope is not to late to finish your MBR Animation.
Well we all know how forfeits work. Branny, frickin' awesome piece of animation right here, congrats! Good music choice and choreographed well with it. I'm glad to see this ghost character again, was half expecting never to see them again after Smash Wall 2020. You did a nice job using the loooong centipede-like boss monster, something that big is pretty difficult to work with. Drew, oof. I would have loved to see you realize your vision, but it sounds like you bit off more than you could chew and so it goes. ...But that doesn't invalidate the effort you put to your incomplete work, so I want to give you a hearty congratulations as well.
That's a bit unfortunate that Drew got screwed over from work. Trying to sprite a whole boss while on a time crunch sounds stressful. It's good to be ambitious, but sometimes it's fine to dial back a bit and get a reality check if you can properly animate it on time. Anyways, Compared to when you were last Vod reviewed, I'd say you improved immensely. Dialogue and action taking place at the same time, Camera work is great, movements are pretty snappy, I enjoyed this a lot. I can imagine that trying to be cinematic with a large and complicated boss like this can be pretty difficult, so kudos to you. One thing I do want to mention is that, if a cinematic shot looks awkward like at 0:51, (half the skeleton's body is just floating there with still pose, sliding across the floor), you might be better off just cutting it altogether. It may improve the overall pacing and may not remove the overall immersion already provided. For the most part, though, I felt the cinematic shots were well done, but just be careful with this sort of thing. Good stuff bud!
It's very unfortunate to hear that Drew wasn't able to finish in time, but such is life at times. I'd still like to give some tips to BMB regardless. First and foremost, your text. Spoiler: Fontttt The font is alright, nothing special, nothing poor, it has enough contrast and size to be functional enough as intended BUT putting a light gray fog behind every letter makes the text difficult to read at times. The simple solution is to either A. Take the background fog out (not the drop shadow, that's fine) and/or B. Add a very thin black outline. It just needs to be noticeable. A text outline's purpose is solely to allow for the user to read the text regardless of what is behind the text, so all it needs is to be of a color that is directly contrasting the text color. Usually, making the text something pale and light like this with a black outline is just fine. I try to avoid bright colors, and use pastel colors instead, as saturated colors tend to get that bad "eye bleed" you see when you read Hunter's name on Discord where his name kinda fuzzes together because of how bright it is. That goes for the outline as well, but is more lenient as long as the color is very dark. Moving on, Next is audio. Spoiler: 3000 word audio essay Audio is a huge part of what makes things feel professional, so it's something that everyone will always spend a lot of time perfecting, so don't fret about getting some bits off. Simply put, some sound effects are too loud, and others are much too quiet. You are VERY close to having a good balance, and the song choice is loud enough that it becomes part of the piece, which is nice, it just becomes over centralizing as a result of there often not being enough sound effects filling the space. Additionally, while many sound effects used fit fine enough, some are a bit off and that's not the end of the world, but almost all of them feel like they lack a bit of punch, and it FEELS like it's because you're simply not overlaying sound effects at all, or you're not combining any sound effects. If you want my take on how to do sound effects, you have 4 things to consider for just about all attacks, sometimes more depending on the attack itself but this is how I memorized it in my head. First, your character swings. It can be a fist, it can be a sword, it can be throwing something, whatever it is, your character has to do something to give the attack some kind of momentum otherwise it's not much of an attack in most scenarios. There are obvious exceptions. Swinging anything through the air has a sound effect and it's usually dependent on the weight of what is being swung, or the action. A lot of those cool anime katana effects won't have much of this but will have some other kind of interesting effects like a bullet sound or something like that, but either way, you need something there, and if a basic woosh, it's often quiet, in a similar vein to the woosh of a camera transition/movement. If you're still not sure about this, think of what sound you would put into that attack if that attack MISSED. That sound effect is there in real life regardless of if the impact hits or not, it is often just drowned out by the hit itself, thus, in most cases, it will be quiet unless it's a: Heavier hits will REALLY enjoy having this sound effect though, so if you cant squeeze one in for everything, at least try and make the big hits have something going for them! I think is PROBABLY the least important of the 4 points as it's a very small thing, and most of these animations are heavily time restrained. Second, the object doing the hitting Again, it can be a fist, or a sword, or something else, but whatever it is, it will make a sound when it hits something. A sword goes clang, a fist goes thump, an energy blast goes zap. That is the noise depends on the material being thrust, and again there will always be an exception but this will still be half of the impact. Third, whatever's being hit. This a sword hitting a sword will go clang, but a sword hitting a rock might not be as high pitched, it might be a lot muddier that turns into more of a wack or thump than a clang. You don't have to directly modify the previous sound effect though, you can simply overlay the noise of a rock being crushed on top of that sword clang and it will PROBABLY work quite well. This requires experimentation, and that's not what I can do since I'm simply not an animator myself. Fourth, hentai noises. Your character will probably make a noise when swinging, and this may not apply to this specific one with the ghost lady but most characters will be like HAH when they swing or something like that. This also includes being hit, when your character is hit and experiences pain, they will likely go OW or something like that. Other things is like extra sounds, like if hit into rock, sometimes rocks falling from the air or splintering or something like that would happen after everything. If you're not sure how to visualize all of this, I've got a few linked videos, try and separate different types of sound effects. Also, watch other animators to see how they're doing stuff differently from you lol Tyler's vids are good for that. Spoiler: None of this is my content, so don't ask and then the actual animation part of it Spoiler: pretty pixels go brr I'm just a little bit the wrong person to ask too much about choreography, as I'm simply not an animator, so I'm not TOO sure how to make things paced better, but if nothing else I can tell you the song sync in the middle of the animation helps. A lot of stuff is lacking a little bit of impact and follow-through, again not something I'm overly familiar with trying to fix, but I will say that I've heard of a few ways to give things more impact, I forgot from who, but I remember someone analyzing Tyler's animations and noticing that often times when he has his character punch something, whatever is hit, he will have in "hitstun" until the visual effect he chooses has fully completed. For the definition on hitstun, look into that on smash bros, but it's basically whatever being hit freezing in air, shaking a little bit before they receive the actual knockback. I would suggest studying the animations of others and slowing down high action scenes to .25 speed or so on youtube, then watching for the visual effects and seeing how different animators move their characters and stuff around that hit stun. Another quick note is you seem to have entirely avoided camera shake aside from when the creature roars. Camera shake is a great way to add impact and weight to whatever's being done, as you yourself showed when you do a fair bit of hand-drawn animation with some camera shake added. This makes the impact and weight much nicer. That being said I also see this mostly in impact type hits, not so much in cuts and slashes, so PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE look into this on your own time, because I'm almost certain other types of damage dealt will look different. Aquila's characters often use swords or guns, so her content may be a good reference for this. And yet another smaller note, you don't seem to use dust almost at all, and this could easily be something you just missed as a result of the time constraint, or that you didn't add as drew forfeited before you got to that step, but simple visual effects when characters and things hit the ground, and air effects when things move quickly through the air will not only help things feel more weighted and realistic, giving it more impact, but it will also make things like the dark and opaque scythe much much easier for the eye to follow. If not dust/air effects, streaks/trails after the object, smearing the object, or even just stretching the object a tremendous amount during movement will let the eye follow it a lot closer, many scythe movements are difficult to track is what I'm ultimately saying. I feel like I'm just pointing out basic stuff, which I try not to do too much but I'm again not great with choreography. I hope this can still help everything connect a little more regardless. And one more little thing I want to talk about a bit, that again I'm not overly confident in, but would still like to make notes on, being camerawork and transitions. Spoiler: I don't own any cameras Transitions are done quite well for the most part aside from the one Shulkle mentioned already, so I won't talk about that. The camerawork is a bit more lackluster but is fair for the most part beyond missing shake for impacts. A lot of the time the camera frames things a little awkwardly, the character will be on the edge of screen with the weapon offscreen at times entirely, or the camera will be zoomed out a little bit after a hit and stay still for a fair few pauses, leaving a lot of empty space in the air with nothing happening. Shulkle already mentioned one of these places, but it happens a few times and I believe likely is a result of both the monster standing still and the character not doing too much with the time. This could also be solved with a more active environment, even just simple objects in the way acting as nothing more than props (again look at the Tyler video I sent earlier) will help break this up, and some scenes like when she flys under the monster are handled quite well for filling what could otherwise have been empty scenes very well. Overall, this is an entertaining animation, and with the exception of audio balance, I would say I enjoyed rewatching it many times over, likely thanks to the presentation of a giant skeleton centipede with the music making it very hyped up. A lot of the small minor things are make or break for that feeling of high quality, and I highly encourage everyone who reads any of my points to spend some time simply watching some of the higher quality animations this community has made and slowing them down to observe how others create things. Aquila, Kayas, CrazyChrisTyler, Mali, Zack, etc. Whoever you think makes stuff that looks great, go watch their content slowed down. I know often times people will straight-up post their .fla files for others to download and directly go over frame by frame, and that is INCREDIBLY useful to have on hand. Experimentation and research can go a long long way. Keep it up.
