MBR: Flare vs Meechie3D Theme: Freestyle Deadline: 14th August Minimum Length: 30 Seconds Voting Ends in 2 Days! Flare Notes: First time doing MBR. Even though I'll probably lose, I had a decent time animating this and I hope I did well enough. Meechie3D Notes: Feels good to get back into the swing of animating. I really enjoyed making this! Hope you all enjoy!
OKKKK, I HAVEN'T SEEN AN MBR FOR A BITTT. I give vote to the classic: Meechie3D hope to see more mbr's again.
Seeing Flare's introduction reminds me of classic maple anims where they'd start out doing that move out of nowhere, gave me a bit of nostalgia haha. I definitely liking the improvement Flare's got going on! Especially using it for maple animating, I'm all in for that. The finisher felt a bit underwhelming with an attack, but I can forgive it since that sword poke felt pretty dangerous against a hadouken. Meechie's part was an anim I looked for, for a bit! For someone who came back after awhile, he still got it in his blood. I really liked the fight physics he was going on, especially when he was all over the place with the camera moving around. I loved the impact there! I loved both of your parts, in the end. My vote goes to! Meechie!
Woo! Got some new MBRs floating around, what a refreshing sight! Not a lot to say on this one from me though, Flare has my vote for having more fight in his animation.
Been a while since I've done one of these. I know both of you wanted CnC out of this, so my thoughts and opinions will have some focus on that. FLARE For how short the fight is, I think the quick intro here works better than trying to set up any kind of context. Story/setup/context can definitely make things interesting, but it can also take away from an animation if paced poorly, if the setup is just uninteresting, or if the setup has no payoff at the end. I'd certainly enjoy seeing you try to add add more to your fight animations with setup/context/story (note, doesn't necessarily need dialogue) as I rarely, if ever, see you do it, but given the nature of this MBR being a shorter deadline freestyle fight, I wasn't expecting participants to squeeze this element in either. That said, the fight itself can carry a "narrative", which I'll get into later. I enjoy that the intro is synced to the music, the first attack landing when the music really kicks in. The camming on the sword being pulled out is almost choppy, like it was done on 2's, but in this way I like. For the meat of the animation, I don't have too many highlights to comment on. There's a good flow of action, the fight never really feeling like it has a moment that's too slow other than maybe the brief zoom out in the intro before the music kicks in, and the final attack at the end with the slow mo + a charge attack. I'm happy to see you use a decent amount of blocks between the characters, and having a good amount of back and forth between the fighters wailing on each other. Overall, my initial impression was that this was an animation that wasn't bad and felt consistent. But, I think this felt a little too safe for what I'd personally like to see from you, Flare. I've seen your animations for some time now, and I've seen the bits of improvement over time. I think some of your camera work here is the thing I noticed improve the most, and I can see you being a little more creative with using Meechie's brawler character, which was fun to see. But I wanna see you start taking your choreography to another level. Let me go into that a bit further... On their own, basic punches, sword slashes, gunshots, and elemental/energy beam attacks can be really bland, especially after seeing them a bunch. So how do you make things more interesting? One method is to have these attacks give the viewer information, and aid in the "narrative of the fight". What do these attacks tell us about the fighters and their personality/mood and fighting tactics (are they reckless? patient? does the fighter seem focused, serious, playful?) Are the basic attacks working against the opponent? How is the opponent responding to these tactics, and then adopting to them? How does the fight change through cause and effect? Planning a fight with these things in mind can add narrative to a fight by making the fighters feel more real, and also make the fight feel more dynamic/evolving/changing which is often more interesting. Combo strings. I don't actually have much to say here, as I'm less versed in this area. Another method would be to add more creative attacks. I can't give you a hard rule of what makes an attack creative, but I'll try to give some examples Combo strings, especially if the attacks feel like they flow together Using the environment to your advantage. In the beginning, Meechie does a surprise attack from above, presumably from the treetops. What if characters tried to create distance by jumping into the treetops? I could easily see Meechie's characters doing some sort of parkour to do another powerful slam attack, springing off a tree branch. Meechie's character likes to throw big punches, but what if your character dodged to cause Meechie to punch a tree, hurting his hand? What if someone tried hiding in a bush? Your character has fire powers, and might just start burning the bushes away as Meechie tries to sneak up on you. TLDR, an environment can be a great great source of hazards, platforms, unique weapons, and defendable positions Attacks that aren't basic, and are more "rule of cool" Meechie's crazy aerial "command-grab" spinny slam is probably the best example of you did of a move that's just "cool" and does something different than the normal basic attacks he does, like punching and kicking. the sword attacks your character does don't really function like an actual sword, but more like a fighting game sword character. But in a real fight, getting hit by a sword is much more lethal and damaging. Rule of cool could have you inflicting cuts and lopping off entire limbs, or puncturing a character. If you wanna get extra, your character seems really dark and edgy, maybe he could charge his weapon with some kind of dark purple aura that inflicts an even nastier wound or curses the target. Hell, give him a fire sword that lights the enemy on fire or burns them even if the they barely dodge away due to the proximity of the heat. Or maybe your character sets himself on fire, or gives himself some sort of ward that when attacks by a punch, burns them a bit. I'm rambling a bit here, but this might inspire you some ideas. Some more specific CnC that I couldn't fit anywhere above: A habit I've seen you do before and have commented on before is not always being consistent with where the characters are in a fight, or not properly showing where they are. There are a few examples of this in this particular animation: In the beginning, when Meechie dives on your character, the attack really looks like it hits, but then your character jumps out of the smoke cloud as if Meechie's character wasn't right there, and as if the attack missed. Rewatching it, maybe you meant for this to read like he just completely misses without your character dodging? Which also feels a little odd/unsatisfying Your character does these two invisible attacks in the air, moving right, then left. And then appears out of nowhere from the right again, where you'd expect him to be on the left. Sure we don't actually see where the character is as they are basically invisible (I guess?), and the camera placement definitely makes me expect the following attack to come from the right side, but it's just one inconsistency I noticed. When Meechie slams your character and there's another dust cloud, Meechie just... completely disappears? And suddenly we see him flying to the right in the next shot? The way your character jitters around when Meechie does a combo on your character at 0:21 looks really off. Especially on those 3rd and 4th hits, the 3rd one looks like your character gets vacuumed into the punch. I probably don't need to get technical on how to fix this, as I'm pretty sure I've seen you do better examples of this yourself, and there are tons of different examples of combos with hitstun for you to look at. For your ending, that attack fell flat for me. It kinda reminded me of what you did with your Vs Charizard animation in Maple Vs Smash, where your character just suddenly stabs Charizard and we get a slowmo red and black screen. I definitely got the feeling the fight was about to end with the double charge up attacks from both characters, but the actual attacks just felt... lacking. There isn't really a narratively satisfying end to the fight, it just ends with a dude getting "stabbed" (smash bros style) despite having charged his attack first. Maybe you could've had your character dodge Meechie's attack, overpower it, or something. Or psyche the audience out by having him attack, and having the camera move behind Meechie to reveal your character, somehow having snuck up behind him in the chaos of the blast. If you really want a final attack to land, you can use some of my advice from above by working in narrative into the fight itself, the final attack culminating with a cool creative move to react and counter the opponent's tactics, culminating in their defeat. MEECHIE I actually gave you a ton of CnC while you were working on this animation, so my CnC is going to be much lighter than Flare's. (Okay just finished writing this, I guess not that much lighter). Some of the CnC I gave you on things like dialogue/text still apply here in the end product. For the style of text boxes you're using, I'd try to be a bit more consistent with how you're using them. If you want to resize the text, or have it in different areas of the screen, I'd recommend dropping the text box and character faces altogether and just animating only the text. If using the text boxes, another tip I'd give is attaching those layers to the camera. Also, have someone maybe proofread your grammar and spelling? Typing out your script in a google doc or a Word doc has the benefit of spellchecking your work. :) The pacing of the dialogue definitely could use some work. In short, better timing of dialogue, and better use of camera along with dialogue would do you wonders here. I can see some of your efforts on having characters being more expressive during dialogue, but the execution can be improved out. I can see sometimes faces and bodies during these moments aren't always aligned right, and the method you're using for squash/stretch emoting could also use some work, from the speed, easing type, and the types of stretching you use. I like that you're giving it a shot though, and wanna see you continue working on it and maybe asking folks who do those types of techniques for feedback next time you do. It's an area ripe for experimentation. I had mentioned to you to try to use the rule of 3rds for camming more, as I think the entire animation would've benefited from using it. For the fight. Damn, you really know how to make some cool looking combos, even aerial ones for that matter. I had to rewatch the beginning one several times as it's just very satisfying. Your fight is very flashy and fun, but it has some faults, not so much in what you animated but moreso in what you didn't animate: It's a very fast fight, only 20 seconds long. The beginning section you added ends up actually taking away from the fight in some ways, given the fight is only 1/3 of the length of the animation and it ends abruptly without giving narrative conclusion to the intro. It's like your animation has a beginning and middle, but no end. It'd be nice if this was worked into the fight itself, or a short scene at the end. (Minor comment, but lmao you should also really fade out the music and animation instead of just cutting it like you did). You basically didn't animate Flare's character. He starts off getting wrecked in his own hideout where you'd think he'd have the advantage, and the small moment he does start to attack he immediately has his combo broken and gets finished off without ever really having a moment. He basically becomes your character's punching bag, in a way that doesn't feel satisfying or fitting. Some of his goons feel like they have more screen time and personality than him. I think some of my advice above to Flare on making a fight more interesting applies here, where you could consider the narrative within the story by having characters reacting and adapting to each other a bit more. Given your style is much more combo based, as if it were a fighting game, simply adding more back and forth in your animation for serious 1vs1 fights could make them a lot more interesting, as this fight really lacked any kind of tension without it. MY VOTE Goes to Meechie, simply for having an animation that I found more interesting with the execution of combos in the fight. The intro infiltration helped add a little more personality to the animation and its characters, and helps make it a little more memorable, despite some of the pacing and dialogue flaws that came with it. I do think Flare put up a good fight, and I think if his had a more satisfying ending my vote could've changed.
