MBR: RedTimez Mations VS Alpha

RedTimez M:
Rank: Silver | 60
Profile: http://maplemation.com/threads/redtimez-mations-mbr-profile.35846/
[MEDIA=youtube]6apy_nTpeEE[/MEDIA]

Alpha
Rank: Silver | 68
Profile:http://maplemation.com/threads/jades-mbr-profile.35776/
[MEDIA=youtube]WHcS9YwFZaw[/MEDIA]
Note:
Eskeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-
I had fun with this, Red's tough so i had to put more thought into this to avoid getting thrashed, hopefully it came out alright. Just for the record, I'm not actually upset about ranks, just did that for writing purposes =p

Hey hey hey !

Before starting to cnc, I would like to congrats Red and Alpha for your animations, but also for having chosen an original sub-theme and the core theme story. Anyway, let's get started:

RedTimez:

Positive point: The animation itself is very fluid and very dynamic, the way you animated a cooperative fight was quite original. Fx and sfx remain rather simple, but all are well used at the right time. The camera, despite some times when there's some negative space under the characters, is decent and fluid.

Negative point: The biggest problem I saw in this animation is the physics which is often weird and hazardous (For example at 0:09; Jade sends fireballs but doesn't take knockback when he throws them. If you wanted to keep your attacks without knockback, you should have gradually dropped Jade a little to the right. The thing is, I feel like it was voluntary and I see it more as a mistake, but it's probably just me) and the perspective seems to be done through the transformation tool, which is not a good thing. Personally, I use external software like firework or after effect, they're more useful for that. Then, some of your combos are repetitive (0:07/0:09: The combo is very well animated, moreover the cam is too. it's just that: having kicked 4 times is rather disappointing knowing it's well animated and that you could have done better). Finally, scamera shake and hitsuns are good but can be better: You just move your vcam or person from left to right in a pretty strong way, but I think you should do it better like that:
- For 2 frames, do a hard camera shake
- Then, you do for 1-2 frames a medium camera shake
- Finally, you do for 1-2 frames a little camera shake
I have a fla that explains and shows what a progressive shake camera looks like, if you want you can ask me about it on discord.

Overall: Your animation is correct, original and very pleasant to watch, but when you take a closer look at your animation, you can see very quickly what is wrong and what can be better animated. Besides, it's pretty sprising to see that there are no story when you chose the core theme story. Anyway, Pretty hasty to see more of your animations, keep goin' !


AlphaOD:

Positive point: The combos of your animation are really fluid and captivating. To be honest, you impressed me the first time I saw Kanel's combo. I find that fx and sfx are a little better than in Redtimez's part, there just few times when some swing effects are not well animated. Finally, I find the ideas during the fight original.

Negative point: To begin with, the camera work is rather bad: there is nothing particular about your vcam, it just follows the characters. I will admit that there are some rather interesting moments when the camera work was good (0:52) but apart from that moment of the animation, the camera work remained badly executed. When your character is on the ground, follow the movement with your vcam (ex: If Kanel does a high kick to the monster, you climb gradually (little by little and at the last frames, you accelerate) and when he is in the air, try to follow the combo. Then, the physics is badly executed at some point during the animation (0:49, Kanel remains in the air instead of go down progessively). If you want to have a good physic, I advise you to look at the spritefan2 tutorials that talk about it or just look at other animations made by other animators like Neil, Mali, XxZackAttack27xX or Kayas. Try to understand how others animator does to have a good physics, it should probably help you.

Overall: The combos and the fight in this animation are really good, the problem is that they would be excellent if the physics and the vcam would be optimal. And unfortunately, that's not the case:/. But I think you have the level to succeed in showing us original and excellent combos. Keep up the good work!

In conclusion, I vote for Alpha.

Good luck for your next MBR !

Well first off, good job to the both of you for getting this out so quick despite your extraneous circumstanced causing delays (it won't deduct points don't worry).

RedTimeZ
+ Pretty flashy and in your face beginning (strong start).

+ 0:07-0:11 was some well paced combat with a nice blizzard sequence at the end.

- The 'story' if you can call it that felt crammed at the end and didn't really add much to the animation, no context, nothing.

- The map is fairly bland, a tile, some pillars a sky and a statue of wolferian (which lacks the grainy stone texture). Would've been nice if you added some more objects and played around with it in the fight as well as some background objects between the sky and tiles.

- The perspective of the tiles aren't executed correctly. It looks to me that you either squished it (the tiles aren't aligned either) or skewed it. If you're using Animate CC, follow this webm I made. Otherwise you can do it on an external program like Photoshop, GIMP or After Effects.

- The combat 0:07-0:11 was well paced but it was just looped combat

- While a lot of the fundamentals were fine, two stuck out to me as badly executed. One, which Azurector above me covered, was the physics. So I won't dwell on that since he said pretty much what I would have.

- The other which was the worst offender was the pacing. Throughout this animation there were mostly pauses, after the great into from 0:00-0:04 and then a weird pause for the flame kick that Alpha's OC did at 0:05 after the tatsumaki barrage felt unnecessary. What followed was great combat that was well paced up until the blizzard. Nothing much happened, shots were drawn out and it ended up feeling like 20 seconds of filler. You want to keep the combat flowing without breaks and you certainly don't want to draw it out if you want to improve this aspect of your animation.

Alpha
+ I got a chuckle out of how you implemented the rank system into your story, was a nice touch. Simple quests like these can do the job context-wise.

+ Your combat was really well executed pacing-wise. There wasn't any bit of slow-down and it flowed really well together making it energetic and exciting. This is pacing done excellently.

+ Slick choreography that was pretty nice and easy to follow.

- Sound design was pretty bland, add some whooshes before hits to emphasise the impacts of them.

- Characters weren't aligned to the top of the floor. This isn't a perspective, it's a flat 2D floor so it's best to keep them at the top.

- The dialogue sequence was animated kind of blandly, I also felt this was put together real quick since there's a lack of movement or variation in poses on top of stale camera work... more on that later.

- The fake loading screen doesn't really work here since that's normally done if you want to replicate a video-game footage but it just seemed slapped in there.

- There wasn't any standout dynamic moments in your animation unlike with RedTimez's blizzard sequence. I'd like to see more 'oh shit' moments.

- The physics weren't well executed. You used a lot of 'triangle' jumps and the weight wasn't portrayed as well as I would have liked. Try using nested tweens for jumps and easing in movements as well as adding slight build up for larger and heavier hits. Check out this clip from Neil's VOD review.

- The camera work really held this down. I mentioned before in the dialogue there were no close-ups, etc. to emphasise the static nature of it - it's also true for the combat. There wasn't anything to emphasise the action going on. It's always zoomed out and static in a single position until a quick shake happens that doesn't taper out. You really need to engage the viewer with tight camera work and include shakes for hits that are hard to emphasise them (or tweens, etc.) there's a lot of ways to go about it. Also, it's a bad idea to rotate the camera like this if at all, so try to make an effort to avoid that.

Conclusion
I think it's clear that my vote goes to Alpha. While he had a lot of things holding him down in regards to other fundamentals, the most important one to me, which I said earlier that makes or breaks a fight, i.e. the pacing, was very well executed. The combat didn't slow down and delivered on the mob battle a lot more better than what RedTimeZ attempted in my opinion. Regardless, good job for the both of you for getting this out there and for showcasing your stuff. Can't wait to see where you go from here.

My vote will be go to Alpha, I love how he did his combo, I love the part where he do the fire uppercut to the zombie mushroom then the fire slip to two to hit two other mushroom in between him and how smooth the animation is. RedTimez I love your part to but you need to work your animation of the flat areas.

Voting for Alpha since he had more consistently paced combat (also it wasn't full of just repeating attacks) and there was a satisfying ending. Also, it actually followed the theme properly. The only REAL problem I have with the animation Alpha made is the camming since it's just still for most of the animation.

Kayas managed to summarize the points I had planned on elaborating for the two of them, damn your accurate and consise details Kayas, you bastard. <3

Anyway, to boil it down - 2/3rds of Redtimes animation was static filler with no combat whatsoever. After the intial burst of combat that set the pace.. not much was left to glean from it, along with not... even following the theme, to my vision.
[ATTACH=full]496[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH=full]497[/ATTACH]
This part was really, really sloppy in my opinion - if you're going for him scratching behind his head it should have swiped above his face, then behind with a different arm. And everything after this part seems like it was rushed and pieced together at the last minute, but that's just me.

As for Alpha, there are mistakes too, primarily concerning your dialogue at the start of the animation rubbed me the wrong way. The resizing and sliding to the left or right for each sentence feels a bit... antiquated in 2019; and while it's a nice pang of nostalgia to the "goelden dayez" I don't it exactly fits in the modern animations we see today. I could be prattling though, so don't mind me.

[ATTACH=full]498[/ATTACH]
Bruh.

As someone who animates a spear; I really like it when someone does it the tiniest bit of justice, and it's cool that you made the mobs retaliate instead of being dummies. Your combat was impactful and flowed really well, and that along with (actually) following the theme just makes me sing your praises even more - I love a good story, and even if it was simple, you did good.

Overall; Alpha gets the vote. If you climb up to gold, we should toss hands sometime.

RedtimezMations:
I enjoyed the beginning of the animation that builds up pretty well alongside the music, however, I'm a little disappointed that the animation felt kinda generic, with the characters' attacks doing rapid multiple attacks, but they felt "impactless". I do like the blizzard transition into some humor with Alpha frozen and the boar running towards you(kinda slowly), although disappointed that it just ended with you two in jail. The story is unfortunately little to none until the end where it leaves as a cliffhanger, which I kinda liked actually in a dramatic sense. As a mob battle, it serves as what the theme wanted in the bare minimum, although I wished there were a good reason why the two were fighting the mobs in the first place. The map' flooring is pretty repetitive with the same pattern over and over, would be nice to have variety patterning in the tiles.

Alpha:
Your story is definitely a little more meat than RedTimez, although it left me hoping for more into these Philosopher's stones and why the rumor didn't bring many people except you and RedTimez. Even showing some random treasure hunter getting smacked by the mobs suffices in showing a reason of the philosopher's stones' elusiveness. As an animation, the camera's wide shot of characters feels odd with so much negative space, which should be filled with the characters talking to each other closer-up.
It would also worl well to have more banter between the two characters besides asking each other if they're okay, to show a little more than their personality.

Overall, I vote for Alpha, Redtimez had a more solid animation, but Alpha followed the themes of story and mob battle more closely in comparison.

You two did awesome!

The votes have come to 6-1 in Alpha's favour. The point calculations come to:
RedTimez: -22 MBR Points (60>38 - deranked to bronze)
Alpha: +26 MBR Points (68>94)
Thank you all for voting and congratulations to @Alpha on the win! Thread locked.