Theme: Your OC is OP (Boss Fight, opponent's OC is overpowered) Due Date: 1/6/21 C3quel: Notes: Mo frames, mo problems. Easily my largest project yet, and I learned a lot from it as a result. Thanks Erston for being a great opponent! lesgo ErstonAnims: Notes: Creds to Sai for the helmet even though I recolored it to match the armor and what not, it is still Sai's sprite. This mbr of mine was an idea I had in mind for really long time and I finally get to animate it and finish. While my opponent is a good greninja main. GGs to c3quel hes a cool guy and a good animator.
Yeah, I gotta give my vote to C3quel for sure. Overall his animation was a lot more polished and had me entertained the entire time. As for Erston's animation is a great sign of an improvement on his end, it still needed more polishing of movements in rigging. I'd also say that for C3quel your gonna need to make sure your text easier to read and slow it down for the audience to read. Regardless this was a great MBR, good job you too!
Good job both of you. Great to see another MBR to keep the arena rumbling. Lets get to it. Erston: One of your biggest issues has to be the pacing and speed of your animation. This not only affects the duration of your shots and the pacing of the video, but also has seemed to bleed into your actual animating process as well. My biggest advice? Slow down. Some shots such as this one gave the feeling like it was added in out of a necessity, because for the duration of the shot and the actions moving so fast; it made me view it as un-needed. Despite it being a little illogical to add to this scene in the first place, if a 'perspective' shot is something you really feel compelled to add; at least deign it more than two seconds and make it visually contrasting both the shot before and after - because this was far too fast to even properly digest what was happening to begin with. There are other shots where an action is performed, then there are lingering pauses where nobody is doing anything. I saw this happening quite frequently in your work, and it kills the flow/pace that you're trying to set with the combat itself. Let's talk about the weapon-play. While your ambition is admirable for learning how to do fancy rigging play; let's learn how to build a rocket before you start shooting for the moon. I believe at this current juncture, you lack the fundamentals to fully utilize rigging at your stage of animation; and I would suggest learning how to make combat without using rigs to have a better understanding of what makes rigging look good. Let me provide you a few examples in this animation that I found that can provide a teachable lesson in working your way to rigging. To start, let's observe this shot here, (and the following shot) at the start of the battle armor fight versus C3. In these two shots, these exists a commonality between what seems to stick out to me: The Physics; or more importantly, the lack there of. Senga hops up to attack the robot with her sword, but then her entire body freezes. After the freeze, her hand continues to animate; creating a very jarring, cognitive dissonance for the laws of physics in this world. Even in low gravity or high gravity, things do not simply stop in place after flying forward at such a momentum without even the slightest form of slowdown. In the 2nd half of this shot, you seemed to have done a 3-point-tween to simulate the act of falling. I'd recommend animating some nested tweens in a symbol to show her rotation while falling, then animate the rotation symbol moving on the y axis in another symbol to give a smooth fall. How does this tie into weapon play? Physics pertains to something critical in fighting with weapons: weight. The weight of a weapon can be it's greatest strength, or it's biggest weakness. In the fight against C3 however, I saw neither. Many of Senga's combos treat her greatsword like a plastic light-saber, more akin to giving moves hitboxes rather than showing any form of wind-up to give the swings any weight. Where one pose would end in an extended, exaggerated pose; it would immediately transition to a different pose with no movement of the actual torso. Example a: This forward jab had no 'forward' or 'jab' to it, even fast attacks need some form of build up or sign of it during it's execution for it to be effective. A knife can be sharp, but if there is no weight or force behind a swing or thrust, it won't be cutting anything. Example b: The sprites are different here, yes, but the issue lies down on the silhouette of the figure, rather than the actual "sprite_pose" being different. If one were to swing a sword in the fashion Senga did, horizontally one way and then the next, in a leaning forward, hyper-extended pose - the momentum for fortuitous injury and violence simply wouldn't exist. The body and head remaining still and in one position in the duration of a swing would seem possible if the weapon were lighter, such as a knife, shortword, hand-axe, mace, or other one-handed weapon - but for a greatsword to be swung like that without repercussions of the blades weight detracts from the mythos of the heavy, weighted design. Example C: This is further testament to how animating just the arms can make rigging seem stiff, and in this case, anatomically implausible. For this swing, I hope Senga gets to a doctor for that impossibly dislocated shoulder. Breaking swings into a segmented trio of poses akin to maplestory's sprites is a good place to start studying how people move when they fight things. Example D: I liked the start of what you had going on for this part - but that 'stand and deliver' style of execution combined with improper pacing of the combat itself took the wind from most of it's sails. My comments on the ending part after Example D aren't much; I personally didn't like how you cut the flow of combat to do a two second special-speedline-super activation-levelEXSuperoverheadLevel3, to restart the flow with him flying back into the building for another 5 seconds, only for him to immediately after that take 45,000 damage. The ending would've transitioned much smoother if you combined those two into one smooth shot. I should also state this - I nitpicked at your animation because I want you to improve. Hope you do not take this in-depth examination to heart as a personal affront to your character. C3quel is up next - I'll start off and give you kudos for making such a long animation that - eight minutes is nothing to sneeze at; so good job. Unfortunately, I can only post 10 images at once on a post; so I'll try to be equal parts brief and through. You and Erston both seem to be lacking on the issue of pacing, and I'd argue while eight minutes is truly a feat, more than half of it was exposition. I feel like your animation could've been made more interesting if you combined action with dialogue to make the whole project more engaging. A quick example of that would be the long expository dialogue near the end when Sedna was charging up her attack in the Kaiser Suit. The whole dialogue was 42 seconds long, and a restaurant-napkin idea could have been Sedna charging up her beam while Arc and C3quel ran away. This could maintain the thrilling atmosphere and intensity of C3 fighting against an overpowered enemy against dire odds, while simultaneously spoon-feeding the audience exposition it needs to progress the plot. So while there isn't really anything happening while they talk, if they're running away, the illusion of something happening while we're developing plot can still be upheld. You got a genuine laugh outta me with the Dray86 bit; I like your style of humor and enjoy the jokes you slipped into the animation. Another idea that ties into what I previously was talking about; is when Shulk is explaining the simulation. Instead of dropping a Hammurabi slab of exposition, perhaps a neat pictograph or crude drawing using stick figures could be presented with each sentence, providing a visual element to a mute explanation for more of an engaging experience. I'm gonna have to side with the man in Green China pants. Ya just can't beat fashion that good. :^) Good job to both of you, but C3quel gets my vote.
Miles covered the CnC above way better than I could so just gonna leave my personal thoughts instead Erston: Miles went above and beyond in his feedback and pretty much said what I could've far more better so refer to his post for feedback, I highly recommend it. C3quel: I'll hold the L and be honest since I thought you were gonna drag out your MBR with filler when I hear it was 8 minutes and you started mid-December, uhhh yeah. I was wrong lol. Granted it wasn't paced very well since I think you had chunks where you dropped a wall of text out of nowhere and most of it was an idle. Like with Erston, refer to Miles' post, he adressed some other stuff you could've done. The contents of the conversation are a different matter. There was a very delibirate care put into it. You put effort into the setting with the simulations, as well as the context for it, and the execution reminded me of the Maple animations I watched as a bystander. Very cool stuff. I also got a genuine laugh out of the "I love you." line to Dray86, I normally don't care for meta humour but this was actually pretty funny to read. I also loved what you did with the crowd. The dialogue got slightly intrusive in combat, but that can be resolved with better pacing. I do appreciate the dialogue being more of a JoJo-esque problem solving scenario than the typical "I must stop you evil cretin" jargon. So what I was reading was interesting, it just needed to be presented more interestingly. Combat was nice. Map was good. Dialogue was great. Point is, I can tell you put your love for the community into this and it shows through the setting and care you put into the world building. It was 8 minutes, but it didn't feel like 8 minutes, that's an accomplishment. You get my vote man.
Okay, where should I start: @C3quel: The Combat was off the charts, your Dialogue is incredibly infinite, you made your way to new and old maple from old generation,Camera angles is pretty much good, 3D models are very fantastic, The Dragon form of Erston is very outstanding,Map is very a good choice and the finish blow of the fight is out of this world. I want to give you golden coin for me one of your animations and I love you so much. @ErstonAnims: I love your fast movement and animations,you character has a good cuts,your form from Sai (rest in peace) is very awesome,my issue is C3quel comes out for the battle out of nowhere is off of me but who cares,the big clash you did on C3quel is very impressive i wish it leave hole on one of them, I wish your animations be longer so I can enjoy and I 3D sprite are very smooth,you really did a outstanding work on your first MBR. VOTE GOES TO C3QUEL!!!!!!
What a way to start the year off: an epic MBR with tons of digestible content. Very very nice work from the both of you. A lot of great CnC has been listed above so I'll drop a few of my personal thoughts. Spoiler: the deets C3quel: Great job, C3quel. A very cool MBR to watch over and over again; tons of story and characterization displayed with the cast you're working with. The Dray86 easter egg was quite fun and I found myself laughing at a lot of the jokes you threw in. I got a super serious Sword Art vibe from your part (I've been catching up lmao) so the terms and stuff got me pretty hyped. I also really liked the personalities and partnership of Adam and Crazy Arc; looks like they get along quite nicely! Your part matched the theme quite well. Senga was definitely pretty overpowered and I appreciate how it mades sense with the whole simulation/usb device, making it enjoyable to see how Adam could overcome Senga's cheat scheme and clench the win. Crazy Arcs smarts really came into play here and made victory guaranteed, making them a fun character I hope to see more of in the future. Erston: Well done, Erston. You're showing a ton of improvement with your animations and I'm glad to see you've made a lot of progress from when you first started. Senga hops into her fight pretty quickly and manages a victory using one of her trump cards. I enjoy your execution of combo's and rigging attacks. Though they could use a bit of work, the fight was fun to watch and was enjoyable to me. I was a bit confused on the execution of the theme though. I'll assume the mecha was Adams overpowered armor while fighting Senga, but to me it seemed they were evenly matched. Senga managed to turn it around with her own OP form which was pretty cool, but it was also reeeaaally quick! I personally wish that the 'overpowered' was shown off a bit more and just a bit longer. You each put in a ton of work and I'm glad to see that each part was completed and turned out so nice! This time, my vote is going to C3quel. I enjoyed his storyline and execution of the theme just a bit more. Well done guys. I can't wait to challenge the both of you down the line! Looking forward to your future works.
Erston: Yeaaaaah.. Miles pretty much said everything I wanted to say. I'll leave it to him. C3quel: Good LORD, 8 minutes?! Pacing aside, this actually got me engaged! Physics can definitely be improved on in some scenes where Adam's in the air with lack of gravity. There are some scenes where the camera is TOO zoomed out, showing a lot of negative space (like 5:08, for example). I would have the camera focus more on the characters and having less negative space. Spoiler: Like this: What I really love about this animation is the character interactions. There's no forced meta humor just for the sake of being funny, and it's all genuine! Spoiler: Decision My vote goes to C3quel. Well done, man!
I've been so hype and ready for this MBR, and you two definitely didn't let me down. You've both gotten a lot of good comments from others, so I'll try to focus on things others did not. Erston: I enjoy the little intro scene you added in to help provide context to the fight, and I like the idea of Senga being tasked to take care of the issue because she's the most fit to do so. I also like the little bits of the relationship you see between Senga and Jordan; their dynamic seems very teasing and almost hostile, but caring. Very familial! I do think the dialogue can use some work though, and with just a few tweaks could add a lot more to the fight to come. I can't quite explain, but some examples may be good enough! I appreciate anyone who adds narration, context, and story into their animations, as it's not an easy task to do, and can be just as difficult as the animation itself. So let's do a little dive into scripting and narrative! Below, I tried to adjust some of the conversation to make it... make a bit more sense, while also providing some character personalization, and even more context to the narrative. In this instance, I also made the Jordan character someone who cares a lot about their business, but not necessarily things outside of it, though that may not be your vision. J: Senga, may I speak to you about something? S: Is this about how I treated the customers today? J: No, though that's a topic for another time. I've got a job I need you to do. J: There's a Guard Robot that is going haywire in a nearby freeway. S: So? J: Customers can't get to the bar, and I don't want it's rampaging destroying the bar. J: (Oh and I suppose it'd save the lives of innocent people or something) Around this point, Senga says something like "Well that's sounds like a job for me, even though it's boring as fuck." I don't quite know the characters personality/occupation, so this was a little confusing to me. To me it sounds like she's saying she's so overpowered that it will be a piece of cake and boring, which... doesn't make sense if the Guard Robot is such a big deal, and it doesn't quite fit the theme of C3's character being overpowered. It also sounds like she doesn't even enjoy her job so much, so you think she'd prefer to leave instead? Maybe instead, it could be something like: S: Ugh, that sounds so boring. Why can't some other person deal with this? Can't they just turn off its programming? J: You got something better to do? Like <insert bad recent incident with customers>? S: *chuckles* J: Anyway, it seems like someone is actually piloting the damn robot. (maybe here you could even show a super quick preview of C3's character doing exactly this). And the armor on those things aren't easily pierced. You'll need to find a way to force them out of there. S: Sounds like a challenge. An easy, boring one. At least it's better than this dumb job. S: *waves and leaves* J: *shakes head and sighs* Don't get yourself hurt out there. (to self: cocky son of a...) This better explains why the situation hasn't yet been taken care of, and why Senga is needed. It also explains why C3 pops out of the mech later on. For fun, I also threw in an extra challenge into the narrative here, that simply the armor is tough to pierce. In this situation, this could give a fun element to the fight, where Senga needs to figure out how to get C3 out of the mech, or to stop him from controlling it (maybe she just needs to apply enough bludgeoning damage to hurt C3 on the inside, and she pulls off an interesting maneuver like by blowing a hole in the bridge and getting the mech to fall a good distance before impacting the ground). I like the little bit you added at the end, where Jordan tells Senga to stay safe/not hurt herself, showing that even though they talk shit to each other, he still cares for her. Now, right before the fight, we have Senga walking onto the highway, saying that it's very clear. It would've been interesting to have her react to the rampaging/chaos the "overpowered Guard Mech" had done on the highway. Maybe some cars are totaled and on fire, people are running around. People who failed to stop the situation are retreating, stating how powerful it is. It also seems like C3 was waiting for her, and she somehow didn't see him first? I was assuming the robot would still be smashing cars and causing destruction. When C3 finally pops out of the mech, it would've been nice to see some dialogue or reaction to it. Maybe he states his reasoning, and/or tries to run away now that his advantage has been taken away from him? In the animation, my impression is that he's suddenly more powerful, like he's unleashed his next form. I hope the above examples help provide some different ways of approaching the narrative and dialogue. One tip I can leave you with that I've learned recently: script your animation before making it. And if you want, share it with a couple people that you feel have good taste and see what they think. This flow I've found helps save me a ton of time, while also creating something paced well, both action and story-wise. C3quel: Man, I gotta hand it to you. This was a real delight to watch, and it gave me such a nostalgic feeling, but still being fresh and new and it's own thing. The animated portions I felt were all pretty solid- a bit floaty at times with gravity, but the floatiness was consistent enough that it felt more like a stylistic choice to me, and it didn't bother me. I think it worked with something that was a little more humorous. The sound fx and music all felt fitting, and were mixed well. The camera use I also enjoyed; you really used that z-axis well! There are portions where it feels a bit zoomed out, though this didn't really bother me. Often, I feel people have their stuff too zoomed in. What really makes this for me is the great story and context you have setup. MBRs as a simulation is such a great idea, and you really dug into that with things like becoming friends with someone famous, and Erston just murder-hoboing the town because they "couldn't feel" anything. The challenge of Erston hacking the system and having an "undefeatable foe" made the fight a lot more interesting to me, as it gave it a unique challenge and puzzle element to it; the type of hype moments you see in all the best Shonen anime fights. It also fit the theme of the MBR perfectly. I really enjoyed the personalities you put into the characters. Your character is a spunky, excitable, and a bit naïve/quick to assume. Senga is mischievous, and just absolutely savage, willing to do whatever it takes to win, even cheating, or pretending to have been controlled. I loved her just flexing throughout the whole fight. I also love the interactions with Dray. It was really cute, hilarious, and even a little heartbreaking. I also enjoy the dynamic between your character and Crazy Arc, who is more of an all-business, hyper intelligent being, but will still drop the occasional "lol", which just seems to show the bond they have with C3. Some people felt that the dialogue was too long, though I honestly didn't feel this way at all, except for maybe in the beginning. I agree with Miles that this could've been made slightly better by showing some examples of what was being talked about, but given the deadline of an MBR, it felt like a minor thing to me. Some pointed out that the dialogue during Crazy Arc and C3 felt really odd in the middle of the fight without any action happening. I initially thought this was a bit odd as well, but when it cut to the "I'VE BEEN CHARGING MY ULTIMATE MOVE THIS WHOLE TIME" I died laughing. Now, for some feedback. One thing that keeps feeling off to me is C3's final attack against Senga in her armor. I assumed their solution was to pierce the armor, then hit it from the inside...? But I had assumed that was impossible to do with the whole velocity being reduced to zero thing. I thought there was gonna be some kind of Mario 64 backwards longjump speed boosting shenanigan at first, where C3 attacked away from Senga as she attacked him, creating a negative velocity or something. Honestly, the solution to the problem just wasn't super clear to me, even if it was super cool looking (and timed so well with the music). Another thing that would've been nice to see was just a conclusion to the story that was built up. It would've been cool seeing the simulation end, and Sengu having to face the consequences (or run from them). Or perhaps some text at the end of the video after it fades out. "And so, the simulation ended, and before anyone else could say something, Sengu simply said pog and jumped out the window". Or something better than that ha. One thing that I would've liked to see was the environment used a bit more. I don't think it was necessarily needed, but I felt you did so much building up the setting, and with all the paralaxing... I just kept finding the space to be really empty. Part of this maybe also be because of how zoomed out the camera is at times. But when I hear "overpowered PC", a part of me wants to see the environment destroyed and interacted as a part of that. I feel in the beginning of the simulation, it felt a little more busy just because there were other characters hanging around, but once they were vanquished the space became empty. Maybe you could've had their bodies leftover? Or left a Maplestory tombstone, like when you die in the actual game? That said, there was definitely some hilarity to the blink/fade out of existence types of deaths, Sword Art Online style. Honestly, I'm having a bit of a tougher time providing any suggestions for this animation, as in my eyes it's one of the best things I've seen put out there. I feel I learned a lot about story and pacing just by watching it. And with the MBRs having a deadline, asking for more than you've already given just seems like asking for too much. The Verdict Though both of you have definitely shown growth and gave us probably your best works yet, I gotta give this one to C3quel.
As I read the cnc from Miles and Poke, I realized that I need to work on many things from this animation by pacing, weight, script, and also combat. For C3quel: The animation was pretty long, I liked how your animation gave a nostalgic tone to it. There were some points in the animation became floaty and but overall it was an amazing animation I loved it. This vote is going to C3Quel. Ggs man
