Score: 9

"Really great!"

submission: -hipsterween-

date: November 1, 2009

Wow, such a huge improvement in quality since the first Rocket Crotch! Every item from the ground up was drawn super well. My favs being the castle (geez look at all the brick work and shingles!), the portrait art on the walls (I saw a fanged Scrumptious Jack :D !), and the bathroom scene (the door, tiles, and the monster with a red Glowing line work and SO many details in the skin texture). I really liked how you used color and lighting to set up tones and atmosphere, like when they are in the car (all colored a blue hint) to indicate moon-night settings, or like when we go into a purple or green room the people in the back having a purple/green shading. The goblin and ghost duo had lots of personality, and you showed it without a single word! A staple to good character animation is if the audience can read a cartoon in pantomime and you did it great. You had their eyes look like they were thinking and scowling at the invitation, put postures of mischief in their bodies, and finally evil giggling grins to tell the story. Also like the picture with the girl smiling...when it goes back to the scene the picture is empty...then the sexy girl comes in mhhmm I get it ;] .

In the animation I still see a lot of panning of single frame images, but you blended them a lot better than in previous animations. I think it's because you mixed some fbf into them and used the bobs and tween-eases in a smart way by adding them to the beats of the music, so it made the viewer want to bob their heads right along with it :) or at least I did ha-ha! Especially loved the part where the pumpkin head guy is gnashing his teeth up and down to the music and when the skeleton took over the DJ board. That brings me to the music, which had a flow and rhythm just right for this nightclub party in a haunted mansion. You feel the heavy beat and that wisp sound like its traveling with the cartoon and accentuating scenes when they move with it. Also liked how it went muffled in the bathroom scene just like the music was coming from the party itself. So kudos to Shadowfox!

I had to replay this one at least 5-6 times because it was packed with so much eye candy and details that you could catch something new on every viewing! I caught a witch on a broom, a king Dedede face, Red M blood, a shout out to the Stray Targets as the best band in the universe (lol-isn't that your band!? XD), and of course a great number of cameos. I guess the only down side was its short length and the fast speed. There were many times I had wished you'd let the camera sit there for a sec or 2 longer so I could awe at the artwork before getting cut off. And then the cartoon was cut short in the end by the time they started killing... I thought those parts could have been built up more, but given the time constraints of making the Halloween deadline it looks like a hell of a LOT of work went into this baby and it had a solid evil ending (no survivors haha). Overall this was a really great polished (but short) cartoon that was a treat to watch, and worth re-watching. Keep it up man; you're improving a ton! :)

Score: 3

"Mediocre"

submission: Stamp on the Ground

date: September 12, 2009

Wow that was pretty weird. It felt like all the annoying things about Deviantart was barfed into one "kawaii gay dancing fest". I mean you had it all: The furries, the gay lovers, the "original" Pokemon characters derived from fan fictions, the pop culture icons, the video game guys who are then made into lovers because they are polar opposites so they have a "dominant and submissive" relationship. Not to mention you drew them all as anime characters with pointed chins, featureless faces and all the same body type (minus the accessories), which completely undermined the original designs into bland eyed copies of their real forms. The animation was 50/50. Some parts like the alien's hair moved nicely with fbf and some of the smaller characters really got down to the beat, but then the rest barely moved at all...you just drew them in one pose and then they landed into another static pose with almost no frames in-between to make it smooth, and then if they turned around it was the same drawing but flipped in the other direction. Or it was the same base drawing and then you erased an arm/leg and drew it in another bend...Also, the slow frame rate didn't help on this fast song, where they should really be bouncing and moving faster. I think if you really want to progress in animation, you should take a look at some real DDR videos online, (I'm sure YouTube has some), and watch the way bodies move as they dance. They have knees that bend, and pivot centers in the waist that show weight (all of your characters fat, skinny, big, or small jumped with the same space and weightless effort). Also, look at clothes and hair when it's moving in real. Every figure here had their clothes glues to their bodies or something...not a wrinkle or slack in them! It was a pretty long song, so I can see you have the effort and drive to produce an animation that can really shine, and that's probably why I think you can do better than this half-job riding on pop culture nostalgia (of course that's just imo). And look at the vast array of characters you did, it's like 20+ different people, animals, things, so you're not lazy to draw! You as an animator have potential to make something completely your own, but you won't be able to get there if you don't break from your comfort zone and rely on only fandom to make things. Anyways good luck! :)

Score: 7

"A Nice Cartoon"

submission: Tywo At Large Ep. #3

date: August 13, 2009

So, as I had said before, I finally got around to watching this cartoon. And I was pleasantly surprised by the attention to details that are found throughout the work. You can see the places where you went the extra mile in the background and scenes, for instance making the river animate in the stock shots, and having background students do things while the action is going on to the main story. I also saw a great blend between the brush tool and pencil tool to make many of the faces and props, and you did this so well that they complimented each other, (which is hard to do sometimes and can look very awkward), but you pulled it off. The way you had a consistent grasp of using the camera angles was just like what they teach in a traditional film school. You knew when an idea of importance or humor was to get the attention, you zoomed in on the subject, and on parts of action you had our eyes follow right with him (like as he went down the hall in the rocket) or was running from the vice principal. Another element of detail that was very nice was the use of lighting and effects....the smoke twisted and faded, and the part where the principal and that teacher are talking in the darker rooms had red/blue gradient tints to emphasize the mood. I was going to add that you over use the tweens, but then I noticed you DO use some fbf its just so subtle and smooth its overshadowed by the more obvious yanking of the tweens. For example, that part where the teacher in walking and drops his papers...I automatically notice the tween walks (not very good), but then you put all this effort into making the papers flip and float so well it's like "Oh that was done so nice I didn't even catch it...because it wasn't awkward heh". Hope that makes sense. So maybe you should cut down on the tweens and make more elements fbf so it balances out better....and don't get so lazy on the heads and feet haha, some people don't even have knees and I think some had heads bobbing a little too forced. Good character animation knows only to do that on occasion for emphasis of something ;). Design-wise I didn't really like the sharp angle mouths you do...you were definitely influenced by cartoons like Invader Zim, because those characters have the same kind of mouths, "square" heads, with a pointed anime-like chin. It's not bad to emulate a style and make it your own, but use it for a reason. Invader Zim was generally an anime-like sci-fi world fraught with futuristic mechanics so their designs complemented the city they lived in. Here, it doesn't do anything. The characters personality is, in a way, constricted to eye movement and a mouth sliding on a template head...you did a little more on the girl when she was moving her brows a bit, but all the screaming and expressions needed more than an open mouth and static bugged out eyes if you get what I'm saying. For an example, look at Roger Rabbit when he freaks out....his whole head and body get into the action! Try doing some of that next time. The humor was 50/50 hit and miss in my opinion, but that happens with a lot of comedies really...oh well you can't even try to please everyone, so please yourself first, right? :) And frankly the idea of kids hanging out at school and having "shenanigans" is a little on the stale side for me...but that's probably because of all those damn live action kids and school sitcoms that are killing cartoons and dominating the current channels . So no offense that I didn't really get into the series or anything and it's good for you to explore beyond it, because it will get you out of your comfort zone and you can only improve. But just know this; you have a lot of talent and passion to animate a cartoon of this caliber and length. And I can see that this was not some crap animation pulled out in a week. You really put dedication, quality, heart, and soul into what you create, and that's what makes good cartoons. So yeah, I look forward to seeing your next animation whatever it may be.