===== From sshelby@shelbyvision.com: Can't find anything to criticize, except maybe that it almost seems unfair that a group can compete with individuals. ===== From emperorofrome@yahoo.com: love the textures, the message. But it could have been a little more exciting ===== From rich@brickbots.com: Wow, impressive. Lots of good work here. My only regret is I am not sure how much constructive feedback I can give. It is nice to get lots of 'Wow that looks great' but I understand how useful feedback is. Generic Note: I really enjoyed watching these animations, but I personally think that pointing out the low points of an animation help more than pointing out the high points. As such, I usually only mention the problems. Please don't take it the wrong way :-) Technical: From a technical standpoint it was great. I think you folks did a wonderful job of implementing your vision. My only real comment is about the hand grabbing the hour glass, it was floaty, which is tough to explain. I think it needed more 'change' within the context of the hand moving. Like fingers uncurling or some wrist movement. A wider shot here could have given you more room to play in. Artistic: I like the widescreen format. Good use of lighting and shadow, but I think some of the composition could have been a bit better. I am thinking especially of the door shots. You did such a wonderful job on the walk down the hallway, especially the diagnal overhead, that these dead on shots of the door seemed a bit uninspired. Oh, and I am not sure if it was intentional, but the bones on the hand when death grabs the hourglass seemed to glow. I would have preferred some lighting which showed the volume and shape of the bones more. The glow if there was some, or the lighting if not, just made it look very flat. If you want the glow, try a sort of bloom outside the bones with some other lighting so there is more shading and shape to the whole thing. Theme: A good take on what could have been a morbid theme. I mean, who is not waiting for the end of spam? Have questions about my comments? Rich at brickbots dot com ===== From evilsnack@hotmail.com: Spam ain't dead yet. ===== From Markus.Altendorff@asamnet.de: A totally unrealistic animation (no, not with death and the lots of hourglasses - sadly, i'm talking about the death of SPAM...) - but i really liked it! My only problem is with the bones of Death's hand - are they supposed to shine like that? ===== From irtc_mail@yahoo.co.uk: In the opening scene there are sounds of the door being unlocked but nothing is moving, and the way the stones in the wall are stacked in columns is very strange. I don't know what keeps the stones in place above the door. The twinkle from the blade shouldn't be moving unless the blade was rotating. Nice atmosphere looking along the corridor. Being as the torches are about head height, Death ought to be casting a shadow on the shelves as he walks past. Just after death walks past there is a cut to a shot where the camera is lurching too quickly towards the shelves like it is on elastic which has been stretched and then let go. I don't get what the darkening/closing iris effect is about as the sand runs out. If it was a candle running out it would make more sense. It is difficult to make out the detail of the skeletal hand as it has no light or shade on it. It is like a dull white silhouette. The movement of the hand needs some work as well. As it moves in, it comes to a jarring instantaneous stop without slowing down first. When death walks past the window, it looks like his body is moving up and down at the same rate that his arm is swinging, rather than at twice the rate. As for the story, I'm not sure about the way you frame the spam hourglass with disease, bigotry and hate, and then choose spam as your target, like its the biggest problem in the world. It makes it look like you care more about your inbox than disease, hate and bigotry. The Death character looks a bit stiff. He could do with bending his elbow. And the way he is either not seen or is just walking out of shot leaves each scene feeling like an empty pre-rendered backdrop which is waiting to have some character composited onto it to finish it off. The best part of this is the soundtrack which comes across as much more polished than the animation. ===== From file: looks really nice, but do you really need so many people to make such a short (and not all that complex) animation? Notable for modelling, composition, textures