===== From Markus.Altendorff@asamnet.de: (Just to test that my vote for my own animation is really not recorded) ===== From evilsnack@hotmail.com: Artistically, not bad. Technically, the motion is not quite natural in many places. The concept had a slight twist. ===== From schaneville@hotmail.com: Well what can I say? The modeling is top notch. The texturing is absolutely incredible. I'm really impressed with the amount of detail that you can put together in such a short time. I also liked the camera cuts/angles, and your timing for each shot is well done. Congratulations. Oh, and glad I was able to help with the compositing hint ;-) ===== From zach@brewstergeisz.cjb.net: The first time I watched this, I wasn't too excited, until the Big Reveal into the cryogenics chamber and the second definition of Escape. Then, I practically cheered. Great story work. You've clearly got a lot of attention to detail, so forgive me for some detailed comments. - The walk cycle--I know you know it has problems, but I think, specifically, it needs more of a sense of weight. Up and down movement of the body, overlapping the foot contacts, would help here. - The monk--again, weight is needed; he's being pulled up by his neck, but he's managing to hold his shoulders up straight. It'd be better if he were flopping about a bit. - The dialogue--I know we're supposed to proceed as though people don't have sound capability, but man was it weird to read captions when you had that otherwise excellent soundtrack. (There, tell your composer.) Especially when there were sound effects in addition to music. Lipsyncing is a bear, but it was difficult to tell how well you did it without the actual voices. On the whole, though, this was extremely well done, and you should be proud. ===== From s.mitchell@tue.nl: The castle looks good, and I especially liked the duel interpretation of the theme. ===== From pterandon@yahoo.com: Hal Foster and others more advanced in the art of storytelling were able to make references to torture as part of a narrative without being so unedifyingly graphic. It's said that one can judge by any consistent criteria. This month a strong measure of the score is the delight of my 3-year old son as he watches the anims. I wouldn't let him watch. I really hope this animation does poorly in the scoring because we don't need this kind of shit. ===== From irtc_mail@yahoo.co.uk: There is something about the constantly moving camera, which moves very slowly, which gives the whole thing a feeling of being shot in slow motion. Moving a camera over detailed textures is also very bad for compression. Why have an open book and on-screen text showing the text from the open book? Couldn't we just see the text in the book? I daren't think what childhood trauma lead to you animate a chained, slashed, bleeding, naked female vampire cat. It reminds me of barbequed chops - burnt black on the outside, red-raw on the inside. The blurring round the edge of the screen seems too much. Focal blur can direct attention onto the parts of the image that are in focus, but this seemed to draw my attention towards the blurred surroundings. The first 'lip-synced' words on waking look too much like an aggressive snarl. I know this is sci-fi, but using "uv-photons" instead of "sunlight" sounds a bit too geekish. The left arm is frozen during the blue arm sequence. Pulling the chain off the wrist feels too soft, it needs more snap. I can't see why the camera spins round onto the shot of the door being opened, and the way the camera moves to the right shows the wall texture (which looks good everywhere else) to be an image-on-a-flat-surface. Perhaps 'real' bricks are needed around the door. That strange punching running style looks very bad in such a glossy production, and the same is true for the stair-walk. Is there any need for the double ending? They have already escaped from the tower. Having the double ending would make more sense if they failed to escape from the tower, but then it was revealed that actually they did escape in the form of escapism. And isn't the plot here just the same plot you used in the last IRTC escape-themed round: an escape sequence followed by an ending which reveals that the whole escape sequence was a full-immersion video game. The changes in the mood of the music don't quite match up with what is happening. I think the worst example of this is the big change in mood at the time of the 'just kidding' line: they still haven't escaped yet, but the music calms down. The fading between the two music tracks as we find out that the escape from the tower is just a simulation sounds clumsy. All the way through, something just doesn't feel right about the way the 'dialogue' is done. The animation has a soundrack, but it is also a silent movie. The characters have lip-synced dialogue, which you cannot hear, which is subtitled in the same language they are speaking in. It is very difficult to read the words on screen whilst trying to keep watching what is happening and it feels strange reading the text while the character is silently mouthing the words. Perhaps it is time to get some voices for these two. You should be able to do the voice for the cat-creature yourself. She doesn't look like the type of girl who would have a particularly high pitched voice. Overall, at first sight this looks fantastic, but then certain things like the running and the stair-walk stand out as less fantastic. There seems to be a large gap between the best things and the worst things about it. I'm guessing a lot of the 'professional' touches here are features built into the package like the depth of field, the wind on the waving flag and the dynamics of the guards torch falling on the floor. I don't want this to sound like an insult (the most I've got a character to say is "Arrrgh") but perhaps the next step might be to spend less time learning how to use the package FX and more on learning the fundamentals of animation. ===== From file: very nicely done. although I can't really like the characters, they are modelled nicely, and I think the lip-sync looks really good. walls look excellent, nice dramatic effects, although could be nicer if that falling torch would still be smoking. the tower from outside appears a bit too artificial. o, and very nice de-cloaking effect! Notable for textures, modelling, lighting, composition ===== From file: I still don't like the way the figures move. It's a little too jerky. Try using another type of interpolation between the motion control points. It looks like you're using linear interpolation. Notable for textures, modelling, lighting