Final Rating: 4.27. Finished 39 out of 83 entries.

383 views including the voting period.

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Animator: Ben

Description: Gordon ears the voice of his mother in his head

Experience: amateur

Time taken: 24h

Comments:

(Commenting only available during the rating period)

Murat Sari:

Wow was not expecting the ending.

Ferdinand Engländer:

I feel like there could be a pose before the last one where you can clearly see that it's a knife. Like the idea of an inner voice.

Sam Francis:

This is a really nice idea! I'm always impressed by creative ways to cut corners in the service of telling a story. A lot of your acting choices read well, too. In terms of animation performance, though, I'm sure you know you've got a long way to go. I think the main things you have to focus on at the moment are weight and breakdowns. Your sense of weight is clearly developed but it just needs a bit more work, since it falls apart during and after 'date!' (especially, his hips are stock still as he's moving around while kneeling). A lot of the movements he makes feel like direct tweens between key poses, and you can fix this by paying more attention to breakdowns and generally adding more keys to the scene before you put it in spline.

Since you avoided doing the bulk of the dialogue I'd guess you don't think you're very good at lip sync, but I think you have a pretty good early grasp of morphemes and pronunciation. The main advice I'd give you is to make all your mouth movements just one or two frames earlier - lip sync usually doesn't work if you line it up perfectly 'on paper', since our eyes expect light to travel faster than sound. Again also, his lips would benefit from some more keys and breakdowns.

Finally, when I first watched this the sword kind of came out of nowhere. I don't think it works with the clip, since his character just doesn't have the motivation to attempt suicide. Visually, if you were going to include it it would have made sense to draw the audience's attention to the sword before it's used, instead of hiding it almost out of frame, to avoid that confusing surprise. I think you've got a lot of potential and imagination, and I look forward to seeing you improve!