Sea Monsters and School Buses - short film by Darrren Sumich

[aesir]

Nice work overall! Definitely a departure from most of the other stories that animators usually tell, but I think you did a pretty nice job. Most of the animation was very polished.

I do feel like the story was a touch confusing. It might have made more sense if it had started with the parent trying to fall asleep, and the kids always waking her/him up, and then getting herself/himself hit so that he/she could sleep.

[stefek]

Hi !

I've checked out your short. As you're AM student, I supposed that animation will be at very high level. And that's right. But this is an "short film" and there is plenty of things other than animation that are making a good film.

Main one is the plot. I think in your short plot is too simple. Way too simple. You know, a guy is back home, tired and he wants to relax, children are fighting against each other and that's it. There are no any obstacles in front of a main character (In fact who's the main character of the short ? I'm pretty confused with it.) The viewer do not know is it about the children to learn their lesson or about father or what. Try to connect a viewer with a characters more next time.

In my opinion films, video games and so forth are made to touch viewer somehow. Make him cry, laugh, smile or anything. Here we have a "whatever" situation. It doesn't make the difference what is happening on the stage. I recommend you to check out some of the classic fairytales like Hans Christian Andersen's for example.

The next comes camera angles. While I was watching it, I get an idea that camera and the plot are working together to make this short's story even more unreadable. There is no consequence in the camera work. (in one shot the main character is surprised and in the next one he's angry and in my opinion there should be some clear signal why this mood transition happened and when)

The third thing that takes away character's empathy is the fact that they are completly generic. I know if somebody is making an short he's probably forced to do the all things on his own (modeling, rigging, mapping, texturing, animating, lightning, rendering, compositing, editing so on so forth) and not everybody must know how to do all these things. I'm not telling you that you're supposed to do it. If you're using generic characters, just try to customise those in way that will differ them from each other. Add some hairs (even as an simple mesh not via some fancy hair plugins), try to dress them, if you can't model the clothing just make an texture.

Animation is overall good. I like it.

Overall, it's a good job. But it looks more like an animation showreel than an regular film.
All the best and I'm looking for another one :)

[BigCurly]

Hey thanks for the critiques. These are the kinds of things I was looking for. It's funny how everytime I think I take a big step forward in my animation it really just shows me how far I have to come.

[Kymer]

I agree on what Stefek said but at the end, you actually had me smiling. =D
The music really fits, very nice expressions and the animation is what you'd expect from a graduate on AM, pure awesomeness. I just love it.

Keep it up man (:

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