Fred & Co, this is remarkable! Very nicely done. Personally I appreciate the lack of over-acting in the faces; it’s very natural and matches the style. No MTV pacing here, but peaceful and fluid, the camera lingers that moment longer to allow me to read deeper into the characters and their situation - to me that’s important because as it draws in my emotional involvement.
The sequence is nicely finished with visuals and sound. No crits from me, except that the video clip does not quite match the written story outline; left me a touch confused. But I understand this is a screen test.
If the whole movie has similar clean and wholesome subject matter, I’d let my kids watch it when it comes out.
Thanks. And thanks everyone else, for the crits too. As for the story, originally it was as in the video, that he wants to finally prove that Santa is real, but I’ve changed it to what’s in the synopsis on the site because I didn’t want it to seem similar to that other Christmas film about a kid going to the North Pole. In reality, it was very different, and I wrote it long before the movie came out (after the book though, but I’d never heard of it). It’s possible that when it goes into full production it’ll go back to the original story, because I think it’s much stronger.
Great work guys, everything seems to fit well in this short. I personally think that rather than pushing for over acting, you can actually push for more subtleties on the face. As a screentest
everything is in there my opinion.
It’s just beautiful. I agree that it would be much stronger to have the boy’s quest
be proving that Santa is really real, rather than just that he wants to get his Christmas
wish list to Santa. That other film wasn’t very good, because the story wasn’t very good.
It actually made Christmas seem kind of scary. That pobably wasn’t their intention,
but it’s true.
Its a nice looking film, the point was to show off messiah in production which it does and does very well indeed.I think you guys did this in’04 and it still holds up.
The thing is there are a million and a half Xmas stories out there all dealing with the same point of finding a fictious character which supposedly sets things right, its a hard thing to pitch. There really is no value or moral to take home with you in that particular vein of storylines. Its why films like Polar Express fall flat on their faces.
That song that your hear coming to dept. stores, " He knows when your sleeping, he’s knows when you are awake." One of these days some kid is going to take issue with this staking. its funny, there is supposedly 12 of Xmas, where are they?
Well here’s an idea , although it might be too much like “Miracle on 34th Street”:
The kid sets out to find the real Santa Claus because Santa Claus is that important
to him, but what he finds is a man who believes he is actually the real St. Nicholas.
Not the modernified commercialized Santa Claus, but St. Nicholas - a real holy man,
the patron saint of children. Maybe this character is wealthy enough to be able to
do the things the real St. Nicholas did - gift giving, but maybe not gold but
nuts and fruits. Just like the original. And of course the boy learns a thing or two
on the way, as determined by the writer. I think that could be interesting. I don’t
think that has been done.
Maybe even though the modern “St. Nicholas” has doubtful sanity, maybe clues
could start showing up that maybe indicate he really could be a real holy man.
Like the ability to work miracles.
Take all this as just the fun of of batting ideas around! I can’t resist it.
Here’s a little info on the original St. Nicholas.
looks great, warm and family friendly, but i agree a more twisted version would be cool, like after all the searching they finally found santas corpse in the chimney with a broken neck etc. show kids the real danger of santas work.
As a newcommer to Messiah. (actually installed it on my machine yesterday) I find it great that work of this quality is being done in Messiah. I like the look and after viewing it the first time the mouth movement looked fine. My top animation critic in the house (Sandy my 2 and a half year old daughter) liked it and wanted to view it over and over.
As far as critiques go. The story looks sort of typical, remember all the cool sucessful Christmas cartoons had some weird quirk about them. Look at Rudolf with the abomidible snowman and the island of misfit toys or the grinch or a christmas story and the bb gun. So just heartwarming is not enough but get a quirk and a bit of fun with the whole thing. Okay I love the qulity of the whole thing but I think you might need to have a bit more fun with it and get peoples attention.
But if you want to get an investor to buy into it you will have to show your hand a bit. Show them the heatmiser or whatever other quirky character you will have to make it fun. I agree with you there can still be something like that but you will need to give everyone a sneak peek to get someone interested and loosen their pursestrings for you. I like it a lot and the quality is there I would love to see this go forward and I am trying to be as constructive as possible so they can go forward with this.
That was fantastic. Great animation and I love the render style, very soft. The acting was well done, not overly sappy (like most Xmas stories) and not left up to the animation to pick up any slack. Perfect mix in my opinion. SpikeWorx, seems that they are whispering for just a dramatic effect or at least that’s what I got of it.
Investors are given all the info. But no, there’s no Heat Miser type character in this; it’s not that kind of show. It’s still interesting though-- you don’t need someone like Heat Miser to have it be interesting. However, we have another project that we present to investors also, and that one is definitely along the lines of the Rankin/Bass shows.
I appreciate the comments. Really, I’m not just saying that, it’s all very helpful.
