Score: 10

"SEXY."

submission: The Breakfast Club

date: June 30, 2005

It's everything I loved about Nick At Nite and more. Is it already 3 am? I totally want breakfast!!! Thanks, guys!

Score: 8

"big ideas and a thick brush"

submission: Fox's Day

date: June 30, 2005

This a fun watch even for people who aren't Fox. In fact, I actually really like the wide brush coloring - it's refreshing that someone out there is still in it for the story and doesn't go crazy over the execution. Of course, the big nerd in me wants to tell you that you get more depth by making the edges darker on round things (like fox, or our mystery villain). But in the end, I'll say fek it, I'm really looking forward to seeing what you come up with next, so I hope you're gonna keep making things! More more more!

Though graphically unpolished, you've got a sohisticated, film-like sensibility when it comes to movement, suspense and just the right amount of humor (the newspaper thing, awesome, anything more would have been too much). Those are serious talents that not many people have; they're more important than being visually realistic any day, so don't ever let the man get you down if he doesn't like the way it looks. The way I see it, someone along the way told Don Hertzfeldt that he sucked because he can only draw stick figures, and he's one of the best animators out there today. Check him out if you don't know him. Especially after seeing that guerilla crayon clip in the Amalgamations movie - that was completely awesome, by the way, I kinda wish you'd go back and do the whole song with them blasting their way through black and white.

You've got a good eye, keep on learning!

Score: 10

"Excellent depth and variety of texture"

submission: Merry Melony ep.1

date: June 30, 2005

This is a very well-executed piece of work. There is excellent depth and lots of detail in the backdrop and in the characters. Changing textures on M's body keeps you riveted, but it's a bonus - I watched this three times over anyway, because there was so much to see.

...Which might be my only problem with it, from a technical standpoint. I noticed some jumps in the actioned layers, especially the Hitchcockian zoom in on M while she was on her cell phone. There were a couple others, her arm floats to her side rather than lowering, a background roll... but again, all of these are technical problems that you could probably fix with some tweaking and re-rendering. It's obvious there's a lot of heavy content in there, and those library files have either been made at full-size broadcast quality and then shrinked down, or there are so many layers that your computer is buckling under the weight a la Atlas. I'd either watch it with those file sizes in your drawing program or see if you can't trim those large backgrounds to what ends up visible, and see if that fixes the jump.

(Breath) Anyway, the rest of it is brilliant. The template is GORGEOUS, muted and earthy, and I love that everything is out of place - cars in the ground and clouds spiked through windows. It's very lovely. The music is so cool. And the sound is mixed REALLY well. Bravo.

I WISH I could figure out what it says on the floor of the apartment. I can just make out "bye," but not the rest. Wanna let me in on the message?