Loved the inventory joke. I really didn't expect this show. Looks like it'll make fun of overused or weird tropes in the Adventure/RPG genre. Awesome.
Creature Caster Masters: It Begins
- Thread starter Jimtopia
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Wow. I thought this was going to be cliche and boring, but it came out of left field and made me laugh the entire time. Awesome stuff. Keep up the excellent work!
This was really so terrible. Internet Kraken summed up your problems pretty well, but I'd like to add a few to his list, including but not limited to:
-Very poor voice work. I've heard so much better on free sites like YouTube. I've even heard much better in user-generated content that sucked, like the awful videos that wind up on "retsufurash." Dan McNealy you are not. If you are the actor, work on your line delivery. If you're going to play it straight, play it totally straight. Be serious. Emote.
Edit: Apparently you've been a VA on other stuff? You're sure a lot better in that, is all I can say. Maybe there's a weakness in the script, I dunno.
-If a joke seems obvious, don't do it. Or do it, but make sure it doesn't draw much attention to itself. At some point every humorist makes a poor or lowbrow joke, but the good ones do it in a way that either acknowledges how bad it is or downplays it.
-Character development and interesting characters can work for you when your story stops being funny. Check out Order of the Stick for a good example. Just because something is derivative and unfunny doesn't mean it can't be enjoyable. If your characters are interesting, voiced well and developed, a flat joke won't matter. This is more just general advice in the event you take the show further.
-Better animation. This is a visual medium, and your animation does not reflect the level of quality I would expect from a site with original content, ads and paid subscriptions. Something like Unforgotten Realms was simple, sure, but the style was clean, colors were crisp, etc. I mention it as an example because it was also incredibly derivative in concept if not execution.
But really, when I look at the bad animation, voice work, plotting, unfunny jokes, annoying designs for the Pokemon look-alikes, and inventory jokes that were a LOT funnier before Scott Pilgrim did them a year or two ago, I just don't see much here. There have been a lot of shows on The Escapist I didn't like. This is true. Creature Caster Masters (I am somewhat fond of the title, I'll admit) is probably the show with the lowest level of quality and polish (and also is the least entertaining show) that I've seen on the site. Of course, anything can improve with time and effort.
-Very poor voice work. I've heard so much better on free sites like YouTube. I've even heard much better in user-generated content that sucked, like the awful videos that wind up on "retsufurash." Dan McNealy you are not. If you are the actor, work on your line delivery. If you're going to play it straight, play it totally straight. Be serious. Emote.
Edit: Apparently you've been a VA on other stuff? You're sure a lot better in that, is all I can say. Maybe there's a weakness in the script, I dunno.
-If a joke seems obvious, don't do it. Or do it, but make sure it doesn't draw much attention to itself. At some point every humorist makes a poor or lowbrow joke, but the good ones do it in a way that either acknowledges how bad it is or downplays it.
-Character development and interesting characters can work for you when your story stops being funny. Check out Order of the Stick for a good example. Just because something is derivative and unfunny doesn't mean it can't be enjoyable. If your characters are interesting, voiced well and developed, a flat joke won't matter. This is more just general advice in the event you take the show further.
-Better animation. This is a visual medium, and your animation does not reflect the level of quality I would expect from a site with original content, ads and paid subscriptions. Something like Unforgotten Realms was simple, sure, but the style was clean, colors were crisp, etc. I mention it as an example because it was also incredibly derivative in concept if not execution.
But really, when I look at the bad animation, voice work, plotting, unfunny jokes, annoying designs for the Pokemon look-alikes, and inventory jokes that were a LOT funnier before Scott Pilgrim did them a year or two ago, I just don't see much here. There have been a lot of shows on The Escapist I didn't like. This is true. Creature Caster Masters (I am somewhat fond of the title, I'll admit) is probably the show with the lowest level of quality and polish (and also is the least entertaining show) that I've seen on the site. Of course, anything can improve with time and effort.
If you're trying to say it's good because the show is trying to be bad, that excuse is nonsense. If something is trying to be of poor quality and succeeds, then yay, but it still isn't any good. I would argue that the graphical elements (color and animation) are poor enough to negatively affect one's enjoyment of the "message." Though I'm not sure what the message would be. Pokemon is a ridiculous concept? I think I figured that out along with all of my classmates back in the 4th grade when we first heard the phrase "pocket monsters."Mechsoap said:
Pretty lazy animation, especially at 3:53. When people walk, each leg moves in sync with the opposing arm; their left leg is synchronized with their right arm, and their right leg is synchronized with their left arm. In this walk cycle, the left leg is synchronized with the left arm and the right leg is synchronized with the right arm, and it looks unnatural. It's also an incredibly easy fix if you did it in Flash (just swap the timing of the arms).
Also, just because the Pokemon/Digimon/whatever floats to walk, doesn't mean you can get lazy and just stick it on one unmoving frame. It should have at least a slight wobble to indicate to the audience that it's propelling itself through space, instead of looking like it was cut and pasted onto the screen.
In regards to your characters movements, I'd suggest you learn that motion tweens in Flash are not your friends. Wait, let me make sure that was clear;
MOTION TWEENS ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS.
Tweening can be used well if you want to pan backgrounds but don't know much about cameras, but never, ever use a tweens on a character (it looks like all of your main characters hand motions were tweened). It's cheap, lazy, unnatural looking, and is a sure-fire way to make your audience think your animation is crap before even giving the jokes a chance.
You might consider developing your own visual style too. I realize the character models are meant to reflect the anime styles of various monster-themed shows, but it's possible to represent that style without making characters that look like every awkward teenager's anime fanart.
All that said though, I see some potential in the series, and considering that it was only the first episode, I'd say it's not a bad start. All those crappy anime shows are ripe with humor and I'm sure you'll have a lot of content to work with in the future.
Also, just because the Pokemon/Digimon/whatever floats to walk, doesn't mean you can get lazy and just stick it on one unmoving frame. It should have at least a slight wobble to indicate to the audience that it's propelling itself through space, instead of looking like it was cut and pasted onto the screen.
In regards to your characters movements, I'd suggest you learn that motion tweens in Flash are not your friends. Wait, let me make sure that was clear;
MOTION TWEENS ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS.
Tweening can be used well if you want to pan backgrounds but don't know much about cameras, but never, ever use a tweens on a character (it looks like all of your main characters hand motions were tweened). It's cheap, lazy, unnatural looking, and is a sure-fire way to make your audience think your animation is crap before even giving the jokes a chance.
You might consider developing your own visual style too. I realize the character models are meant to reflect the anime styles of various monster-themed shows, but it's possible to represent that style without making characters that look like every awkward teenager's anime fanart.
All that said though, I see some potential in the series, and considering that it was only the first episode, I'd say it's not a bad start. All those crappy anime shows are ripe with humor and I'm sure you'll have a lot of content to work with in the future.
Heck, I feel more like defending Doraleus and Associates.cymonsgames said:
Originality in humour is not easy, and I for one think all the ideas you mention would have sucked - unless the delivery was very good. It is all about the delivery, and I for one haven't seen a series that is like Doraleus and Associates and as good.
If every type of humour could only be done once, it would be lame. So if you saw the Pokemon parody and you wanted more, all you could do was watch it over and over again.
So I watched this a second time to see if I could come up with what I find wrong with this. For starters the jokes are just way to predictable. Let's start with the waffle maker since that is the first joke (If anything before this was supposed to be a joke then sorry but it failed horribly). When we see the waffle maker it looks like a Pokeball. Since we all know what a Pokeball does we are presented with two natural outcomes. A) It "Catches" the waffle mix and a waffle is made. B) It fails the "Catch" and releases it. These are the obvious outcomes to anyone who has seen/played Pokemon, since that is basically your whole audience any obvious choice is going to be a poor choice. Not only did you choose an obvious choice but you wasted 7 seconds on the "suspense" of the capture, so not only do we have an obvious joke but horribly pacing to set it up.
Our second joke is the Bike. Admittedly this one is slightly funny. It's just a shame that the lead up to it is poorly executed. "Hmm now lets see where is my bike again? Oh duh my backpack." Well thanks for explaining the joke to us and giving us the most cliched way to bring attention to an oncoming joke. Also we have to do the horrible "wade through item list" thing. Look I don't like wading through lists of items in my games, why would it be funny to do it in a show, this just creates even more horrible pacing to a one second joke.
Third joke is the Trainer Battle. Lead up to it is pitiful and obvious, "It's vision is based on movement." So let me just go ahead and move and then be surprised when it puts me into a battle -_-
So we then have the Wikidex... oh I get it, it's supposed to be funny because of Pokedex is an encyclopedia of Pokemon and Wikipedia is currently our version of an encyclopedia.... yeah.
We have more horrible pacing, leading us up to the Explosion! This part makes me chuckle ever so slightly.
"Well Tun-tun We won our first battle," So let's walk along and recap the episode and give plot exposition (basically just the characters name) and make a HI-LARIOUS joke about us taking it easy while we go into certain danger, because jokes like these have never been relegated to the backwaters of terrible children's shows.
Here I think I can already guess the next episode.
"Hey Tun-Tun this doesn't look like the Professor's House, it's a cave." So let's walk into the cave that is obviously not where we are supposed to be going. Then for some inexplicable reason they are stuck in the very dark cave. "Tun-Tun where are you. Oh there you are Tun-Tun" "*Grrrr...*" "Wait a minute you aren't Tun-Tun" (oh that part will be HI-LARIOUS I tell you!) Let's pull out the Wikidex for another HI-LARIOUS useless explanation of the strange creature. Deus Ex Machinca saves them from a horrible death. "Well Tun-Tun I hope nothing else weird, crazy or dangerous happens to us from now on." See it's HI-LARIOUS because he says one thing when we all know the exact opposite will happen, hahahahaha.......
Our second joke is the Bike. Admittedly this one is slightly funny. It's just a shame that the lead up to it is poorly executed. "Hmm now lets see where is my bike again? Oh duh my backpack." Well thanks for explaining the joke to us and giving us the most cliched way to bring attention to an oncoming joke. Also we have to do the horrible "wade through item list" thing. Look I don't like wading through lists of items in my games, why would it be funny to do it in a show, this just creates even more horrible pacing to a one second joke.
Third joke is the Trainer Battle. Lead up to it is pitiful and obvious, "It's vision is based on movement." So let me just go ahead and move and then be surprised when it puts me into a battle -_-
So we then have the Wikidex... oh I get it, it's supposed to be funny because of Pokedex is an encyclopedia of Pokemon and Wikipedia is currently our version of an encyclopedia.... yeah.
We have more horrible pacing, leading us up to the Explosion! This part makes me chuckle ever so slightly.
"Well Tun-tun We won our first battle," So let's walk along and recap the episode and give plot exposition (basically just the characters name) and make a HI-LARIOUS joke about us taking it easy while we go into certain danger, because jokes like these have never been relegated to the backwaters of terrible children's shows.
Here I think I can already guess the next episode.
"Hey Tun-Tun this doesn't look like the Professor's House, it's a cave." So let's walk into the cave that is obviously not where we are supposed to be going. Then for some inexplicable reason they are stuck in the very dark cave. "Tun-Tun where are you. Oh there you are Tun-Tun" "*Grrrr...*" "Wait a minute you aren't Tun-Tun" (oh that part will be HI-LARIOUS I tell you!) Let's pull out the Wikidex for another HI-LARIOUS useless explanation of the strange creature. Deus Ex Machinca saves them from a horrible death. "Well Tun-Tun I hope nothing else weird, crazy or dangerous happens to us from now on." See it's HI-LARIOUS because he says one thing when we all know the exact opposite will happen, hahahahaha.......
A Pokémon parody?
What is this, 2001?
The only thing that was kind of funny was the explosion, but that has been done like fivehundred times before.
What is this, 2001?
The only thing that was kind of funny was the explosion, but that has been done like fivehundred times before.