Vertical Horizons: Cartoon Series Based on Actual Events

[94253]

I started teaching myself animation as a hobby early this year and have had fun creating shorts with my friends. A couple guys from my office and I created this series about a marketing firm which takes its buzzwords far too seriously.


Our gimmick: each episode is a true story of something I or a colleague actually experienced. We've exaggerated a few elements for comedic effect, but the basic happenings of each episode are real events. (Probably more of it is real than you would believe!)

The series can be found at http://horizons.gfcmedia.net - thanks for watching!

[Charles]

Hey there 94253. Welcome to AN. I'm impressed that you're teaching yourself how to animate. Congrats on getting off to a good start.

Watching your animation made me a little tense. Not because of the film, but the situation. Must be a pavlovian reaction. Either being reminded of dealing with customer service, or with an impossible client. That's not bad, it actually highlights how people in general are affected by their experiences with this sort of thing, at least from my point of view.

In any case, I think you've got something interesting going on especially if these are real life incidences you're portraying.

The style of your cartoon is simple and effective. I think you could stand to improve some of the environments. For example, the establishing bg at the beginning. It's too simplistic. Try to come up with a better composition on your next one, or rework this to make it more engaging.

You might want to add just a little more snap to the character animation. It's a bit too sluggish and consistent in the movement of the character, even though he's only talking on the phone while sitting at the desk.

Some suggestions offered in the spirit of progress. Thanks for posting. Looking forward to more.

[94253]

Thanks, Charles, for your helpful comments. I'm using the Anime Studio software which is really quite easy to figure out after watching some quick tutorials on YouTube.

My background is actually in live action film, and I've found true stories often are the most fun to tell. In the cartoon we've exaggerated some things, but a shocking amount of content is completely accurate. It's surprising what kind of morons you get calls from while working a help desk job - and it's just as surprising how rude and apathetic many help desk employees can be. Having worked at a job like this for a few years with a variety of colleagues...it's inspired dozens of entertaining stories.

I was going for simple yet effective art, but I agree the backgrounds could benefit from some enhancements. Snappy character animation would really improve the show. When the majority of episodes focus on a guy sitting at a desk, it can easily become visually dull. Do you have any specific suggestions how I could improve that? I've been watching other animators on YouTube to see how they do things, but as I don't have any real animation training I think there are a lot of "basic" techniques I'm simply not aware of.

I look forward to improving my animations through feedback from others in this community, and I'll be sure to post when I have something new for you all to critique.

Thanks again!

[94253]

I posted a few new episodes. The latest one can be found at http://horizons.gfcmedia.net/?pageID=10

As you can see, I started to add some simple shading to the characters. I think it helps quite a bit. The backgrounds are still pretty plain, though, so that will be my next area of focus...

[94253]

I let this project sit for a few months so I could work on something big, but I finally made time for a couple more episodes. Enjoy!

http://horizons.gfcmedia.net/

[Charles]

Very good! I like the clean look, and I especially enjoyed the lesson in buzzwords. Thanks for posting the latest episode of Vertical Horizons.