Cookie's Uncensored Reviews 🔒

fcukforcookies · February 4, 2019, 9:39am

1st Episode

Your intro is kinda cute. Although I would make it shorter somehow. Dunno if you intend to put it into every episode. If you do - better make it shorter. I felt like sound bg was put for good 10 seconds and bg with the title (before characters appear - for another 10 seconds). Maybe make it more dynamic.
And yeaaah. Author introduction, which is not technically author’s, cause characters are speaking. I don’t appreciate this approach, just the same as it would be with author character instead. They break this illusion of being “in the story”. After watching it till the end, I gotta admit that this one was kinda cute.
I am customizing Prince. Eyes customization is a bit messed up, cause on the second page of eye shape “Done” button is in the upper left corner for some reason, also I don’t think you included every eye shape. Same with the face shape and “Done” button. There are some lip shapes, eyebrows absent… Ok, u got the picture. Try @Dara.Amarie customization templates, she recently updated them with new content, that was released last week.
Second narration line containing “(your parents)”. Not sure it is the best way to tell it. This is kinda breaking the fourth wall, meaning, that you give information like MC doesn’t know that these people are his parents. I would remove it, especially since it’s the logical conclusion, as MC is the prince.
The first scene with Ophelia. She is saying her lines, and other two characters are on looped talking animation. And their animations, before Ophi starts speaking are taking too long.
It’s a bit funny. “I thought I heard carriage” and then we see it literally two meters away. I think that “Look, the carriage” would make more sense.
Btw, look at the characters compared to a horse in the background. The horse looks like a pony. Consider making them smaller.
I’m not sure about guards outfit. All the citizens and Prince himself are dressed in medieval (?) clothes. So guards look kinda out of place.
MC “I’m in no rush…”. I always mention it I think. It is way better to put dialogue lines with talking animations. Sigh, wink, admire aren’t talking animation, even remotely. If u want to add this sigh animation, maybe put it after the dialogue line, and for the line use some legit talking animation.
George line “Thank you, my prince”. If the title is used as a noun, like for example “We expect the arrival of princes and princesses,” it goes with the small letter. If you use the title as in your case, when a person directly addresses royalty, or if the title is followed by the name, like “Prince William” you start it from the capital letter.
When MC approaches guard. You put like 6 (approx.) seconds for the walk to spot command, then he is simply standing, while you zoom for another 3 (?) seconds. I’d advice u to put it like this to make the whole thing smoother:
& PRINCE walks to spot xx xx xxx in T and PRINCE does it while walk_neutral_rear
@zoom on xx xx to xx% in T
This way you will get zoom going simultaneously with his walk.
When he says “Home sweet home”. You can do it with him walking at the same time. So he doesn’t have to awkwardly stop and say this line. To do this:
&PRINCE walks to spot xx xx xxx in T1 - where you put the spot, where is supposed to end, outside the screen, on the right.
@pause for T2 - where you pick the time, enough for MC to get somewhere in the middle of the screen (basically half of the T1).
PRINCE (walking-talking animation)
Home, sweet home. - I forgot, but I’m not sure if you put the coma in this sentence.
@PRINCE starts walking-animation.
Abigail says her line with the bow, and her mouth is closed. Use bow beforehand, and then add her dialogue line. And then after she finished, she stands with the weird pose, with her hands slightly raised. Put her on shiftweight-animation.
The problem with using stands screen left/center/right in Limelight is that females are higher than males. I don’t say that guys can’t be shorter than girls, but I doubt u meant to do this with the prince. The scene with Abigail and Cathleen, he looks like a teenager. Use spot commands.
When Abigail says that king and queen would like to have a word with them, I think King and Queen are supposed to go with the capital letter. I noticed some mistakes, more punctuation and use of the capital letters, although ur English is very good. But still, I suggest you find a proofreader. With this, I won’t comment on grammar/punctuation anymore.
When Kat and MC stand with the King and Queen, MC is layered behind Kat, although it looks like he stands closer to the reader. Dunno if you use layer commands here, if you do - check them, if you don’t - do.
It is very weird, that when King is talking to them, he speaks about Kat and MC in the third person.
I suggest u add more to the customization template. His family and sister look nothing like my customized character. Additional commands for the family in skin color and hair color will do. It’s not much.
When MC remembers that event on the island, the background (“I could see glowing orbs…”) is a bit off, meaning I see the white line on the left.
After the fight scene between MC and fairies, there is the next scene, and characters appear after the transition. I guess you put their commands after transition command, so this happened. You can just remove the transition in this scene while keeping transition-out command in the previous. Not a big deal.
When MC and 3 fairies are talking, at some point they just stand there, while narration goes on. Looped talking animation on one person + some shiftweight + listen + nod or idle_handsonhips animations for the rest of them will do.
Very weird background choice for Sapphire CC. Visual consistency is always better. You could use the same bg, as you used for MC CC.
-Check speechbubble positions. I noticed that they are off in the scene where they write an announcement, but maybe it was before.
Marabella seems to be talking a lot to herself. Is it a personal trait, or because it was easier to make her talking than thinking?
More scenes where characters pop-out.
When Kat is walking in the scene right after Marabella.

I mean, that when you have one character put with the spot commands, and then use another with the enters/walks to screen r/c/l, this character, despite the layer you might’ve put it on before, will appear behind the rest. If you put one character with the spot command, do it with the others.

On the shop-street scene, I noticed several characters put on listen-nod animation, but they don’t talk to anyone, so it looks like they are insane X_x
Like you use non-talking animations for dialogue lines, u use speaking animation when the character doesn’t say anything. Check it.
It looks weird when you have two people coming, and both of them on looped talking animation, like in the scene where Priscilla says to her mother, that Marabella wants to go to the ball.
Dang, that horse is funny
Why would u ask if I want to see credits if there is no other option?
Dang, the episode is so long, you could split it in two, one following Prince POV, and other Marabella’s.

2nd Episode

I dunno if you should tell about the story pace since it’s a fairytale basically. It is not supposed to be really realistic. And here I would point also that I don’t see a point in mentioning time.
I will leave this here, cause I think you may not understand how these commands work.

Character spots
When you simply put spot commands like @CHARACTER spot xx xx xxx you put @ .
Animations:
If you want the character to perform animation before anything else happens you put it like @CHARACTER is animation
If you want the character to start performing animation, while something else coded in the next line continues you either do it like @CHARACTER starts animation or &CHARACTER is animation
Walking to spot
If you want your character to walk before anything else happens you do the regular @CHARACTER walks to spot xx xx xx in T
If you want the character to keep walking/moving, while something else coded in the next line continues you do it like &CHARACTER walks to spot xx xx xx in T

I don’t think I ever saw u using @zoom on xx xx to xx% in 0. Always non-instant zooms.

I love their names. I think you did a great job with them.
Yep. U see, u have this dragging directing, where you try to show every single movement, and add to this that you don’t do well (or don’t do at all) & and starts commands, it is dragging a lot, and makes the whole story more boring, despite interesting plot.
That horse is so crazy-hilarious :DDD Can’t get over it.
Ay-ay-ay. The characters placed in the royal ballroom is very wrong. Just because u place characters higher, doesn’t make them look like they stand further. Check the guide below.

Guide

OK. Sry I won’t finish the 2nd story, since due to my 2 hours of sleep I’m not very productive today, but I got the idea.

Overall.

Overall I liked the plot idea. It’s a nice fairy tale, with few MCs, which is totally fine, especially when they come together. There are some cliches, like evil step-mother and whole Cinderella vibe, but I’m cool with it, as it fits the story well, and as I know there will be more characters from other types of fairytales, I see nothing wrong with these cliches, I’d even say I find them kinda cute.

Now to the things which I think might be improved.

OK. Directing first. Directing is not bad. It is clean in some way, there aren’t major mistakes.
I would suggest you check my Help Thread, wherein the first two posts I mention most common mistakes I meet in stories in regards to directing. I noticed 1/3 of them in your story. Just go through those tips, and note to yourself, if you agree with them, and if you do - fix them. If you don’t know how - seek help on Forum or write here or in my DM.
While your directing is decent, it is not smooth, because I think you don’t use/use very limited & commands.
Note that when I mention some specific mistake, it means you should check it everywhere in your script, in all episodes. I can’t write them all down.

I have more problems with the way you’re telling the story. Especially at the MC memory of fairies. You use this type of narration, that is usually used in books. The difference between Episode and books is that while in the book we can stop action/dialogue at any time in our head, and it won’t disrupt the illusion of being “In the book”, it doesn’t work in Episode. When you put narration, when it is possible to put dialogue, your directing goes slow and interrupted. The whole scene would work much better if you’d put dialogue instead of narration. It would make the scene more dynamic at least. Now it looks like MC is the story narrator, and take into account that you used another narrator at the beginning of the story. Get a grip over narration ways, because now it is very messy, and screws your directing. Get some kind of system, maybe read writing guides (not Episode guides) about the use of different types of narration.

What I also didn’t quite like. Sometimes you go too much into details, that aren’t adding anything important to the scene, but feels more like a filler. These things make the story more boring. I suggest you go through all the story and think, what are those moments that don’t add anything interesting or important to the story. One example is the grocery list. I think there were like 6-7 items mentioned, and it was totally unnecessary.

I would make the intro shorter, at last in the next episodes.

I would suggest splitting the first episode into 2 parts as I said before, but if you will remove all the unnecessary content from your story, the first chapter might get the decent length, so maybe it is not necessary.

Check customization definitely, and overall just go through the everything u find reasonable in my review.

Also, if you can, I’d be glad to hear from you, like if you took my suggestions, and which ones, what you decided to change etc. I ask it, because although I mentioned a lot of things in a negative light, I don’t think your plot is bad, and I liked the characters (although check the girls, as I’m afraid Sapphire’s personality might be too similar to Marabella’s, but I dunno yet). So yeah, I would read it if u’d fix those things I mentioned.

Hope it was helpful.