"Dessert Critters" Review

This animation was a project from a student attending California Institute of the Arts. Though, I do not know the requirements that were needed to be filled with this project. This animation was incredibly cute. It showed great use of the rule of thirds, as well as had a very interesting story.

I really enjoyed how the animation was sort of a vector project. It used a lot of triangles and hardly any use of other shapes. The shading was amazingly done, as well as the expressions. They move the story along easily without any voices, which is a big plus. Instead of using voices or little chat bubbles to explain what was going on in the animation, they used body language and expressions to contribute to the story and give a sort of explanation of what is going on. For example, when the fox first meets the pup, he seems a bit shocked that the pup is there with him, or he had seen his food stash, I'm not sure which.

I would probably apply the more triangular style to my projects because I really enjoy it and I would love to have the same in my animations. I have already learned how to use shapes to cut and make a model of what I want in Maya. I believe that the creator did well on making the foxes expressive that went along with their body language. I also thought that the creator made a very smooth animation with a lot of motion that caught the viewers eye. I believe that the author could have used a bit better voice acting for the characters in the story. It was good, but it just sounded off coming from the animals. Also, maybe try using a bit more sound effects that actually sound the way their supposed to. It just makes the story flow a bit easier and causes the viewers to not be distracted by the use of unnatural sounding sound effects. Overall, I generally enjoyed this small film. I thought the creator did a very nice job of creating a story that had a smooth animation with a relateable viewpoint. Though it had a few tiny messes, I believe that the story worked out nicely.

Desert Critters from Li Wen Toh on Vimeo.