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Cinematic Contest #5 ~ The Poll

Based on the contest's criteria, which entry do you think should win?


  • Total voters
    24
  • Poll closed .
Status
Not open for further replies.
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(Sorted alphabetically)

APproject
Human Error

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Tickles
The Passage

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The reviews are almost ready. I had totally forgotten that there should be a poll (though not sure if it really makes sense between two entries, but let's stick to the original plan).

I feel like I need to explain myself for my absence. For the past months, I have been analyzing data from brain structures, reading on a daily basis for my thesis, designing a game, learning C#, moving to Amsterdam, starting my internship and applying for PhD. So sorry, but well, there were reasons.
 
A Void Rating


Tickles

The Passage

Voice Acting/Sound - 8/10
Intrigue - 6/10
Story - 5/10
Terrain/Environment - 7/10
Creativity/Design - 6/10

Overall - 32/50
APproject

Human Error

Voice Acting/Sound - 6/10
Intrigue - 5/10
Story - 8/10
Terrain/Environment - 9/10
Creativity/Design - 6/10

Overall - 34/50
Vote goes to: APproject.
 
Last edited:

Yrk

Yrk

Level 6
Joined
Apr 1, 2014
Messages
239
My Scores
APproject

Human Error

Voice Acting/Sound - 7/10
Intrigue - 7/10
Story - 9/10
Terrain/Environment - 9/10
Creativity/Design - 8/10

Overall - 40/50
Tickles

The Passage

Voice Acting/Sound - 9/10
Intrigue - 5/10
Story - 6/10
Terrain/Environment - 8/10
Creativity/Design - 7/10

Overall - 35/50
Vote goes to: APproject.
 
Last edited:

Cokemonkey11

Code Reviewer
Level 29
Joined
May 9, 2006
Messages
3,516
Both of these cinematics are well-rounded total conversion projects, representative of a lot of time and effort.

These are both leaps and bounds better than the typical wc3 cinematic, and left me very impressed.

Human Error by APProject:
* The dynamic environment is by far the best part of this cinematic. Everything is well-imagined and well-implemented. I particularly liked the sand that filled the pit.
* Some of the subjects in various shots seemed a bit lazy. The car driving down the path in the beginning was very jerky and could easily be smoothed with a scripted path.
* You don't like stillcam. Why? Stillcam is the most powerful camera you can use in cinematography. Unfortunately, literally every shot had a slowly panning camera, which brings me to...
* clipping. There were numerous occasions where a panning camera revealed objects that were near-z clipped, or the opposite. This is extremely detracting and makes your cinematic feel unrefined. When in doubt, just use a still camera!
* worse than clipping. There were some cases where some subjects in the shot were jumping to follow discontinuous pathing maps provided by your terrain, for example the scene where the units enter Anubis' tomb and descend the stairs. This is so easy to hide, so why do it! Either don't show the units descending, or use a continuous pathing method like a script or a hidden ramp.
* unreasonable animation usage: your cinematic takes place in Egypt - not Italy. Why does every character have to punctuate questions with overly exaggerated "interrogative" animations? Just set the animation speed to 40-60% sometimes so they're not waving their hands around so much.
* uncomfortable homogeneity: There are many cases where you have units with the same model doing something side-by-side and therefore using the same animation at the exact same time. In a cinematic, you can easily hide this! Just adjust animation speeds, colors, heights, etc, so it doesn't look like a clone army, aka a game.
* unoriginal storyline: everything was just sort of predictable. boss comes to new digging site, demands site be opened, enter tomb, angry resident.

Overall a really nice cinematic that was engaging and held my curiosity as well. Hopefully next time small changes can be made to not detract from the story - and hopefully you'll have a more creative story as well :)

70/100 A-


The Passage by Tickles
* I was immediately intrigued by the total conversion you made in the opening scene with the boy's room, and thought the secret passageway was a creative way to change setting.
* My biggest problem with the cinematic is the story itself. I didn't feel at all concerned for the boy, and feel like he met his demise too early. The ghost is also kind of revealed to be the antagonist in the first seconds of the video. The irony in this case, was too aggressive and became uninteresting.
* The flashbacks to the boy sitting on the chair while his friend colored a book were totally out of left-field and nonsensical. I still don't understand what you were trying to convey there.
* The gotcha moment
when the viewer realizes that the bad man introduced in the opening scene is actually trying to rid the boy of the demon
was the best part, but it lacked the right feeling (visual queues? audio queues? timing?) to give it the punch that was necessary. I think if you spent more time introducing the story, instigating a problem (dream sequence maybe?) and otherwise distinguishing how the various scenes interacted with reality, the storyline would be a bit easier to follow.
* In general this could have been longer. The time allotted simply can't introduce characters in enough depth that can create a connection with the viewer. If you were hoping to provide this kind of depth like some short film producers do, my advice is: don't. There's no cinematography theory or voice acting proess that can get that kind of emotion out of a wc3 model.
* My best advice for you is to make a longer cinematic. You're losing this contest purely because you failed to spend enough time to introduce a real story.

55/100 C

My vote goes to APPProject
 
@APProject you made a hell of a cinematic there. But I can't help myself not to criticize movement of units. It's so robust and it's ruining your hard work. It's clear that you used over-sized models, and for that you needed to fix unit movement animation (run/walk) speed, not just unit movement speed. Also that car driving on the very beginning could have some turn rate speed decreased.

Other than that once again :thumbs_up:

@Tickles your cinematic was short and really interesting. I could somehow see the end of Human Error, but your ending was so brilliant. :D
 
Level 31
Joined
Jun 27, 2008
Messages
2,555
Thank you, guys, for your votes and reviews.

@Cokemonkey11
The car driving down the path in the beginning was very jerky
True indeed, it was far from perfect, yet for some reason I did not hold it a matter of great importance, it appeared to be acceptable for me as this is a warcraft engine, yet clearly even the smallest details like this could have been polished even further. I will take this into notice.
I did not notice any serious clipping, so that is why I did not fix it. I am pretty sure there was clipping, but once again I did not pay too much attention to these extremely small details. Clipping can be fixed very easily, again, my bad for not paying time for it.
This is so easy to hide, so why do it!
True again, it was probably the ugliest thing on entire cinematic for me, yet I picked the easier way by putting a walkable destructibe. Raise tool would have made it smooth though.
Just set the animation speed to 40-60% sometimes so they're not waving their hands around so much.
That may appear problematic as well. I completely agree that these animations are over exaggerated, but making them slow would probably make things look even more unrealistic, since arms are still going to be raised to that height and it may stay up high for longer time. Yet probably a little slower would do good. The best solution of this would be to get a completely new animations though.
uncomfortable homogeneity
Agree, will take this into notice for the future works.
unoriginal storyline
That is another thing I did not care much for. I realized the storyline sucked only aftter I made it, hehe. Because the main aspect I focused on was the atmosphere, models, terrain, sounds, basically machanics and not narrative, because mostly I was driven to do something about Egypt. Narrative is not my strong side I suppose, that is why right now I am working on my current project with someone who provides help on the narrative.

@Kobas
I can't help myself not to criticize movement of units.
Yeah, once again I fail to deal with it despite many people telling me the same over and over. I will have to focus on these cons much more in the future. :)
 
Level 5
Joined
May 14, 2013
Messages
48
The Passage by Tickles
Rating The Passage is not hard but its most intriguing so...
Voice Acting/Sound- 8/10 :thumbs_up: "Great!, it matches each character."
Intrigue - 8/10 :thumbs_up: "Gave me a lot of these (???)"
Story - 3/10 :thumbs_down: "Can't really tell why... (maybe its too short)"
Terrain/Environment - 6/10 :wink: "Its good. The room is nice but its not enough & the other world is nice too though its pitch black I guess. I also like the moon outside."
Creativity/Design - 5/10 :wink: "Not much of original models but it doesn't affect much in a cinematic as long as the story is good."

Fixes:
("This doesn't affect any aspect of voting, this is just my own opinion of what should've been done to make it more appealing.")
1. Steeper Camera Angles
2. Integrated Special Effects
3. Applied Climactic Approach
4. An Unexpected Ending
Human Error by APproject
Well I'm still rating Human Error so...
Voice Acting/Sound- ?/10
Intrigue - ?/10
Story - ?/10
Terrain/Environment - ?/10
Creativity/Design - ?/10

Fixes:
("This doesn't affect any aspect of voting, this is just my own opinion of what should've been done to make it more appealing.")
1. NaN
@APproject: How come Frozen Throne gets stuck whenever I load your map? Are there steps on how to run it? because it gets lag whenever its nearly done loading. Its the same case with opening it on the Editor. Oh and when is the next contest, I feel like joining...
 
Last edited:
Level 8
Joined
Mar 17, 2009
Messages
68
Review

The Passage

The Passage is a (-)short cinematic but with a very (+)interesting story. Its (+)originality and the (+)construction of the map is a very intriguing aspect that dazzled me, although I did not enjoy the (-)camera movement and the (-)directing, but lets agree that cinematics are not Hollywood productions. Overall the cinematic left me with a (+)good impression.

Human Error

A much (+)larger cinematic and with (+)better effects it still (-)lacked the ingenuity of storytelling found in 'The Passage'. (+)Camera work is quite smooth I did not notice anything fishy about it. What I did not like is the (-)story, as it lacked any intriguing detail. Still I am inclined to say that I (+)enjoyed it none the less.


My vote goes to Tickles due to his original story.
 
Level 23
Joined
Apr 12, 2014
Messages
1,846
Human Error

Voice Acting/Sound - 8/10
Intrigue - 7/10
Story - 8/10
Terrain/Environment - 9/10
Creativity/Design - 10/10

Overall - 42/50
The Passage

Voice Acting/Sound - 9/10
Intrigue - 8/10
Story - 8/10
Terrain/Environment - 8/10
Creativity/Design - 8/10

Overall: 41/50
Voted for APproject.
 
Level 15
Joined
Jul 6, 2009
Messages
889
I'm just going to pick based on which plot I liked.

The Passage reminded me of Monsters Inc, with Boo and the doors being the gateway from human and monster world. #throwbackcinematic

Human Error seems kinda unoriginal. Group of greedy (or curious) explorers stumble upon something and accidentally awaken Pandora's box. I appreciate the length as being an effects showcase, I didn't feel the need to be so long. But that's just my thoughts.

So, going to go with The Passage just because of monsters inc.

X_X


Also, this makes me want to do something with Anitarf's CinemaWorkshop ...
 
Level 4
Joined
Feb 15, 2015
Messages
80

APproject

Tickles


Human Error

Voice Acting/Sound8/10
Intrigue8/10
Story9/10
Terrain/Environment9/10
Creativity/Design9/10
Total Score
43/50

The Passage

Voice Acting/Sound9/10
Intrigue8/10
Story9/10
Terrain/Environment8/10
Creativity/Design8/10
Total Score
42/50

Results

RankUserScore
1APproject43
2Tickles42
My vote goes to: APproject.
 
Last edited:
Level 7
Joined
Feb 16, 2014
Messages
322
Tickles had a good story but it lacked content and could have been longer. APproject's was kinda anticipated but was longer. Lots of work by both, so my vote goes to APproject.
 
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