Hello, Moho community. It's been awhile since the factory of Studio Usagi forged something lately. Dhark Matters 'Seeds' is the first episode in the Dhark Matters series.
Dhark Matters is a series about a variety of social and self inflicted wounds people do to themselves. Sometimes the greatest pain we get in life is something we caused solely by ourselves. But, this pain may have been induced from something we were either taught in our immediate circle or the greater circle that is the society we live in. The the first teachers we are given to learn how to behave are our parents/guardians. Many lessons fall on deaf ears while others we pick-up later or revamp. This series is a tale of those struggles many of us go through.
We would love some feedback/comments letting us know what you like/didn't like and would like to see more or less of. The factory is up and running, so see the episode while it's still hot . Thank you and hopefully everyone has a happy holiday. #StudioUsagi #DharkMattersSeeds
I appreciate the comment! I don't know the proper name for the style and tbh i didnt even know others were doing it as well. I was sure it existed well before me but i didnt see it done until i saw the video you posted. I got the style idea from a browser game I used to play a lot growing up. How you like the story?
I found the beginning of the animation to be a bit jerky and then smoothing out after the first few minutes. Stay with one or the other.
It looked like Terry Gilliam had animated it for the first then it got much smoother.
I went back to the drawing board, looking for things that were I guessed 'jerky.' And, maybe I'm a little bias but couldnt really point out anything that needed an ultimatum of styles. If you dont mind, can you please point out specific scenes that were 'jerky?' If you were talking about the background mountains and the overall 'vibrating' (thats what the team likes to call it) of the drawings then that's actually intentional.
Sorry if that style isn't to your liking. I hope you do stay in tune for the rest of the story though because out of all the projects the factory had produced, Dhark Matters seems to be the one we're sticking with to the end. More episodes will be posted soon. Thank you for your feedback and ty for watching
I liked a lot about this, this editing and shot choices were good.
I liked the vector noise, creating the ripple, but I can see that it made details of the hands fail.... might have get creative to fix that.
Also, a little finessing of shapes here and there would lift the look a bit.
A couple of times it was not so easy to see who was speaking,
One thing that comes to mind is that silhouette and profiles have the effect of distancing the audience, so the characters are very inaccessible, you could try giving them just little angular shield shaped eyes in white, for a enough expression for the sake of the audience. This is not outside of the style, at all.
Hmmm these are some really good points to take into consideration. I love the ideas you presented and greatly appreciate the feedback. The ripple or the 'vibrating' is my favorite artistic style we added to the series. I noticed also during the production the hands would sometimes be a bit difficult to see but I have no idea why that looked cool to me, so we decided to keep it haha. I guess it fitted an abstract look i was going for. Not sure what you meant about finessing the shapes.
And, for the major concern of the show is the difficulty at times to see who's talking which to be honest, is what we wanted as well. This is honestly great to hear because it lets me know the story is interesting enough to keep you questioning 'who's talking right now?' and hopefully keep you interested enough to gradually through each episode understand 'oh, he would certainly say that, thats that afro hair looking dude talking.'
Better directing can certainly fix that, but we're not planning on adding any white-colored shapes of mouths/eyes onto the characters because it would kill the 'Dhark' theme of the show, but I will certainly have this idea in the back of my mind when we get further into the show. Thank you for the ideas and concerns and I hope you stay in tune for future episodes. Cheers
STUDIOUSAGI wrote: ↑Sun Feb 07, 2021 12:22 amI went back to the drawing board, looking for things that were I guessed 'jerky.' And, maybe I'm a little bias but couldnt really point out anything that needed an ultimatum of styles. If you dont mind, can you please point out specific scenes that were 'jerky?' If you were talking about the background mountains and the overall 'vibrating' (thats what the team likes to call it) of the drawings then that's actually intentional.
Sorry if that style isn't to your liking. I hope you do stay in tune for the rest of the story though because out of all the projects the factory had produced, Dhark Matters seems to be the one we're sticking with to the end. More episodes will be posted soon. Thank you for your feedback and ty for watching
I'm not a fan of Spung bob neither, I hate any character or person just being stupid to be funny. But I have watched it.
I'm only talking about the character animation. Not the background.
Look at from 1:00 to 1:10 Lots of jitter.
Then 1:49 where he climbs the ladder and stands up. There is smoothness in the movement. Then the after that movement has some jitter, not as pronounced like the start.
I just feel that it's not consistent through the animation. It not that big of a change, but I see it, maybe you don't because it's your animation.
Remember this is my opinion, But It's your animation.
I'm not a fan of Spung bob neither, I hate any character or person just being stupid to be funny. But I have watched it.
I'm only talking about the character animation. Not the background.
Look at from 1:00 to 1:10 Lots of jitter.
Then 1:49 where he climbs the ladder and stands up. There is smoothness in the movement. Then the after that movement has some jitter, not as pronounced like the start.
I just feel that it's not consistent through the animation. It not that big of a change, but I see it, maybe you don't because it's your animation.
Remember this is my opinion, But It's your animation
I appreciate your comments. And, I would like to implement your opinion, but you used a different animation to explain the 'jitter.' Do you mind if you watch the original animation I posted in my first comment and give examples from there about the jitter or unsmooth animation? I want to approve the series so laser focus on the concerns is greatly appreciated. Thank you
. Thank you and hopefully everyone has a happy holiday. #StudioUsagi #DharkMattersSeeds 
