Topic: LEGO Doctor Who Episode 3 - The Sontaran Plot - Part 2

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LEGO Doctor Who Episode 3 - The Sontaran Plot - Part 2

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(3/6) BOOM! It's the Blitz, and there's just a few minutes until the bomb is dropped. It seems like the Sontarans (BricksInBlocks, legopinkpal) have succeeded, but have they really? The planes are spotted and then it's just a matter of luck, and a good sonic device.

Formerly known as the2awesomeguys

Re: LEGO Doctor Who Episode 3 - The Sontaran Plot - Part 2

The main problems are the voice acting, and pacing/plot.

The voices sound like young kids on bad mics, sorry, but it's the truth. I'm certainly not saying that the actor for the Doctor has to sound exactly like one of the TV incarnations, but he has to sound like he could be one of them.

The dialogue was un-interesting, and combining that with the voice acting caused the whole thing to become fairly boring. Some more movement on the speakers parts would help, since most of it was nothing but still pictures with the mouth animation. But you may want to try to make the story itself more interesting and fulfilling.

There wasn't much of a sense of urgency, and it felt like it went from talking scene, to talking scene, with very little in between. The climax was...meh. While the turret scenes were fine, all the excitement went out when the Doctor had his conversation with the alien. Then, the camera switches right back to the action, the humans blow up the planes, and then Wham! they're saying their goodbyes. That caused the only "Climax-like" scenes to be split up by another talking sequence, and therefore their effect was, for the most part, nullified.

You animation quality isn't bad at all, so next time, I'd recommend skipping the mouth animation, and spending that time on more animated scenes, and polishing the script. Really, just try add more interesting parts. I understand if you don't want to change voice actors halfway through a series, but you'll really have to step up everything else to make up for it. Especially the script.

Concentrate on quality, not quantity. Your viewers will be thankful if you do. mini/wink

Re: LEGO Doctor Who Episode 3 - The Sontaran Plot - Part 2

I appreciate your criticisms - I will take your feedback on board. mini/smile However, I would like to just make the case for a couple of the problems you brought up.

Pritchard Studios wrote:

The voices sound like young kids on bad mics, sorry, but it's the truth. I'm certainly not saying that the actor for the Doctor has to sound exactly like one of the TV incarnations, but he has to sound like he could be one of them.

That's because the short film was made by young kids, for young kids. If the microphone quality itself isn't that great for most of the voice actors, I have very little control over that. As a reasonably unpopular YouTuber, I'm very limited as to who can actually voice act in my films. For the most part, it's mainly just me and a couple of other people voice acting. But, for a larger project like this, there's no escaping the fact that I need quite a few people to be in it. A lot of the time, these people don't have the greatest microphone quality.

Pritchard Studios wrote:

There wasn't much of a sense of urgency, and it felt like it went from talking scene, to talking scene, with very little in between.

That's just how the Doctor operates. In any of the Doctor Who episodes, he prefers the non-violent way out of things, which means a lot more negotiating. The reason there is any action at all in Doctor Who, is the humans, who often sort out their problems with violence. That's why the talking scenes may have seemed a bit excessive. However, the script itself was initially really long and much more filled with action and would have come out at around 20 minutes. This was supposed to be a short film, so I was pushing it a bit at 9 minutes.

As for the mouth movements, I agree there is room for improvement. I'm fairly recent to the whole concept of mouth animations, so I'm experimenting with different ways to do it. This is my most recent approach to it, and it just sort of...stuck. I'll try to make sure there's more actual figure movement in the future, though.

Formerly known as the2awesomeguys