#If this scene makes it to TLOVM can we keep the line please?

[ravendruid]

"This is not an animated series. We have more than one pair of pants."

AH! NOT YET, TALIESIN.

[l-a-l-o-u]

super curious abt ur opinions on tlovm. would u be willing to talk abt it??

Two other people (@raycowboyroy and @sapphiczorua) asked me so I guess I'm doing this!! Ty for your interest in my opinion ♥

So!! The Legend of Vox Machina. The tl;dr is that I'm a lil disappointed in the quality of it, but I'm still very very happy that it exists. I have a ton to say about it after watching the first 3 episodes, so I'll organize my thoughts into a list of positives and negatives. But first, some context for my silly little essay:

• This is my personal opinion, and from what I've seen so far, most people love the show. So, please don't decide to avoid it because of me. Check it out and decide for yourself!

• I'm an animation professional so I have a trained eye for animation... and I'm really nitpicky about it! I'll complain about stuff that the average watcher wouldn't even notice

• Critical Role has been a main interest of mine for the past 3 years. I know the story of Vox Machina by heart and actually wrote a big chunk of the main characters' articles on the wiki. That means it's really easy for me to compare the two stories, and also that I already know what's going to happen most of the time

• I had really high expectations before we saw the final art, and that influences the way I feel about the show

Okay with that out of the way, let's start with the list of things I liked in the first three episodes!

• I like the story changes that were made so far. I'm glad we got to see Brimscythe - now we get to see the entire Chroma Conclave story! The way the reorganized some plot elements to shorten the storyline without taking away the main elements has been very well executed so far. And that must've been pretty challenging, what with hundreds of hours of content to distill into a few episodes.

• The voice acting is overall great! My favorites so far are Pike, Scanlan and Keyleth; their line deliveries make them very easy to get attached to. Percy is also very nice, although I wanna wait until I see how he'll be in the Briarwoods arc.

• I enjoyed the group interactions a lot! Every time two main characters talk to each other I can feel their connection and their history. The scenes in Greyskull Keep were especially nice and reminded me why I love this group! Scanlan and Grog's dynamic is especially entertaining.

• The Briarwoods....... hhhnnng

• I really like the backgrounds. There's a lot of great establishing shots where you can appreciate the environment designs, and the artstyle is really solid and pleasant to look at.

• Great use of color to set the tone in every shot. Not every animated series does that! It helps a LOT to carry the story and adds an extra layer of immersion. Plus, it adds a layer of mush needed polish on the animation.

• The storyboarding / photo direction is nice so far. Apart from a couple of awkward shots, I like how they frame everything, it flows well. As they say, good cinematography is when you don't notice it. I especially enjoyed the opening scene of episode 3 with Percy's memories.

• This is probably my favorite Scanlan design yet! I like it even better than his campaign art and comic book design. It's perfect for him. Keyleth is also really well executed overall

• I love that they made Gilmore fat and gave him eyeshadow. King shit

• I just love the fact that this series exist honestly! I love that a group of people managed to turn their silly little friend activity into an entire production. The CR cast looks over the moon about it, and I'm very happy for them.

And now for the depressing part! Here are the things I was disappointed by.

• I saw this coming a mile away with how much the cast insisted this was "adult animation" in interviews, but it really started off kinda crass. A lot of scenes, especially at the start of episode 1, feel like they exaggerated the gore, language, and gross moments just for shock value, and I just thought it was unpleasant to watch. They show vomit and peeing and gory deaths on screen and it's all front and center - I feel like there's a better way to make an audience feel the weight of the action without actually shoving it in our face, ya know? But I guess it was funny in a few places.

• Although the story is well planned out, I think they fell a bit short on the pacing. Many scenes feel very rushed, with too much happening and not enough time to really appreciate it. There are things that should have lasted longer so we can actually feel their emotional weight. For example, the scene with the fisherman's family was nice, but it didn't feel like we were supposed to care about them at all. So when Vox Machina uses their death to motivate their new goals and morals, it fell flat to me and wasn't super believable.

• I wish they would tell us more about how the group came to be. I already love Vox Machina, but I feel like a new viewer would have a hard time getting attached to them. When Keyleth asked “why are we even together?” and nobody answered her, I was like yikes. She’s right who the fuck are you!

• So far the tone of the show doesn't feel super solid. Is it supposed to be funny? It doesn't feel like a comedy, apart from a few jokes here and there. Is it a serious high fantasy adventure? I think that's what they're going for, but so far it lacks a bit in charm and lore. I'm confident this will pick up later in the season though.

• I've said this before, but I really don't like the art style they picked for the characters. It's really a personal preference, but I also think it does a disservice to the animation as a whole. The designs are a bit too realistic and complicated for a television production. They have a lot of elements and little things poking out, making them harder to move in three dimensions.

• I said earlier that I like the use of color, but most character designs are the exception. A lot of them I find weirdly desaturated, which doesn't help to integrate them in the bright environments. Some characters, especially Vax and Pike, have a weird greyish tone to their skin that constantly takes me out of scenes as I stare at them in confusion.

• There are several elements in the main characters' designs that I dislike - again a lot of it is personal preference.

• Vax is my least favorite. The furs on his shoulders make him like he's wearing a football uniform, and he looses all of his twink charm. The top of his hair looks weirdly flat in many shots, and the lines under his eyes are so pronounced that it makes his look a lot older than he is whenever he's not smiling. He doesn't really feel like Vax to me!

• I also dislike Vex's design: she has three belts for some reason, and her tunic is such a bright blue that it looks off next to every other desaturated character element. She also feels too old and not quite like herself, especially without her braid in the front.

• Some very minor things: I don't really like that Grog is blue now, and I CANNOT take Percy seriously with that hair.... And they made Keyleth short?!? at least its not extremely obvious

• Like I mentioned earlier, there were a couple of awkward zoomed-in shots here and there. You could feel like they were trying to be cinematic, but they stand out too much or they're not amazingly executed, taking you out of the moment.

• I thought Scanlan's songs were overall not great. I liked the one he sang to open a door tho!

• The 3D animation was awkwardly integrated with the 2D. The horses were especially jarring. But at least the dragon animation was well made, it just didn't fit super well.

• And lastly! I feel a bit let down by the animation quality. It's really good for the budget they had! I just wish they had more budget lol

That last bit is its own section because there's a few things to unpack.

I wanna preface this by saying that I absolutely don't think the animators did a bad job. The poses are nicely drawn, the layouts work, it's not hard to understand the action, etc. They obviously know what they're doing. Traditional animation always has a less polished look in a television production, because you have to animate more scenes in less time. That means less time for polish and touch-ups. Like I said before, the character designs are also difficult to animate. And I believe that the CR cast, ie. the producers, specifically asked for an animation style similar to anime (because they're attached to it, having done a lot of anime voice work) and also similar to 80s cartoons (for nostalgia again). And, well, anime and 80s cartoons are notoriously cheaply made, with very little budgets and a lot of cut corners. All of that helps to explain why it looks the way it looks. And I absolutely don't think it's bad animation - it's good, it does it's job, and I think most casual watchers will probably not be bothered by it. I'm a silly fool who just wishes to see my favorite thing have movie quality animation! Plus, the CR cast seems to love the final animation, which, awesome for them! It's their characters after all.

Let me explain what I mean. If you compare the animation in the show and the animation in the opening, I think even the untrained eye will notice a significant difference in animation quality. You could even compare it to The Legend of Korra, a show with a very similar art style. The opening of tLoVM was done by a different studio (Grackle), and they likely had a lot more time to polish every shot. Everything seems to move more fluidly, the actions have more punch, and everything is constantly in motion. So what's the difference? The answer is that the opening's animation follows the 12 principles of animation! You can learn more about the 12 principles here if you're interested.

In a production, the first step of animation is to draw key poses: the start of the movement, the end, and a few important poses in between them. When a production doesn't have a lot of time, they go from pose A to pose B to pose C by drawing the inbetweens at an equal distance from each other, going from pose to pose in a straight line. There's a LOT of that in anime. The movement works, you understand it, but it's kinda.... bland. It's stiff and robotic and a little boring. No action has more weight than the one before or after it, they're all equal. I barely noticed any anticipations, follow-throughs, ease-ins, ease-outs... not a lot of arcs either. They used a lot of still poses where only one body part like an arm, a mouth, or the eyes move on their own layer. Facial animations are limited, with characters often starting and ending a shot with the same facial expression. I don't think I noticed any deformation - nothing moves in an elastic way, nothing bounces or stretches or squashes. They did do smears here and there but that's pretty much it. And I want to reiterate that it looks fine and it works! They had less time to make it and less frames to work with.

All of that affects the acting. I don't mean the voice acting, I mean the body language, the expressions, you know!! Acting!! There's acting in the key poses, but so much of acting comes from HOW you move. And when you're trying to cut corners, oftentimes your animation won't do the voice acting justice. One scene that comes to mind is at the start of episode 1, after they've been thrown out of the tavern, and Scanlan turns to ask for his clothes: something covers his mouth, and even though Sam is delivering his line in a really peppy way, barely anything moves. That line deserved so much better!!!

There’s exceptions of course! Some shots, especially the action ones, are a lot more put together. I think overall, I’d give the animation quality a 7/10. Because the layouts and key poses are really good, and they cut corners in a clever way, so it works really well. I do think Titmouse deserves praise for their work! They did really well!! The animation quality is most likely due to budget limitations, and if less episodes had been made, it would've likely been higher. But they made the choice to write more of the story, and I think that in this case with how much material they’re adapting, that's not a bad decision. I wish The Legend of Vox Machina had a big production budget, but it didn't. And that's just life!

As a last thought, I just wanna say - this could've been a lot nicer if they had more cartoony designs. Do you guys remember the picture they used in the Kickstarter days? Sometimes I look at it and think about what could have been... They could’ve done cutout animation, even. That could’ve turned out nice. But oh well! The showrunners are happy, and for such a personal project that's what matters isn't it?

If you read all this hello!!! I hope you had fun reading this & don’t forget to love each other ♥