I question the language in this movie. It wasn't very necessary and didn't really fit the setting. You have some nice puns, and decent animation. The one thing I would try and work on would be the constant flicker throughout the video.

Keep up the good work!

"Bless you for making this." -Sloth 2016 * on "Chicken Shaped Lighthouse Attacks Police"

Ephesians 4:29 -"Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers."

The youtube says the next part is due in August so not sure how feedback on part 1 will help part 2, but since you asked ...

I enjoyed it. 

If you enjoy writing then you did that well.  A nicely moving plot with a scattering of side jokes.  Good job.  Whilst i didnt lol, i didnt alt-f4 either and i very rarely watch an 11 minute brick film.  I was disappointed when i didnt get to see the ending.

Animation wise, that whole head bopping about when talking was a little too exagerated for me.  Keen to see what others think.  I was watching one of them talk and i was feeling dizzy trying to track him lean back and forth.

The sets were quaint.  Sparce when acceptable and detailed when required.

Voices, another one actor would have helped but not a big deal.  Maybe part 2 if its not too late, for a character we havent met yet.

All in all im looking forward to the rest of it.

I really like this.  There's some great jokes.  I also really like the set design--it really reminds me of a classic brickfilm feel which works really well in this film.  I also really like the voice-acting (for some inexplicable reason I always crack up when you roll your "r's").  However, I do feel that you should have gotten one or two other voice actors, as all the characters' voices sound a bit too similar.  Also, there's quite a lot of flickering (especially in John's blacksmith shop, with the reflective surfaces).  And I find it odd that a king who is addressed as "Your Grace" is in charge of an empire...

(Also I had no idea Kevin MacLeod composed the Egmont Overture.  This guy is totally going to be the next Beethoven...)

Last edited by Mr Vertigo (July 10, 2014 (01:55pm))

Wow. Not only is everyone's feedback fair, its also really detailed and helpful. Thanks so much guys, and please keep it coming. I want to make this series as good as it possibly can be.

Which langauge? The very, very mild cuss words (its fair enough if your offended, although I only count two of them - 'bloody', which you find in kids films, and 'shove it up your AARRRGGHH' which is heavily masked) Or the fact that the dialogue is fairly modern, and not like Tolkein's psuedo-Shakespearean writing?

I'll definitely look into this. I've always been distrustful of using other people (unless its for feedback and criticism)...and this distrust has always been a bit unjustified.

The problem is that this part had over 100 lines of dialogue in it. I could and should have assigned minor characters such as the Halberd-Shopper, the Merchant, and the Capitol-Gate Guard to other people - but I have no choice really but to play all four major characters (John, Whitebeard, Wormface, and The King) myself or else this'll never get made. Even with the thing split into parts, and with part 2 shaping up to be slightly shorter, asking someone to record about 40 lines at once is way too much.

It's helped a lot. I've almost finished a first draft of part 2 - but the great thing about writing is that it can easily be re-written.

Right. I've always run out of ideas when it comes to animating dialogue. I'm trying to be more inventive with the next part. Whilst there will always be points when characters have to stand face-to-face and produce rhetoric, I'm trying to do stuff like have characters talk whilst walking and performing other activities to liven things up a bit. I'll also try to reduce bobbing.

A lot of dialogue was already cut, but evidently I didn't cut enough. I'll try to make it more to the point next time.

Um...I didn't use a greenscreen. I've never used a greenscreen. Where precisely did you see bleeding?

Alas! It's very difficult to find out just how old the people who watch my stuff are - but for now I'm trying to keep this a family show. Although, I'm completely ripping off The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy and the Thief videogames by putting in fictional cuss words that are obviously censoring much stronger language.

I might try that. I can't draw (that's why I animate with LEGO) but I could always do stick-figures. I'm making an effort to at least script actions more - as before my scripts would just be a dry list of all the dialogue.

I only found out how many times the set 'caught my best side' when I played it back. I would have re-shot all of it, but I was being driven mad by animating nothing but dialogue in such a small set (this is the only time I've dismalted a set by throwing it on the floor) that I decided I would try and fix it in post...to no avail.

Oh...ELF!

I know! I couldn't believe it myself - but I guess he's just that much of a genius...

Last edited by Max Butcher (July 10, 2014 (03:22pm))

Enjoyed it. Didn't find the language offensive or unnecessary.

Nicely done, Butch.

"Nothing goes down 'less I'm involved. No nuggets. No onion rings. No nothin'. A cheeseburger gets sold in the park, I want in! You got fat while we starved on the streets...now it's my turn!" -Harley Morenstein

I really liked it. I love the Monty Python feel to it.
More please.

I'm afraid I disagree. Brickfilming's a filmmaking medium, not a genre, and as long as you properly signpost that there's going to be violence, language or sexual references, then it's fine. I didn't flinch at them at all; if I hadn't read this thread after watching, I would never have considered it a problem.

You make a good point about Lord of the Rings - it was fantastic and didn't have any offensive language - but I don't see how a medieval setting makes bad language inappropriate. Some of the most offensive words in the English language, including the most offensive, predate the Viking Age itself. That's 700 AD at the latest. Cussing is nothing if not medieval - it's only in modern times that we have become more conservative in our dialect.

It's just about what you want your film to be. If you want to make a fun, family-friendly adventure film, then keep language and sexual references to a minimum. If you want to make a comedic, screwball deconstruction of popularised fantasy whilst taking a miserly and disdainful tone, as Max has, then you can get away with a lot worse than he has with Lord of the Thing. Even in a brickfilm.

But that's my opinion. I'm not saying you're wrong. Plus, Our Lord Nathaniel made a thread for this.

"Nothing goes down 'less I'm involved. No nuggets. No onion rings. No nothin'. A cheeseburger gets sold in the park, I want in! You got fat while we starved on the streets...now it's my turn!" -Harley Morenstein

I actually like it though, it seems to fit quite well with the style of the film.  Perhaps even have a character who constantly gets the king's title wrong as a running joke (calling him Your Lordshipness/Honour/Highness/Holiness/O Great One, etc.).  It's also interesting that "Elf" is both an expletive and name of a race... (this must make certain diplomatic negotiations rather awkward...)

Well, Max is the one who created this film, so he's free to choose what he wants to put in it.  I personally didn't find it too jarring.  "Arrrgh" would probably go over the heads of most kids anyways. I did find the aforementioned joke a bit off, though mainly because I personally find it fairly cliched and overused (though again, kids probably wouldn't get it anyways).  Still, many popular professionally made kids' shows often do this sort of thing as well (just look at Adventure Time...).  And why would setting a film in a medieval/fantasy setting preclude it from having "offensive" content?  Historically speaking, the middle ages, if anything, were a lot more openly violent/crude/offensive (we are, after all, talking about an age in which public execution was considered a form of entertainment...).

Having said all that, it for obvious reasons isn't a good idea to put offensive content in a film if you intend it to be family-friendly.  And I think it would be funnier to use "family-friendly replacements" or fantasy expletives in a really over-the-top way instead of bad language--like saying "lymphatic heck!" or "bodily-fluid-covered geographical-opposite-location-of-heaven" instead of, well, you know.

I really like this idea.

"Nothing goes down 'less I'm involved. No nuggets. No onion rings. No nothin'. A cheeseburger gets sold in the park, I want in! You got fat while we starved on the streets...now it's my turn!" -Harley Morenstein