starlac

I've got Some Falling to Do is a very poorly animated flash video attached to a passable, annoyingly catchy, but otherwise unremarkable song.

Ultimately we're at a point where even flash animation has to achieve a certain level of competence in it. This is mostly due to seeing web flashes were the animator/s at least put in the effort. Falling, like so many others of its type, is almost the antithesis of this. At least a part of this may be due to the time that and manner that the product was made, but then it was prevalent then, very much so, and some of these had something vaguely meaningful to say.

Hey, some of them were made by actual talent as side projects. In 2012, this would be something I'll expect from the worst-side of Indie-gaming, and thrown out with fits of laughter from the inter-webs. Or maybe that's just what I'd like to be the case.

It's not as overtly egregious as The Evil Strawberry, which had no redeeming quality whatsoever, but it doesn't have anything resembling substance either and doesn't offer anything that I can say is, worth seeing.

Some of the Flash animation out there that I’ve seen is beneath contempt, this is perhaps one of the lowest of even them. An indescribable piece of filth that would take more than a mere bottle of industrial strength cleaner to shift.

The animation lacks any merits or anything, looking like something barely above kindergarten level, but without the level of insane confidence in their drawing ability that a child has (or at least can get away with). Of course if the maker of his film thinks that their art constitutes anything good then I pity him. The animation follows the art style, in a “I can’t be bothered to put any effort in because I sure to get praise regardless” kind of way that this whole thing reeks off.

It also seems that the creator turned on a microphone without knowing anything about the use of sound balancing for recording purposes. The results of this, of course, mean that the entire dialogue of the baby is over-peaked and filled with so much static distortion that it becomes immensely painful to listen to.

Nothing else bares mentioning.

It is more than a waste of time, it’s a ear-splitting abysmal waste of time, effort - to sit through - and data. Albinoblacksheep should be ashamed of hosting it. If some of the flash animation out there is garbage, then this garbage is some sort of glowing green toxic waste that has been left to putrefy and mutant into something unimaginable.

Horrifyingly bad.

1/10

A bouncing tune, decently animated throughout, completely insane - in a mediocre run of the mill way - and short enough not to grate too badly. It seems that web-animation and South Korea are words that go hand-in-hand. It really has no plot, nor do any of the segments that the song uses (which are all clips from other web-toon episodes), it’s just a random piece of nonsense that the makers seemed to have enjoyed making and I enjoyed watching.

Unfortunately it doesn’t bear up to repeated viewings, especially to someone who has spent many years watching the best and worse of what animation has to offer. Still, worth a watch anyway, just to see something daft in a world which is increasing forgetting how to have fun.

It's the Flash animation that caused a sensation...

It’s also Flash that really makes me wish that the package had stayed as a web-editing tool: rather than the one used to create short animation that could be used and abused by just about anyone with a rudimental knowledge of animation techniques it is now.

Copying and pasting the same animated image over and over again is not clever, well not if done in this fashion. I can only imagine that the only reason it became so popular is because of the very fact that it is so easily emulated.

A lack of effort piece that inspires others to do lacklustre pieces is bad enough, the even lesser effort of carbon copying just cements this as something to avoid. It not funny, even on the first visit, it endlessly loops and quickly gets annoying… If I wanted all that, I think I rather listen to the Llama song, least that has a more coherent song.

NB: Please understand that I have nothing against using flash as an animation tool, when done well it can be very entertaining (in the case of 'Europe and Italy' or 'There she is' it can be really entertaining).

Generally comedy in animation works best when it is meticulously planned. It doesn’t necessary need to be a big-budget driven, contemporary style piece to be good. Heck, you can get away with the simplest of geometric shapes if you work out what you can and can’t do, working with the limitations of your chosen system; as demonstrated here in one of Bruno Bozzetto’s fun little flash piece about the differences of EU and Italy customs.

With Flash’s limitations, flat geometric shapes also translate into easier to animation, cheaper to store in memory and therefore can run smoother; this has to be one of the smoothest animation Flash has shown me. It also the funniest by a stretch, mostly due to the superb timing on the maker’s part, the supposed truth of what is being said and the occasional surprisingly piece of oddball.

His other shorts are good as well, on the recommendations front, I really like the “Yes and No” one, a great little commentary on driving habits.