We are going to be friends

this is so cute! i love the story between these two and their friendship. i think you could cut out a few parts though, it goes a little bit too long.

I love your creative use of existing imagery to bring your story to life visually. Your story is a universal theme that many can relate to. It would be great to understand a bit more about what makes their friendship work and why Luna struggled before. That will allow the story to feel more emotional and relatable. Nice work.

I'm sure you know that the deadline to submit has already passed, and scoring's ending today, but I really respect the choice to send in all of your hard work, anyway, and want to recognize it. : ) Of all the times I've seen submissions get around drawing by cobbling together clipart, yours is by far the most elaborate and thoughtful. Rather than simply grabbing some PNGs and putting them on a white background, you actually came up with thoughtful compositions of all the elements that have a sense of time and place. You added nifty props & costumes & speech bubbles & facial expressions to keep the characters feeling alive... I especially like the inclusion of moving backgrounds! That really brought this to life-- you're really the first to do that! To me, it all made me think fondly of the time I spent making my first movies with paper dolls in a pop-up dollhouse book. Sometimes it's not so much the images you use, but the placement. It's like a kind of still life puppetry. Hard to explain, but since they're really more like posable action figures, your brain can fill in the rest. You were also smart to pick drawings of the animals that didn't have normal cartoon eyes. The less humanoid cartoon eyeballs has a lot more wiggle room for your brain to imagine a whole bunch of different emotions being expressed with the exact same picture, should the story call for it. Luna lives in a castle and has no friends, but it's never brought up exactly how she came to live in this castle. I'm guessing this is in a world exclusively made up of animals, so this is just, like... a castle for kittens. It's not like she's someone's pet or something. But it still makes you wonder what she did to live in a castle. Did she build the castle herself? Did her cat parents leave her the castle when they passed away? Is she a royal? Does she have royal duties of any kind? Servants? Etc., etc. The castle feels more like a visual choice than something that adds to the story, which is about a lonely, friendless person. You could use the castle to give Luna's loneliness context. I feel like it would strengthen Luna's journey if you give at least one specific example of the bad things Luna's "friends" did to her. I also think that, with the theme of "You only need one good friend" expressed at the end, it'd be nice for Luna to wonder why she's not happy, because now she has MANY FRIENDS. It sounds like she reached her goal, right? If you have FRIENDS, what's missing? ONE true friend. Quality over quantity. I know that's the message, but it wasn't so clear until you said it at the end. If Luna self-reflects on why she still feels unhappy, it gives the audience the time to self-reflect, too. It also makes me wonder, like... had Luna given up on trying to find more friends? Because she seems to meet Clover completely by chance-- which is cool. It's pretty true to life than when you stop looking for something, it finds you. But it'd be nice for the story to specifically point out what Clover's doing on this "adventure", and why, before she runs into Clover. The story summarizes the journey as "Clover helped Luna, and throughout the way home, they became friends." Similarly to how I'd like to know what her old friends did that was so bad, I'd like to know exactly what Clover did to help, and what kinds of things made them grow to love each other. This is the thing your story hinges on, and you can say "they became friends", but you GOTTA SHOW IT for it to be real. And it's important, I think, that Luna be good to Clover, too. Friendship isn't one-sided. "Luna found herself never being left out again" -- the slide accompanying this shows her in class with the other animals who were her so-called friends before. Does this mean that Luna still associates with the not-very-good friends? That simply because she's friends with Clover, it makes the other people include her now? This is pretty true to life, if so. I've seen all kinds of pettiness and clique-ishness at play in my own life. But it does make you wonder if maybe Luna should reject her old "friends" to prioritize Clover. Hanging out with fair-weather friends and yearning to be in the "in" group is bad for preserving true friendships. (Also, the thing about that scene being in a classroom is a little strange. So... she's a kid? Who lives in a castle all alone and goes on adventures by herself? This is the whole thing about the castle in general. Like... if she's a young cat who goes to a modern-day school, maybe she shouldn't live in a castle? Maybe it should just be a modern-day house, because she represents a modern-day kid? I just want some consistency in the world.) It's a very real and interesting problem that being around your friend too much leads to unexpected aggravation. Since the details of the argument that follows isn't described at all, it doesn't really come off as a convincing solution to the problem. Like... really, everyone needs alone time. There IS such a thing as too much of a good thing. And when you're so co-dependent on each other, you lose sight of the joy of your own individual life. So, really, it feels like the solution is that Luna & Clover need to give each other space. And that might not immediately sound like a solution when it comes to somebody you love, but-- it's healthy & good, and it'd be REALLY great if more stories shared that message, so that people suffering from social burnout don't feel like something's wrong with them. Thank you for sneaking in there with your delightful digital paper doll show. : )