A Heroes Story

There is so much room for an epic story here! There is lots of space to add lore, such as why are the other characters called Pompous and Cold Feet? Do all the heroes have names that mirror their character? Is this something that creates difficulties for them? What is Titus's weakness/strength? I look forward to finding out how this ends and if Titus saves the day!

Titus, you are have incredible potential in being a story artist. There are parts of this that you really did more of a POSE-TO-POSE ANIMATION for than a simple single illustration. That's a lot of hard work! Great variety of shots, angles, and the performance of your characters feels motivated the whole time. You obviously think in pictures, and have done a terrific job in translating this into something we can see. BUT. I only know all of this because I watched your INDIVIDUAL Act 1, Act 2 and Act 3 videos. THIS video is nearly incomprehensible. It's SO fast, and all you did was speed up your shots as fast as absolutely possible to match with the blindingly fast narration you created for this video. I don't know what's going on half the time when watching this version, and I don't think anyone else would, either. Besides that, your original Act 1, Act 2 and Act 3 videos cleverly used NO NARRATION and had you doing really charming voice acting on the dialogue, and doing mouth sound effects! It's SO much more enjoyable than hearing this very stilted AI narration voice that puts emphasis in all the wrong places so I can't follow what's going on even more. Language is to CONVEY SOMETHING. If your language isn't conveying something in a stronger way, stick with what you already had. Maybe you had the idea that you had to do your story in this way -- this is untrue. Some of the greatest submissions to our program have even used NO words at all. You didn't need to wreck what you already had to check off the boxes that narrated versions do. All you needed to do was paste all three of your Act videos together and present that as your final. It would've been stellar. Your character designs are the strongest part of this. Since we're dealing in a fairytale adventure, half the storytelling is told in how everything looks. Each of your characters has a unique silhouette and attitude, and just looking at Titus and N (I think that's his name) in the same picture, I FEEL THE BATTLE HAPPENING. Because putting those two characters together, you automatically can feel that opposition forming. In a world where the industry heads desperately want recognizable characters that we connect with, that kind of magic is hard to find. From a storytelling perspective (and, of course, I'm judging you on your individual Act videos-- not this), I think the audience needs to have a clearer throughline for your character arc for Titus. I think the takeaway here is that Titus was a coward who ran away when he could've helped, and then he reluctantly joins the rebellion, and in the end does something brave and selfless. That's classic stuff, and a very good basis for a story. But since the story starts without a lot of context, I don't really know what's going on in Titus' head. You didn't introduce us to who Titus is before "everything changed". A lot of the Act 1 stuff is pretty vague, too. I guess that Titus is a loner in this cave he's living with the other superheroes? He's sighing, and he's... reading a book by himself while the other superheroes high-five each other? Is that it? What does the book say, "How to help and be left alone"? It's too tiny and too fast a detail to gain anything from it. Help us get part of what makes Titus tick before N and his cronies come and kidnap everyone. And then, we need to see him grow. It's cool that the other heroes he finds rope him into helping, and he isn't into it until later, but... what makes him change and grow, so that he wants to help? I'm not buying the change. I need to see it in the story. That alone is going to make the story WAY better. It's so satisfying to see a character grow and change, and to believe it really happened right before your eyes. Just as important: I don't really know what happened to N at the end. He said, "You ruined everything!" to Titus after all he did was remove his mask. Like... since we just met our masked villain, to have the very, very next thing to be an unveiling of his face, and apparently that completely ruins all his evil plans? Nah, give your villain more credit than that. Imagine if that's how it was in Star Wars. Luke Skywalker meets Darth Vader in the first movie, immediately bops off his mask, and Darth Vader goes, "NOOO, YOU RUINED EVERYTHING!"? It would completely discredit your villain as a formidable opponent for the rest of the movie. You gotta make us work for dethroning our villain. It's an equally important thing to creating a story that rewards the audience for sticking in there. Plus, like... what, is N just really vain? He wants people not to know he looks monstrous underneath? If that's the point, you have to work that vanity into the villain's arc. Like, there's this movie I watched called The Club of Ugly Children. The villain in that movie, President Isimo, runs on a campaign that "ugly" people don't deserve to live. At the end, it's revealed President Isimo wears a wig to hide his bald head. You know, something like that. So I gotta know why N is doing what he's doing, capturing all the heroes, and why this reveal stings so much for him. Or, honestly... ... like, this probably doesn't work with your whole idea, but N is so much more compelling visually with that mask off. Don't you think he doesn't need the mask? If he wants to instill fear in people, and I looked like THAT, I'D keep the mask off. So... maybe you should play around with making his motives and his weakness something else. Maybe look into Syndrome from The Incredibles, since he has a similar plot of getting rid of all superheroes.