The Awakening of Dan's Review Skills(?)

For a while now I've been wanting to take a whack at reviewing a movie, and didn't want to review an old movie cause there's little point in that. But with this surprise release (or not so much after I was asked to do last minute voices), I worry that this is the last opportunity to review a big release while it's still fresh.

The Awakening of Bremzellshumbai is a very gothic themed movie, as expected from the likes of Compcat! Following the story of Carter, Lewis and a cat called Cat.

The first thing that struck me was the incredible attention to scenery, Compcat's ability to create and bring textures together to make such a unique atmosphere in 3dmm is very impressive. Particular highlights include the library, the door opening to reveal a long forest path, the shot of the boarded up door as the characters walk past in the distance.

When you have such a talent for scenery, one can't help but flaunt it. But sometimes it felt like this flaunting was drawing Compcat away from putting as much effort into the story. There were moments where the characters were just walking, exploring a very linear path (did they have a map? they seemed to know where they were going throughout the whole movie), it could have definitely done with some conversation between the characters, or some wrong turns/dead ends/puzzles to get to the next area.

I liked Tuna's comparison to a 90s PC Adventure Game, because it's eerily spot on. In such games you do a lot of exploring and minimal conversing with your party during (hell, nearly all adventure games are like that). Also the fact that you had one swordsman, a ranged attacker, and a magic caster, hahah, textbook RPG. But one thing that made this comparison true the most, and it's kind of my fault. Was my voice acting, for some odd reason the quality of my mic, the slight fuzz, along with the appearance of the character I was voicing. It wast just BIZARRE how much it resembled voiced characters back then.

Expanding on voices, I won't say anything about mine, other than the fact that I wish I revisited the casting call thread so I realised how manly Lewis looked, when watching the movie I realised how girly a voice I gave such a HANDSOME FIGURE. As for everyone else, I have to say Trooper's voice acting as the Librarian was the highlight, it fitted so well. Followed closely by Eric's role as Carter. Daniel's voicing for the cat captured the wise and mature personality, but seemed very monotonous at times and lacking emotion, "get off me you simpleton" in particular wasn't entirely convincing. I also think Bremzellshumbai could have done with a more BOOMING voice.

The animation was well done, there were bits that seemed a bit off, like when Lewis slowly falls down onto the pentagram and lies flat on his face. But there were a lot of fun bursts of animation skill that provided a nice contrast from the bombardment of slow scenery pans. Such as the portal scene and Lewis knocking the fountain over, the falling out of the bathtub scene (I loved that room because of how normal it looked in contrast to the rest of the movie, it was like an assuring flash back to reality, even though where they went was real too). The sweeping broom animation, and not just because of it's animation, but the concept too, if Bremzellshumbai is to rule the world he requires a spick and span base. First the dust, then the world.

I should have written about the story first, but it just didn't flow that way. But yeah the story, it wasn't TOO immersive, there were no major moments of "oh god what if they don't win! what if Bremzell succeeds! WILL THEY FIND HIM IN TIME?!". But that was probably because it was hard to take the movie too seriously, with such occurances as the ol' tongue-in-cheek 'well-animated fight scene that I wont bore you with' cornercut technique, and Lewis' consistent clumsiness. It was very light-hearted for a gothic movie, which was an interesting mix. There were no laugh out loud moments as such, but I watched it with a smile because of the general warm nature of the storytelling.

Flaws aside, the story made great use of the scenery, I would love to see more movies with such textures. It may be stealing, but I feel the amount of effort put into the textures in this movie are far too great to only be present in a single movie. In fact that was probably the majority of the work for this movie! So could we expect more from Compcat using the same textures? I would like to think so!

What have I missed out? Music! The music was brill, it was really well placed, didn't get in the way of anything, only improved the atmosphere and general tone of the movie. The serious vibes of the music helped keep the movie from being too goofy. So yeah nothing bad to say about the music at all!

Overall I think the movie was a fun little adventure, the length of the movie was fine, I don't think this would have done too well if extended closer to the hour mark. The light-hearted approach to such an adventure fitted the shortish movie length nicely. Great work dude, this is definitely your best movie. I hope you and other readers have enjoyed my FIRST EVER proper review.

[Trooper]

Aw, thanks bro. But yeah, good review.

[Compcat]

Thanks, Dan! Really good first review, though I might be a bit biased . Either way, I'll certainly be coming back here in the future when I need to replenish my 3dmm motivation tanks.

[Ben Rice]

requesting a HVS3 review plz