yttriumsfm short criticisms
I rewatched the short and went through a few frames. Lighting I think was fine, scenebuilding was fucking fantastic (unless that's absolutely their in-house map), animation quality's a step above Winglet's old short for the Mayann community project. It doesn't hold a candle to Love and War or Meet the Spy's lighting, but It's something I wouldn't be surprised to see in the Saxxy's (speaking of which HELLO VALVE SAXXY'S WHEN THIS WEEK???). I think the lack of voice lines from other classes hurt it story-wise, TF2 is so reliant on its voice acting to carry it. Spy not even snapping one smarmy remark towards Scout was incredibly weird, I'm so confused since I'm confident they got VAs to record lines for in-game.
Valve does use a mix of mocap and animation and it is really noticeable for some reason since Expiration Date, and for whatever reason their NPC characters that they've brought out of the comics into SFM look way more detailed than the in-game TF2 models. That being said, crappy model quality or weaker animation was present in ED like look at Miss Pauling's collar and her in general. The fan-made model is smoother than this model.
http://78.media.tumblr.com/2bce3d59e72d69fbf5823193fae9357c/tumblr_n7c9yjUjq81s21x06o2_1280.gif
The yeti model's armpits do really suck but my theory is they probably bought this Halloween Heavy set from The Heartsman, so they or Heartsman had to model over the Heavy or around the missing spaces. Either they asked him to make sure it had a decent to low amount of polys in-game, or Heavy's armpits being fucked up from the start is what caused this. I can see in the Yeti Smash taunt thumbnail that there's like a seam between where Heavy's sleeves would have been vs. where the arm starts.
Also I thought Saxton Hale was going to suck even more than the yeti or Miss Pauling because I saw the leaked art from the Turbulence Saxxy trip and I thought it was just Soldier with a mustache and a cleft chin. It looked nothing like the comics or Moby Francke's concept art. I was prepared to ask JPRAS for his model from Winglet's Mayann animation as soon as this came out, but then this came out and Hale looks much better than I thought he would look. His profile shows respect to the feeling that Francke's concept felt like.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DMS_aOmUMAAe90z.jpg