Obligatory pilot discussion thread

I'm gonna have to repost this once we get a discussion thread in the actual animation subforum, but here's what I got so far:

- The visuals are great. It's well directed and well-animated with fluid designs and a strong sense of movement throughout the editing.

- The voice acting works perfectly fine. People were concerned about Toby Fox (who is not a career actor, obviously) as John or about Dave being annoying, but Toby does a good job and Dave is definitely SUPPOSED to be annoying. The scraps of Rose, Jade and Karkat we got were excellent.

- The narration does not work. It sounds like it's the guy from Digital Circus (It's fucking ONEY?!), but every time he showed up, not only did it feel like a drain on the pacing, but it also took things to a place where they're way too self-referential, with characters briefly acting totally aware of the narration.

- Sylladexing is in, and I think it shouldn't be. It was dropped as a video gamey mechanic before the halfway point of the comic anyway, and just having characters able to carry shit around (even if they still use inventory cards) would be way better than this, where it's literally exposited to the audience at a breakneck speed.

- Similarly, the pacing (especially with Homestuck-specific mechanics in mind) was REALLY fast. I truly, truly wish they'd been able to adapt all of act 1 into a 22-minute episode, because this only serves as a tiny taste and only makes it about halfway to the first meteor, ending with John starting SBURB.

- The dialogue got a whole lot less "it's 2009 and I can say the word 'retard' as much as I want" and a lot more Hazbin Hotel. This is good, in that Andrew Hussie can't write naturalistic dialogue to save his life, and bad, in that the numerous swears lack any particular creativity. They're just kinda...in there.

- Apparently, the success or failure of this to become a full show is dependent on showing merch sales to investors. If we need normie attention to get those sales, this project is doomed. It's just too niche, they didn't dumb it down enough.

I think I liked it. I liked most of the voices, and the animation was really good. I'm not sure about the narrator, especially during more serious parts like the "the note desolation plays" speech, but I also don't think there's a way to do a lot of the iconic parts of Homestuck without a narrator. I hope that if this moves forward it will be a bit slower paced. I feel like if I didn't go into the pilot already knowing everything that happens very well I would not have been able to understand it. I'm guessing they just condensed stuff to get things like the dad strife in already because they wanted to show some parts that would drum up more interest, and that it might not feel so rushed in a full series. I really hope it gets picked up.

i thought it was great! i didn't love the narration but people saying the pilot was doomed are totally exaggerating. it's already going viral. i think homestuck is straight up difficult to understand, but some of that is okay, because it builds intrigue. hopefully people will want to know more! i do wish they had a little more breathing room, but hopefully episode 1 will do some of that legwork. the voice acting was great, the animation was amazing. a ton of potential.

i really didnt like it. i was hopeful when i learned vivzie wouldnt be in the writers room but i was sorely disappointed watching it, the only praise i can give it is the animation was awesome but otherwise. theres so many inconsistencies (why do they all communicate with phones and WHY is the meteor there THEY HAVENT EVEN STARTED THE GAME YET), the pacing is so whack (which i get its a pilot but jesus christ), the dialogue feels like its from the 2020s and not 2009 its so AWKWARD and i feel like the kids are mischaracterized the way i feared... maybe its nitpicky but dave is wayyy too expressive and john swears like every other sentence and rose feels way less sophisticated than she tries to be in the actual comic. those just arent my kids!!!! and what really made me sad was how they did the "It is your thirteenth birthday, and as with all twelve preceding it, something feels missing from your life" scene, completely missed the mark. thats one of my favorite pages because it sets a precedent, its like the beginning of something big and its just so good at creating this specific feeling. and the pilot just speeds through it and moves on and that annoying narrator voice messes up the whole feeling and auhhgg the whole thing just sucked :((

i liked it just fine. the animation was really nice. obviously its not perfect but it is a pilot after all, that's to be expected. i think a lot of the pacing issues/other issues people are having with the pilot would be smoothed out if they're able to expand it out into a full series. i truly really really hope it gets picked up!

it was honestly a lot better than i expected? i've got my problems with it - i think the narrator wasn't nearly as dry as it should've been for HS's narration, the swearing is both way overdone and also not nearly as creative as it is in homestuck, the like self-effacing posturing of it is a little hit-or-miss - but the art was super cute and i really really love how well they sold each character's deal within the limited timeframe available. hoping to see a full series, which is not at all what i was expecting my reaction to be going in lol.

i really liked it,, the animation was fantastic and i loved the music,, the dad strife was fun and the outro was hype!! i do think there are some things to work on, like dialogue and pacing,, but im a hashtag believer that theyll iron them out once it gets picked up. im really really excited to see where this goes !!

For a pilot i really liked it, they clearly had to rush the narrative because it would be impossible to keep the comic's pace but they did it quite nicely.

Despite being an oney fan I didn't really like the narration tho, it felt weird. i hope it will go viral and that they'll sell a lot of merch it would be nice for it to continue and see what they would do with full episodes

i didnt have very high hopes for it, but i was at least curious about how well it would have translated into an animated pilot. and, well, i just dont think it did!

the pacing is all over the place, the humor didnt land at all for me, and some parts of it just didn't work at all. the way information is layed out for new viewers is utter nonsense, way too much is going on in the short span of time the pilot gets, and nothing really gets explained properly! it feels like something thats only comprehensible for people who are already well familiar with the comic, which, doesn't seem to be the target audience for this at all

i think it shows promise. i dont mind them changing some stuff up- if they tried to keep everything exactly the same as the comic thered be no point in remaking it, and most of the things that were changed (like how pesterchum works, john not needing to steal his dads pda and just having a phone already, a lot of the longer/less consequential conversations getting cut) i can get behind. the people making it are all clearly very talented- the animation was very appealing and expressive, and the va's managed to do their characters justice pretty well (or at least in my opinion.) the one problem i have is with the pacing. im aware theres a lot they had to fit into a short timeframe, and homestuck is a notoriously long-winded property, but it seems like they sort of overcorrected in condensing it. i think if itd had more time to breathe id be rating it a 10/10, but where it is now is around a high 8 to a mid-9. still not too shabby at all.

Seconding lapis, the pacing will obviously be better in the actual show than in the pilot! I personally liked it, especially the small inclusions of 2020s lingo like "bestie", it was cute (//v°)

What was lacking for me was the music, at the end it got better though so it's not a huge flaw. Looking forward to the full series, I'll probably buy some merch too

It was fine. Clearly more a proof of concept than like, a "real" first episode.

Surprisingly funny. Great visuals. Strife sequence was the best part of it.

Toby Fox John works surprisingly well. Rose is amazing. Jade is cute.

Dave's bad. Narrator's unfunny.

And das pretty much all I have to say.

I'm glad I didn't have high hopes from the start because both liked it and completely didn't.

it's more of that I was kind of disappointed with some of the aspects of it like the voices (I'm not a big fan of Daves and Roses voices) and how ooc Dave and John were as well as some parts of the animation just made me cringe.

Ok I'm glad other people have issues with the narrator I thought I might have been overreacting.

I think as readers we spend so much time with the narrative voice of Homestuck that it's much more firmly set in my mind than any of the actual kids who I can leave up to interpretation. But the Narrator should be a serious deadpan and not some wacky parody of annoying narration. It's self-important and authoritative even about the most inane topics. Wouldn't the jokes just obviously land much better if John was wackily interrupting a serious narrator who is trying to give tutorial advice (not to mention the iconic title prose)?

And not to get ahead of myself here, but establishing the narrator at a serious baseline is important for when moments when the narration gets TRULY unhinged

(not to be overly negative anything because I love the other kids voices and adaptational changes with the pesterlog animations are all good stuff)

My main gripes were that in my opinion Dave felt too much like deadpool, Jade was a little too wooby and there was absolutely a lot of 'fucks' that shouldn't be there.

I do think it was a lot of fun though and I think it has a lot of potential tbh

I liked the arm shoutout, I liked how the syllabus was handled outside of its introduction and I really liked the fight with dad and in particular when dad grabbed John as they were falling, that made me feel like they're actually a loving family, which is a thing that I think was missing a bit from the comic early on.

media straight outta israel

@squiddo

> Jade was a little too wooby

I believe John is actually talking to Dream Jade during this conversation which is why she doesn't get the full cut-ins the other two kids do and doesn't remember the game, and in early acts Jade is sillier and flakier than normal so I think this is actually good attention to detail!

That could be why I was thinking that? I'm not sure tbh.