After the response to our Haiku reviews, we’re introducting another creative review style this week. Noah Rodenbeek reviews games with comedic animation, but does it all by hand, frame by painstaking frame.
Noah selected some of his favorite animated reviews and reflected on how the experience has gone for him so far. “With games like Modern Warfare 2 it’s been interesting to see how my rudimentary animation style fits with the notion of a game review. But like all my animating work, it’s a real mixed bag – fun and frustrating, satisfying and hollow, successful and failing.”
Noah’s hand-drawn response to Modern Warfare 2:
Each cartoon takes him around eight hours to draw, something that stems from his commitment to a handcrafted approach. “I make my animations with Illustrator and Flash and I draw everything completely by mouse, often without any rough sketches. Eventually I would like to make my cartoons cleaner and more professional looking, my Resistance 2 review for instance could easily be extended into a more involved story. But for now, I’m satisfied with just having fun playing all these games and animating my thoughts.”
Noah’s hand-drawn response to Resistance 2:
“Writing the reviews and coming up with ideas for the animations can be extremely frustrating. As soon as any kind of writer’s block sets in I get a nagging paralysis and feel like the work is worthless, sometimes for weeks. But I plan to stick at it – the exposure’s great and there is seriously nothing cooler than playing a promotional copy of a game that has just hit the shelves.”
One question remains though, should he introduce sound to these animations? Maybe Noah could voice the characters? Or add sound effects? Or even a laugh track?
Game People is a rag tag bunch of artisans creating awesomely bizarre reviews from across the pond.
