I intend to watch every episode of this series. Step by step. And prove to you how hideously bad it is. I will take screencaps. I will quote dialogue. And oh, be so glad I can't rip the audio for the voices.
I will be hearing these sounds in my nightmares.
Let us begin.
Episode 1
Running Time: 5:29
Summary: Ethan doesn't play enough video games, leading to violence for no reason.
The Blind Ferret company animation makes no sense. Apparently, the ferret is blindfolded, so it cannot play piano... but when it takes the blindfold off, it plays a beautiful tune. I'm pretty sure that means the ferret actually can see, but hey, it's their logo. Aaaaand following that, we have tits at 15 seconds in. But not actual tits, or Buckley-drawn tits (god forbid). It's a giant, badly-inserted 'poster' of Dead or Alive 4 on the solid gray background of the scene. Too bad, because if there was actually something eye-catching, I'd be distracted from how poorly-animated this is.
Ethan's thumbs are moving slooooooowly on that PSP. I could give one of those to my baby sister and she would react faster than he is. I can't think of a single title you'd be playing that you move this slowly in. And yes, it's nitpicking, but frankly, if your character is supposed to be some extremely hardcore gamer, make it look like he's played a fucking game before.
But then someone else walks onscreen, and he's just as slow and jerky as the thumbs. The only issue is that every one of his body parts is moving at this same speed, making him look like a sickly, lobotomized marionette, with the shit-eating grin on his face. Makes me wonder what Buckley looks like anytime he buys a video game. The thought of any man with this expression on his face, asking the nice Gamestop employee to hand him a copy of Barbie's Horse Adventure, just makes me break into a giggling fit.
Oh goody. They opened their mouths. At least they kept that Buckley feel: every frame of the mouths can be seen on a still of CAD in comic form. And already the pain begins, as the customer asks if he can play Xbox games on a PS2, only to get the scathing response of "I don't speak stupid".
I'm 30 seconds in, by the way, and look how much I've written. I have another 5 minutes of this. There's a reason I'm breaking this down by episode.
Another random thought: why the fuck, when everyone is an employee at some shop, does nobody ever appear behind a counter? In fact, every time we're in the store Ethan works at, from memory of the comic's archives, I'm pretty sure the cast is in front of the counter. (I'm going to assume the rectangle in multiple shades of gray is a counter, although the lack of a cash register has me wondering.) No, smartass, you might not speak stupid, but you goddamn look stupid, standing in the middle of a store paying more attention to a game than to any kind of easily-pilferable merchandise. I'm just going to assume the whole store is run this badly and the discs are all inside the display cases, waiting to be stolen by the first speedy little bastard to attempt fleeing the store. God knows there's nothing behind the counter for them to be hidden in as prevention, unless Badly Lens-Flared Boxart #2 is actually a wallsafe.
Do you see this? This is what my brain does when it doesn't want to go on with something this horrid. It nitpicks EVERYTHING it can find, hoping against hope I'll be distracted and just forget about the DVD in the player, and maybe go play a game or something. I haven't even unpaused it since the 30 second mark. I keep finding more and more flaws in the artwork, concept, and general idiocy of the universe this takes place in. Fuck, I procrastinate less when writing up essays for classes I loathe.
Agh. The animation makes it look like Ethan's having a seizure and his eyes are rolling back into his head, but he keeps. Fucking. TALKING. I can't convey how bad this animation is, folks. I'd make a GIF but it'd end up more fluid unless I repeated every frame five times or so. I also can't really demonstrate the horror of this dialogue, either. Yes, we get it. You're zany because you keep making horrible puns like "the great land of Stupidia". Ha ha. Speaking of which, why aren't you ever fired? And do you do this to every person who isn't "hardcore" that comes in? Because while I'm aware most of those guys buy everything new the instant it comes out, and that would be worth some more cash, I'm betting casual gamers account for more of the store's profits, and running off some random guy because he doesn't have the level order in Doom 3 memorized seems, how do you say, counterproductive to running a business. All I'm saying is that someone like you once worked at a local gaming store around my place. He was canned. Within a week. (That's actually true, by the way. Come to think of it, mayhaps it was Buckley himself, and he permanently takes out his E-RAGE on us all with this comic. It would explain the impenetrable ego.)
See this? This came out of another six seconds of footage. Either I'm wordier than I was aware of, or this is terrible on new levels.
Crap. Clicking play got my hopes up when the customer made a fist for a second, but apparently it was for the purpose of pointing as a finger spontaneously appeared from it a second later. Also, god DAMN, on the same note: if someone asks for the manager, you get the manager. I think I'm just going to tell myself the manager smuggles crack out of the shop and that's how it stays open, because they cannot be keeping this place open on game sales with this shithead on the payroll.
Wow, this has turned into the worst "throwing down a box" animation ever. It just hung in midair in a few spots as it moved. And all of a sudden, the previously-silent PSP starts making noises as the customer leaves.
Guys? Did you animate this on a 386 computer, that could only handle so many actions per frame ? Because the very thought that you charge for this level of quality suddenly makes me realize the kind of geniuses behind Blind-But-Not-Really-Blind-So-Much-As-Blindfolded-Savant Ferret's logo.
Aaaand at one minute, we get to the title logo and a generic guitar sound over a drum machine. Joy. Seriously, people paid money for this? I mean, I know someone had to, to end up giving this shitty coaster to me, but they pay money for this and enjoy it? Did the disc come with a home lobotomy kit that got left out of my copy?
Now, the funny thing is? Suddenly the animation style changes, to something much more fluid and... well, I'd say "realistic", but the closest it comes to realism is that Ethan has this psychopathic expression which is what I'd expect a maniac like him to look like in real life. (Protip to all writers out there: if your main character is frequently going on rampages and has no respect for other humans, he is not "zany", he is a sociopath and you've fucked up in creating something sympathetic. If this is your intent, please, do not write your story as a comedy. Note that Jeff Lindsay is immune to this criticism, and Dexter is a fantastic, darkly comedic sociopath protagonist. Go read his novels.)
Yes, that was another tangent. But seriously. Look at that face. This is what I'd expect a real Ethan to look like, and that slow, vacant grin on Lucas' face represents the kind of trusting man-child who would stick around this lunatic, with the eyebrow giving a side dose of "I am hanging with the cool kids, which is why I put up with them burning down my house. To be cool. Oh yeah." in his mind.
See this? Again, not "zany". "Damaged human being" is closer. Show us where the Atari 2600 touched you, Mr. Buckley.
Also terrible: this "gamers are social misfits" shit. I'm not sure I understand why his fans are his fans. I mean, they pay for something like this, and it basically says they'll never end up with an attractive woman (I'm going to assume Lilah is supposed to be attractive here, his art sort of renders everything moot in that manner), or that if they're female, they're doomed to be with Ethan. So gamers are broken goods one way or the other. Thanks, Tim.
Come to think of it, if there was ever an appropriate time for an "I don't think so, Tim" quote, I do believe it's now.
Oh god. And now the robot is making humping motions at the TV.
(Sorry. Blogger is terrible about gifs. I tried animating this and it would only upload as a still. I'll look into a solution for this. Still, it gets the point across.)
And it gets worse. I'll refrain from screencapping, given that he used this as a punchline pretty early in his strip, but it's Lilah mouthing what is obviously "I love you" (and really, if you can make the animation this good in the opening, why is the rest of the episode so shit?), and Ethan grabbing her tit in response.
Okay, so I suppose I'm going to add Lilah's manface to the screencaps, because damn, I know he said he loved her, but baby, you got reeeeeal ugly. I'm pretty sure if I photoshopped her hair off to reveal the default bald template he cut/pastes features on to, you wouldn't be able to tell that apart from a man at all, not even with the tits.
Oh joy. Straightman Linux Stereotype and Penguin made it into the animation too. I can't wait to hear their voices.
Those two don't feature at all in the big group shot at the end, though, which is completely strange. Not strange: the image to your left lasts longer than any single shot in this so far. Gee, I wonder what might have spawned that decision.
And fuck. We're back to the terrible animation again. Lucas really does sound sort of like a man-child, but maybe that's his overdub talking. The character sounds like he's in some sort of small wooden box, while everyone else's voice wasn't nearly as... um... distinct, I suppose, is a good term. And look! It's to make the comment that Ethan doesn't pay for rent, or food, and only uses his money on games. Strangely, Lucas doesn't seem to find this disturbing, and has a permagrin in the entire exchange.
Maybe he has some sort of Stockholm Syndrome. It explains a lot. How he puts up with Ethan, how it would be the end result of a large dose of abuse over the years, why everything that most of us would consider mad is overlooked in the name of "friendship"... actually, the more I try applying logic to this, the more disturbing it gets. This is the kind of shit you end up with once you become a psychology major, people: over-analyzing ANYTHING when your mind tries wandering.
I'm also noticing that at least Lucas' eyebrows move. (Well, eyebrow, anyway. The other is stuck in the same fixed location. Maybe it's because of all the facial damage he's suffered, only half of his face has working nerves anymore.) This is good, because apparently that's where all the eyebrow budget went. Ethan's stay completely motionless as the rest of his face and head twitch to his speech, and it's freaking me the hell out.
Holy shit, actual logic is applied. Let's see if they touch on the "how the fuck does Ethan still have employment when all he does is play games in the store" conundrum I raised earlier.
No. No they don't. They tell us someone else at the store does all the work, and suddenly it turns into an argument over why Ethan can't play games on the TV right now.
And now, I wonder how the hell this apartment is laid out, when he walks off to the right of the screen, and is suddenly walking IN from the right into the bedroom, where Lilah (MY GIRLFRIEND... or is that MY FIANCEE? I don't know if it was ever touched on or not, and I can't be arsed to look) is lounging on a bed... but looks up when HER MAN comes in, because she knows her place. Or something. This is too creepy for me to keep analyzing.
Oh god, she spoke. Uh. Hmm, I'm trying to think of how to describe the voice actress. Okay, you know those people they get to play the young mother in some soft drink commercials? That's Lilah. And the first thing out of her mouth might well have been ripped from one of those ads: "Hey hon, how was work?"
Oh christ. No wonder Buckley's art is only applied to the side of heads. I'm pretty sure porn stars who specialize in deep-throating don't even open their mouths that wide.
Yes, I have fallen to the point of making pornography jokes to mock this series. No, I'm not apologetic. I'm trying desperately not to just screencap random frames and caption them with "IT'S SHIT IT'S SHIT WHAT THE FUCK WHO PAYS FOR THIS UTTER SHIT", but it's harder by the moment.
I'm 2:30 into this, by the way, and if you recall, the running time is 5:29. Scroll up a minute, and realize how much I have written about this, maybe subtracting a paragraph or two for filler. Do you see how terrible this is, and now does the fact that I'm running out of adjectives make any sense?
Anyway. Let's hit play again.
"Do you want to go see a movie?"
"NO! I can't leave, because Lucas is using the TV and I have to find 'other stuff' to do!"
People identify with this character. People think this man's creator is worth adoration. I am not kidding, the fact that Tim Buckley makes a living off of things like this depresses the shit out of me, no lie. The lone thing allowing me to sleep at night when I contemplate the bastard is that he must have sucked the flaming teat of Satan to achieve this success, there's no other way that one could end up in his position without consequence.
But anyway, let's not focus on why I drink my liver to death. And of course, logic continues to slide right off Ethan's back like water on a duck, when it's pointed out movies are "other stuff to do". So his response is "holy crap, you're right... I NEED TO COME UP WITH AN ELABORATE PLAN TO GET LUCAS OFF THE TELEVISION". I shit you not on that. Lilah just says "have fun" and we cut to the living room again.
Okay, wait. So everyone just goes along with the "elaborate plan" line, but when he says "I'm going to learn to fly on the roof", Lucas is instantly concerned, and runs outside? And as for the man-child theory returning, he can't tell that a dummy on the roof isn't Ethan, AND screams to everyone around outside "if you break your neck, I'm not calling an ambulance". Admittedly, neither would I. Shit, sweet, sweet freedom is all one could hope for after that nightmare, and they'd probably say it was suicide. (I say "probably" because it's too much to hope for, in this world, to assume a mental facility would have record of an arsonist with restraining orders against him that could be used to make a "okay, this fucker did it to himself" verdict.)
Also funny: you can say "I'll let you die if you fall off the roof", but "son of a bitch" has to be censored.
And now we have the "best friends" one-upping each other with pranks. Keep in mind, PvP did this storyline over a year before the CAD animated series was announced. Good show, Tim! I wonder who'll be injured by the end of this, all in the name of comedy. My suspicion is that it'll be Linux Guy, just so they can show his animation and voice actor off briefly before the first episode ends. (In case you're wondering, by the way, the animation is still just as shitty, but nothing spectacular is standing out, so no screencaps.)
Okay. I think the official contender for "worst line in anything to do with this series" is now "Nobody glues my circle-strafe hand to a doorknob... (pause) ...and gets away with it." Not even any enthusiasm on it, all monotone.
And now we have a property damage montage that I'm almost certain Tom and Jerry used once. In order, the pranks become:
- Ethan making his robot flip the couch over, launching Lucas off of it (no indication of how he got his hand off the knob)...
- ... and the couch FALLING ONTO ETHAN afterwards.
- Lucas showing Ethan porn to distract him (hey, wouldn't the lone dude in the house with a girlfriend be less affected by this sort of trick? NOT IN BUCKLEY-WORLD) and then throwing it aside, where Ethan slams into something offscreen
- Ethan, I shit you not, screaming and running at Lucas with a knife in hand (although it's only "running" in the sense of he is moving towards Lucas, the animation makes him look like he's standing completely still somehow)...
- ...before somehow getting caught in one of those old cartoon snare traps that somehow catch you by the ankle and lift you into the air. The knife then lands about (and I'm trying to work out distance in this shitty perspective) a foot or less from Lucas' leg.
And then Lucas, who is supposed to be the sane one, just says "So... co-op, then."
Because in Buckley-World, logic is only allowed to kick in after the viewer's intelligence has been insulted no less than fifteen times.
Make that sixteen. Lilah then asks to play Halo because the guys are "done with the TV". I almost expected a "wah-wah-WAH" sound effect to go here, but instead the shitty generic guitar started up once more to signal the credits.
Fun fact: Buckley's name appears no less than three more times in the credits. (Brian Clevinger is also listed as "Best Boy Grip", and Brian Carroll is "Hair & Make-up".) And just to close out this dead-dog-and-failure show, the She-Turned-Me-Into-A-Blind-Ferret-(but-I-got-better) logo plays once more to the sound of applause.
I have another 11 of these to go through. From what I'm told, 5/6 (I think it's those two) are a hideous two-parter of failure that composes the crown-jewel of awfulness in this tiara of mediocrity. I'm sure you can tell how much I just can't wait.
Kill me.
27 comments:
I'm sorry.
FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC.
THIS is what you have to do (at least until you can't do any more [which I expect to be soon]). Nice work! I could see this blog as covering many shitty things and working well.
Google has a weird system for directly uploading stuff, and the blogger direct image hosting is the weirdest hostng service ever seen since 1997 on the web.
You can work around it by getting a googlepages page (http://pages.google.com/), uploading the gif there and then directly linking it (e.g.: http://dramapatrol.googlepages.com/cad-animated.gif), or via photobucket.
Great review, I remember watching this because the first episode was free (I was very bored at the time).
You're dead-on about the voices, I'd rather drive nails through my ears than listen to those characters talk. And what you said about the opening clip had me grinning like an idiot at its accuracy. If I got lip from a game-shop employee I'd come back with a team of lawyers.
However, the worst tragedy is that Blind Ferret Entertainment make REALLY good animation when Buckley isn't involved:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcbazH6aE2g
The shit animation must mean that Buckley was over the animator's shoulder the whole time, constantly berating the team. I can imagine him going "No! You're made Lilah actually look like a woman! Start over again!"
Anyway, I now look forward to your reviews for the later episodes (if you manage to survive them all without tearing your eyes out).
I actually went and found this on Youtube. It really is as bad as you said.
I am ashamed to admit it, but I actually payed for a subscription to this shit when it was new. I liked the Linux guy and I wanted to see him animated. After like the 6th episode I stopped watching because he didn't show up. I think that's around the time I stopped being a total fucking idiot.
Great. A shitty flash about a shitty webcomic.
If you have the stomach, you should post all of those episodes and bonus crap on youtube. Buckley has stated many times that he doesn't tolerate people posting the episodes on youtube since it is "illegal". God, he just loves his little cash cow. That'll piss him off.
They're all up on dailymotion.com.
If you like pain, you can see em all there.
I just watched the opening sequence on youtube, and the thing that really struck me was the group shot at the end... Lucas, Lilah, and Zeke all stand around Ethan, gazing adoringly upon him as he ignores them to focus on his computer. Then I remembered that Ethan is a blatant self insertion, and it made more sense.
I've just finished watching the videos on DailyMotion (it's possible that I have a masochistic streak, but I'd prefer to rationalize it by pointing out that, having never actually read Ctrl+Alt+Del, this is a lot quicker than going through the comic's archives.)
It's actually episodes 6 and 7 that make up the two-parter, and while they're pretty awful, they're immediately outdone by episode 8, which consists of Ethan stalking some anonymous guy for the heinous crime of legitimately purchasing the last copy of a game he wanted on launch day.
Fortunately for me, DailyMotion.com does not, in fact, have the full archive of videos uploaded. It stops at the aforementioned eighth episode.
It's funny how Buckley goes apeshit over a fanmade animation when his own official baby is even worse.
I watched all 12 episodes a while back on some video site.
Episode 1 is almost tollerable compaired to the horror of the awful starwars 'parody' storyline.
Or the episode that's made up entirely of horribly animated slapstic sketches about Battlefield 2021 (or whatever).
Complete with those shitty 'wacky' cartoon sound effects they ruin american clip shows with. DX
I tried to watch episode 1. I thought I had a masochistic streak. Apparently I do not, or it was trumped by a severely short attention span to crap.
I have never seen so much time, effort, and money--and no matter how much or little, it was too much--put into a more self-centered.......I could go on.
Instead, I say: Congrats, Buckley, for figuring out a great dream of mankind.....how to circlejerk _on_ yourself, _by_ yourself.
(I know other people were involved in that menace, but they can't possibly have had any creative input or it could not possibly suck that bad.)
I do hate to say this, because you're absolutely right about how painfully shitty this animation is, but your review makes lousy, desperate critiques. I believe the term "weaksauce" might apply.
"Stupidia" is not a pun. Puns juxtapose two or more words that sound similar to humorously (in theory, at least) play on their different meanings. "Stupidia" uses only one word, and doesn't mean anything. It's like "Gayville,"
Whenever you remind us of how long this review is, and how little of the animation you've looked at so far, I lose more interest.
Then, you start complaining that this comic doesn't accurately portray effective business strategies? Dude... IT'S A JOKE. Remember the Penny Arcade strip where Gabe starts a company with his balls?
The same goes for psychologically profiling the characters as if they are meant to be real people with logical interactions. This is like saying "The Lockhorns should really visit a marriage counselor if their entire relationship consists of snide confrontations." When one goes into reading an online humor strip, it is generally understood that one does not expect realistic human exchanges; one expects goofy caricatures of human exchanges. Sociopathic misanthropy is a staple of humor, especially internet humor. That Buckley's use of this staple is neither clever nor nuanced would be a legit argument, but you can’t hate on a brutha for using it at all. If anything, it's his occasional semblance of pseudo-serious drama which ruins the surreal-behavior in CAD, not the other way around.
wow , just to fuck with the order of things on your site obviously run by emo kids,i actuay enjoy the comic and hte series, corse wow im sorry, you feel its nesicary to pull apart every little detail of it... and the later people did you realy not like the videos or are you just agreeing to make youselves seem "cool" because thats definatly what it seemed like to me... fuck whores...
Anonymous, I really hope you're one of those people who genuinely have a learning disability, because otherwise your total disregard of spelling and grammar show exactly the lack of thought you put into that post, and by extrapolation, your life in general. I would quote it, but I only have so many [sic]s I can use per day.
I hate to comment so late but I only recently learned of this set of blogs. Anyway.
It's actually rather sad that Buckley has such a huge ego and that Ethan is such a blatant self-insertion, as otherwise he could be an okay parody of what huge assholes they are. If it wasn't so poorly executed.
Most notably the "I don't speak stupid." line proves that yes, yes he does, as he's obviously forgotten how something you haven't grown up with and had ingrained in you can be so alien and confusing. I bet his ego makes him think that he could master a foreign language in five to ten minutes. Excuse me, I'm giving him too much credit. Make that seconds.
Really, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Buckley is a racist as that line, that one line, shows that he has the makings of one.
Luprand, for me to actualy put any care into my grammer and spelling in that last post would mean that i gave a fuck about this stupid ass's idea of a review of a comic, apperently i hurt your feelings by contradicting all of you stupid ass coments from b4, and to that i say haha take it you fuck ass.
What's sad is I've actually seen this before. This episode was up on Youtube and it was mostly curiousity as to how something like this got animated. "Not well," was the given answer. Must've been a terrible experience for you, but we got something so beautiful out of it.
"(Protip to all writers out there: if your main character is frequently going on rampages and has no respect for other humans, he is not "zany", he is a sociopath and you've fucked up in creating something sympathetic. If this is your intent, please, do not write your story as a comedy. Note that Jeff Lindsay is immune to this criticism, and Dexter is a fantastic, darkly comedic sociopath protagonist. Go read his novels.)"
I'm rather confused about this statement, Fletcher. Do you mean to imply that the violent sociopath (admittedly an overdone source of humor) should never be played in any comedy? Because afterwords you cite an author who did this and praised him. I just seemed really confused on what you're saying here.
Man go fucking kill yourself..your nitpicking on shit nobody gives a damn(story of your life isn ). this is simple jealousy im seeing. And im sad to say that you've apprently found a whole group of retards to join you in your quest or suckiness...Just die already
too bad when people get jealous. i wouldn't wonder what you look in real-life without hair ? :D if you can draw better, then maybe you could post some links? :D don't have? can't draw ? that's what i thought. and the webcomic IS about fun, and most of the things aren't in real life. u even have read the comic, asshat ? standing in front of the counter is in a comic, not in real-life. and, like always, you're a fuckin noob, who hasn't even touched a PSP. maybe you have tried like fuckin button mash games , like Beowulf etc. But I know ALOT games on the PSP , what you can play even faster. and one thing, what shows, you gay-man haven't read the comic, is that, Ethan isn't a hard-core gamer. He is a noob. So, you haven't read the comic. Good. Or you're just a retard. Yup, im right, you ARE a tard.
Jesus CHRIST. I kinda had the notion that Tim Buckley was a psycho from John Solomon's review, but your profile on FUCKley and this review of the CAD episode makes me see that he's a full-blown psychopath that should be locked up. Forever.
Also, if I didn't know any better, I'd say his "girlfriend" was actually Ethan's sister.
Great job on your review, man.
Oh lord. I found your blog by googling "Tim Buckley ego". You should be proud.
""(Protip to all writers out there: if your main character is frequently going on rampages and has no respect for other humans, he is not "zany", he is a sociopath and you've fucked up in creating something sympathetic. If this is your intent, please, do not write your story as a comedy. Note that Jeff Lindsay is immune to this criticism, and Dexter is a fantastic, darkly comedic sociopath protagonist. Go read his novels.)"
I'm rather confused about this statement, Fletcher. Do you mean to imply that the violent sociopath (admittedly an overdone source of humor) should never be played in any comedy? Because afterwords you cite an author who did this and praised him. I just seemed really confused on what you're saying here."
Though I can't answer for him, my interpretation of that was that Dexter and Ethan are entirely different characters. For one, Dexter doesn't go "on rampages" and for two, the actual acts of murder and violence aren't the things played for laughs, it's the dichotomy of Dexter the man with incessant homicidal urges and Dexter the stand-up cop who just happens to know a lot about blood splatter. Ethan doesn't have either of these dimensions, he's just the reincarnation of a semen repository who the Gods thought they were doing her a favour by letting her be a human who was not a prostitute.
Buckley attempts desperately to use violence as a punchline, which obviously can work (if it hadn't, slapstick would never have been invented), but it fails because he makes all writers everywhere look worse by proxy by screwing up everywhere he goes (find the Puzzle Quest comic he did, then look up PA's version of it); even when Lindsay does, Dexter is never intended to be zany and so it works.
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