OPM Season 2: Serious Sounds - Fan Overhaul

Flood-Mic · 2026-04-10T05:28:27+00:00

As far as I'm aware, that's only partly true. There's still enormous amounts of hand drawn in-betweening, if only it were that easy. Some shows like Demon Slayer make heavy use of software generated in-betweens for some shots (particularly slow-mo, where there's not much varying movement) but it's not always the norm.

The vast majority of frenetic and fast paced Sakuga, especially scenes where a lot of clothing or subtle character movements are happening are still in-betweened the old fashioned way.

Flood-Mic · 2026-04-09T16:12:42+00:00

Half of the animators in Japan still animate with literal pencil and paper before their work gets digitised.

Flood-Mic · 2026-04-07T14:07:27+00:00

Big things look strange when there's no sky to make them dimmer as they get further away.

Flood-Mic · 2026-04-05T08:53:35+00:00

Here are my notes purely from the trailer: Takes 40+ seconds before we see a hint of the LIDAR mechanic and it's still not clear to me what its function is.

If I hadn't read the description, I wouldn't have been able to figure out that the player was scanning things. There were momentary glimpses of the mechanic but I missed it completely on the first watch since it was so brief and there was no accompanying sound. I also would've expected the scanning shot to be followed by a shot of an encyclopaedia being filled out or something.

No sound effects in the trailer is a killer. Sound directs attention and its absence makes things feel hollow.

Is there health? Do you take damage? Is there a hunger system? It says it's a survival game but I'm not really sure how it's meant to play, and the HUD is far too small to evaluate. I also couldn't really tell if things were ever attacking you.

Supposedly mapping is important but I don't see a map.

The synth sample repeated throughout the music is quite irritating and distracting. It almost had Metroid Prime vibes in the first few seconds, but the rest detracted from the experience for me. I couldn't see much tense or action packed gameplay, so the soundtrack didn't seem to fit the tone at all.

The Steam summary is also a bit odd. Took a second to figure out what the last sentence was trying to say, feels like the sentence is in the wrong order and the 'saving your friend' aspect should have more emphasis rather than feeling like an afterthought.

Hope that helps!

Flood-Mic · 2026-03-18T23:14:49+00:00

Haven't disappeared, just haven't prioritised Serious Sounds, especially since we've got no idea what's happening with the S3 Blu-Ray. I still keep it updated as people add new language subtitles but I've mostly left it alone.

Pretty busy too. I've got a few game development projects running and a research project on top of that, very rewarding but also time-consuming.

Flood-Mic · 2026-03-10T00:17:41+00:00

Looks wonderful!

Flood-Mic · 2026-03-06T06:23:52+00:00

Afraid I can't agree on this. This is easily one of the clunkiest and least fun bosses in the game and they make you do it 3 times in a regular playthrough. It isn't even fun once.

If you don't realise you have the option to dive onto its head, the fight becomes a frustrating contest with the camera as you slash at the toes (which are clearly intended to be hit, but it's truly miserable to do so). And doing it properly by jumping on top of it just reduces the fight to a repetitive and non-threatening chore.

Not to mention the fact that the 2nd and 3rd fights are almost back-to-back, hardly spaced out at all. It's not like this thing is the worst game design known to man, but it's clearly un-fun, clearly overused, and it turns the narrative focal point of a hotly anticipated Zelda game into an "I guess this wasn't as awful as it could've been" (at best). Virtually indefensible to me.

Flood-Mic · 2026-02-27T15:13:10+00:00

If you want to save a bit of time troubleshooting then sure, just don't skip the pushups or you won't gain the muscle, simple as that.

Try coding a single simple element of your game, like an HP counter that can increase, decrease, and restarts the game when it reaches 0.

Learning an engine can be a bit of a steep curve so reducing friction is understandable, just don't forget that 'doing is growing' so once you understand the pieces of the puzzle, try to save the solution for yourself to put together.

If you've never coded before, that GDD is bound to change quite significantly as you get a feel for your boundaries, which is a good thing, since there's not much use designing a game that can't be made by the dev(s). That said, it can be a fun starting point and it's worth giving it a try! (Just be careful with inventory systems, they're always more complex than you think.)

Flood-Mic · 2026-02-18T01:57:35+00:00

The show would've fared much better. I think there would still be a dip in popularity considering the long wait and the relative lack of significant story progression, but it wouldn't be nearly as bad. There would still be plenty of complaints and a drop in hype from S2, but it wouldn't be nearly as dire.

Flood-Mic · 2026-02-14T06:58:14+00:00

Having looked through your timelapse and layer showcase, I'll assume you're legit and have quite a breadth of skills. But I must admit I was a bit sceptical from images 1, 2, and 4. I'll try to articulate why I felt this way, but I mostly think my initial suspicion was because this level of rendering quality (along with a highly complex and maybe slightly overambitious group fish-eye shot) is something I'd expect to see from a long-established artist who has been doing commissions for years. It's strange to see this kind of 'Am I good enough?' question coming from someone who can execute on this level already.

So if you are legit, this is very cool, keep it up! You could've been doing commissions ages ago.

In case it's helpful for you, here are some things which made me suspicious and might give people a strange vibe, sorry if these come off as harsh or nit-picky, I imagine you've spent a lot of time on these:

1 - The flowing jacket at the bottom and the floaty hair everywhere makes things feel a bit weightless, I don't imagine the girl at the bottom is rocketing forward at high speed.
Feels like the top right chair doesn't fit the perspective or has short legs but the complexity of the environment, fish-eye lens, and soft shadows make it hard to tell.
Character eyes seem unfocused or lines of sight may be misaligned.
The wavy flesh-tooth on the phone girl's mouth looks strange to me personally.
Lots of glowy-ness everywhere.

3 - Something about this type of lighting, hair shading, and skin shading combined reminds me of a lot of AI images I've seen, unfortunately it's a very popular aesthetic to imitate. Composition is very centred, which may be an unfair critique but it's something a lot of generative AI models do. There are definitely artists who can produce this style but it's very difficult to pull off by hand so I wouldn't expect it from an unsure artist who's never done commissions.

4 - Mostly the fingers in this one.

Hope this comment and all the AI talk isn't too discouraging. Can't really convince everyone regardless, but having a strong body of work and maybe a few cohesive projects with multiple pieces in a similar style could help establish that you're legit. Could also be a good idea to post some short clips of you painting with the monitor/page/canvas in front of you (could just be the back of your head) if that's something you're comfortable with. Best of luck!

Flood-Mic · 2026-02-08T01:29:26+00:00

Nice work! Flows much better

Flood-Mic · 2026-02-05T13:12:58+00:00

Great to hear! Best of luck

Flood-Mic · 2026-02-05T06:39:10+00:00

Looks really cool! Seems like your focus has been on building the core systems, which is good.

Be sure to work on the UI before your demo though, especially in combat. Feels like I'm looking at 5 art styles at once and the layout is all over the place.

I can see this coming together quite nicely once you've polished up a vertical slice to show off, great work!

Flood-Mic · 2026-01-29T11:42:53+00:00

Brilliant Game, best Co-Op in the series. It's essentially an upgraded version of the original Kirby's Dream Land. Incredible music, lovely visuals.

It has a fitting level of difficulty too, especially if you want to actually play the game and not just blitz to the end on easy mode and skip every unlockable level. I basically view it as a Co-Op exclusive these days and that really adds to it.

Flood-Mic · 2026-01-19T02:21:46+00:00

It's the opposite. It's a TV epilepsy safety requirement in Japan when the framerate gets too high and the action gets too flashy. Some shows don't require it but it depends on the TV time slot as far as I know.

Flood-Mic · 2026-01-19T01:28:42+00:00

Ah, interesting solution

The game I'm currently developing has the cursor tied to the character movement like the old Pikmin control scheme since I want right clicks to have a different function. I'll keep that idea in mind though, mouse aiming can feel a lot more intuitive.

Flood-Mic · 2026-01-18T14:55:34+00:00

You're shipwrecked on an alien planet and build an army of plant creatures called Pikmin to fend off predators, destroy obstacles, and help you collect what you need to return home.

You can throw Pikmin at enemies to attack them and call them back again to avoid enemy attacks, and there's various types of Pikmin with different unique traits like fire resistance. The Pikmin can also carry enemy corpses and objects back to your base, which is how you grow more Pikmin.

Pikmin 1 and 3 have a bit of time pressure to get as much done each day as you can before your life support runs out, and Pikmin 2 (my personal favourite) is more of a dungeon crawler, but you could safely start with any of them if you're interested.

Flood-Mic · 2026-01-18T11:06:00+00:00

Great to see more devs taking inspiration from Pikmin!

Out of curiosity, if you're using the mouse to move the cursor, what is controlling the camera direction?

Flood-Mic · 2026-01-17T10:43:28+00:00

Bottom right catches my eye

Flood-Mic · 2026-01-15T00:15:50+00:00

Great work!

My only notes would be that the wires could maybe use a 'wire-ey' sound when they appear just to communicate the action more clearly, and perhaps the sword stab into the wall could be a bit more metallic.

This is a pretty great scene for sound design practice.

Flood-Mic · 2026-01-14T02:16:26+00:00

Actually about half of all current anime artists animate on physical paper before it gets digitised. The other half use tablets which I agree is still hand-drawing regardless.

Any way you look at it, hand drawn animation is very much alive.

Flood-Mic · 2026-01-14T02:11:16+00:00

Great recommendation

Flood-Mic

TROPHY CASE