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Tavakai: The Movie - Review Topic


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(Topic--this is where the actual epic is located)

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Frequently Asked QuestionsWhy does it say "The movie" if it's an epic?This was originally going to be a movie. But then I realized it was going to take too long to do the whole thing in Flash, so then I decided to make it as a series of comics. But then I realized that would take too long. So then I decided to make it an epic. "Tavakai: The Epic" does not have as much ring to it, and let's face it, just calling it "Tavakai" would get confusing. And anyway, I did release part of it in Flash, so that gives me the right to call it a movie. :PWell, actually, to tell you the truth I'd probably swap the "The Movie" part out for some other titley thing, but I've kind of got a poster and a banner and 23 title images (for each chapter) that say "The Movie," and I'm not in the mood to change them all.I haven't read your comics before. Do I need to?No, although it would probably help you. Since this is the BZP Library, I was aware that there would be a number of people who hadn't read my comics, so I've tried to make it as friendly to those people as possible, by including a prologue and character bios. There isn't much storyline that even happens before this epic, so it's not really much to summarize. If you want to read the comics, the very least you would have to read would be this, this, this, this, and especially this one.Additionally, I did release some of the movie as comics. The epic will still cover those areas.Also, one thing I'll have you know is that this gets much better as it goes on. This story is pretty much a transitional phase of my comics--going from the old, stereotypical Artwork III premise of making comics in a studio, to a newer and more original thing that's actually plot-based.Other things I'd like to note: If the term "cameras" ever comes up, it's probably referring to the type of sprite kit that's used in the comics. This is a thing the ICC made up to explain the canonical existence of different kits--the RZMIK camera displays things differently than the Chimoru Omega camera, for example.=====Character BiosVakamaTK: Once a maskmaker, VakamaTK decided he wanted to leave Metru Nui and pursue a career in comic making. Once reaching Hapori Nui (also known as the Comic Land), he had mixed results, though overall gaining somewhat in popularity if not being completely mainstream. He has worked on cameras somewhat, mainly Chimoru Omega. He is red and gray, with a red Great Huna.Jacku: A Matoran who is inexplicably obsessed with destroying Apple Jacks. One of the characters VakamaTK had hired as a character in his comics. He wears a red Noble Ruru, and has red and lime green armor.Yoobye: A salesman whom VakamaTK hired as a character. He loves to rip people off. He is a brown-and-tan Po-Matoran who wears a brown Pakari.Grav: A result of Nuparu's failed attempt to clone himself, Grav is extremely selfish, and takes joy in the misery of others. He is not an evil character--he merely makes mischief now and then, nothing particularly evil. He crashed near VakamaTK's studio after being ejected from Nuparu's laboratory. He looks exactly like Nuparu save his orange Hau.The Seeker: This mysterious being has numerous powers, their number perhaps beyond comprehension. Little is known about his true nature, though he seems to have resided on the Hapori Nui for quite some time. "The Seeker" is merely a nickname given to him after he started seeking out new comic makers to send to the Comic Land--his real name is unknown. VakamaTK was one of the Matoran he brought over. He is gold and silver all over, and wears a golden Noble Mahiki.Bladeran: The hero from Meta Nui who wielded the Meta Sword against the wielder of the Meta Edge. The records of his quest have not yet been released, however. Beforehand, he had been a simple comic maker on the island, and formed a friendship with VakamaTK, each of them becoming permanent guest stars in the other's comics. He also loves to eat muffins. His armor is two shades of red, and he wears a red Hau.Hero100: A friend of VakamaTK's, from his days on Metru Nui. He came over to the Comic Land to start comics himself, but soon went bankrupt (after spending all of his widgets on salt and vinegar chips), having to move in with VakamaTK. He used to be a Matoran of Pineapples, but later had an accident with the Element Experimentation Zone in Nuparu Labs, which resulted in his element being changed to Duct Tape. He is now gray and white, with a mask that is a fusion of the Kakama and the Avohkii.Coleanuva: The second guest star to appear in VakamaTK's Comics (behind Velika), Colea became friends with VTK after a while, and was hired as a permanent guest star. He is native to Wava Nui.Gavla: A rising star in Hapori Nui, Gavla is known for his perfect balance of red and blue armor, as well as his remarkable ability to produce comics in a rapid fashion. He had an early interest in VakamaTK's comics, and the two became friends. He is another permanent guest star, and is native to Sy-Nui. His armor's coloring alternates between red and blue, and even his Hau has different colored sections.Gerlicky: A resident of Scrui Nui, Gerlicky is one of the most interesting comic makers. He has done much work with cameras--he has a few private cameras of his own (including the much coveted "Toon Kit"), as well as some very popular modifications to the Chimoru Omega camera, greatly improving the picture quality. He's had a few different series, and is currently doing "SpoofQuest!" which is a satire on comic making stereotypes. He is a Matoran of Plasma with blue, black, and teal armor, and a bright teal Ruru.Philbert: He's a comic maker who has also done some work with cameras. He is from Zola Nui, and has brown and orange armor and a red Great Komau.Jack the Magic Pirate: The emotionally unstable villain finally broke after envying VakamaTK's maskmaking abilities to the point that he accidentally injured himself. Fleeing his own maskmaking job (rare for Le-Matoran to hold, especially in Metru Nui where Matoran generally do not have a choice in thier career), Jack became a pirate and vowed revenge. It is also interesting to note that he does not remember his original name. Eventually, he managed to follow VakamaTK to Hapori Nui, and stumbled upon an abandoned castle, perfect for use as his headquarters. He is green and teal, with a green Noble Huna. He also wears an eye patch (resulting from his injury), and a pirate hat.(All other characters are either newly introduced or have minor appearances)---------Comments on Latest UpdateSo, I'm finally getting to releasing this. Good. Much of the story came to mind in 2008/2009. So anyway, the picture is just a collage of panels from throughout the series--much like Kahinuva has done, and largely inspired by him. These are mostly from the early comics, because that's most of what the prologue covers. For some reason I also stuck in a panel from the Haku340 guest star comic; I have no idea why. :PPeople who have been fans of my comics won't really be seeing anything new until chapter two comes out, though. Chapter one is fairly long. That's the funny thing about the chapters of this--I mostly just broke the chapters whenever I had a good cliffhanger, or multiple cliffhangers. Towards the end, the chapters get smaller. :PBannertm_ban_newbzpready.jpg

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Well, actually, to tell you the truth I'd probably swap the "The Movie" part out for some other titley thing, but I've kind of got a poster and a banner and 23 title images (for each chapter) that say "The Movie," and I'm not in the mood to change them all.

Laziness strikes again, Blade. :PChapter 1 is here.Comments on latest updateThis is the only chapter that I've completely done in other formats before; the first scene was in Flash, and the other two were done as comics. But still, there's details here and there that you don't get from what I made before.

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And now, Chapter 2 is here. This is where it kind of starts to get good, I guess.Comments on Latest UpdateSo, the first two scenes have already been released as comics.And then there's the third scene. I started making a comic of that, but that's when I got really lazy. I was combining it with a scene from the next chapter, and (as you'll see in a few days) that wasn't exactly something that was easy to make.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Wow, I totally forgot to update this. XPAnd yeah, RWAM is going to be continued, but let's leave that to the comic topic, okay? :)Chapter 3!Comments on Latest UpdateThis is a major reason I didn't continue making this as a movie or a comic. I didn't want to have to design that thing. :P

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  • 3 weeks later...
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  • 3 months later...

It's possible. I have way too much story planned to make everything as comics, so it could happen after I retire from comic making here.Anyway, commentary (I'm doing it in bulk to keep me from being too lazy to update two topics every day):Comments on Chapter 6:I'm pretty proud of how the guards turned out (they're obviously pictured in the title image). Very spiky, too.Pretty much nothing to say on the chapter itself, though. :PComments on Chapter 7The "I really hate you" line is a reference to Gerlicky's "I hate you guys" line, which he says whenever he posts something that doesn't get a reply.Also, in hindsight I made the Seeker seem like a ##### there. :P I needed some kind of reason for him not to use his uber powers to help, though.And here we see the beginnings of the ICC being formed in-canon.Comments on Chapter 8PLOT TWISTComments on Chapter 9I just now realized that "dunked" is a pretty creative word to describe people being put into a volcano. :tehe:Also, bit of trivia--originally, the word "gods" was used rather than "great beings," but I decided I might be breaking the no religion rule and decided to use something more BZPolitically correct. And in hindsight, it's probably better for a Bionicle story anyway.And yeah, there's so many plot twists here you could call it a plot pretzel. Don't eat it though; I've heard from reliable sources that it gives you food poisoning.Also, you may recognize the header as one of the images I used for C3 2010. Didn't remake this one, even though it used my old closeups--I lost the original files when my computer crashed, and the closeup on the closeup is such that you can't tell the closeup is the old closeup and not the new closeup unless you look really closely at the closeup. XDComments on Chapter 10I'm not totally sure if those heat gliders obey the laws of physics. But this is fiction, so screw physics.Also, I think I did pretty well on the picture for this. Who knew those leaf brushes would come in handy as shadows?Comments on Chapter 11So, I'm going to admit that there was some inspiration from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest for that part where Jacku ran up. Only slightly; I hadn't seen the movie yet when I came up with that part.Also, if I'd split this into parts or acts or something, the end of this chapter would be the dividing line.Partly because it's such a huge cliffhanger, partly because it also ends in the plot twist that defines the whole plot.Comments on Chapter 12Anyway, the funny thing about this is that I didn't know how to swim when I started writing this, but assumed I would by the time I finished and posted it. I was right. :PZondo's partly based on by my awesome teacher I had last year for Honors Chemistry.Also I love pickles.Comments on Chapter 13TRIPLE CHAPTER WEEK :awesome:Not much action here, just backstory. Same goes with the next chapter.Comments on Chapter 14Randu has the Mask of Sanity.I'm also going to take the canonical liberty to assume that when Axonn healed Gali Nuva's insanity back in '06, it was with his mask and not with some random other power he had.And anyway, now you know Jacku's backstory. And yeah, he's going to stay sane for the rest of however long I do these comics.Also, I realized while rereading a chapter a while back that some people could mistakenly think Jacku turned the group in. It was totally unplanned but it's definitely an added bonus. :PAnyway, now we're getting into the climax. CONFLICT CONFLICT CONFLICT ACTION STUFF all the way across the most of the rest of the epic.Comments on Chapter 15CLIFFHANGER AGAIN----Anyway, in case I forgot to mention, I posted all of this on a different website during the downtime, and I'm just copypasting the commentary.lastly:oh man i may have just stopped forgetting to update thishttp://www.bzpower.com/board/public/style_emoticons/default/cool.png

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The best word to describe the epic is a single word: “outrageous”. Whenever you think this epic in within the realm of reason, it adds one more twist, which makes it as twice as ridiculous as the last one. Which, by the way, is not all that bad, really. At least, until it gets toward the end.

Fortunately, Grav hadn't gotten very far with his apparent plan to tell The Seeker about the expedition, and VakamaTK and company practically ran into him on the way to the port. It was a simple matter to tie him up and put him into a spare suitcase.

Oh, come on. You missed a grand opportunity here to give Grav his own wild quest to find The Seeker.Chapter 13:

They walked for a while, then VakamaTK asked Viron, "What exacly is going on on this island? Are the people in this...base...the only Matoran here?"

Should be “exactly”.I’m starting to get the impression that The Seeker is evil. Or he knows the power of telling people not to do something. :)And I like the title Tavakai: The Movie. It sounds cool, and it hooked me into reading. The epic did not disappoint the glorious expectations raised by the title, and if you ever decide to write another epic, I will likely read it. Good job.
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@fishers: I typed everything in Notepad, so that would explain the typo. I'll fix it as soon as I can.I might end up making the rest of my planned storyline in epic form; I might quit making Bionicle comics soon and it's a lot faster to write epics. I don't really want all of my planned story to go to waste.Anyway, here's the remainder of the commentary:Comments on Chapter 16Vorox appearance.Zakadox is meant to be a similar creature to Takadox; the Fenradox had inspiration from that one screechy monster in the arena in Star Wars Episode II. Also, if I'd done this in flash I would have made the Vorox sound like a Tuskan Raider.Comments on Chapter 17Get it? The conflict erupts?Also the stuff I did to the masks in the header looks cool on first glance, but when you look at it more closely it's pretty obvious I was pretty lazy about it; there shouldn't be that much reflection of the lava light inside the eyeholes. So don't look closely.Plus it later occurred to me that the sun doesn't go out that quickly. :Palso cliffhanger againComments on Chapter 18The full scene I used for the title pic is probably a lot more epic. I need to post some full pics of the best of these in my blog or something sometime soon.NEXT TIME EPIC FIGHT SCENEComments on Chapter 19I probably have loads of run-on sentences in this chapter. :PStill, I'm pretty proud of how it turned out. I actually described an epic fight scene in pretty good detail for once.As for the picture--It's pretty blurred, so I don't know if you can totally tell what's going on. Jacku's swinging on a rope and kicking at Randu, who's ducking. It was actually originally a lot more blurred.NEXT TIME SLIGHTLY LESS EPIC BUT STILL PRETTY EPIC EPIC FIGHT SCENEComments on Chapter 20Yeah, here's the other epic fight. Less epic than the other one, for sure. But still pretty epic.Comments on Chapter 21FINAL CHAPTER(stick around for the epilogue though)So anyway, this basically just wraps things up and sets things up for season two, AKA Kaitro Comeback. Not even sure if that's going to be done anymore, though. :P I do have pretty much the entire script already written out, so I'll try to post that if I don't go through with it.Also, look at the name of this chapter. Now look at the name of the first chapter. Now back at this chapter. It isn't this chapter's title. But it's very similar to this chapter's title. Look down, back up. Where are you? You're posting about the chapter with a similar title to that other chapter. What's in your post? Back at this one. I have it. It's some words of praise and TWO THUMBS UP for that epic you love. Look again. The post is now posted. Anything is possible when you read TavKorp. I'm on a cliff. This is a really good benefit of writing out the whole thing ahead of time; I actually changed the first chapter's title.Comments on Epilogue[strongbadvoice]IT'S OVER!!![/strongbadvoice]Yeah, not much to talk about here, except point out that this is where the ICC began to be created in-canon. Kahi brought up some issues with me later about chronology, so I had to change it from being when it was actually created to when they started thinking about it.I think I originally planned on writing some kind of lengthy review of the epic as a whole here, but I don't feel like it.Also, I have no idea what's going to happen with Kaitro Comeback. I'm probably not going to make the comics; I may release the raw script or turn it into a sort of epic, though not as epic an epic as this one.As for the future, after Kaitro Comeback I had another comic season, which would probably go the same way as whatever way KC goes. Then I had a second movie planned, and that's probably going to go as an epic too. I'm not going to put "the movie" in the title though; I think I only really kept that one in here because it's also the name of my main character and my username, and things could have gotten confusing.

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  • 9 months later...

Hello, Tavaki. You have earned the second ECC charity review of the New Year. Yes, it's not quite as fabulous as the first ECC charity review of the New Year, but I will do my best to make it as informative and helpful as possible.I would also like to note that I have not read your comics, so if I point out any continuity or plot errors that are answered or explained in the comics, please feel free to correct me :) .Now let's get onto the review itself:I'm ambivalent about the beginning of the story. On one hand, when writing a story that is part of a series, it is always important to try to bring new readers up to speed in the most interesting way possible, preferably as soon as possible.That means, among other things, that a prologue that starts as a basic infodump and then abruptly slides into narrative is not the best way to go about doing it. If I were you, I get rid of the prologue entirely and reveal bits and pieces of the backstory as the story progresses instead, which would make it fun for new readers while not annoying old readers with information they already know.As for the plot, it's all right. It's generally easy to follow, although you didn't bother explain some things. Take the Thrustarro T60, for example. Where did it come from? Who built it? Why was it built? Why did it recognize Jack's fingerprint? Why did it take him to Kaitro Nui? You didn't answer any of these questions within the story itself, although I suppose it's possible your comics might have already dealt with the Thrustarro T60's origin and purpose.Your characters are generally lacking. While characters like VakamaTK/Tavakai and Jack the Magic Pirate were well-developed, the rest of Tavakai's friends, such as Bladeran and Hero100, had almost no personality whatsoever. Part of me wondered what they were doing in the story at all when they nothing personal at stake and didn't affect the plot much, if at all. Grav in particular I felt could have been more developed, for you established early on that he was a bit of a tattle who liked to tell on Tavakai, which could have led to some interesting plot developments if you had chosen to give him a bit more of the spotlight than what you gave him.Your spelling, grammar, and punctuation are average at best. I didn't notice many errors, although the story read awkwardly at times. Take this excerpt from Chapter 17, for example:

And, once each of their minds had come to this conclusion, the sun vanished completely beyond the horizon, leaving them in complete and utter darkness.
Those two phrases sound awkward/unnecessary. Here's an example of how I'd improve it:
And, just as each of them concluded this, the sun vanished beyond the horizon, leaving them in total darkness.
See? It's much shorter and gets the point across in a far more effective way. Try to keep an eye out for any sentences that sound clunky. A general rule to follow is that, if a sentence sounds clunky and unnatural, then it is clunky and unnatural and needs to be changed.Anoher general rule is brevity. In other words, do not use ten words where one will do.Your point of view (POV) appears to be the omniscient narrator, which is perhaps the trickiest POV to do right. Frankly, I don't think you succeeded, for while your omniscient narrator was not bad, it was distracting at times when you'd be in the POV of one character and then abruptly change to the POV of someone else. Like this, from Chapter 1:
Upon seeing what was coming out of the Energized Protodermis, Gavla's eyes widened. He couldn't believe what he was seeing at first, but then he found the words. "He...he's alive!" he stammered.The others around him immediately turned their attention away from Jack to see what Gavla was talking about.Jack noticed this change in focus, as well as Gavla's words. "Alive?" he said to himself. "He can't be alive. That was Energized Protodermis. I studied that for months; he's sure to have died. The chances are against him!"Nevertheless, the idea of his arch enemy not, as he had hoped and tried to bring about, being dead, was not a good one. And since there wasn't really anything worse that could happen by simply turning around, that is exactly what he did.
We go from Gavla to Jack's POV without a smooth transition. Omnisicient narrator is tricky to pull off because of the constant temptation to jump from head to head to deliver information to the reader. That actually backfires because it makes it hard to emphathize with a character if we are not given sufficient time in his or her head, so the reader stops reading and nobody wins.Another problem I had with the story was its mood. While you eventually settled on an epic with humorous overtones, I found it hard to take seriously at times, like when Tavakai first ate a pickle or the whole idea of the Matoran of Apple Jacks tribe. How can I take "Matoran of Apple Jacks" seriously? You should have lampshaded it at least once, in my opinion, which would have made me go along with it. As it is, I don't see any reason to take the idea of Matoran of Apple Jacks seriously, no matter how much you presented it that way.Overall, this epic is not terrible. It does suffer from inconsistent POVs, some awkward sentences, certain unexplained plot points, one-dimensional characters who appear to be there for the sake of being there, and a boring beginning, but for an epic based on comics, it's pretty good, even though I bet I missed some of the references you may have made to your comics. Just consider my suggestions, if not for this epic, then for your next one, if you choose to write another one.-TNTOS-

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

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