Firstly, I think we all should have seen Loona needing a shot from a mile away. It's exactly what they'd do!
Okay but fucking Striker bursting in all dramatic before snatching Stolas up! Oh it was sooo good.
Though I'm not quite sure about Strikers VA replacement. Like, nobody will surpass Norman Reedus, but still.
Oh, and the fact Stolas literally had to ask "Am I in danger?"
And Striker was a legit menace, maybe even more so than his original episode. Man was kicking Ass with Rope!
Mother fucker answered what the unofficial installation already had.
And Bloood!
STOLAS. CAN. BLEED.
OH MY GOD. ANDREALPHUS.
Alright, I'll bite the bullet and day it.
Andrealphus wasn't nearly as much of a Twink as I was expecting. Like, I expected MAJOR Bottom energy, like Angel Dust levels of manwhore, and sadly I just didn't get it.
But hey, at least he's fairly supportive of his sister, so that's something.
Oh my God! Stolas' weak little "Blitzy will..." when he's stabbed. Fucking Gut wrenching!!
And They finally addressed what happened in episode 7!!! About freaking time!!!
Over all I loved it, and will probably be posting several more things I noticed from the episode later on but not all of us live in the USA and I am so tired.
*cracks knuckles* Get ready for a long ask
As an animator/artist myself, I have a lot to say about the character designs.
I'm sure you've heard this before, but these characters are not animation friendly. More detail just makes it harder to animate. (While Bee is a notorious example, nearly all of the characters suffer from this)
When designing a character for animation, you need to pick and choose the key parts of their design, because you're going to be drawing the same thing over and over.
Another thing: The characters have so much freaking red to them.
I won't dwell on this for long, but they don't stand out from the background because there's so much freaking red
(Another thing that bugs me is that the characters don't look like what the artist wanted them to be like)
Ex:
Charlie doesn't look like a doll
Vaggie barely has a moth resemblance
Angel Dust doesn't look like a spider
Alastor doesn't look like a deer
Niffty doesn't look like a bug or B-movie styled aliens
Ozzie doesn't look like a rooster
Beelzebub doesn't look like an animal trainer (you would think with all the suits and shit she likes to use, an animal trainer's outfit would be perfect for this)
Another thing: Her characters reuse the same design tropes. Bow ties, suits, fingerless gloves, gold tooth, stick thin figure, top hat, etc
I'd excuse it if this was a beginner artist (heck, I used to do this, but eventually learned and grew out of it) but this is a woman in her 30's who graduated art school.
TL;DR The designs are bad and hard as heck to animate
Couldn't have said it better myself
I feel like, when Viv sits down to design a new character, her personal preferences come first and everything they're actually supposed to represent second. Sort of tacked onto the final product like "yeah sure that'll do it"
As for the details, if I may add on: not long ago I've studied screencaps of a character from Helluva for redesign purposes. The amount of inconsistencies I came across was surprising! I'm pretty sure he didn't even have an official ref sheet (nor has one been posted to date), but I've heard that even for more prevalent characters the animators only have the most basic turnarounds? Also stuff like Millie's hair and spots tend to be inconsistent. With so much gratuitous/weird detail and apparently lack of proper reference, consistency suffers
Everyone is also very spiky and full of triangles; I'd love a more soft or even square character. Also some different body types... I mean, remember Mimzy from Hazbin? I don't know if Viv does. I wonder if she's still gonna appear at some point. But anyway
On a more positive note, there's a lot of background character designs that I find really cool & enjoyable! Maybe I'll make an appreciation post for them sometime
What're Loona, Striker, and Stella like in the Kindergarten AU?
Thank you for the ask @welcome-to-hotel-california !
it makes me really happy to see people are still interested in the Hazbindergarten AU even after I kinda let it go dormant for so long!
Second up I’m really glad you asked about Stella & Striker, because that lets me bring up an idea I’d been thinking of for a while! (that’s why it’s so long and why it took me so long to reply, I had a lot of ideas but it took a while to get them typed up):
So I was trying to think of a way to incorporate Adam and Lute and I thought maybe they could be the teachers of a different classroom within the school, maybe one that doesn’t deal with “problem” students like the ones Charlie and Vaggie oversee, and that would include characters who wouldn’t fit in as well/don’t have a major enough role to fit into the Hazbindergarten setting while still letting them have a role or cameo in the series.
Stella I think would be in Adam’s classroom, but she would know Stolas from her parents and his parents doing a lot of business together and they have “playdates” outside of school (heavily implied to be build-up for an arranged marriage. She initially has a crush on him, but the more she’s pushed into their courtship the more their dynamic warps into a controlling, bullying dynamic on her part. She frequently tries to force Stolas to play house with her, and to go around with her on the playground at school recess, and he understandably absolutely hates it. For a long time Stella is the only kid Stolas ever really gets to be around outside of his much older siblings who barely tolerate him, but once Stolas joins Charlie’s class and is able to interact with Blitz he becomes more able to stand up to her behavior. For a while she bribes Striker with some of her lunch to make Stolas play with her instead of Blitz, but her teachers eventually put a stop to it when they catch Striker and Blitz fighting because of it. Unlike in the actual show, I think Stella could have her behaviors addressed and go on to develop some genuine friendships with other characters (maybe even eventually Stolas) once she’s able to understand that it’s wrong for almost most of the adults in her life to be so insistent that she form a connection with this other young child who doesn’t seem to want to be around her and for her to be punished when she “fails” at that. She still needs to amend her behavior, but she doesn’t have that same degree of calculated cognition canon Stella has.
.
Since Loona is Blitz’s kid in the real show I initially wasn’t planning on incorporating her or Vee, but picturing Blitz & Stolas playing house together I thought it could be cute if they always have a wolf and an owl plush that they pretend are their kids, and later on in the last episode of the series is a time jump that shows Blitz and Stolas dropping off their kids on the first day of school and it’s two daughters that are very obviously versions of Loona and Vee.
Striker would be one of Adam’s students at first, but eventually has to be transferred to Charlie’s class. He’s one of Adam’s few lower income students and he clearly has some at-home issues, such as often “forgetting” his lunch or periodically missing school for a few days with little explanation given. He lives in a rural part of town with his great uncle, the local sheriff’s brother, because he was supposedly the result of an affair one of his parents had. After one of the aforementioned absences he begins to develop severe mood swings, swearing, paranoia, and seemingly random severe behavioral episodes (which are later revealed to be frontal lobe seizures). The closest thing to an explanation of what happened Charlie or Adam ever get is that there was an accident of some sort out on the farm and that the sheriff “handled things” afterwards. Striker has a lot of trouble adjusting to Charlie’s classroom at first, behaving aggressively and stirring up the other students, but he does eventually settle in as he comes to appreciate the fact that on the whole he can relate to his new classmates’ more than he could with the kids in the first classroom, that he can still play with Stella at recess, and that he isn’t having to struggle as hard to keep up when he misses school. He warms up to Vaggie much faster than to Charlie since he thinks that she’s cool for having so much military knowledge and she’s able to use this to curb some of his initial behavioral issues. His favorite parts of the day are music time, P.E, and snack time because now snacks are being provided in-class instead of only those packed from home.
FINALLY getting around to downloading all of loona's music..... i literally havent listened to any of it since the boycott began WHICH IS CRAZY THAT ITS BEEN THAT LONG. i dont know how i survived
Striker got held at gun point by someone he literally called a weak little vermin and tried to kill no less than 10 minutes ago AND THEN Got crushed under a statue representing his ego and y'all are telling me you DONT think he's a loser????
This is coming from a striker super fan but guys gals and non binary pals, the man is a boy-fail who gets no bitches.
yk what I hate when ppl ask me what my favorite helluva boss character is and i normally say like beelzebub or Verosika Mayday but also really like Loona but I never say that bc of her fans but I wanna say loona but i never can 😭
this phrase right here is esp cruel like they’re just just trying to drag her name through the mud…god forbid chuu who blockberry was overworking btw wanted to get paid for her work