- Joined
- Jan 17, 2023
I forgot about the pen actually. Yeah, I guess that's my genuine issue. The inconsistent logic. Even if I personally don't like it, I could at least respect it if the show was able to follow its own rules for more than 5 seconds.
GLITCH Productions - From the guys that brought you the Super Mario 64 bloopers
- Thread starter Activelo
- Start date
- Joined
- Jun 29, 2021
Don't also forget doll teleporting everywhere but suddenly couldn't when trapped with cyn
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2023
I actually completely forgot about the teleporting too.
Sadly this isn't an isolated problem. A lot of things do this now where they just completely forget about a power a character has when it's convenient for the plot.
(The worst part is they could have at least handwaved it by having Doll attempt to teleport and it failing, implying Cyn blocking it somehow. Like when Uzi tries to use her powers on Cyn at the chapel. Just ANYTHING besides forgetting about it entirely.)
That being said, Liam admitting outright he just doesn't give a shit explains literally everything. What else is there for me to say?
- Joined
- Jun 29, 2021
They also could of just implied it's more moving so fast that it looks like teleporting, which is a common anime tropeI actually completely forgot about the teleporting too.
Sadly this isn't an isolated problem. A lot of things do this now where they just completely forget about a power a character has when it's convenient for the plot.
(The worst part is they could have at least handwaved it by having Doll attempt to teleport and it failing, implying Cyn blocking it somehow. Like when Uzi tries to use her powers on Cyn at the chapel. Just ANYTHING besides forgetting about it entirely.)
That being said, Liam admitting outright he just doesn't give a shit explains literally everything. What else is there for me to say?
Such a shame, because the concept is everything I'd love out of a cartoon and it's fumbled badly because someone doesn't know what to do, I will forever die on the hill this show should of been character focused, the characters or at least designs is clearly what most people love since people adore N, Uzi, V, and even J and doll
but nah instead we get wannabe confusing anime
all this is just peak modern western writers
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- Jan 17, 2023
I feel like that was probably the original intention before they decided to be narrative focused instead.
From what I can tell Murder Drones as a whole suffers from 2 major issues.
1. This is clearly Liam's first big project that's gotten a lot of attention and he clearly has no idea what he's doing and is incredibly indecisive on what he wants to do if the fact that he seems to rewrite every episode like 50 times before release is any indication.
(I'm even beginning to question if the reason the gap between episodes being so large has nothing to do with the animation or any of the actual work at all and instead is due to Liam constantly rewriting the plot. Fuck maybe that's why it costs so much to produce one fucking episode. They waste money getting so far along with one particular script and then Liam goes "Ummm actually no, we're doing this instead." and they have to throw it all out and start over. Jesus, that must be frustrating if that is the case. For the animators I mean.)
2. He just doesn't give enough of a shit to care about the details which makes everything seem extra sloppy and honestly makes the show feel like it has no heart. (Even though there's supposed to be DEEP LORE too somehow???)
If Liam at least cared enough to try his best despite how retarded and confused he is I could at least maybe respect it and enjoy the show in a "Wow, this is his first big project. Damn it's bad but at least he's trying his best." way. But I have never felt that even once watching the show. As I said before instead a lot of the time it just feels like schizo babble the show. Everything about this show is confused and indecisive. Just like it's creator. Wouldn't you know it?
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- Jan 17, 2023
Okay, a bit more sperging. Yeah, I know. You're probably tired of reading me ranting about Murder Drones.
But somehow this hadn't struck me until today, I was having a conversation with a friend and he pointed out how surprising it was that nobody was calling out how in poor taste some of the darker aspects of the series feel especially with the humor.
Like, in Episode 7 it was basically revealed that not only was the Earth destroyed but the disassembly drones were slaughtering cities full of civilians just like they were doing with the drones on Copper 9. It's one thing when it's just robots. But you have to now realize, these drones have likely slaughtered trillions of people. Men, women and probably children too. (Oh and fucking ate them too, can't forget that.) That's pretty fucking dark.
And to top it off the main villain is literally wearing the skin of the one person who was nice to them because "lol I'm evil." me and my friend were genuinely surprised that absolutely nobody talks about that.
It would be one thing if the series actually took itself seriously and it was treated as you would expect. But, that's not Murder Drones.
It mostly all just feeds back into what I said earlier about the complete tonal dissonance the show has with itself.
But somehow this hadn't struck me until today, I was having a conversation with a friend and he pointed out how surprising it was that nobody was calling out how in poor taste some of the darker aspects of the series feel especially with the humor.
Like, in Episode 7 it was basically revealed that not only was the Earth destroyed but the disassembly drones were slaughtering cities full of civilians just like they were doing with the drones on Copper 9. It's one thing when it's just robots. But you have to now realize, these drones have likely slaughtered trillions of people. Men, women and probably children too. (Oh and fucking ate them too, can't forget that.) That's pretty fucking dark.
And to top it off the main villain is literally wearing the skin of the one person who was nice to them because "lol I'm evil." me and my friend were genuinely surprised that absolutely nobody talks about that.
It would be one thing if the series actually took itself seriously and it was treated as you would expect. But, that's not Murder Drones.
It mostly all just feeds back into what I said earlier about the complete tonal dissonance the show has with itself.
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- Joined
- Jun 29, 2021
I feel the humor could of worked out better if the show actually tried to be a dark comedy, with you know actual crude or mean spirited jokes and humor akin to early 2000's cartoons
but that requires too much creativity, talent, and can't have anything slightly edgy in today's climate, gotta have that zoomer humor
like yea it's still be out of place and fucked but it would work better if the characters were aware of how horrible everything is and made light out of it in a way you'd actually expect a person to who is in that position(see certain careers where death and awful shit is something you witness daily and dark, cynical, downright depressing humor is one of the many ways they cope)
but again, too much creativity
you can sperg all you want because I equally probably have a lot of issues too and the fact there's practically nowhere to discuss this because the fandom just like with liam, doesn't seem to care about the flaws doesn't help
but that requires too much creativity, talent, and can't have anything slightly edgy in today's climate, gotta have that zoomer humor
like yea it's still be out of place and fucked but it would work better if the characters were aware of how horrible everything is and made light out of it in a way you'd actually expect a person to who is in that position(see certain careers where death and awful shit is something you witness daily and dark, cynical, downright depressing humor is one of the many ways they cope)
but again, too much creativity
you can sperg all you want because I equally probably have a lot of issues too and the fact there's practically nowhere to discuss this because the fandom just like with liam, doesn't seem to care about the flaws doesn't help
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- Jan 17, 2023
That's pretty much the only reason I sperg about it so much here as well because this is like the one site where people will actually engage with me when talking about the flaws of the show instead of just calling me retarded and or flat out ignoring me.
Depressing tbh.
Outside of conversations with IRL friend I rarely ever see anyone bringing this stuff up. And when people do, they just get blown off more or less.
That would fit way better. The zoomer humor just does not mesh. Now if the humor was suitably dark and cynical to match the dark and cynical setting it would probably go over way better.
Hell I can already for instance make N much more tolerable with one simple change. Make his comically happy go lucky attitude a coping mechanism. Give him cracks. That could be used for dark humor as well. Outside of episode 1 he completely drops any darker aspect of his character.
Fuck, it's something me and my friend make jokes about. Have it show he's always on the brink of going bananas and this is how he copes with the horrible things he does. As a singular example, having him respond to certain questions with unnecessarily dark and elaborate descriptions like
"So how did you sleep last night?"
"Not well. It's kind of hard to because of the screams. I always hear them whenever I close my eyes. They never stop and in my dreams I'm tortured by my victims as they screech and tear me apart while I'm helpless to-"
"Okay, I get it."
It's edgy but the thing is the setting itself is already dark and edgy the characters just kind of ignore it though. Actually... that's it. The setting and lore feels like some dark edgy 2000s internet series but the characters are modern zoomer characters and it just doesn't fucking work.
Basically, it'd be preferable if I was going "Yeah, that feels about right." instead of "Are you fucking kidding me?" all the time.
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- Jan 17, 2023
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- Jun 10, 2024
What grind my gears about Murder Drones is that they could've made the most milquetoast plot imaginable and it would still be amazing (although I have no idea how you can make a boring plot with a concept like that, even if it was like "Oh we gonna join forces and kill all the humans" or "Time to retaliate and kill those murder drones", it would still be a cool concept.)
Like, the character designs, the aesthetics, the soundtrack, the fact that they're ROBOTS, everything is just *chef kiss*, is just perfect!
... Yet, we waste all that on an confusing plotline that you have to rewatch all the previous episodes to """understand""" the latest one, which just ruins the overall experience for me. Fr, the only reason why the Murder Drones fandom doesn't talk about the flaws is because... well... the entire thing is flawed, what is there to talk about?
Watching Murder Drones for me is like watching Family Guy, I love the non-context clips that I find on YouTube, but watching an entire episode by itself is just dreadful. I wish they made a reboot spin-off(?) in webcomic form with a non-confusing storyline, and if people liked that, who knows? Maybe we can see it in animated form too.
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2023
Personally I blame Undertale.
I might be wrong, but I really do feel like Undertale is what popularized this kind of writing with zoomers.
Undertale also has the exact same issue where the serious moments don't really land at all because of the huge tonal dissonance the game has.
Well that and the fact the game really rushes the entire Asriel plotline and tbh never really gives a legit reason for why you should care. Why so many zoomers got so comically attached to that character still eludes me. But that's an entirely different discussion.
Except no it isn't actually because I just realized Murder Drones also had nearly the exact same issue with V's death. Again, her development is so rushed and we barely get to know her at all outside of her being a murderous psycho my reaction was pretty much the same. "Why should I care?" and the zoomer humor does it no favors.
I might be wrong, but I really do feel like Undertale is what popularized this kind of writing with zoomers.
Undertale also has the exact same issue where the serious moments don't really land at all because of the huge tonal dissonance the game has.
Well that and the fact the game really rushes the entire Asriel plotline and tbh never really gives a legit reason for why you should care. Why so many zoomers got so comically attached to that character still eludes me. But that's an entirely different discussion.
Except no it isn't actually because I just realized Murder Drones also had nearly the exact same issue with V's death. Again, her development is so rushed and we barely get to know her at all outside of her being a murderous psycho my reaction was pretty much the same. "Why should I care?" and the zoomer humor does it no favors.
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2023
I just realized how many posts in this thread are my own. Is it time to deepthroat a shotgun chat? I think it might be.
I'll just put this one behind a spoiler so you can just not read it if you like, but today I'm going to be sperging about Doll, spurred on by yet another conversation I had that sparked these ideas.
Tl;dr: Doll is a character that could have had potential as a tragic descent into desperation and evil but the show completely skips the development and starts us off right at insane killer.
I'll just put this one behind a spoiler so you can just not read it if you like, but today I'm going to be sperging about Doll, spurred on by yet another conversation I had that sparked these ideas.
Nobody brings up how confusing of a character Doll is. Besides just having a pointless russian speaking quirk which makes her a little harder to take seriously she has a few aspects that don't work.
Now at first her character seems simple and possibly had potential, a rival character with the same powers as the protagonist who goes about things their own way. She could have been an interesting counter force for Uzi. She wants revenge on V for killing her parents and she wants to prevent the Solver from destroying Copper 9.
Meanwhile Uzi befriends the Disassembly Drones that she despises and wants to work together to destroy the Solver entity or whatever, so we have a conflict of interest.
You'd think on paper she'd be an anti-hero right? But no, she's just as evil as the disassembly drones for no real reason. Despite being a victim of tragedy she has absolutely no qualms inflicting the same on others. You don't think she hadn't killed someone else's parents too at some point? I mean her home was literally filled with dead drones.
Now I could understand if she was only killing people when necessary to keep herself alive since the solver seems to require the user to feed on oil to survive. (Which is still unexplained Liam, like why though?)
But that's not what happens. Lizzie seems to be the only person she has any sort of friendliness towards. Infact it's heavily implied she knew Doll was killing people and was actively helping her but it's never addressed. Why is that? Who knows. And in case you were doubtful about Doll having no qualms with killing whoever she literally kills 2 random bystanders during her fight with Uzi at the prom just because she felt like it essentially.
Then for whatever reason she suddenly cares when she finds out Uzi is infected too??? Yet still goes against her anyway so it doesn't really matter or amount to anything.
So we have a character who seems almost contradictory to themselves. She hates the DDs yet behaves almost exactly like them. Now I've seen some people say she's supposed to be a dark mirror of Uzi. Something Uzi could have become if she was led a little more astray or something.
Now on paper that sounds like it could work and even be a bit tragic. Everyone knows the saying about being careful not to become a monster yourself while hunting monsters. But the problem with that is the series completely skips the tragic downfall. She's already a murderous psycho from the moment we meet her.
Now if the series actually devoted time to developing the characters properly this might have been a decent idea.
If I were writing this slop I would say first introduce us to Doll before she unlocks her powers then maybe after she does at first she starts off benign like "Wow! I can finally use these powers to actually do something!" then you depict her slow descent into madness as her measures become increasingly unnecessarily cruel as she begins to hate everyone around her for not doing anything about the DDs or even trying to help her. The funny thing is that could have been a legitimate reason too. Didn't Uzi say something similar about how everyone else was cowardly for just hiding inside the colony instead of trying to kill the killer drones? Well, Doll could have taken that to an extreme.
Instead we got... I'm not really sure honestly. A really shit villain I guess? Yeah, we'll go with that. A really boring and uninteresting villain that doesn't really give you a reason to be interested in her or care about her motivations.
In my opinion the best villains are the ones where you can at least understand why they do what they do. Even if you still hate them. Doll just does not provide that. As someone else put it she just feels like a plot device, an obstacle rather than an actual character.
Now at first her character seems simple and possibly had potential, a rival character with the same powers as the protagonist who goes about things their own way. She could have been an interesting counter force for Uzi. She wants revenge on V for killing her parents and she wants to prevent the Solver from destroying Copper 9.
Meanwhile Uzi befriends the Disassembly Drones that she despises and wants to work together to destroy the Solver entity or whatever, so we have a conflict of interest.
You'd think on paper she'd be an anti-hero right? But no, she's just as evil as the disassembly drones for no real reason. Despite being a victim of tragedy she has absolutely no qualms inflicting the same on others. You don't think she hadn't killed someone else's parents too at some point? I mean her home was literally filled with dead drones.
Now I could understand if she was only killing people when necessary to keep herself alive since the solver seems to require the user to feed on oil to survive. (Which is still unexplained Liam, like why though?)
But that's not what happens. Lizzie seems to be the only person she has any sort of friendliness towards. Infact it's heavily implied she knew Doll was killing people and was actively helping her but it's never addressed. Why is that? Who knows. And in case you were doubtful about Doll having no qualms with killing whoever she literally kills 2 random bystanders during her fight with Uzi at the prom just because she felt like it essentially.
Then for whatever reason she suddenly cares when she finds out Uzi is infected too??? Yet still goes against her anyway so it doesn't really matter or amount to anything.
So we have a character who seems almost contradictory to themselves. She hates the DDs yet behaves almost exactly like them. Now I've seen some people say she's supposed to be a dark mirror of Uzi. Something Uzi could have become if she was led a little more astray or something.
Now on paper that sounds like it could work and even be a bit tragic. Everyone knows the saying about being careful not to become a monster yourself while hunting monsters. But the problem with that is the series completely skips the tragic downfall. She's already a murderous psycho from the moment we meet her.
Now if the series actually devoted time to developing the characters properly this might have been a decent idea.
If I were writing this slop I would say first introduce us to Doll before she unlocks her powers then maybe after she does at first she starts off benign like "Wow! I can finally use these powers to actually do something!" then you depict her slow descent into madness as her measures become increasingly unnecessarily cruel as she begins to hate everyone around her for not doing anything about the DDs or even trying to help her. The funny thing is that could have been a legitimate reason too. Didn't Uzi say something similar about how everyone else was cowardly for just hiding inside the colony instead of trying to kill the killer drones? Well, Doll could have taken that to an extreme.
Instead we got... I'm not really sure honestly. A really shit villain I guess? Yeah, we'll go with that. A really boring and uninteresting villain that doesn't really give you a reason to be interested in her or care about her motivations.
In my opinion the best villains are the ones where you can at least understand why they do what they do. Even if you still hate them. Doll just does not provide that. As someone else put it she just feels like a plot device, an obstacle rather than an actual character.
Tl;dr: Doll is a character that could have had potential as a tragic descent into desperation and evil but the show completely skips the development and starts us off right at insane killer.
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- Mar 29, 2019
@Bob Barbas because I cannot quote or reply your post for some reason.
Honestly, you are the only reason I even check into this portion of the thread. There are so many flaws with the show and it's characters that nobody wants to address. I couldn't even start the series to understand it merely because it starts off with just a whirlwind of concept that makes it hard to understand anything.
I've seen clips and snippets from various places but it doesn't help nor do any of the fans who try to address anything remotely about the series. It just becomes more confusing.
I don't know if it's just me but Cyn or whatever the most famous one right now being how they be is unsettling. I'm well aware the skinning of her own friend and wearing it to blend in is a shock value with most modern dark / horror elements but the amount of people making some unsettling merchandise off it seems...well...someone for making a Daki pillow of a psycho robot snake wearing her friend's skin is all I'm going to leave this with.
Honestly, you are the only reason I even check into this portion of the thread. There are so many flaws with the show and it's characters that nobody wants to address. I couldn't even start the series to understand it merely because it starts off with just a whirlwind of concept that makes it hard to understand anything.
I've seen clips and snippets from various places but it doesn't help nor do any of the fans who try to address anything remotely about the series. It just becomes more confusing.
I don't know if it's just me but Cyn or whatever the most famous one right now being how they be is unsettling. I'm well aware the skinning of her own friend and wearing it to blend in is a shock value with most modern dark / horror elements but the amount of people making some unsettling merchandise off it seems...well...someone for making a Daki pillow of a psycho robot snake wearing her friend's skin is all I'm going to leave this with.
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2023
Weird.
Fuck it, I might as well get this rant out of the way too since you mentioned Cyn who so far seems to be the big bad at the moment.
Cyn is somehow even less interesting as a villain than Doll and any horror she may have been able to instill is completely shattered for me by her personality and manner of speaking. She feels like a complete joke character yet we're expected to take her seriously? This is the one who destroyed the earth? This fucking thing? I was very disappointed when it was basically revealed her entire goal is to just eat the universe, instead of a simple robot revolution like Episode 5 made me think.
Now, the thing is a villain with such a destructive and evil goal CAN work. But you have to portray them in a very particular way for it to land properly. I called Cyn "Discount Gravemind" a few pages back and since their goal is pretty much the same I'll use The Flood from the Halo series as an example.
The flood are frightening because they are more or less a force of nature, a force of destruction. They're not funny, they simply want to kill and consume everything in the galaxy out of pure spite and contempt for all living things. That's why The Flood lands because they are treated and behave as you would expect a destructive force of nature and death.
Cyn on the other hand is literally just Haha Funny Computer Girl anything she does to try and be scary or intimidating falls completely flat because her entire character is a joke. And she doesn't even treat everything like a joke in the creepy way but moreso in the zoomer funny haha way and it's awful.
If you want a creepy evil AI villain done right, look at something like Shodan from System Shock. I wish they copied Shodan rather than Glados. Except, Glados was actually funny sometimes.
Now, the thing is a villain with such a destructive and evil goal CAN work. But you have to portray them in a very particular way for it to land properly. I called Cyn "Discount Gravemind" a few pages back and since their goal is pretty much the same I'll use The Flood from the Halo series as an example.
The flood are frightening because they are more or less a force of nature, a force of destruction. They're not funny, they simply want to kill and consume everything in the galaxy out of pure spite and contempt for all living things. That's why The Flood lands because they are treated and behave as you would expect a destructive force of nature and death.
Cyn on the other hand is literally just Haha Funny Computer Girl anything she does to try and be scary or intimidating falls completely flat because her entire character is a joke. And she doesn't even treat everything like a joke in the creepy way but moreso in the zoomer funny haha way and it's awful.
If you want a creepy evil AI villain done right, look at something like Shodan from System Shock. I wish they copied Shodan rather than Glados. Except, Glados was actually funny sometimes.
Tl;dr: Cyn is not sinister enough if the show is going to keep trying to insist it's also horror.
- Joined
- Jun 29, 2021
The writing is such a mess I honestly forgot if the main villain is suppose to be cyn or the absolute solver possessing her
Corpos suck shit threw a straw but in cases like this and with helluva and hazbin, big corpos breathing down someone's neck and tard wrangling would honestly benefit a lot, because there is such thing as too much creative freedom and this is a great example, constant rewrites because nothing is forcing him to stick with one thing, a confusing plotline of plotholes and lack of development, probably could of been fixed with a few filler episodes to flesh the world and characters out, and someone tard wrangling him telling him to either stick with a lane or just make a new show
I've watched OVAS handle character development and plots in 4 episodes and end on a satisfying note that makes sense, it can be done
Corpos suck shit threw a straw but in cases like this and with helluva and hazbin, big corpos breathing down someone's neck and tard wrangling would honestly benefit a lot, because there is such thing as too much creative freedom and this is a great example, constant rewrites because nothing is forcing him to stick with one thing, a confusing plotline of plotholes and lack of development, probably could of been fixed with a few filler episodes to flesh the world and characters out, and someone tard wrangling him telling him to either stick with a lane or just make a new show
I've watched OVAS handle character development and plots in 4 episodes and end on a satisfying note that makes sense, it can be done
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2023
Same.
Personally though I don't think Cyn is possessed at all and the entity is simply lending her its power or something because we have seen absolutely 0 evidence of Cyn being controlled by some other force, no conflicting personalities, nothing. In almost every appearance she looks and behaves the exact same. So, if it does turn out she's simply just a puppet for something else then I don't think it's been conveyed very well at all. Like when she possessed other characters, it was obvious. But there's no hints at all of Cyn having some "true" personality underneath.
Unless the big reveal is Cyn was never real in the first place which would make sense. Wouldn't fix any of the other issues, but still.
This is basically the conclusion I have come to.
Liam needs a tard wrangler, just like Kojima or George Lucas. They have cool ideas on paper, but are clueless on how to properly refine them and need someone else to filter their ideas through. Though in fairness it's always good to have someone competent to bounce your ideas off of. But some need it more than others.
This is what happens when a tard artist doesn't have a wrangler to filter ideas through.
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Two Dollars
kiwifarms.net
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- Jan 6, 2022
You can’t quote posts that are really long, but you can highlight part of a post and quote that.
Lankybox Enjoyer
kiwifarms.net
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- May 4, 2024
I was looking through steam reviews for YIIK, as you do, and I came across a negative review. Normally negative reviews on steam are usually just memes dunking on the game or actual reviews that have way too much effort put into them, but this review perfectly encapsulated everything wrong with YIIK in the best way possible in just one sentence. "YIIK sucks, and that is disheartening because it is definitely not from a lack of effort." YIIK was a bad game. The gameplay is tedious, the story is overly pretentious while simultaneously being dumb, and the game utterly fails at delivering its message because they never properly portray that you're supposed to root against Alex and only resolve his flaws at the end in an extremely forced way, leaving the player dumbfounded and believing Alex to be an endorsement of pretentiousness. But there is no denying that there was so much love put into it. The music, visuals, and details are phenomenal and would prop up a good game into being amazing, but since these things are trapped in YIIK, they end up as wasted effort. The developers wanted YIIK to be as good as possible, but since they didn't have the expertise, as good as possible just wasn't good enough. Why am I talking about this here? Because I believe that Murder Drones has the exact same problem.
Liam Vickers is a talented artist and there's no denying that. Before Murder Drones, Liam self produced a pilot called CliffSide. CliffSide was very well received at the time with people having their minds blown that such a high quality long form animation could be freely distributed on YouTube, despite the janky animation (keep in mind that this was before Hazbin Hotel). Why is this important, well according to Liam himself, CliffSide was a side project he did for fun and he wasn't even an animator! That is insane for anyone to do and really shows the talent Liam has. CliffSide undeniably led to Murder Drones, but before Murder Drones, Liam had another series that he storyboarded on his YouTube channel, Internecion Cube. Internecion Cube is a serious he storyboarded for a little while on his channel that is about murderous robots. In the video where Liam talks about the production of CliffSide, he mentions that he pitched CliffSide to many different studios in order to continue the series.
Although there is no way to know for sure, I believe that Internecion Cube or something very similar was pitched to Glitch which would be accepted and eventually become the pilot for Murder Drones. That sounds good, but here's the thing, Murder Drones is way different from Liam's previous work. Way too different to be a coincidence. Liam Vickers loves monster girls. In Cliffside there's the spider girl and in Internecion Cube there's the robot cube girl. In fact, both of those monster girls are the main love interest for the main character. The dynamic between N and Uzi is so completely different that it makes me believe that Liam may have very little creative control. Just the way it's written is also so much different past the first episode. The first episode of Murder Drones, however flawed, is most certainly written by Liam Vickers, it just has his style all over it. But episode 2 and beyond, or post rewrite as was explained earlier in the thread, the show just changes so much in writing style that the beginning of the series is barely recognizable from the end. Glitch probably wanted a linear story rather than an episodic show that Liam wanted to make.
It is easy to pin all of the blame on Liam and just laugh at him for not being able to make a single thing about the story make sense, but the more I think about it, the more I think he was screwed over by higher ups. Everything about episode 1 is completely dropped by the middle of the series. Uzi clearly was never supposed to have the absolute solver which is indicated by the lazer gun that is destroyed in episode 2 that was shown to be her main weapon in episode 1, Uzi is immediately allowed back into the outpost when it is implied that her exile would be a major plot point, and the obvious villain that was hinted at is never brought up again, even as a cover up for Cyn. Liam probably envisioned Murder Drones to be a much different series, but due to corporate pressure he was forced to change his vision, and the show paid for it. Yes Liam could have tried harder to make the story more coherent, but can you blame him for not wanting to write someone else's story about his characters. Liam as an artist most likely knows his strengths and weaknesses, which is why he stopped animating CliffSide in the first place. Liam was just not built to create a show like what Glitch wanted Murder Drones to be, so he didn't and instead created the mess of a show that is Murder Drones. Murder Drones isn't bad due to a lack of effort, it's just that the Liam Vickers could only make the show as good as he could have possibly made it, and Glitch lowered that bar due to them forcing the show to take a direction Liam wasn't comfortable with.
I hope the season finale of Murder Drones is a total PR disaster for Glitch and Murder Drones gets recognized as a heavily flawed show. It probably won't, but with how low the viewership is, even after Digital Circus blew up, I can't imagine Murder Drones being continued after the season finale. Murder Drones was completely botched and Glitch is 100% is responsible for fucking it up, at least in my opinion.
Liam Vickers is a talented artist and there's no denying that. Before Murder Drones, Liam self produced a pilot called CliffSide. CliffSide was very well received at the time with people having their minds blown that such a high quality long form animation could be freely distributed on YouTube, despite the janky animation (keep in mind that this was before Hazbin Hotel). Why is this important, well according to Liam himself, CliffSide was a side project he did for fun and he wasn't even an animator! That is insane for anyone to do and really shows the talent Liam has. CliffSide undeniably led to Murder Drones, but before Murder Drones, Liam had another series that he storyboarded on his YouTube channel, Internecion Cube. Internecion Cube is a serious he storyboarded for a little while on his channel that is about murderous robots. In the video where Liam talks about the production of CliffSide, he mentions that he pitched CliffSide to many different studios in order to continue the series.
Although there is no way to know for sure, I believe that Internecion Cube or something very similar was pitched to Glitch which would be accepted and eventually become the pilot for Murder Drones. That sounds good, but here's the thing, Murder Drones is way different from Liam's previous work. Way too different to be a coincidence. Liam Vickers loves monster girls. In Cliffside there's the spider girl and in Internecion Cube there's the robot cube girl. In fact, both of those monster girls are the main love interest for the main character. The dynamic between N and Uzi is so completely different that it makes me believe that Liam may have very little creative control. Just the way it's written is also so much different past the first episode. The first episode of Murder Drones, however flawed, is most certainly written by Liam Vickers, it just has his style all over it. But episode 2 and beyond, or post rewrite as was explained earlier in the thread, the show just changes so much in writing style that the beginning of the series is barely recognizable from the end. Glitch probably wanted a linear story rather than an episodic show that Liam wanted to make.
It is easy to pin all of the blame on Liam and just laugh at him for not being able to make a single thing about the story make sense, but the more I think about it, the more I think he was screwed over by higher ups. Everything about episode 1 is completely dropped by the middle of the series. Uzi clearly was never supposed to have the absolute solver which is indicated by the lazer gun that is destroyed in episode 2 that was shown to be her main weapon in episode 1, Uzi is immediately allowed back into the outpost when it is implied that her exile would be a major plot point, and the obvious villain that was hinted at is never brought up again, even as a cover up for Cyn. Liam probably envisioned Murder Drones to be a much different series, but due to corporate pressure he was forced to change his vision, and the show paid for it. Yes Liam could have tried harder to make the story more coherent, but can you blame him for not wanting to write someone else's story about his characters. Liam as an artist most likely knows his strengths and weaknesses, which is why he stopped animating CliffSide in the first place. Liam was just not built to create a show like what Glitch wanted Murder Drones to be, so he didn't and instead created the mess of a show that is Murder Drones. Murder Drones isn't bad due to a lack of effort, it's just that the Liam Vickers could only make the show as good as he could have possibly made it, and Glitch lowered that bar due to them forcing the show to take a direction Liam wasn't comfortable with.
I hope the season finale of Murder Drones is a total PR disaster for Glitch and Murder Drones gets recognized as a heavily flawed show. It probably won't, but with how low the viewership is, even after Digital Circus blew up, I can't imagine Murder Drones being continued after the season finale. Murder Drones was completely botched and Glitch is 100% is responsible for fucking it up, at least in my opinion.
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2023
You do make a fair point. I admit I may have been somewhat unfair to Liam and perhaps Glitch did fuck him over. I actually wouldn't be surprised if someone came out and said the entire 8 episode thing was agreed upon as a budget thing. Like we already know Murder Drones as is, costs like about 2k or something around that per episode? (Information from an alleged interview, can't verify but would be a weird thing to lie about.) And since we don't know Glitch's overall budget for all we know that could be very expensive for them.
Considering we know the show was originally going to be a completely different genre I wouldn't be surprised if Glitch told Liam "Look, we do not have the budget to produce a 30 episode series so you're going to have to cut some corners here." I forget when the 8 episodes for Season 1 were confirmed but I remember it being at most a few episodes ago so it was definitely decided on fairly early. I feel like the budget issue is probably the most likely explanation. Glitch just didn't have the budget to do what Liam wanted to do. Plus they probably figured if the series flopped they were basically fucking themselves for no reason.
Though I will say that a good writer still could've made 8 episodes work. But I don't think writing is Liam's strong suite at all. Infact he seems to be an artist first and foremost and Glitch possibly forcing him to constantly change his ideas due to budget limitations probably doesn't help either.
That being said, they probably should have hired someone who was actually a writer and had Liam be the idea guy or something. Would that have fixed the problems? Who knows, but it might have turned out a bit more coherent. But then again that's also another staff member they need to be paying.
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Two Dollars
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jan 6, 2022
Back when I regularly kept up with SMG4, I couldn’t help but notice that it started taking itself much more seriously and became less episodic when Kevin got involved. With how big Glitch has gotten, it makes me wonder what exactly Luke’s role is. Does he still animate, or does he just oversee everything now? At the very least, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s as involved in SMG4 as Seth Macfarlane is in Family Guy (which is to say, basically nothing beyond voice acting).