Category: Finished Series: Adventure/Fantasy/Science Fiction

Welcome everyone, to another episode of Kaina and the Great Snow Sea! This week we finally reach civilization, as Kaina escapes the Valghians and gets pulled deeper and deeper into this conflict. What happens to Ririha? Who is the hot knight lady? Read on, and find out!

Starting off, I want to praise Kaina’s production. By and large it’s still the same flawed CGI work its always been. But this week I saw some actual… ambition, from Polygon Picture. The swordfight between Orinoga and Amelothee, the leaders of their respective expeditions, had a lot of cool shots. Some jank ones to, sure. The snow moved like blobs. And the ambitious ones were still rough around the edges. But stuff like the tracking camera and closeup swordplay lent their fight an energy that has otherwise been absent from Kaina. And then of course stuff like the backgrounds, such as the undersea roots or Atland at night, continue to be beautiful. Its like Kaina is slowly ramping itself up as it gets more and more used to its models and world, like this CGI approach and reuse is only making production easier as it goes.

Continue reading “Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 4 [Conflict at the Snow Sea]” →

Welcome back, to another week of Kaina and the Great Snow Sea! This week we reach the bottom of the tree, Ririha and Kaina get to know each other, and the villains introduce red-haired general lady. Lots to enjoy this week, so lets dive in!

Right off the bat, I want to say that I’m actually starting to get used to Kaina’s visuals. It still doesn’t look good, sure. But without the wrinkled skin old people to show us just how texture-less it is, it’s nowhere near as noticeable. It also helps that the Canopy Tree is a fantastic backdrop, and that Polygon Pictures actually did a decent job of compositing them onto it. They stood out, sure. But they still interacted with it, and were framed against it, pretty decently. Take the ledge scene for instance. They fit pretty well onto that small outcrop, and it felt like they interacted with it well. Most likely it, and the tree surrounding it, are CGI models themselves with a painted texture. But however they accomplished it, it didn’t look bad. At this point, it’s really just the hair that stands out. Most of the time.

Continue reading “Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 3 [Traveling Down the Orbital Tree]” →

Welcome everyone, to my 2nd show of the season, Kaina and the Great Snow Sea! For the sake my sanity, and word count, I’m just going to call it Kaina from now on. I hope you’ll forgive me this transgression. Now without further ado, onto the episode!

Starting off, lets take a deeper look at Kaina’s animation and production. As we mentioned in our initial impressions, Kaina… Kinda (heh) looks like shit. The character models look plasticky and stiff, in what has sort of become Polygon Pictures staple. That’s no surprise. But where I do want to give the CGI credit is in the monsters and their design. This CGI may look like shit on soft, squishy people, but on hard carapace-d giant bugs like the Tree Fly? It doesn’t look half bad. Not great, but it certainly sticks out far less on something we know isn’t supposed to be recognizably human. Pair that with Kaina’s greatest production strength, it’s absolutely stellar background art, and you have what I think is an ultimately passable art style. At the very least it’s enough that I picked it up to blog about it for a season.

Continue reading “Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 2 [Princess of the Snow Sea]” →