This melted my heart! I love Jeff and his seeing him interact, there's just something inherently charming about a zombie who has limited movement, trying his very best and eventually succeeding. Great job!

Oh I like the Music and the drawings a lot! I'm not sure exactly what is going on, so it might be beneficial to have some narration. I am interested by the zombie. He seems nice and kind.

Hey Spencer,

Great to see that you’ve finished your story reel! As I’ve said earlier, I think you have a very interesting concept to play around with. I also want to compliment on managing to tell the story without any narration!

I recently gave you a bunch of feedback on a previous submission, so I think it’s nice to check how things have progressed. First of all, I appreciate it that you were able to still make quite some changes to your story! Overall, I think your story has a good flow to it with enough external challenges which are thrown at Jeff. Also, using the guitar to find out who he was as a living person is interesting, but I still think you could’ve done it without it.

The thing I’m missing most is the character’s motivation, to do certain things or not. I feel like that he gives up pretty quickly. After the dog went to the house of the humans, it seemed that Jeff didn’t even try to get the dog back. And for a first time viewer, it might not be entirely clear that he isn’t allowed to get to the houses or that he’s afraid to go close to it.

Towards the ending, when Jeff finally has the guts to get the dog back, the girl and parents are totally cool with that. This is a point of concern to me, since most humans would either try to run away from zombies (or even strange people), but not to embrace it. Also, the humans ‘just’ accept that the dog is his. I’m curious why that is? Why would they believe him?

So, good job so far, but I think you can push this story even more to make it more believable for the audience! Please let me know if I can help you in any way, since I still see potential in the concept.

I hope that you have learned a lot through the Xperiential program, and most of all, that you’ve enjoyed it! The latter can certainly be seen in your story reel.

It was great to see your story grow, and that I could help you with it.

Hi Diederick, Thanks for your help on the story reel. I think your feedback is helpful since I was working on the story and also had some stopping points where I needed to expand the story a little more. I think a lot of people commented on the fact that zombies are strange and not usually embraced by humans I can keep this in mind for this project. The dog essentially ran away because she was scared of Jeff and he is a zombie so he didn't think much of the situation.

In terms of characters arcs I think I could have expanded Jeff's story more to include his overall journey to become friends with Flower the dog.

Hey Spencer,

Thanks a lot for your reply! I'm glad to hear that my feedback has been helpful for the last couple of weeks. And I can totally understand that it's a challenge how to decide what to include or not after getting large amounts of feedback. This is always a difficult thing to accomplish. I think you did a great job whatsoever!

Regarding Jeff not thinking much about the situation, I would suggest to flesh out the characteristics of Jeff in these kind of situations a little more, in order for the story points to be completely purposeful. This way, the audience can really empathise with Jeff! Please let me know if you're planning to work on the story more and if you'd like to have any help!

Hello Spencer. It seems that Jeff is a nice Zombie, I like the way he plays with the dog, and that he likes music.
I am curious if Jeff the zombie was always nice, or he became good after he died? The music you are using is great!
Good job!

Hello Spencer,
I really liked your story about Jeff! He seems to yarn for his normal life back and especially the connection to the dog was a lot of fun!
Some frames seemed a bit chaotic to me, maybe cleaning them up and adding some shading to draw a focus point would help here.
I also liked the music you added, it fit the story well, especially when Jeff picked up the guitar!

I liked the pace of the story and how it kept in time with the music. The way you clearly set up Jeff's house is good world building! I would like to have some more clarity with what happens to the dog. Does the dog go to the girl's house to be babysat or did the dog choose to leave Jeff for the girl and her family and then comes back? I think adding some images showing the dog move towards the house would help to explain its disappearance from the middle part. Your story was very fun to watch!

Thanks for the feedback, I'll consider adjusting some of those frames since I am still working on some of the editing and framing of the story.

Love the music, and your editing of slowing it down at one point (something I was hoping to achieve in my story), but I think you’ve created such a lovesble character who would usually associate with being grotesque and fearful. I was a bit confused on where the dog went, and how the guitar came to play as a second character to keep the main character happy. But overall really enjoyed your story, and felt like I could follow along fairly well. Good luck with what comes next for your creative journey!
Paige