Animation Spotlight: Dead Space: Aftermath

As promised in the Game Spotlight for Dead Space 2, let’s have a look at one of the two media releases dealing with the events leading up to the start of Dead Space 2.

The first Dead Space animation, titled Dead Space: Downfall, was one of those “it’s so bad it’s actually good” situations, though I’m still undecided as to how I should take Dead Space: Aftermath since, overall, it’s not really as bad as Downfall.

Warning: Unlike the Dead Space 2 entry, I’m not going to bother to try to craft this entry to avoid spoilers…

Story

Chronologically, Aftermath is set after the events of the graphic novel, Dead Space: Salvage, which depicts the recovery of the USG Ishimura after the events of the first Dead Space game and before the events of Ignition and Dead Space 2.

Aftermath takes you back to the Aegis system with a crew sent on a covert mission by the EarthGov to recover shards of the Red Marker that was destroyed by Isaac Clarke in the first game. The opening of the movie begins with the end of the crews struggle against the a Necromorph outbreak on the ship, though their rescuers aren’t any more friendly toward them. In order to find out exactly what happened during the mission, the surviving crew are interrogated by EarthGov operatives, each sharing the story of the mission and the Necromorph outbreak from their own point of view.

Animation

What’s interesting about Aftermath is that it is made up of a number of different animation styles… similar to the anime shorts popularised by The Animatrix, however Aftermath presents these shorts as one cohesive movie. The current events depicted in the movie are presented in a CGI format which will remind people of works from Vancouver animators Mainframe Entertainment (now called Rainmaker Entertainment apparently… who knew), though it is actually done by some South Korean company. During the flashback moments each of the surviving crew members have, the animation style switches to a more traditional cel-shaded look that resembles styles used in anime… but they’re not. The fact of the matter is that this entire animation is actually done by various animation companies in South Korea… who most likely also do the in-between animation frames for many Japanese animations as well.

Though I like the concept of the varying animation styles in a cohesive non-chapter based movie, it can be a little distracting at times. I also found the changing character designs of the various characters in Aftermath to be quite distracting, at times I started to forget which character was which.

To illustrate exactly what I mean, take a look at the four images above that depicts the changing appearance of Isabel Cho throughout Aftermath.

Voice Acting

The voice acting in Dead Space: Downfall was laughably bad so really, the only way they could go with Aftermath was up. The cast is made up of a number of different nationalities, from your typical smart ass American, to the bad ass Russian dude, a Scottish Captain (with a pretty awesome beard) and a hawt Korean chick… oh and of course a particular weirdo many will come to know in Dead Space 2… For the most part I didn’t really have any complaints about the voice acting, it served its purpose and I didn’t feel that any of it was bad.

I do feel kind of sorry though a little amused by the type casting of Christopher Judge… I mean, sure, he’s a big African-American guy therefore in an animation he’d most likely be depicted as such… but did they really have to do the whole Goa’uld pain stick thing? Poor guy has already had to go through that a million times during Stargate SG-1, he didn’t really need to have it done to him in this too.

Final Thoughts

Bottom line is that most people aren’t really going to care about what goes on in this movie unless they’re really into the whole storyline concerning the Dead Space universe… and no, not even the one scene that has a naked Korean chick in it is really going to persuade you to look into this movie, but that’s not really the issue… I just wanted to mention that for the hell of it.

Anyway, enjoy the cliché movie trailer… the next entry I’ll post up will be about Dead Space: Ignition, but after that I’ll write about other stuff… I mean, unless they release that DLC episode for Dead Space 2 really soon.