Critique 4 Animation

I selected the group project on animation to do my critique on. At first glance the website is visually stimulating. There is a lot going on and I am unsure whether this works well with the theme of the website. Although I might argue that having the links filed down the left side of the site may make sense for a simplistic feel I think it leaves a lot of empty space apart from the one big image of the teddy bear on the right side of the screen. I think the stars and the set up in the end is more distracting then useful and the same chronological scenerio of screen shots with captions with links could be applied in a side scrolling and stacked manner rather then one narrow collumn.
That being said, I'm not the one who should criticise lay outs considering the difficulty I've had creating websites. The site does do a good job in educating people in regards to animation in a simple and effective way. I do think that much of the site relies to heavily on wikipedia as a source however. Although the extracts from Youtube adds a level of depth to the site, the historical animation is my favorite section of the work. The background is less distracting shades of brown that work well. I think the background of th main page should have something similar in the background. I wish there were more pages linked from the main page like this one.
I DO appreciate the section dedicated to computer animation as it seems that venue could have easily been ignored. Similarly the concentration on Anime and its popularity is an important inlusion as well. Overall the site does well to inform and has a lot of information on animation and delivers it in an easily accessible way. Outside of some visual layout alternatives I think the site is well made.