InsertFunnyUserName's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Avania: episode 1 part 1]

There's potential here.

The animation was good overall. There were a few points where the linework was shaky and where some of the movements looked stiff, but I don't have any other complaints in that regard. You did a good job varying up the camera angle.

I think my biggest issue with this is that the lighthearted presentation and execution don't feel as though they match the more serious nature of the plot. It feels like it's consistently hovering in the void between comedy and drama, never touching one or the other. For example, I'm not sure whether the second scene is supposed to be climactic and suspenseful or playful and comedic.

Utilizing lighting and music can help a lot with this because it can drastically affects the mood. If you need music, than the audio portal is a great resource. If you don't find a song there that works, you can always ask around to see if there's a musician who will collaborate with you. In terms of lighting, using more contrast and darker, less saturated colors will help show that a scene is supposed to be more serious whereas using saturated, bright colors will make the scene look happier and more playful.

Just a voice recording tip: when you're recording, it's better to be further back from the mic and speaking louder than close to the mic. When you're too close, the mic picks up the sound of the air coming out from speaking, which makes the recording muddy, as it is here. Also, be conscious of how quickly you're speaking. It's easy to speak more quickly than you think you are, so when recording, speak a little slower than you think you should. This will help prevent the dialog from whizzing by.

It's also not advised to try and do all of the voices yourself, especially if the characters are a different gender. There's a number of voice actors here on NG who will collaborate with you. Granted, the voice of the main character did fit him, so that was good.

The dialog could use some improvement, too. It hurts the quality of any kind of writing when you say too many things in a matter-of-fact way. It's better to imply things because otherwise, it'll feel like you're stating the obvious and giving superfluous explanation of the scene. For instance, there's no reason for the character to say he finds it strange that the rabbit is talking to him because his reaction when the rabbit starts speaking gets that across enough. Along those lines, make sure you don't say the same thing twice, like when the boy says he doesn't like to lie and then the rabbit asserts that the boy lied. You could get across his reluctance to lie through facial expressions and timing, but also, you don't need to state that he lied both before and after the orb glows. You might not even need to say it all if you get across the impression of a lie in the boy's manner of speaking. The orb will put the pieces together for you.

I like the plot overall. I think it could turn out to be an interesting story. It's just that the execution could use some work.

Deer50 responds:

Thanks alot. Now this is a good piece of advice. ^^

[Coffee, boy!]

Haha, nice.

I love all of the wacky images that you use to get across the idea of a coffee high. The absurdity of the things, the exaggerated movement, the vibrant colors and the rapid pace of the flash all got that feeling across nicely. I like how all of the changes happened so fluidly at times, though I wish you had done that for all of the scene/object/etc changes.

I don't think that I've fond of the shakiness, though. At times it seemed to fit well stylistically, but at others it didn't, particularly when the objects were still. At those points it seemed like it was a mistake. Maybe it was. Regardless, consider both thinning down your lines and making them more consistent.

There are a few points where I really loved the anticipation that you put in, like when he was swinging his arms.

Lastly, the lip syncing was shaky. It seemed like you put too much detail into the movements of the lips, making them jumpy and overcomplicated.

Hildebrandt responds:

Hellooo,
Thanks for your long (and helpful) review,
I did the shaking on purpose, but what really grinds my balls is that you've only got that shitty brush tool in flash to draw thicker lines and it FUCKS EVERYTHING UP... which is very annoying.
I know, the lip sync isn't perfect, but since the movie is only 12fps it is very hard to get the right shape for everything...
Thanks again!
Hildebrandt

[Untitled Western]

Nice concept.

I like the story and I smiled at the duck. It is a bit short, but I don't feel like that's a problem. I feel like the length suits the content. I have some concrit, though.

Are you using onion skins? Especially on the hands and when the camera is moving up from his feet to his head (but many other places as well), your lines are jumpy. Thick, also. Try using a smaller brush or the pencil tool because the thick lines didn't flatter it well. Make sure to keep unwanted fluctuations out of your lines, as well. Clean them up, that is. It'll make the linework look more polished and it will also help with the jumpiness problem.

Try a higher framerate because the animation was choppy.

You did have a few nice perspective shots in there, like the hand shot for example, but speaking of perspective, there are some issues, particularly with that last shot with the building in it.

DivineN responds:

I thank you for your review, the choppy-ness of the lines where intended. That was the style i was going for.

[Omega: Boat Chase]

It has potential.

I saw your post in the animation forum and figured that I would give you my advice. Keep in mind that I'm a critical reviewer by nature so I have mostly constructive criticism to give, but the flash is actually pretty good. I'm just here to (hopefully) help you make it better.

First and foremost, color schemes. They're vital in art, but they're also vital in animation (after all, animation is just moving art). You want to have dominant colors, you want to have your colors complement each other, you want to shy away from over-saturation, etc. If you're not sure what I mean, I suggest looking into color theory tutorials. They've helped me a lot.

Speaking of that, I noticed that you used a number of gradients to represent your shading. This is generally not flattering because gradients don't express the form of the object and they also lack the amount of color diversity that you need to make something look full and realistic. You can get away with them sometimes, but they have to be subtle and it's beneficial to have additional shading on top of them.

Another artistic tip is to avoid pure white. It's a harsh color, especially when you use it for large and prominent objects like the boat. It immediately draws the eye away from what's actually happening and it's also a flat color. Pure black as well, though you didn't have much of that here. Use light, subtly-tinted (depending on your color scheme) grays instead.

I wasn't fond of the blur effects that you used. On the clouds, I feel like you should portray their form through drawn details instead. On your background effects, I feel like you've used too heavy of a blur.

The animation itself felt stiff to me. I figure that this is the fault of using symbol animation which almost without fail doesn't look good on complex figures. Frame by frame is more tedious and runs the risk of volume problems, but once you get good at it, it's a much more realistic representation of movement.

You have a lot of little lines within your character forms that represent musculature and wrinkles in clothing that I feel don't help you any. Those types of details are better defined by shading. It's also okay to use simple figures. If you have to chose between complexity and realistic movement, although it's good to have both, the later is the one you should prioritize.

I'll note that the sound effects and the music didn't have the greatest sound quality. The voice acting could also use some work.

My last comment is on the story itself. I know that this is only the beginning, but there's nothing that really sticks out in my mind about it. Starting your series with an extended fight scene is a good way of portraying the characters' physical strengths, but it has the nasty side effect of losing viewer interest due to how there's nothing particularly unique about it and how you haven't developed your characters much. Beginning with an intriguing plot setup is what will generally entice your viewer to come back for the rest of the series much more so than a fight scene with no character development or plot setup.

JTmovie responds:

Thanks for the constructive criticism you really took alot of time to explain the faults I'm really grateful for that

everything was very helpful and as far as lighting and coloring goes I am clueless I'll take a look at thoughs tutorials and try to figure something it

I know symbol animation can be faulty and limited so Ive recently switched over to FBF and its looking really good just takes alot more work but its worth it.

really thank you for taking the time to review this , its very helpful! :)

[stick fight (n vs e)]

Decent, for what it is.

As a stick movie, it's not the best and it's not the worst. The animation is smooth and there aren't any blaring problems with the movements that I can see. The unrealistic behavior of the blood was something that needs addressing as well as the unflattering use of text (if you're going to have voice acting, put your dialog as subtitles, not floating words). Never express character emotion through emoticons. Ever. Seriously, it makes your flash look amateur. Body language will get the same message across.

Now I have to be honest and address the reason I voted two: story elements, or lack thereof. No story, no plot or premise, no character definition or development, no motives, no antagonist or protagonist, etc. I understand that this is something prevalent throughout the vast majority of the stick genre, but that doesn't make it any less of a problem. Perhaps your average portal-goer may simply enjoy watching two minutes of stick fighting and that's fine, but if you're looking to push your flashes to the next level, this is where you need to go.

My last comment is on the stick genre itself. It is extremely limiting and not only will it be a detriment to the quality of your flash, it will also bind your flash to uniformity, so to speak. It will take out from the animation everything unique and rememberable. There are only a handful of authors who have developed their own discernible stick style and that's the reason. It's a good style to learn the basics of motion with, but it's not something that you want to stick with (no pun intended).

ganuganu responds:

wow boring class....dont post long boring lectures in my anims...i dont like it.... :)

[Johnny VS Zombies]

3/5

The animation, overall, was smooth and the graphics were pretty appealing to the eye. The use of bright colors was a nice touch. The thing I didn't like about it was that you use shape tweens for the blinking of the eyes. Maybe it's just a pet peeve of mine, but tweened blinking takes away from the animation quality more than other tweens in my mind. The eyes are one of the major focal points, so what you do with a character's eyes is important.

I feel like the Michael Jackson picture at the end was too random, especially because it was live action. I'm not entirely sure whether the picture was related to the rest of the flash or not, but either way, I think a drawn character of michael would have been less stylistically awkward.

Overall, I think it was pretty good.

[Review Request Club]

muffinman9 responds:

actually your wrong - the eyes were not done with shape tweens (i dont think they could do this well) - they're frame by frame of me resizing the eyes.

Thanks, but the thing is if I just drew the MJ picture in thriller style - people would just think it's a zombie or something so a picture was the easiest way of tributing to him.
Aww shame you only gave a 6/10 if you liked it

[Hurshnenglurper 2009]

3/5

I didn't like how you mixed all of these different art styles from pixel art to claymation to frame-by-frame to tween-dominated art. If you're going to make another one of these mix flashes, I suggest sticking with one style.

I strongly suggest not relying too heavily on the gradients-for-shading tactic unless your gradients are very subtle. It's more tedious to do, but drawing in your own shading will almost always improve the look of a flash in my mind. I saw that you reflected on the gradients during the flash (I think you should have left up that text for a few seconds longer because the scene changed before I had a chance to read it all. I had watched the flash three times around before I was able to read it in full) so I know that you recognized that, but you also did the same thing in your first clip when the sky went red.

Speaking of the first clip, I thought that that one was pretty good.

Smooth out your claymation as I feel it was a bit choppy.

[Review Request Club]

Surn responds:

"I didn't like how you mixed all of these different art styles from pixel art to claymation ... I suggest sticking with one style."

I've found some who disagree. One may be the web-master of Albino Blacksheep who said he was "fascinated" by it.

"I strongly suggest not relying too heavily on the gradients-for-shading tactic unless your gradients are very subtle."
Yeah, I agree. Heavy reliance on the auto-gradient function is noobish.

"but you also did the same thing in your first clip when the sky went red."
I thought that was pretty subtle but I may have been able to make a creepier effect if I whipped up something in Photoshop.

"I think you should have left up that text for a few seconds longer because the scene changed before I had a chance to read it all. I had watched the flash three times around before I was able to read it in full"
Yeah, I'll have to look at it again and see how long I left it up so I can avoid the same mistake next time. It might be better if I can learn to do the "press space to continue code". Did you see the subliminal message at the end of the pink wolf clip?

Thanks for the review! It was real helpful.

[CoolJaw: O.S. I-V]

3/5

I love the storyline. You managed to go the "start the story with a strange dream" rout without making it cliche, which is awesome.

You did have some perspective issues in a few of the drawings. In the 'street with one house' slide, the street and the house have a different perspective. There are similar problems in the slide where he's standing in front of the house. This is always a risky angle to try to draw. The foreshortening on the person is too extreme in relation to that of the house. Also, the person's center of gravity is off. He looks like he's about to fall over. On the next slide where it just shows the door with the '101' placard, the perspective in funky as well. I don't know a good way to explain the problem well, so I'll just say that the left side of the placard should be parallel with the right side of the door, and adjust the perspective from there.

I was never a fan of the slideshow style. I think it takes away from the flash. I recommend making it a full animation for part two.

[Review Request Club]

Celx-Requin responds:

Hello,

I wanted to stick to the comic book format, and the whole perspective being out of place was done on purpose, to hint that the character was dreaming.

I probably am going to keep with this format, but I'll try to innovate a bit in the coming "chapters". I do hope you'll catch the next one though!

Thanks,
- Celx

[The Future Wasn't There]

I liked it.

I like the overall plot and I think that the storyline flowed well. I think it was a good decision to not go farther than when he stepped inside the time machine because otherwise, it would have had a cliche feeling that would have taken away from it.

I like the colorful linework of the characters. It was a unique touch.

The only thing I feel takes points away is that though I liked the music and I think that the music really fit what was happening, there was no transition between the individual music pieces which made it a bit awkward to listen to, particularly being that there was no dialog. I think that fading the clips in and out would add to this.

4/5

spanio responds:

Thanks for watching! I tried a little fade in/fade out stuff, but it didn't sound quite right.. so I only kept in it in a few places.

[An odd movie]

Okay.

Well, your animation is smooth, so you get points for that.

It leaves a lot to be desired, though.

First is, add a preloader. Always add a preloader. If you don't know how to make one yourself, there's a whole bunch of them here on ng for you to use if you click the 'downloads' link under the header. There's also a number of preloader tutorials in the flash tutorials section.

Second, add sound. Sound makes everything more interesting. If you don't have it, your flash will seem a hell of a lot more boring than if you had sound.

Third, it was extremely short. Too short. Spend a while adding on parts to your flash, though I know the longing to submit your first flash. I did the same thing with my first submission.

There's potential here, though. Keep working on it.

2/5

(You're going to get a higher score on this today than you would any other day of the year because it's clock day. Most people won't even watch your flash. Bad day to submit it if you want feedback and a fair score.)

mrsico responds:

Ok, I did add a preloader buuuut it was in AS2 and I was doing a AS3 progect.
I didn't add sound because I wanted to get it in NOW.XD
I'll edit it so it's longer later.
Thank you for your awesome review.