Neophyte-Ronin's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Daydream +]

Commentaries are Meant to be Optional

Now, the animation and premise are okay during Acts I & II--the imagined success and the real failure and injury--but Act III's rambling commentary detracted from the experience because it was poorly done... both deliberately and performed poorly in general (poor performance at being poor... there is such a thing). It prevented me from clicking replay.

To all authors: if you think a Commentary would be cool to add, either you don't or allow it as an optional audio track (even if it is supposed to suck).

[Ouija!!!]

Sound if Not Brilliant Effort with Few Flaws...!

The visual efforts are particularly complex, with multiple background shots and a brilliant opening background of an orderly suburb at night. Atmospheric effects are okay, although the rain looks a bit fat. The cat's meow sounded off but the lightning and thunder captured the essence of the season.

Sounds are a bit low in volume. That ought to be readily noticeable.

Given that there's but a single voice-over thespian performing all four parts, one would imagine that things would get outright poor. They do not. Actually, it isn't just well-voiced, but well-acted too. We get a grasp for each of the trick-or-treaters, including the ill-fated cynic in the imp costume. Though their tone of voice and inflections are diverse, it is obvious that it is the same voice-over thespian, since there isn't a good application of multiple accents. Still, they all sound like typical pre-teen offenders, and the writing is convincing. Lip synchronizing isn't too bad, either.

The plot is actually weak however, perhaps because the deadline was closing in and they figured someone had to die. The old parlor game of Ouija has so many possibilities to tap into--a means of contacting a fickle, possibly volatile spirit world!--that having someone die just from something in the toilet... well, it seems rather lame. The actual death scene isn't nearly as polished as the rest of the story, including the pissing sequence (which was simple as shitting to implement). Thus, we can still tell that this is a rushed effort.

But who really cares if it's a late entry? Halloween in October sucks. I envision remaking the whole Hallow's Eve as a whole "All Hallow's Season" from October 13th to December 23rd. The 31st would be our heavy date, and the only reason Thanksgiving is celebrated is because we get to butcher a turkey. That's got to be good for something. In any case, this is great as a debut effort for Gaia and AndroidEnt is a respectable talent. Hopefully the next project won't be as ambitious than it is well-made, and Newgrounds audiences will certainly look out for these artisans in the future.

[Bee & Dino]

Admirable First Effort; A Bit Loud, Though

The application of movieclips, mild humor, and colorful, lively imagery, are well-defined in this project.

This Flash contains an overpowering, annoying song, which is probably rendered at its full bitrate. It gets abruptly cut off once the movie is over the the "Replay" Button appears, so it wasn't even used to its full potential. I would recommend changing the song; peruse the Audio Portal to find an acoustic guitar piece that still fits the sentiment of your piece.

In addition to being loud (Flash does allow volume programming), the song was set at a full bit rate, meaning massive memory use. As it is written in Newgrounds' FAQ regarding submissions and said etiquette, this is considered wasteful. The site once enforced a 5 MB file size cap; you'd have to send the piece to an admin's e-mail for an appeal and hope your Flash was good enough for its size. If you care to broadcast your ideas online, remember that Flash is popular because it is versatile and uses small file sizes. Consider "Optimizing" vector drawings and use sound file editing programs like Audacity in conjunction with traditional Flash techniques to keep a submission low in size.

The Flash is short, sweet, and reflects fairly upon its author. Keep these suggestions in mind and don't stop pushing technical boundaries. It's also nice to see that this flash is in decent taste as well, unlike most authors whose debuts consist of debauched stick brawls. Let's just say your head is above water and you're paddling reasonably well.

[School Project]

First Efforts are Always Roughshod

Your first shot into Flash is objectively good--the typical first try--and by that, I mean this thing looks crude and roughshod compared to everything else! Unlike most "first Flash" attempts, however, there is a structure and a level of quality above and beyond the typical dabbler; obviously, your entry into the foray is serious and with some prior discipline, thanks to your art classes.

As for the Flash itself, it is supposed to be a promotional piece for an animation/design studio. Typically, these should snappier in terms of speed, or cut down. When Greasy Moose made "Captain Planet Goes to Copenhagen" (Captain Planet Strip Club, as Newgrounds knows it), they got an Australian television program to air it. To do so, however, they were asked to slice off twenty seconds from its running time.

Don't feel awful about slicing out bits and pieces, because even Chris Voigt has to do it on occasion. Some things in your Flash could be cut out completely--the red & yellow balls, for instance, didn't come out so well--while others could be elaborated upon, like the mouse animation. Another animation caught the corner of my eye, but it was so brief that I couldn't really gauge its quality. Still, I wouldn't bother replaying the movie just to see that one flash of animation, because from my guess, it looked too crude to bother with. The attempt had detracted from the overall vision. Despite this, presenting the "Animation" and "Graphic Design" terms in scrapyard junk was a nice touch.

The overall theme for this Flash, therefore, appears terribly gritty and uses many dark colors, which plays against an advertisement designed to extol any product/service's better virtue. In other words, even though it is called "Scrapyard Animation" (a moniker that would work for you, incidentally), there should be brighter colors to counteract the dark and depressing overtones of the piece. In advertising, white flashes are often used because the color suggests tranquility, able to settle the audience like warm milk to an upset stomach.

While it isn't anything exemplary, this Flash reflects well on your present skill... which transcends anybody else who has yet to craft a Flash! Thus, you are in decent standing, believe it or not. Push hard to polish those stones and soon your scrapyard will become a respectable recycling agency. One can only hope.

foolishcharacter responds:

wowwe, what an encouraging and intricate reasponse! I'll make sure to consider these points later on, as I continue working on more personal projects in the future.

[Gerudo Rock Band]

Solid Effort; Encouragements and Mild Praise

I'm impressed that the file size is incredibly small, given the artwork. It's crude but passable somehow. The concert flair is intact and the characters are drawn decently--they resemble the Gerudo from the game.

The characters, however aren't terribly well animated. It would be terribly ambitious to synchronize their movements to the beats and tones of the soundtrack. That would also mean increasing the noticeably slow frame rate... painfully slow, actually. Doubling one's workload via a faster frame rate might sound harsh, but the payout would transcend one's expectations in the long run.

For a first effort, this is exemplary. It probably took a great deal of trial and error, though. The author should try two hands at a larger project (or submit small stuff on par or even better than this) to gain some discipline that would justify a measure of notoriety. In other works, good job--not stunning, but it works--so keep it up!

zoesaday responds:

You are right, should have done more frames but .. I make animations with the mouse, and it is very difficult draw, but this does not justify that I should do more animations that last longer .. thanks for the comment helped me a lot, and they learn more!

[PencilTest Animation Reel]

Good to See Improvement

It's probably still past your grasp, but I bet you could incorporate more frame-by-frame styling in actual Flashes, based on this entry.

It's a very swift piece. It's a decent demo, but you can do better. Trust me.

[Stick Dance 3: M.Jackson]

For Once, No Bashing of a Celebrity at Newgrounds!

Although animating the stick figure MJ had a lukewarm result, the diffculty of pulling that off correctly sort of compensated. It's hard to perfectly animate a stick figure--or any figure, for that matter--to the style of Michael Jackson.

It is, however, heartwarming to know that someone around Newgrounds won't utterly trash a celebrity, as is the typical response to just about any celebrity. Few can understand the sort of pressures of the performer's life, or the personality type required to handle said pressure. What I would give if there was ever a functional purpose behind complete isolation from the outside world!

In all, the core element could have been better, but as a tribute to the man and legend, nobody could get anymore positive. Good job.

[cupcake?]

Psych-a-delic

This is reminiscent of the old Atari 2600 games that would start messing with the color hex-codes throughout the whole color scheme. By that, I mean when you weren't playing a round in the game, the game would start changing the colors on the television strictly to prevent wear and tear on the screen. Pair that with electronic scrambling of a criminal's face on the show Cops (or the fade-out effects from the Super Nintendo) and you have a cartoon that would only entertain someone who smoked Silverleaf and Stranglekelp over a bonfire.

Didn't the green creature remind you a little bit of E.T. for a moment? E.T. was the worst damn game on the Atari 2600, incidentally.

Despite all this, this was a pleasant diversion for some ungodly reason. Good luck with the contest!

TheBoogley responds:

You are a knowledgeable fellow, and it has been a pleasure to read your review.
We must do this again some time.

[An Unfortunate Girl:Lapse]

Shuddering Should Stop Soon

A Firth-laden atmosphere, coupled with a dissonant voice-over casting and liberal application of blur effects, manages to hammer down the dark fantasy elements of "An Unfortunate Girl" rather nicely.

If the synchonization between voice-overs and animation failed, then splitting the flash into two parts might have been unavoidable. A full version, however, would erase confusion generated by a convoluted plot, or background. The narration either lacks linear chronology, or it goes out of its way to hide it.

Furthermore, like a speculative/science fiction work, it plays "What If" games. Science fiction is a sub-genre of adventure story that introduces unorthodox or complicated concepts with stories about how these concepts interact with characters and protagonists. To prevent audience confusion, literary science fiction rarely uses stylistic innovation. In fact, it's utterly conservative.

Not everyone will immediately correlate medieval pandemics with this flash's postmodern context. Seriously... how many Newgrounds folk actually study history, in or out of school? Pair that with an approach to film-making akin to David Lynch ("Eraserhead", anyone?) and a portion of the audience "simply doesn't get it." The use of abstract film-making is great for portraying a disheveled mind, but not quite for explaining the "how" and "why" behind that disheveled mind.

And cutting the flash in half--according to TheFabs, at least--stemmed from a minor technical issue! Frankly, a little more effort to edit, optimize and otherwise tweak the initial full version would have grant an easy +.10 to this flash's batting average, guaranteed.

On the other hand--and rifledark1 figured this one out easily--slicing it in two leaves the audience begging for answers, like medical or police procedural television dramas such as CSI, NCIS, or House. By design, these shows slash their narratives between the times whenever something grotesque or horrific happen, to build the suspense right before some corporate sponsors numb our minds into soup with countless promotions for their products. Consider the author's editing to be the surgeon's best efforts; it covered any risidual stain left behind after slicing the flash into two parts. Leaving us right before a scene of intense, painful surgery is, triumphantly, among the best cliffhangers in Newgrounds' catalog of serious shorts.

Voice-overs are a mixed bag. The author's comments suggest that casting revolved around cheery-sounding voices to kill the potency of already-potent macabre sequences. That sounds like hand-holding to me, sorry to say. On ther other hand, casting young-sounding voice-overs ironically enhanced the overall macabre mood. The semblance of youth makes the audience feel for their plight. It would be a hard sell (the approach would differ, that is) if the author picked any couple past their twenties. Actually, the characters look and even sound pre-teen. Even so, while the lady voice-over is excellent, the two male parts sounded either wooden or thin; the doctor didn't sound authoritative enough (or old enough...).

"An Unfortunate Girl" has problems, but no glaring ones. And as the title of the review suggests, it has a creepy enough aura to throw-down with the likes of Firth and some of the Noir or horror shorts. I recommend Newgrounds to take five minutes of his or her time.... once the completed version debuts, of course.

TheFabs responds:

Music to my ears.

[bluh bluh bluh.]

Cute and Crazy but Short

It's a step above Knox, the clay fanatic. Even so, it's a bit quick. It's understandable. It's irrepressibly cute as a trade-off.