Score: 8

"Quite funny."

submission: Lim and Richi:Enhancement

date: April 3, 2006

Not much of a plot, but hey, it made me laugh! :D Excellent intro, and excellent face animations when they talk. You also seem to have a knack for choosing good music to accompany your animations. The one at the credits was amazing - you wouldn't happen to have the title by any chance, would you?

I hope to see more of these, for a first episode this one was really good.

Score: 7

"Worthy"

submission: Angel has Flown

date: April 3, 2006

This is a nice music video, and there were a few scenes in it which I really liked - the ones where he was running through the grass and flying through the clouds just really appealed to me emotionally.

Your style is pretty good, but beware - although your animations are smooth, some of them are incorrect. In particular, when your characters are running their feet don't actually lift up off the ground as they should. This is present both from the side views and the behind views, so it's something that needs to be fixed for any future animations. Perhaps you could try running yourself and noticing how your feet move.

Overall, a rather sweet, worthy animation. 7/10

Score: 8

"Excellent animation"

submission: Shoo Fly

date: March 31, 2006

Yeah, I can only imagine how long that would've taken to draw... this was a really nice short animation, rather funny and skillfully made.

I especially liked how well it went with the music - how, for example, when the music played quieter you switched it to showing the OUTSIDE of the house. The fly was rather cute, and everything was skillfully animated.

I'm not as enthusiastic about the style, mainly because I don't really like this form of anime character drawing (especially how the faces look from the side). Still, that's my own personal opinion, I won't hold it against you (too much ;), and I realize that most people love it in any case so I'm in the minority.

A week ago I might've given this a "9", but my grading criteria has completely changed after watching Alek Wasilewski's masterpiece "Hanged Man's Elegy" - it really raised the bar. So I'm giving this an "8" - I realize that it's very well-done for what it is, but it doesn't aspire to anything as great, and (I'm sorry, and I know I'll get thrashed to bits for saying this) I don't believe that it deserves a score .37 higher than that phenomenal flash.

So I'm giving this an "8" - well-made, well-realized, and entertaining, but in the end not belonging to the higher realm of art.

Score: 10

"Alek, good God!!"

submission: Hanged Man's Elegy

date: March 29, 2006

How do you DO that?!

That hurt, man. Your film grabbed hold of me and wouldn't let go. I can't even objectively review this, that was absolutely gut-wrenching - it reduced me to shock and tears. How the hell do you create something that beautiful and terrifying at the same time?

Seriously, my fingers are shaking even as I type this. It was THAT powerfull. There's no way that anyone can watch this film and be a dispassionate observer - this is audience manipulation on the highest level, on the same level as Eisenstein, Fritz Lang, or Peter Jackson. Just... holy crap. Words fail me.

The graphics are perfect in every way, the colours are perfect, the animation is perfect, and the sound is perfect. Look, EVERYTHING is perfect. This is one of, if not THE, best short animated films that I have ever seen on Newgrounds, or perhaps anywhere!

Anyone reading, you MUST watch this! The author has cunningly calculated things in such a way that even the hardcore action fans will be more than satisfied (although this movie is NOT primarily about action sequences). The amount of work put into this is simply mind-boggling, make sure you watch the whole thing and not turn it off before it completely ends.

Overall, a perfect 10. It deserves nothing less.

Score: 10

"Yes, that is how I feel."

submission: The NU adventures

date: March 28, 2006

You did a very good job of showing what life in university feels like.

Excellent graphics and idea, you are trully one of the best artists on Newgrounds, I think. And I see that you're the guy who did "Las Aventuras de Mr. Coo" as well - I should have recognized the style! :)

Excellent job on everything. While there are probably some things that you could've done better, it is beyond my knowledge what those things are. Sorry, but I really am stumped - usually there's at least SOMETHING I can say, even for movies that have a much better score on Newgrounds.

I hope you release a third animation soon - that'll surely get you into the Top50 Artists on Nerwgrounds list (you need to have submitted at least 3 flashes to be on it).

Score: 8

"Not bad."

submission: 2012

date: March 23, 2006

First of all, that's one awesome preloader... but anyway, this flash as a whole rather impressed me. There are many flaws in it, and the graphics are certainly not perfect, but it's impressive for the sheer scope of what was attempted. This is a BIG animation!

I'm not really into the whole "Rapture" thing at all, but I can definitely appreciate what you tried to do here. I especially liked your portrayal of the guy in black who was giving out the orders. Very creepy teeth... *shudder*

I can imagine some people being somewhat pissed off by the whole thing (especially those who have little tolerance for superstition), but if you're one of them, just take it for what it's worth - it is, at the heart of it, just a story. You don't get pissed off because Star Wars isn't actually real, do you? Well, no reason to here. ;)

So anyway, good luck on your future projects. This one was quite nice.

Score: 10

"Incredible..."

submission: Primal War 6

date: March 23, 2006

I've seen all of the other ones in this series, and this is the first one that I've given a 10 to. It's not a perfect 10, mind you - there were a few places were the graphics were just a bit rough (during the middle of the battle scene, in particular), but overall this shows MANY signs of improvement from previous episodes. It's pretty damn close to a perfect 10. The graphics are smoother, the sound is quite nice and (for the second time) is pretty much perfect, and the story was fleshed out really nicely.

About the alligators - I guess the battle is between modern creatures and dinosaurs, then, not between lizards and mammals? I don't really know of another way to explain it.

I don't think that the little message at the end was quite right, though - it somehow ruined the serious mood. I think it should've been a little more "epic-sounding" than simply "these guys won this time".

I'm very curious right now about what the conclusion is going to be...

Oh, and I'm surprised at how few reviews this has gotten! This masterpiece deserves more attention, dammit! :P

Score: 7

"Not bad."

submission: ::antix vs draciel::

date: March 21, 2006

As the first reviewer said, the character design needs some work. The characters were rather crudely drawn, and they really need to be more refined and more detailed. Practice is probably the only thing that'll help you here.

The editing and the actual animation of your characters, however, was fantastic. I really liked all of the camera movement too. It ended much too abruptly, though - just saying "X wins" isn't really enough. I was expecting more of a grand finale - I don't know, victory dance, something. :P Text isn't really necessary in animations like this.

So yeah, the number 1 thing to work on for next time would be your character drawings - the bodies AND their faces need some work. Overall, however, this is quite good. A little more effort and this might approach "4.00" territory (although I suppose it's a bit presumptuous of me to guess what score this is going to receive :P)

Score: 7

"Note to Wikipedia admin below"

submission: Fred the Notable Monkey

date: March 21, 2006

The main reason I go on the Wiki is because it has articles on more things than a regular encyclopedia. Regular encyclopedias take up physical space, which is why they cannot contain too many things (that, and because they don't have as many writers working for them). However, what the hell would be the problem with having a gajillion wikipedia articles? It's not like they take up any physical space. People will only find them if they SEARCH for them, and I actually LIKE seeing that there's a Wikipedia article on some obscure thing that I didn't think anyone else knew about. The problem with deciding that only things that you deem worthy will be in wikipedia begs the question: who decides what is worthy? And why does it matter, since the people who don't search for it will never see it anyway?

But anyway, on to my review of the flash:

Nice character design, nice colour scheme, and fairly good animation (a bit too static, but I understand that you're trying to save time). The monkey's voice could've been worse, but it was still far too high-pitched for my liking. Nice idea overall, although you could've taken it a bit further I think.

Score: 7

"We had a similar game..."

submission: Ultimate Wallball

date: March 20, 2006

...in my school (I'm in Toronto). It was called "Red Ass". :P It was with more than 2 people usually - every time someone caught the ball before the first bounce, the person who threw it got a letter (starting with "R", then "E" and so on).

Ah yes, this flash sure brings back memories. The actual character graphics weren't that great, but the frame-by-frame animation was really good! This was indeed the ULTIMATE game of Wallball. :)
It was very fun to watch, although some of the backgrounds could've used a little more detail. Oh, nice job on the voice-acting as well - it sounded pretty good, which is quite an accomplishment when you consider it to the majority of the stuff that's submitted on to NG. I think that you should use more voices next time you do something (if it's appropriate of course - I think in this case, some voices while they were fighting wouldn't have hurt).

The music was generally good, but the changes of music were rather abrupt sometimes.

Overall this falls somewhere between a 7 and an 8. I'm giving you a "7" on this review, but I voted 4/5.

Cheers. :)