Esn's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Minataur]

Good but unfinished

You did an excellent job at creating an atmosphere and making your flash cinematic - it is too bad that your animation isn't as good as your composition skills (or perhaps it is simply because you were rushed). It would be easy to fix, too - first in the beginning, the hoof should tilt before it lifts off the ground (otherwise it doesn't look like walking), and second in the final sequence (you should at least have one drawing of the man in a jumping position so you can alternate between the standing & jumping positions).

Having said that, the drawings are very nice and I love the way that you make the minotaur's head bob up and down when he walks. Good sky, too. :) Did you import jpegs into flash to get that look?

[Las Aventuras de Mr Coo#3]

Hurrah!

Yes, finally, the new Mr. Coo! This one was great in every way (it was even much funnier than the previous one, I thought), but it was too short unfortunately. I would've rather you'd combined #3 and #4 so that the new flash would've been the same length as the original Mr. Coo - my score would've been higher. :)

Still, this is absolutely fantastic - I love it!

[rtil's trad animation '06]

Not bad at all.

To those reading this review - this is basically a collection of untouched-up, unfinished animations drawn in pencil on paper. They're nice, though.

Some of this stuff is really impressive. While obviously unfinished, it was fun to watch. I do kinda wish that you had coloured it and finished it up a bit, though.

I like your walk cycles the best. The one with the cane was almost perfect, but I felt that he still needed a bit more character in him (yes, even more than what was already there). So if you had exaggerated his movements even more, it could've been REALLY nice. The run cycle somehow just didn't strike the right chord with me - I'm not quite sure what it was. A little too blurry, somehow.

The dialogue test was amazing - trully amazing, as was the flour sack. The wave test was also good, but there seems to be an error in it. Near the end of the loop, the bottle appears in one place then quickly goes back to where it was before.

I really didn't like the music that you had in the background for the menu. I guess it doesn't matter that much, though.

xtil responds:

they are finished to me. i haven't been taught how to color these yet, and the software and shooting cameras we have don't even support color.

glad you liked the walks.

the run i wanted to add more frames to, but it was a piece of extra credit padding an already good grade, so the 20 frames it's already on was sufficient.

the wave is not designed to be a loop, it just does loop. the test was simply to have the wave crest and fall with follow-through on the water. the bottle is just popping back up after being hit by the wave in the last two frames

glad you like the dialogue and flour sack. those are two of my best i think.

i like the music .. i'm surprised you do not it's so peaceful. lol. ps triplets to belleville rules

[BirdSong]

Nice, but somehow...

...it was a little empty. It was like it couldn't decide what to be - at one point it was all about the beauty of nature and subdued colours, and then suddenly you change styles and they're on the cover of a Beatles' album and going to a bar. It just didn't go together well.

I loved the graphics largely, but they need work - the background at the very beginning needs more layers (I like how the trees in the front move faster, but what about the ones in the back?), and the birds need to be more polished. I wish you'd done more of that "3D" thing that you had at the very end elsewhere in the flash movie - it would've made it look quite nice if you'd moved the camera around some more. You can watch "Los Dias Sin Dias" on Newgrounds for an example of what I mean.

So this is good overall, but not quite there yet. Worthy of a relatively high score, though. :)

[Pico ch1: the Gloom]

Pretty good.

Don't be offended because I rated this a "6" - I actually liked your flash, and for a first effort it's phenomenal (even though I was a bit dissappointed that there was no action sequence :P)

There are a couple of issues to work on here - #1 is the sound. I have a REALLY fast computer, and the sound was still out of sync by the end, even on low quality. Since there are long stretches of silence in the flash anyway, find a way to make sure that the sound isn't counted from the beginning of the whole flash. I know there's a way to do this, but I don't know the terminology.
#2 is the pacing - while better than most NG flashes, it could still use some tightening around the edges. Try to really focus on the essentials. This doesn't mean making it faster-paced, it just means cutting out the "dead" bits that don't really add anything usefull. I think that the REALLY slow voices contributed to this feeling of it moving just a little too slowly than it should.

On the bright side, excellent graphics. I'm even willing to overlook the fact that you drew "Bitey" completely wrong (oh btw, be on the lookout for the next Brackenwood flash today). And despite my criticisms, fairly good pacing.

It's just too bad that you missed Pico Day! Perhaps Tom will include a special section for the late submissions? There seem to be so many...

PVP-BoCS responds:

Hey, thanks for the constructive criticism! I really appreciate it and couldn't agree more with you on many parts. I do consider this chapter to still be a work in progress so expect changes. I hope to fix it up, theres just alot I still don't know as you might have noticed. I'm also sorry about the lack of action, I was dissapointed too but Ch 2 will certainly delve into it head on, I have it all planned already, just didn't have time.

First off, yes, I was really frustrated and disappointed to find how the sound lagged, it was working fine until I submitted it. If you, or anyone for that matter, could point me in the right direction as to how to fix this please do! I look forward to improving this. I'm actually quite surprized with it's current score and feel I need to do more to deserve it. I tried some tricks I found on forums and tuts with the sound but as you can see none of them worked.

Second, you're right, the pacing really did drag in there and I will certainly tighten that up, same with the dialogue. I appologize most of that was made this morning, including my dialogue, after many hours of no sleep in hopes of getting it in on time (and still no luck there lol :( ) the quality of the sound will also be improved, just had no time to play with it and being I'm currently living in Japan I haven't any of my good recording equipment.

Finally! *deep breath* I must say that I don't believe I drew any of the characters completely the same as their respective models but in my defense I wouldn't say Bitey was drawn cooommpleetely wrong :). I know my version was a bit more lanky than the real Bitey but once again that just came down to no time for going back over things, was there anything else about his representation you felt was off? (and I always look forward to new Brackenwood, defenately an inspiration :D).

Thanks again to you and all who take the time to comment, please point me in the right direction so I can better perfect this and future works!

[Jeffrey Faden's BUS]

Pretty good.

This is very entertaining to watch - it only becomes less entertaining at the end, when that "dramatic music" begins playing. Right at that point I kinda know what's coming next, so it seems a bit useless on your part to stretch it out.

But anyway, this definitely hits the mark in a lot of ways. Good humour, music, and voices, and decent animation. Very funny, overall. I'm at York in Toronto, and in winter it looks like there are lines of penguins waiting for the buses - these lines are so long that they go for several blocks. :)

There's just one thing that I don't understand - if you're in that position, why don't YOU stand up and move to the back of the bus? No smelly guy, no empty-headed girl on cell phone, no crowd. It's better for you, and it goes to a good cause, after all. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

So it's kind of ironic in that sense - the character is complaining about all of this but he's not doing a thing to fix it himself.

[Boneland's Stray Bullet]

Meh.

Sorry, Tyler, I think you should focus on Minushi. This just didn't do it for me - yes, things like this were once the mainstay of internet flash humour, and there were many sites that used them, Boneland dot com being just one. But times have moved on - this wasn't bad per se, but there are better things out there now. Talented artists (you yourself among them) have shown that it's possible to do greater things with flash than this. In short, while I might've loved this once, my expectations have risen.

Besides that, it was (in my opinion), unnecessarily cruel and far too lengthily drawn-out for what it was. The theme song was quite funny, but the scenes in between should have been made much shorter, and there should've been more of them.

[Monster Island : Spesh]

H-oh, man...

I absolutely love your graphics... on the the surface this is a simple "duel" animation, but the graphics and style (as well as the excellent choice of song - more relaxing than the subject matter would suggest) make it something much more original. There were so many effects in this which I'd really like to know how to do myself... well, I'll find out eventually I suppose, one way or the other. :) I really liked how it was like looking through a glass, almost.

My one advice for you would be that simply having a good style, graphics, and creating some cool characters is not really enough - you need to know how to craft a story as well, and you must have something that you want to say. If this flash had those things, its score would be much higher. People need something to connect to, and not everyone can connect with pretty animation. It helps, of course.

I think this should have won 1st place today, but I can see why it didn't - the story was not exactly awe-inspiring, and I think that next time you should properly think out a good story first to go with your excellent characters and backgrounds. It'll make everything go much smoother!

[Happy Birthday BlueHippo]

What's that music?

Could you please tell me the name of the really cool song on Motolov's submission? I remember it from a "Nu Pogodi" episode (search it on wikipedia if you must), but I don't know the name!

Anyway, I'm giving this a 6 (higher than it objectively deserves) mainly because BlueHippo seems like a cool guy (I'm basing this mainly on the fact that he helped make "Your Horoscope for Today"). So yeah - happy belated birthday! :)

So what's that song, guys?

[Your Horoscope for Today!]

This deserves a high score.

Wow, I cannot believe how long this submission is! For such a fast-paced song, it looks like a hell of a lot of effort went into making this.

The song was excellently interpreted, and the scenarios made me laugh many times. The animations were very well-done, and I loved all of the different styles present in the movie - I never knew what to expect next!

One thing that I didn't like was that there was a bit too much of the "animutation" feel to the whole thing. It was good in moderation, but there was just a little bit too much flashing text on flashing backgrounds for my taste. It's not that I didn't like it, per se, but it made the flash look less professional than it could've looked - at least using a more creative font for the text would've helped.

Still, I love this submission. A definite "5" vote from me. It was all over the place, and that's just the way it should've been. There were so many different styles that I had no idea who drew what! Did you guys share the workload evenly?

ZekeySpaceyLizard responds:

I did the animation, Hippo fixed the gliches, errors, souns, and the preloader