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!

[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.

[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