Esn's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Captain's Burden]

Very nice.

Although some of the animation is rather jerky and some of the art is a bit hurried, it's obvious that a lot of effort was put into this. I assume that you've learned your lesson about not putting the credits 1/4th of the way into the animation by now, so I'll move on. :P

I have no idea who did the voices (I don't really watch THAT much Star Trek...), but everything fitted in pretty well and the song went quite well with the video as well.

As I said, the only bad part was that some of the animation was somewhat jerky and unpolished. I think you should really think about a different art style, or at least find a quicker way to do this one than tracing bitmaps. There's probably some kind of effect that you can use in graphical programs to make actual faces look like cartoons, or at least you could find something that would help you quicken the process. Try downloading Paint.NET and tinker around with it - it's a simpler, free program like Photoshop.

There's actually an animated movie coming out soon called "A Scanner Darkly" that uses graphics rather similar to yours - perhaps you could see what programs they used for it and see if you can afford them.

Well, that's all I got - I hope it was some help at least. :P

Good luck on your future efforts!

nightshade-pheonix responds:

:D Thankyou for your balanced review. For the voices, I used real Captain Janeway soundbytes and my own "alien" tones (woohoo for audio filters!)

I didn't trace any bitmap, that's why it took so ruddy long, I drew it all by hand. Some might look like traced bitmaps because I drew them far too complex and had to smooth 'em down a log.

I'll definately look out for the movie you mentioned, thanks again!

[Primal War 05]

Definitely up there!

I'm one of those who had some criticisms about the previous animations in this series, about sound and such. No more.

All I have to say for this one is: Keep doing exactly what you're doing! :) This was really awesome. Music was GREAT, sounds were great, animation was great (although the style seems to have changed a little...). Pacing (how the story came together) is the only thing that might use a bit of work as it was sometimes confusing what was going on. Still, this had so many things going for it that it was easy to overlook.

How do you make these so quickly? It's amazing...

[Sounds of CS]

I'm sorry.

It is FAR too repetitive! When it started out I thought that it was really cool, and for a while the whole thing seemed fresh and original. I really, really wish that I was right. I WANTED to like this.

But how can I like it when I'm forced to watch the exact same scene repeat 20+ times in a row?

The "music" had some nice ideas, but it didn't have enough of them, and resorted to repeating the same thing over and over again. It should have been either shorter or less repetitive.

But the graphics could still have saved the flash - all you had to do was change the scenery every so often. Ok, so a particular sound is tied to a certain guy firing - why don't you show that guy from several different angles? Have him MOVE from time to time? Instead, the visuals seemed directly tied to the music - when the beat of the music repeated, so did the scenes. It didn't have to be that way, & it would've been better if it wasn't.

I know that my opinion doesn't count for much, but I don't think that this flash deserves its 4.17/5.00 score. I wish it did - I love the idea behind it. But I have to say that I was dissappointed in the execution.

StealthBeast responds:

actually no scene repeated itself more then 10 times, whether you notived it or not =P. Theres like 20 gun sounds in cs how much can u possible mix it up? besides i didn't make the song sue me.

Its difficult to make multiple people move at a time for me the way i animate, i cant be moving these guys and shooting at the same time, thats not what you do ingame anyway.

I think your crazy to think it doesn't deserve the score it got. I have several things pounding against me. One, i didn't create the song, two its sticks, and 20% of people Xd out and clicked 0 when they found out, and three, my batting average isn't exactley brackenwood. Your the only review who seemed to dislike this, so I must be doing something right. Basically you seemed to lack the patience/or I lacked the ability to stimulate you to sit through a few looping scenes with only an occasional mixing scene that would happen everyone once and awhile. I took your opinion very nicely, until you say you said it doesn't deserve the score it has.

Then again I don't have to worry about it, because if im correct, you have never made a flash animation in your life.

However i looked at your other reviews, and your anything but a crap reviewer. thanks for not being an idiot like everyone else, and thank you for your review! No hard feelings im just sensitive =P

[Saw and Garlic]

What the... ?

Err... O.o

Right.

That was actually pretty fun to watch. Good graphics - loved how you made them bounce like that when they talked - and good sound balance (although the laughter at the end was a bit too loud).

I think that if this had been a bit longer and more ambitious this could've gotten a much higher score. I really like the style that you used here, and the voices weren't bad either.

Make a longer and more ambitous movie next time, but keep the insane sense of humour! :)

[When Robots Attack]

Wow!

This started out a bit slow, but it became really amazing as it went on! I just love what you did with the constant scrolling, and how it was almost like a puppet show (I especially liked the 3 rotating legs on those walking humans). If there were an 'imagination/originality" score on Newgrounds, I'd give you a very high score. The animation was pretty much flawless, this is one of your best entries in my opinion.

The song itself was great (as one would expect from Neil), but something about the way it was performed bothered me. I can't quite put my finger on what it was - perhaps the sound file was low quality, or something was a bit out of tune. It was a great song, but it needed to be polished a little more I think, so that's why I'm giving this submission a score of "9".

Otherwise, great job! This should be on tv, by all rights - it's much better than most of the stuff they show.

TmsT responds:

Heh, funny you should mention it being on TV... ;)

[Newhailes Wood (old)]

Impressive, yet flawed.

I'm amazed by how well you managed to animate the squirrels using no frame-by-frame, and the character graphics overall are very impressive (although the slugs are obviously copied from the "Worms" games). The backgrounds aren't quite as nice because of the limited colours - I think painting them in photoshop might've been a better idea (like in "Nim's Winter Tale").

The voices aren't too understandable without subtitles, but they were ok and sometimes pretty good. What this flash really, REALLY needed was some music. The lack of any at all in something this long really made it drag.

That's the biggest flaw by far, and it could've made the animation much more enjoyable had it been included.

Overall, I'm very impressed by the scale of this work, so I'm giving it an "8". There are several problems with it, however, that prevent me from scoring it any higher.

One last thing - consider doing a full storyboard next time before you start on an animation. It seemed like parts of this one were made up on the spot, so the pacing is a bit unbalanced.

Jaffry responds:

Thanks for the review, I had ran out of filespace for more music I'm affraid :S There should be more, with a James Bond style track with the squirrels going into the hut. But not only did I take that out, I had to shorten the entire scene. As I stated in the comments, I'd like to have done more but I ran out of space and frames so this is the final Flash version! I done partial storyboards with a full script. I like the idea of Photoshop but don't have any experience or access with it.

[Strawberry Valentine]

Whoah!

This is very good and very frontpage-worthy!

Awesome graphics, great editing to the music, and a funny (and realistic) story.

Not much more to say really... this is one of the best Valentine's day submissions that I've seen so far this year!

[Peoplemation: Trash]

Awesomenessessess.

...yes.

This was very cool and funny, even though the story didn't quite make sense (how come when the trash can crashes into the car, the guy in the red shirt first seems to be awake and later he's not?)

The music was awesome. Dustball wrote some pretty good stuff for this and that other Peoplemation "Spin" (could we know what programs you used to make it?).

The animation was also really good - I love it how the camera spins around them when there's that whole chase on the street!

I really hope that you two make another "peoplemation" some time in the future!

Dustball responds:

Haha, you're right... I was wondering the same thing about me being awake, then later just laying there. We should've really written a story first.

Glad you like the music! For Spin I didn't use any program actually, just a crappy keyboard and a four-track tape-recorder! For this one I performed all of the instruments individually on my keyboard and recorded them in Adobe Audition.

[The Chicken or the egg!]

Not bad

As the previous reviewer said, the "naught" joke got old pretty quickly. Don't we have scientific notation for things like that nowadays?

The flash was pretty good and was pretty funny, even if I don't quite agree with it. Not because I don't believe in evolution, but rather because the whole concept of a "species" doesn't really make a lot of sense. Biologically speaking, there isn't a good definition for a "species" (most people assume that there is, but there's actually a big controversy about it), so your whole thing about the first 100% chicken arising from two parents who aren't quite 100% chicken is dangerously misleading.

There is no point where one species becomes another, there are just labels of convenience and various degrees of separation. And if you don't believe me, ask yourself why it is that many animals that are labelled different species can interbreed (lions and tigers for example - google "liger" and you will come up with tons of pictures). In fact, this should be obvious by the way that evolution works - new "species" aren't created overnight, old species change form slightly over millenia until they end up being different. There's no exact line where something becomes a chicken - we can always make an artificial line based on percentage of difference from today's chicken DNA, but it won't really mean anything in the natural world aside from making it easier for humans to classify things. And as far as I know, no biologists have agreed on just where that line should be. After all, how do you define what is "100% chicken" when every chicken alive is different?

Everything on Earth is related, and distinctions like "species" might be usefull for human science (if they could just pin down what the definition of a "species" should be) but are meaningless in nature. To find the ultimate answer to the question of "chicken or egg" we'd need to go back in time down the long evolutionary ladder and find where the first collection of chemicals that we call "life" appeared. But then again, "life" might be as artificial a distinction as "species" is - for example, viruses, by far the simplest "life forms" around, are just small inactive groups of chemicals that basically only come alive when they can replicate. The difference between life and non-life isn't as great as most people think, so the question of "chicken or egg" may well have no answer at all.

Anyway, I'm sorry for going on this over-long rant everyone. Watch the animation, it's nice. :)

whataboffin responds:

Wow this guy wrote an essay! Interesting yes but I would like to point out to everyone again that I am not a scientist, I am an animator who didnt even bother to check his science facts because he just wanted to make a funny animation :P