Esn's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[-MASS-]

Good

An excellent flash - my eye was drawn to all of the wonderfull different graphical styles that you used. The pacing also fit in perfectly with the music.

A few questions I'd like to ask, though: I know from reading the other reviewers who in particular it was directed at, but who's the "flower" guy? Was there a particular instance that you were referring to, or a particular episode of that series?

In truth, I'm a bit conflicted about the message in this one because I'd say that I agree with the reviewer below me who said "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". You said "open your third eye" in response to him, which isn't really a response - you're assuming that everyone's "third eye" sees the same thing as yours. Perhaps what you were trying to say is that people should watch more obscure artists so that they can tell the difference between something that took a lot of work and crap. Well, the NG voting system IS geared toward solving that problem - the system is designed so that people who watch more movies have their vote count more, on the theory that as they watch more films they'll be able to better tell what's good and what's crap. It may not be perfect, but I think it's pretty good.

Also, most users on this site are voting for how much they enjoyed something, not on how hard it was to make. Although there's definitely a correlation between those two factors (especially as the user gets more experienced and "grows up" out of liking the stuff that he now realizes takes almost no effort to make), it's not a perfect one. A bad artist can work two months on something and it can still suck because of bad artistic decisions, while a more talented artist can make something rather simple in a shorter amount of time and have it be really fun to watch (most of weebl's flashes are like this). I don't see anything wrong with that. Picasso was an extraordinarily fast painter later in his career - something that he'd worked on for an hour would be worth far more than something I'd worked on for 2 months.

I also see nothing wrong with parody - a lot of parodies require a lot of work as well, and are original in their own right.

Still, your flash HAS made me want to watch more "obscure" flashes in the portal, which I think was your main objective. So good work! :)

ZekeySpaceyLizard responds:

Good sir. Scour the portal of newgrounds.
See some of the amazing cartoons that are there. Many of which are not famous. Are not popular. And are far prettier, funnier, better and more deserving of love than the majority of things that are in the top 50.
True, the Newgrounds vote system seems to work. But it is abused constantly. People vote low on other's work simply because they dont like the person and vice-versa.
The system is flawed. Thats why the same people manage to win Turd of the Week and Underdog every week for months.

[Primal War]

Very nice movie.

A mythological fight between reptiles and mammals using advanced weaponry - pretty cool idea. The drawing and animation in this one is spectacular. I really disliked the music, but it does fit in with the flash, especially with the animal sounds in it (wait, you're saying those were made by a human?! :P)

There's one small slaw I noticed - when those eagle things are flying against the moonlight, the wingtips of one of them seem to dissappear a few times as if there were a rectangular white object blocking it instead of moonlight.

Overall, this is definitely worthy. Nice job.

[Gaia Destruction]

90% Awesomeness!

Wow, that was far above my expectations. Seriously, this was awesome in so many ways - the fight scenes were mostly great, and I loved the screen shaking thing that you did. You also made some REALLY nice use of unorthodox textures for backgrounds and such - I loved that lava effect in particular as it welled up from the Earth. Your monsters are really imaginative, and the whole thing just felt really epic - the length was impressive too, although I felt that the last bit when the song repeated itself wasn't really necessary since you just repeated most of your animation - you could've had the song fade away early or do some fancy splicing work there to skip a section.

A few other things I didn't like - the "God warriors" often didn't move realistically in combat, especially when someone hit them from behind. They just didn't seem to react - it was as if the demons were piercing slices of cheese. Also, the colouring of the "good guys" was a bit bland compared to the rest - I would've loved to see some of the more imaginative and complicated colouring schemes that you used in other places. You basically replicated the same image for most of them and had them floating around, so it wouldn't have taken up too much extra time I think to spice that up a little.

I also didn't understand what that guy was doing in the end up in the clouds - he looked like he was scraping coins off of his chest or something. It just really didn't make sense for me. Could you please clear that up? I think that the whole "give a coin to the boatman" sequence could've had a little more variety in it. You could've made the boatman move a little maybe or something.

Another thing - thank you very much for putting subtitles in for part of the song! This is a really nice touch that many flash artists don't do, and it really helped because the words aren't that clear in some places.

That's it.

[Clock Classics 2]

I liked the idea.

But it has a major, major flaw - it's a silent movie, and you don't give the viewer enough time to read the text. That's about the worst mistake that you can make when making a film like this.

Since I wasn't able to finish reading about 1/3 of the text messages (the longer ones, and towards the end especially), I can't give you a high score because I didn't really understand what happened. And it really should be YOUR job to make the viewer understand.

So that's it. If that problem were fixed, I might've given you an 7 or an 8, but I can't give you any higher than a 6 now.

CorpseGrinderClock responds:

I sacrificed that to have the events hit on certain notes in the music, give me some credit sheesh

[The Fresh Maker!]

Not bad.

I miss the style of your past flashes though - everything in this is so... normal looking! What happened to the wacky artistic style of your past works? The people especially looked very plain - they were well-drawn but the style was just not very interesting to look at.

Still, this is pretty good, and I laughed a few times. It's also your longest flash so far. One thing I would suggest would be to quicken the pace a little - there were many spots where nothing really happened, so they felt like dead space. It seemed like they were there more to make the flash fit to the length of the music than for any other reason.

As for the music - it was good, just like the music in all of your other flashes. But the other posters are correct - it just doesn't work with what you tried to do here. That type of music works really well with the style you used in your previous flashes, but it doesn't work very well here.

[Evolution of the Unicorn]

You inspire me!

So you did all of this with photoshop? That's absolutely amazing! The only film like this one that I have seen was the 20-minute "The Old Man and the Sea" by Alexander Petrov (who paints with oils on glass using his fingers). Are you a fan of his work, by any chance?

I was wondering about the plausibility of creating a film in which every frame was made in photoshop to simulate the "painted" look, but it seems like it's possible after all. This flash inspired me to try it some day.

So could you please answer, what program did you use to put together all of the individual frames into a movie? Can this be done in flash (I've never used flash so I don't know, but most of what I've seen so far has been done in vectors or was just a live-action movie, not frame-by-frame stuff)?

Thank you for your time!

TypeQueen responds:

Hey, thanks for the review.

I love The Old Man and the Sea, it was definitely an inspiration for the stylization of my movie.

The way I accomplished this, was to first model very basic landscapes and the unicorn in 3d, and animate the film in 3d to act as a "guide." I then imported the frames one by one into Photoshop and re-drew them using custom brushes to create the "painted" effect.

You could easily animate it in 2d first and use that as a guide, but I'm faster at 3d animation than 2d.

I saved the painted frames from Photoshop one by one (naming them unicorn0001.jpg, unicorn 0002.jpg), then imported them with QuickTime Pro. QuickTime Pro allows you to import an "image sequence", and then I exported the sequence as a movie, and imported that movie into Flash MX.

[Charlie the Unicorn]

Bizarre, yet compelling!

This has got to be one of the strangest things that I've ever seen on Newgrounds. But you know what? It's also one of the best. The graphics are not fancy, but I wouldn't have changed them in any way, and the music and voices are just fantastic.

Surprise ending too, so you a 5 from me! Watch this everyone, it's insane!

There's just one thing that I'm confused about - what was their motivation??? O_o

[I Love Death]

Simple but excellent

Why does the movie send me to a "404 page not found" after it ends?

In any case, this movie was really well-done and everything about it was very professional. It really shows off the strengths of Flash, in that the graphics are really simple but very high quality at the same time. Some of it was a little in bad taste (gee, ya think?) but it was all for a good cause in the end - the flash actually had a message, unlike many others - so I commend you on your effort.

[Minushi - Chapter 4]

Hey, Tyler!

I haven't visited your site in a few weeks, but now that I have I'm glad to know that Minushi Chapter 13 is coming December 1st. Thanks for reminding me! ;P

This has to be one of the best Minushi episodes, and that along with the fact that it's very easy to understand even for someone who hasn't seen the previous 3 (which is most of your audience) should make it go far on Newgrounds!

For those who're coming to this series for the first time - this is a good episode to watch to get an introduction, and if you decide that you like it, go over to the Minushi website and watch the whole series from the beginning. Don't watch the other episodes from Newgrounds because 1) Chapter 1 is not on Newgrounds and 2) the official site has the retooled versions of the episodes which have much better graphics.

And that's about it. I love this series! :)

[Le Petit Americain Ep. 2]

An excellent flash, but there's something missing:

An interesting core at the center of it all. Even though your animation, voices, music selections and pacing were really great, and certainly enough to hold my interest, I just didn't feel like there was an actual story behind it all. Although this flash is very good as it is, most of its humour relied not on what happened in the actual story but on the various colourfull diversions from it, and I think that it would be better if should you choose to make another flash, you try and make the actual story itself be the cause for more of the humour.

I also have to say that I found the whole concept to be a little... bizarre. Is it supposed to be making some point, or is it mainly for laughs?

That's all I have to say really. It's definitely better than the last episode (which was good but felt a little stretched).

epyon5 responds:

An awesome critique! Thanks for taking the time to watch and write. Their's not really a point to this episode except that we're just trying to introduce and familiarize everybody with the Youngbody family. Ep. 1 was about Robert, ep.2 the family, ep. 3 will be about an adventure with Viper (he seems to be a favorite) While ep. 4 will finally start to have more of story feel to it. It will focus on Travis coming to accept Robert as his new brother. As for the bizarre feel to it, that's what I love. My collaborator David is a fantastic writer with a whimisical and imaginative charm that is remeniscant of Wes Anderson's style of writing.