Esn's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Life Factory]

Really nice.

I saw this from your review to Zekey's "-Created-" (I guess you were hoping for that ;)... this is a very nice film, better than I expected. I can't really recommend anything as far as ideas and structure go, since that was quite well done. Maybe my only suggestion for improvement would be to make the visuals more striking - you had that factory animation in the background all the time that added a lot of atmosphere to the proceedings, but I think you could've gone further than that. There's a certain elegance in the simplicity, of course, but I do think that you could try working on making your visuals more striking while at the same time making sure that things don't get too crowded.

OrigamiNugget responds:

I wasn't trying to advertize lol. I was trying to strike up a conversation with a like minded artist.

[-Created-]

Why do I love this?

It's hard to put a finger on it... on the surface this seems to be one of the most serious Zekey flashes, but behind the soundtrack of Mozart's Requiem (I still think that should've been mentioned - it may have been the "Lacrimosa", but that's just one part of the Requiem) there's a lot of joy, humour and a love of drawing that comes forth. I love the Zekey style, and my only trepidation about viewing your films is that they can often be rushed. Thankfully that's not the case here - when you put your mind to it you can create something really wonderfull.

There's not really any plot to speak of, nor does there need to be. It works quite well without one (perhaps the music holds it together). Definitely deserving of a daily first.

ZekeySpaceyLizard responds:

^_^

[Kittaays animation]

Something different :)

First of all, I'd just like to point out that the long and rambling (my how they ramble!) author's comments were unneeded - your film speaks for itself very well and needs no explanation. I love the way that you animated all of the cats and that style that you used. Their emotions and antics were perfectly captured and made this film very fun to watch.

An excellent film. I hope that you'll stay at Newgrounds and submit more delightful films like this one. However... please stay to mostly dialoque-less films. And I mean that in the nicest possible way - you're very good at dialogue-less. I'd kinda feel a bit scared to watch a film that you wrote the script for (seriously, I don't mean to offend... take it as honest criticism if you can - reading your author's comments before seeing the film was a bit frightening, because I was afraid - needlessly, as it turned out - that the film would be like that too; rambling and never getting to the point, when in fact it was quite the opposite).

JelliedFox responds:

I do tend to ramble alot... I like to talk, I can't really help it... I'll keep it short and sweet next time.
I thank you for taking the time to watch it and not getting to scared off by my ramblings and to write such a helpful review. :3

[Pissed Off and Armed]

Wow!

I just LOVE the lack of a central character! This is the only "stick/figure fight" flash I've ever seen that doesn't focus on one guy. Just about everyone's doing something, and you never know where to look, or who's going to win - it overwhelms the viewer. But in a GOOD way.

You definitely deserve the second place. :)

Tome89 responds:

Thanks, Esn!

[God's Message]

Heh, I liked this better than the scientists one

Good graphics, good voices (the voice for God was better than in the other one), and good music.

I like this one better because this one is just a funny joke, not a joke with an agenda to discredit a group of people as the scientists flash was. This one's funny whatever religion or philosophy you happen to belong to - all it requires is an understanding of the English language.

I don't think that the scriptures at the beginning really added anything to the film - I realize that being religious you felt you had to put them in to "spread the word", but objectively speaking their content didn't have a lot to do with the film itself (Christ is never mentioned in the actual film, only God).

Pretty good, overall.

This next section is just for the author, the actual review is now finished.

--------------------------------
Your response to my previous review to "God & the Scientists" didn't make any sense to me - could you please explain what you wanted to say?

"Define what is funny and why we laugh?"
Why should I? What does that have to do with anything? And why ask me questions that are so vague that they don't have an answer? Do you want to know the chemical processes behind laughter, the evolutionary reasons, or what?

"Why is it a joke to humble Scientists like the way I portrayed it? Ultimately it's not."
Now you seem to be contradicting yourself; "God & the Scientists" was clearly meant to be funny by you.

"Even in a Christian perspective, this is a very serious case where, not just scientists, but a lot of people in general just don't humble themselves enough to accept particular defeats in their lives."
I really don't understand what you were trying to say here - could you please explain? Were you trying to say that it is your opinion that in refusing to follow Christianity I am refusing to accept that I SHOULD follow it (as if I secretly actually believe that it is correct)? If that's what it is, that seems rather smugly disrespectfull on your part. If that's NOT what you meant, you must still admit that it is often a very good thing that people DON'T just "accept particular defeats in their lives", and fight for what they believe is right. Slavery would still be around today if everybody just accepted the defeats in their lives. In fact, this whole "just accept that life sucks" business is how kings and clergy in Europe kept the population under control, poor, and uneducated in the Middle Ages. We can all agree that the European Middle Ages is by and large not a period of history that we should be proud of, can't we?

Finally, just another thing I noticed from some of your comments - you often give "love" as proof that evolution is false, defining it as some magic undefinable thing. But you should know that love has been analyzed and the causes (chemicals, as always) have been found. The February 2006 National Geographic issue has a very nice article on the chemistry behind love. The interactions between the chemicals in your body are incredibly complicated, but complicated things do not have to be explained by supernaturalism, and should not be listed as PROOF of supernaturalism either. But anyway, I'll stop now, because to be honest I don't understand what "supernaturalism" actually means. From what I can see, saying that something was caused by supernatural causes is just a different way of saying "we don't know what caused it".

Godlimations responds:

thanks for the review, I am very happy you graded my animation as well as reply to my previous comment, I will clear it up, and you're right when the scriptures at the start don't add anything to the film, simply because it's my first ever Theological animation that I didn't plan on turning into a series. But cool, glad you liked this one better overall :)

"I think that whether you find this funny or not depends almost wholly on whether or not you believe in the Jewish/Christian/Islamic God (however you define "God"...)."

This is a reply to your statement which was the first question I asked: "define what is funny, and why we laugh" Its not supposed to have an answer, It's a statement to claim that you can laugh about anything in life whoever you are because we have our own free thoughts on laughter, who cares why, no one... It doesn't exclude your comment, as I agree with you. Yeah I know... Nextime I'll just say "I agree" SHUTUP lol!!!:P

I do not thoroughly say things through my own opinions, unless I'm asked to, and never have I been asked :)

ok the next one, "even in a christian perspective, people don't humble themselves"....

My comment, means that in "general" as in everyone don't humble themselves, even people who claim to be Christians don't do it...
I don't even do it sometimes. I'm not perfect, neither is the rest of this world! Being humble doesn't make you Christian, however, you are practicing Christianity in doing so :) In refusing to follow Christianity is your own choice, since when do I have the right to say what you SHOULD do... its your heart attitude I'm more interested in, if you refuse because you don't believe in it or of the such... congrats, I'm very happy for you, :) I agree with you in all of your statements, the only issue here is miscommunication.

You have taken me out of context, Slavery would be around today yes that is a possibility, I mentioned "particular" defeats, not all. When you are defeated already, people don't accept it. ie; a soccer match, you lose... but you don't accept it, you wanna bash the opposition up because theres a pride in you saying you cannot accept defeat... and in the scientists case, they got pwned, wait I meant humbled :D

errr wrong, I don't give "love" as proof that evolution is false, for proof itself doesn't exist. Love is not a magical undefinable thing, whatya think I'm stoopid? I wouldn't actually mind hearing about what science has to say about Love, it will give me a good insight. :P Here's a link to help you, its sorta on the same pattern length to our conversation:
http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5237

Supernaturalism... it means a lot of things.. ultimately... I don't know either :D

It could be true what you say in the last sentence... you're probably right... It doesn't have anything to do with me really, but that's cool, it makes up for the "why be funny" situation lol :)

thanks, I admit you got me hard in this review, harder than others mostly, but overall your quite right... I just don't see why you would ask such questions. Are you trying to find a fault in me? Because I do have faults, no big revelation there. As I said before, I'm interested in your heart attitude.

[God & The Scientists]

Not bad, but short. Best viewed by theists.

Well, this is a really short flash & depends almost entirely on the punchline. Graphics & voices are pretty good but not great (graphics are a little messy, & the voice for God didn't really fit somehow).

I think that whether you find this funny or not depends almost wholly on whether or not you believe in the Jewish/Christian/Islamic God (however you define "God"...). If you do, you'll see this as a true and funny argument against people like me (symbolized by the scientists in the flash).

If you do not (or, like me, find that the question makes no sense - search "ignosticism" on wikipedia), you'll get the joke but won't find it funny - you'll think that it rather misses the point of why you think the way you do, and insults you in the process (the scientists are quite clearly shown to be the "enemy" in the flash - the shots where they snicker at God were a particularly insidious attempt to instill in the viewer's mind who the "bad guys" are).

Godlimations responds:

God sounds however he wants... :)

Define what is funny and why we laugh? Why is it a joke to humble Scientists like the way I portrayed it? Ultimately it's not. Even in a Christian perspective, this is a very serious case where, not just scientists, but a lot of people in general just don't humble themselves enough to accept particular defeats in their lives.

[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

[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!

[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

[Fred the Notable Monkey]

Note to Wikipedia admin below

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.

JKR responds:

Thanks for the review! I agree with you in that I think it is not hurting anyone to have more obscure things also in Wikipedia. Perhaps a system could be set up where the most popular items are held within a certain place so they are quick to access, but the less popular things might take a bit longer to load. That way you wouldn't be affecting the people who get searched out more often. Just a thought.
Anyway, glad you liked the cartoon okay. Yes, doing one a week all by myself (voices, animation, everything) does put a limit on what I can do without not sleeping and going crazy. =)
I hope you enjoy the next Fred cartoon more, and I'll try and add even more animation to it.