Bezman's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[- NGChat [Dot] Com -]

made me chuckle

I admit - I thought it would be a movie about someone visiting the NG irc channel or something. Or maybe a story inspired by the irc channel folk.

In any case, it was a cool animation, made me chuckle and I like how you used the NG bg.

I'd have suggested you cut out the ad though and the animation/cropping could have been better.

gumOnShoe responds:

I've been on IRC several times, but I don't make movies about scrabble. Yeah, it was sloppy fpf, but if it made you chuckle it was good enough for me.

[Imagination Ep.3]

Not as 'flowing'

I'm surprised none of these got a daily award given their score. What was their score when first submitted?

I liked the way you worked with the colour in a fbf manner. However, apart from the flower/windmill turning into a butterfly, I kinda felt there weren't enough morphs and too many transitions where you just wiped everything off-screen to start again with a blank slate. That made it lose some continuity.

Also, the straight lines and tweening did slightly ruin the effect for me. When the guy smoothly shrinks into the spaceship or the glass's straight lines blur outwards, it sits at odds with the wibbly fbf lines used elsewhere.

The flashing text might be amusing to you, but it does just make it look glitchy. It would have been better had it appeared fbf,lasting a few more frames.

Lastly, you really need to work the music better. Put it on to stream. Have it fade out at the end. And credit the musician! I've heard the tune before, but can't remember who it is. Only fair to credit an artist who's worked so hard on the audio!

The signature is cool though and I like the introduction of colour. It's a cool series and I'd love to see more of these.

-Review Request Club-

VegetarianMeat responds:

Unfortunately, I'm not too sure what the score was originally (obviously not enough for daily award I guess :P)

As for the wiping of the screen: yeah, that basically happened cause I ran out of ideas, changed what I wanted to do mid-animation etc. The animation also was a little inconsistent; like you mentioned with the glass and the guy with the spaceship. On second thought I could've easily hand drawn that. I also could've done without that flashing text (or made it appear fbf style like you suggested).

The music was a bit tricky. There was a problem where I pressed the replay button and the music would overlap. I ended up putting a movieclip or something offstage with the music file inside there, and it seemed to solve that problem. The music not fading out was a personal choice of mine, I think it sounds alright. And you're completely right, I really should credit the musician (Chemical Brothers - Where do I begin)

Thanks a lot for the review :D

[Imagination Ep.2]

Not as 'flowing' as #1.

The various sections did fit with the mood of the music - specially the rising angel.

Overall though, I felt this was weaker than the first. #1 was like a flowing stream of visual - pure stream of consciousness where nothing was 'held' for longer than a few seconds (other than the boy'devil).

In this, the slower start and end really weaken the whole animation.

And why have the music go on in its entirety after the animation? Yeah, it's a great piece of music but it feels sloppy. Instead, set it to stream, use a custom sound effect and have it fade out as the 'replay' bit appears.

The dynamite becoming a spider was kinda cool though.

_Review request Club_

VegetarianMeat responds:

To each his own I guess, I like it when the music continues on once a film finishes :P

Thank you for the review :D

[Imagination Ep.1]

Glad you made this. :-)

Looks like you weren't too happy when you made this. I mean you hold the shot of the bruised unhappy boy for a long while, then stop on an unhappy face...

The whole idea was pretty cool to watch. My favourite bit were the hoover sucking the tree and the dots moving round into the square that got cut.

The worm was drawn pretty well, but some of the 'literal' things you drew, like the boy/devil and the fly could have been more stylised maybe.

Fun to watch and I'm looking forward to the next.

_Review Request Club_

VegetarianMeat responds:

(The ending is the worst part of this one :P) I'm with you on the tree getting vacuumed up, that's my favourite part as well. I also had a good time animating it.

Thanks for the review :D

[TV Rules the Nation]

this rocked!

I love the black+outline style. The whole thing matched the pace of the music perfectly and the story was simple but cool.

I did start feeling at points that your characters were kinda in a slightly uncomfortable place between being realistic and stylised - as if you still maybe need to think about how to stylise your own characters a bit.

I loved the sinister dudes in the ministry and the digital font rocked.

The tweened arm on the dude near the end wasn't so great.

Maybe a bit of glow or some non-solid colours for the 'blast' when we see the globe the final time would improve it.

Overall though, this rocked! Great to see you trying new things - you're really improving!

_Review request Club_

Jimtopia responds:

Yeah, my characters were a little awkward at points, but that's mainly because I chose bad ways to draw them, like... weird positions... anyway, you're right, the 'blast' would have been better with some "non-solid colors," that would probably have improved that scene, but to be honest, I just wanted to finish the cartoon at that point in the animation. lol

[Présentation de La France]

I'm sure everyone in the class got a chuckle!

The lack of a preloader/play button was a little annoying, but understandable given your explanation above. I'd definitely suggest you submit stuff rather than worrying about it too much.

The whole thing was pretty simple. The way you tweened the head in time to the syllables worked well and made him seem kinda alive despite no mouth movement.

I did find it kinda jarring when the clipart tourist came along - just because of the different visual style, it immediately made the whole thing feel a bit sloppy to me. Maybe you could've drawn a similar limbless tourist to play the part?

The 'beautiful planet' sequence was kinda charming.

The forgetful bits were vaguely amusing, but the voice acting could have better reflected someone grasping for thoughts.

I enjoyed it a bit overall - there's a few things that could be improved to make it more entertaining on NG, but it had a good vibe.

I'm sure everyone in the class got a chuckle!

[Freddy]

didn't care for this (But freddy WAS nicely drawn)

Kinda confusing mostly.

I liked the spoken intro - it had a nice lyrical rhythm to it.

Freddy was drawn quite nicely - I liked all the angular lines. Sorta looked as if you'd used modify>simplify or something, to good effect.

I think your character would have looked good drawn similarly though and the single eye is too far forward - the character kinda looks as if he only has one eye.

The mouths were moving way too fast - certainly keep the open shapes open for longer and don't necessarily try to fit in every single phoenome. When folk speak, they don't instantly close their mouths after each word.

Anyways, the plot itself just seemed a bit disappointing to me. It seemed like the highlight was meant to be the song, but for me that section just really dragged on. The start before that and the bit after just didn't really have any impact on me at all.

It seemed like a lot of the interesting action happened off-screen. Maybe show us a silhouette of the body he's just killed?

And for me maybe a little more exploration of the characters would have helped it have an impact.

Sorry, didn't care for this much.

_Review Request Club_

ShortMonkey responds:

thanks for the review anyway :)

oh and with Freddy, I didn't use anything like Modify>Simplify or whatever - I drew it witha brush tool and tidied up the outline with the black arrow tool...

[You gonna drink that?]

I didn't celebrate Paddy's day today. :-(

I love this animation. The hand-drawn bitmaps look awesome (though in a few frames the purple guy has white bits around his eyes) and it all works really well.

I specially liked the animation for the liquid spewing out the planet - how did you do that? Is that animated in flash or is it hand-drawn?

Voices sound kinda like Weebl's... hmm...

I felt that the text (the Times-Roman-esque subtitles) looked kinda crappy and wasnt needed.

Otherwise, it looks way cool and is pretty funny too.

TheKingofSwing responds:

Well, glad all that did the trick for ya. The liquid part was just one drawing tweened over and over onto itself; it looks like it's pouring out cuz of how it was drawn and how it was tweened. And I honestly haven't watched anything by Weebl, but I'm sure there's similarity in it somewhere. And yeah, the text was half assed, but eh, something in this had to look like shit, so it might as well be that. Better it to be the text than the animation, eh? Eh.

[From Life to Death]

Just my opinion of course.

Great typography at the start.

I loved the moving lines you started with. (Brush strokes straightened?) The angular-wiggly look worked well.

I felt the straight lines and filled colours on the coffin didn't work too well given the style of everything else.

The pink/yellow/white characters were kinda hard to see against some backgrounds - specially the pink/yellow against the light pink.

The faded gradients worked wonderfully as did the relatively minimalistic animation. Though the characters didn't move much, the moving lines helped give it life.

The proportions were slightly out of whack - specially when the guy's holding the teddy bear. I understand cartoons don't need to be 'realistic', but the way the head expands slightly in that frame and the hand is so tiny looks wrong.

Seeing the lines, 'through' others didn't look too good in my opinion. A soft fill might have worked well.

Anyways, sorry to focus so much on the graphics, but despite your comments, I just didn't find an awful lot of emotional depth here. Sure, we can read messages into it - life is short, enjoy it; death comes to us all and other such things but to me it never seemed like you were telling a real story - it all just seemed sorta generic and I never really got swept up in it all like I thought I would shortly after it began.

I noticed that you had some parallels between his earlier life - when his father ignores him & the coffin - and later life. Is that meant to be the message? That life is cyclical? That we can get stuck in a rut?

Thing is, when I watch an animation like this, I don't want to be shown things I'm already aware of - I want to be offered an opinion, taken on a ride... essentially your animation didn't really 'speak' to me.

Sorry.

- review reQuest club -

ReklessCreati0n responds:

Yeah, I understand fully, not everyone will get the same reaction from this as the majority are. Its one of those things you can watch once, enjoy, and remember it for that. I know I really can't watch it anymore because it becomes boring and I made it.

thanks for the review!

[The Spice Girls Concert]

ried noth

I find it interesting how you break the 4th wall so often in implicit ways - this being a prime example.

I guess it works far better because you don't spell it out like you did in 'Satan's Complaint' - you just sorta use the advances in your technique etc. to point you in the direction of a plot point.

It's kinda like breaking the 4th wall but not actually doing so. I hope you know what I mean because I like it.

I'm just disappointed - having seen the icon I hoped it'd be a crazy mix-media piece.

Also - why doesn't the replay button work?

Anyways, I'm looking forward to seeing more of this drawing. I was worried nothing would ever change with the graphics. ;-)

kinggila responds:

I was thinking of improving the image of Afro_Stud, but my friend didn't really like the idea, so I left it until I made that flash when I thought I really needed to make a new version of Afro_Stud.