Bezman's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Today is a gift]

Lovely

Really slick.

The smile at the end was well done, though I didn't notice it the first time.

Great colours for the lines, really tight overally, lovely idea.

I almost wish it were longer, but you've already made it memorable and enjoyable in the time it lasted.

[Ctrl + Z]

I thought the idea would be explored more.

It was a great idea, but I feel you could have explored it more, or done so with a bit more flair.

Your comments kinda gave the entire story away - I was hoping to see the possibilities of a real-world undo explored. Maybe time travelling, maybe he'd go back to yesterday and jokes would ensue... I can't think of many cool ideas off the top of my head, but I'm sure you could if you sat and had a long think about it.

I can see you were going for a quick punchline, but the comments and the slow narration and spinning keyboard made me think it'd be a longer story, leaving me disappointed.

The graphics were okay. You could have drawn in the mum/dad. I wasn't sure who was talking - in the first fram, I first thought someone inside the box was talking.

When things disappear, you could have had them tween out - maybe reducing their alpha value. That would kinda make the events more visual.

The audio was all pretty clear and the idea was cool, though.

[A Thousand Two Frames]

The starting splash is cool.

I feel like the strongest parts of these things - certainly in your case - is when they're bordering more towards pure abstraction.

The blue splash was certainly brilliantly done, and the red bit was cool too.

The scenes with the cavemonster, pooing blob, zombie and fish just didn't seem as strong though.

Unlike the first installment, this wasn't really connected - that had the theme of all the travelling etc. If you followed themes (e.g. dinosaurss, machines or jungle animals), it might seem more like a cohesive whole

Anyways, I'd really suggest you give us more splashes - those seem to be your forte. Maybe turn the animals etc. into more stylised blocks of colour? Maybe spend more time on them and sketch out different ways of drawing them before doing something on the computer?

As is, they bring the animation down.

I didn't enjoy this much, sorry.

blackcat2000 responds:

Mmm... Splashes... Mmm... Water... Mmm...
Block colors? Sure.
A plot to my randomness? Egad! I'll storyboard any future flashes. I'm sure it'll help. I'm drawing things (or was trying to) in (more) detail now, on paper. During classes. That way I'm totally concentrating. I can probably animate a strange monster if I reaaaallly wanted to. Maybe I'll compile some shorts. But connect them in random ways :D
Nah, that'd contradict your suggestion. I'll stick to some sort of theme :D
Thanks for the review!

[The Beelion]

Fun poem and idea marred by other elements.

I liked the poem at the start, but felt the graphics and the remainder let it down.

Your trees were nicely visualised.

The loop being on for so long kinda let it down though. I mean, where the poem talks about the nine creatures, maybe show them clambering around the trophy. And when they start singing Hakuna Matata, I thought it was gonna continue throughout the song and would have given up on it had it not been an RRC request.

I'd suggest you don't implement that song, unless you were gonna have the beelion dance or something.

The end kinda works well - those scenes at 1 frame a second are quite dramatic. When he finally gets the trophy though, as a moodshift, maybe you could have tweened him going through the cave?

I watched this last week and still don't know what to think of it. I love mixing animals together and your poem is cool. But so much brings it down that I can't really say I liked it overall.

I strongly encourage you to keep realising these ideas though. Look forward to seeing what you can do after garnering more skills.

blackcat2000 responds:

Heh. Thanks to the RRC for keeping some people longer than they would "normally" have. It was a slight fear when I submitted it that half the people would figure it's not going to end.
Indeed, indeed... motion tweening and movement to make the movie a tad more mysterious... have him moving into the darkness...
Thanks for the review!

[The MAC & PC show]

kinda amusing joke

The characters were pretty cute, thought I felt the thin lines on the mouth on mac at one point didn't match too well.

Quick but kinda amusing joke and kudos for not dragging it out.

[A Thousand Frames]

A step above the typical fbf experiments

What do you mean by 'rotating perspective', 'semi-3D things' and 'blurry movement'?

This was pretty cool - I specially liked the colours and liquidy motion at the start, as well as the fact that it all had a vague narrative, but the miidle and ending remained a slight disappointment.

Seeing that skull turn into liquid and splash away, then those colours shift, followed by the colours receding kinda like fungus was all incredible.

I felt that when you tried to be more literal - like with the fish, man, bullet... the limits of your abilities kinda showed. Maybe some colours would have improved it a bit and maybe you could have used the ctrl-Z to its full potential, trying for lines with style when drawing stuff, maybe sketching out a rough in a layer underneath, then redrawing it with more confidence and - hopefully as a result - flair.

The lack of colours worked well when the 'spedy' section started, but in the sea, I really missed it and in space it might have been nice to fill in the bullet/TV with some shade.

The narrative was cool - it was fun how racing along the road brought us to the cliff edge, bringing us underwater, bringing us into space. Maybe you could make more of some vague 'thematic flow' like that, maybe dropping some scenes, like the gumball bit , which didn't really work well imo.

Anyways, it's cool to see peeps experimenting and this was fun to watch the first time. Good stuff.

blackcat2000 responds:

Rotating perspective- I dunno... More like plain rotating, I guess... It's when the guy shows up for a short while, with his head spinning.
Semi-3D things- Well, more like... drawing with shading... The planet and all. I was a bit vague with that, but I meant shading :P
Blurry movement is another one... The fish swimming for example.

Sorry that i disappointed with the middle and end, but I figured it needed more action, then I sorta drifted into the land of animating madness :P
With the drawing underneath, I tried that with "The Beelion" and found it to be quite helpful... But probably would've been a tad boring with pure fbf. It's a good idea though, and I'll definitely remember it in future.

Thanks for the awesome review :)

[VZ Series:Naruto V Sasuke]

Just like hundreds

Overall, the movie bored me - the graphics are mediocre (excellently drawn by whomever drew them, badly composited by you for the most part) and the plot is the same old tosh. Essentially, it's just like hundreds of others.

What's the name of the font you used for the in-movie dialogue and opening text? It looks like a great decorative font, but for the size you're using it at (for the speech), you really need something more functional. Maybe a bitmapped font or a sans serif?

The sprites were well put together and all the speedlines, explosions and specially the 'charging up visuals' looks cool. Changing the bgs at that point was a nice idea.

However, there's a lot wrong.

Zoom-ins weren't a good idea with sprites - it doesn't look good. Work within the restrictions of the medium rather than trying to force it into places it shouldn't be.

You could have used a mask to blend the mountain and the 4 faces a bit better.

There were some examples of squashing - resulting in an oval planet at some points and a chubby Naruto in Sasuke's ending.

The explosions for Naruto's death looks fairly incongruous with everything else. Try to source images that match each other better.

The stuff I've said is just a bunch of graphical niggles - nothing that would stop it being enjoyed if the narrative was above par. Unfortunately, that's just the same-old battle scene and the 'true' ending, was just totally confusing. It wasn't as if it raised questions - it just made me wonder, 'wtf' and feel like you'd set yourself up to explain something that you won't properly be able to.

The charging bit and the bit where Sasuke first hits Naruto do look pretty decent.

I suggest you take a step back and think about what you're hoping to achieve with this series.

Tell a story? Work on it.
Improve your animation? Don't use sprites.
Show us cool stuff? Make a website - not flash animations.

-Review Request Club-

mortis5000 responds:

Thank You...The sprites were limited so I did have my hands tied behind my back...the camera systems that I used did distort some of my scence esp sasuke ending...I have adopted a new system actually that doesn't distort it...

[All Your Leet]

...

I'm not sure what emotion you hoped to spark. Confusion? Nostalgia? Anger? Bemusement?

In me, this provoked the marginal confusion above and perhaps also disappointment and boredom. Nothing else.

IThe title screen - with badly drawn text shifitng around - just doesn't look good. If you're gonna draw out text, make it well drawn.

I haven't seen the intro drawn out before, but the fact that it was drawn, rather than the original screenshots, actually reduced the appeal imo. Your drawings weren't graphically appealing.

I kina liked the pic with the petrol station prices, as it seemed like something that could actually happen in life without staging and wasn't obvious like the clocks.

I admit I never liked the original though and any 'craze' is long passed. The idea of this kind of slideshow just seems kind of boring - amusing the first time you see it, but never thereafter.

Sispri responds:

Fads pass and I guess this is old.