Bezman's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[GAEL-- Harry Potter]

I guess I'm just not that keen on the joke itself.

I liked some of the 'animated' photos as well as your voice.

I had read these jokes elsewhere on the internet, lessening the humour greatly. Also, most are an overly large stretch other than the 'silvery stuff'.

You have a great voice and the starting animation was fairly decent, but I was disappointed to see you hadn't made another GAEL since this one - I would have been interested to see what else the 'show' would look at.

It's well presented, but I guess I'm just not that keen on the joke itself.

[The Fairy Future Mother]

he graphical quality does mar it

I'm no script-writer, but that script seemed pretty cool. It was entertaining at any rate!

I love the idea of a 'Fairy Ghost Mother' and liked her surly attitude. Maybe you could have played that up even more - taken it further into a cartoonish extreme?

I think the main reason why it didn't do as well as you hoped was because of the graphical qualities. Within all 3 fields - design, drawing and animation - there are shortcomings that detract slightly from the quality. I'll try and give an example of each.

1st frame - the design of the first frame will usually be seen for longer than any other, so try and make it well designed!

On this screen, the most prominent feature is the newgrounds preloader, whereas I feel it should be the title. Instead, the title is of a similar colour to parts of its background (the pinkish wall) and appears low-contrast and hard to read as a result. Typically, it's best to set text against either a solid colour or a low-contrast background - here, if you deleted the wall/windowframe and the stars behind the text, that'd be a step in the right direction.

The star looks cool, but maybe it could be integrated more - say by being the dot of the 'i'? Maybe enlarge the text, giving it two lines at least, and space to breathe? Why is the NG logo/play button the largest element? I'm all for bigging up the site, but it seems incongruous with the graphical quality of everything else. Rather than having the text/pictures and play button as seperate elements grafted onto each other, you need to think of a few ways to lay them out together then assemble it so they each become part of a greater whole.

Animation - you obviously do a lot of tweening in your animation, whilst keeping many layers static. I'd suggest using a few more poses - in the starting argument, for example, it seems unnatural for everyone to be standing so rigidly - even just 'snapping' to a new pose - leaning forwards, hand on hip etc. - would be a step in the right direction. When you're animating, take a moment to 'act' that section, then think about how your body moves.

Drawing - the leg/torso proportions really do look kinda bad. Legs should be far longer and it looks like a mistake rather than a stylistic choice. Work on your hands. Think about removing black outlines in the background or altogether. Make your lines nicer curves rather than being so 'rigid'. Think about the colouring of everything. My tips here are to practise sketching people - maybe on the underground, or anytime you're sitting, doing little and people are nearby. Think about colours more.

A lot of this will come through practise, but I hope I've helped prod you in the right direction.

Now for some more things I liked -
The wallpaper in the starting scene was an awesome texture. Where did you pick it up from?

The voices were all generally well-acted and clear to understand.

The scene with the dancing, changing colours and animated crowd looked cool. Maybe another line of people (a slightl different colour of course) would have made it shine even more but it looks great as is.

I liked the fact that you bothered to do shading for most of it.

It was fun to watch and a good piece, but the graphical quality does mar it slightly and will greatly affect its score.

OxSox responds:

Bezman your reviews are the greatest. If I could be half as good of an artist as you are a reviewer, I'd be happy. Next time I make an animation I'm going to look this review over many times as I do my work. Thank you.

[Adventures of Matt L.]

little could be said to be 'enjoyable'.

I do like the fact that folk are experimenting with different techniques. Just as glitches became an intentional part of modern music, it's interesting to imagine videos where glitches become a cool feature.

However, I feel this just isn't 'there' yet. I imagine you kinda made this up as you went along, kinda thinking up jokes, slinging them in, messing with things, trying them out... it's great to see that first step, but I'd like to see something where every glitch has thought behind it, each element is there for a reason...

Part of me wants to suggest you improve traditional animation and graphic design skills before revisiting this idea. Maybe then, with greater sympathy for the audience and better skills, you'll achieve more.

As is, parts of this are kinda interesting, but little could be said to be 'enjoyable'.