Bezman's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Last Hour: Chapter 2]

Atrocious voices

Everything I said about episode 1 still applies, with the added comment that the voice sounds terrible.

It sounds like you were trying to emulate the grandiose opening voices we sometimes hear - like at the start of ResEvil. But your voice just sounds silly. Specially the way you say, 'adventure continues' just sounds ridiculous rather than being dramatic.

I think you should get real voice actors. Or maybe use text.

I could barely make out what was being said by the pilot and the base in the actual animation.

And you need to spend more time on stuff. Don't just draw a single frame then stretch it to convey movement. If you're serious about wanting to be a great animator, do some real FBF animation. And try and refine your lines somewhat.

Also, the spaceship just looked like it was a tiny thing floating above him, rather than being in the distance or whatever.

The ending seemed like a decent place to cut the episode though. If this had been part of #1, it would have seemed better paced.

This seemed even worse than #1.

Jaiba responds:

yes i did try to sound like a epic voice actor. i will improve on my next work.

[The Last Hour: Chapter 1]

Short and unfulfilling.

Wow - that was short!

For 'jaiba productions', you could use a more interesting typeface than Times. Something more decorative.

And on the main menu, fading out the bottom of the 'play' buttons seems like a bad idea - buttons should generally be one of the most noticable things on a screen imo.

Try being more careful when drawing the stars, so they're tiny dots rather than short lines.

The plot sounds interesting from your author's comments. I'm not familiar with the bible, but I'm guessing you are? Always kinda fun to see a skewed 'reinterpretation' of a popular story.

However, due to its short length, none of that really came to fruition. Nothing happened here and there's actually nothing within the flash itself that makes me excited about the next one. It seems awkwardly cut.

Jaiba responds:

this is one of my oldest works. i want to redeem myself. if you check out my latest chapter as of late, chapter 5. you will notice all the improvements of the bad things you spoke about. i hope you check it out and review again. for chapter 5. thanks.

jaiba

[Stolen Art (short)]

predictable

The punchline was kinda predictable, rendering the whole thing a bit boring.

I liked the cheesy grin on the thief though and the way he pranced about. Redrawing him rather than having him just tweened would improve the look though.

And maybe zoom in on the guard at the end to frame his face better?

[+The Race+]

Just a 5s loop.

It seemed like it had potential. You established a rivalry and the absurd vehicles looked kinda interesting.

You need to finish it though - 5 seconds looped over and over just isn't gonna cut it.

To be honest, this seems like you started a project, then after a couple of hours of work decided you coudn't be bothered and just abandoned it, yet submitting it anyway.

[Yet Another Day]

Fun, energetic toon

The scenery and props were kinda crude at times and I felt that gave it a shaky start.

You're great at drawing yourself though and I like how you make great use of limited drawings. The poses you pick are full of energy!

The story was fun and though the 'fictional lover' theme is a little bit cliche, it made me smile anyways.

Great work!

[Bob!]

You need practise.

Firstly, I suggest you set the music to 'stream'. That will help keep it in synch and you'll be able to time your graphics better.

That alone would step it up a notch.

The graphics are kinda ugly - you've put a little bit of work in, but you need to practise and work on your style. Play about, practise, pick a style and apply it to the whole movie. Here you've got brush strokes combining with geometric shapes and it doesn't look good.

And take the time to actually finish the thing.

Not atrocious, but you just need to practise more, maybe on paper?

[Numa Gone Wild]

Kinda predictable.

To be honest, the whole thing felt really formulaic and after the first 30s, there weren't any surprises. Because of that, I found it dull all in all.

The animation and colouring was good though and the music and sfx also.

[loneliness and sad]

I couldn't feel it.

Are the drawings traced photos? It kinda looks that way - specially with the girl on the bus and some of the folk in the park.

The animation looks really stilted though - like you needed to draw more frames. Specially with the boy kicking the ball. Having 2 frames of the guys in the park - one with them all looking at him, one looking at each other just isn't enough. Try to draw them turning around, or at least fade one into the other so it doesn't look so cheap.

The shot of his feet moving through the water was brilliant though.

You should have actually filled his eyes with white - they're currently just holes and we can see through them when he's walking through the street.

I get why he's drawn so differently from everyone else, but it would have been nice to see some sort of profile, rather than just a curve. And the coloured lined people he sees - I'm not sure if that was just something you wanted to experiment with, but there seems to be no reason for them being rendered differently and it comes across as almost jarring,

Not a terrible piece, but by the end it started to drag for me. I guess he's just feeling depressed, but with no reason given, I couldn't empathise.

[The Link Song.]

Kinda lacking in jokes...

Seen a fair few versions of this on NG but never get tired of the song.

Your characters are kinda charming.

The textured Mario Bros. sky was lovely.

The idea of plonking Link into the Mushroom Kingdom is cool, but it didn't really seem to go anywhere. I mean, we didn't see any particularly funny interactions.

And for the most part, I felt the movie was slightly lacking in jokes or visual eye-candy. Too often, it seemed like you were just sorta struggling to fill time rather than having a packing of entertainment.

[I Get A Kick Out Of You]

Fun while it lasts.

I love your textures. It looks like watercolour scribbles on top of a photo of a wall?

The stripes and symmetry as we return to the 'plane' line has a cool retro vibe about it.

I feel like you could have had more going on though. Like in the section where the guy's just playing the piano. I like the subtle bg stuff going on with the circles/rectangles, but maybe having his body not be in such a short cycle would make it interesting. Or even adding more visual detail - lines for the piano keys would clearly show what it's meant to be without detracting from simplicity.

I wasn't too keen on the pixellated bit or the more 'realistic' face near the end - those parts didn't really seem to fit. (Specially the face - seemed totally incongruous.)

Most of all, I was annoyed by the abrupt ending. That seemed kinda like laziness.

It was fun while it lasted though and you have some cool ideas in your graphics - specially the bg rectangles etc.