Bezman's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Dragonball Z Episode 1]

Not as good as I'd hoped.

I'm guessing this is meant to take part just before the start of the real DBZ.

The graphics for the planet and starfield were pretty basic - not a problem, but when we see giant thick black lines, it just looks crude. Maybe consider giving lines some colour or thinking about their width.

The flash was at least short and to the point - something I liked.

A lot of the punches/kicks seemed to connect and the sfx/music were well picked.

The fireball was kinda cool and I liked the pacing.

However, you generally aren't gonna be able to get a brilliant fight scene using these Snes sprites or whatever they are - when characters zoom in, it looks ugly, moves are severly limited and the text just lacks the emotion that you could get from real voices.

[A SlapHappy Quickie #6]

A fun thing

The intro (the 'quicki #6 bit') was distasteful to me as I find overly long intros a pet peeve. Here, though, it worked, making the shortness quite amusing.

The lip synch was nicely done, the language sounded interesting and the character design and art style were all good stuff.

Chucklesome!

A couple of nitpicks:
#1 - LEARN TO USE THE HIT FRAME OF BUTTONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Seriously, that pisses me off. Learn it. Look up some tutorials. If you can't find one, maybe I'll write one. I've explained this maybe 20 times in reviews and if I wrote a tutorial or knew of a good online one, I'd just link to that instead.
When you edit a button, you'll see 4 labeled frames. The 'Up' frame is displayed whenever the button isn't being interacted with. The 'over' frame is shown if the mouse rolls over it and the 'down' frame is shown when the mouse button is clicked, with the pointer on top of it.

Now, most importantly, how is 'over it' and 'on top of it' defined'? Well, whatever you draw in the 'hit' frame defines what area counts as the buttons and what doesn't - anywhere you draw a shape or a brush stroke in this area forms the 'hit detection' area for the buitton. (If you draw nothing, it'll just use the previous frame.)

I generally recommend that a) your 'over' frame be different to your 'up' frame (so it changes as people search for something to click, attracting attention) and b) your hit frame is a filled rectangle covering - and slightly larger than - the underlying button shape or text.

If you just draw text and leave it at that, you'll end up with a button that's horribly fiddly to click.

#2 a bit of static on your speech.

Otherwise, a fun little thing.

tehslaphappy responds:

Thank you. I was just getting the use of putting buttons in my animations. Now I know how to fix the problem. Yeah, sorry about the static, my mic has been messing up lately. Thanks.

[Tywo At Large Ep. #2]

I'm still looking forward to #3.

Another great animation, but this one didn't seem as good as #1.5.

My main beef was with the fact that whilst the first toon sorta hinted at a larger one, this doesn't really say anything about Tywo, seeming like it's not really 'canon'. That one seemed more like a glimpse into a series with working logic and I was eager to see future work. Here, there was no explanation for Tywo being part of the presentation and I didn't really get a feel for any of the characters, nor feeling that this is a 1951 production.

Also, the jokes largely seemed to all revolve around Tywo being scared or hurt (with a bit more predictibility) and the pace didn't seem as fast, with the last joke seeming like it was being dragged out following all the same, predictable, standard twists.

I liked the bird dropping but add more stuff to keep the promising standard of #1.5

I liked the pun 'jumping to conclusions'.

The intro is great - faster than we can take in, meaning there's stuff to see on subsequent watches, kinda like the futurama intro. I'm looking forward to seeing the episodes the intro shows. Have you already made future episodes? Seems insanely well organised.

-Review Request Club-

Pixmintro responds:

Thanks, it wasn't canon because it was just some fast movie I whipped up in a few days for a Chemistry class, the reason it takes place back then was that I originally wanted to have a color wrap-around at the end where Tywo is reaming Jackal for looking for summer jobs in other time periods (Jackal's the genius). I never got around to it though.

[NEW Tywo At Large Ep. #1]

Awesome cartoony low-brow humour

Right from the start, the customised NG pre-loader, graphically impressive zoom into Tywo and the intro with cool lettering and excellent character designs set a prilliant tone.

The first scene starts and we have some great lighting/colouring and you already start with the jokes.

The pace of the toon was excellent, with the setup lending itself well to some fast jokes and you making judicious cuts. The one part I felt was cut too much was after the laser section - it seemed like he'd just arrived, not just finished another egging, ruining the surprise of the joke somewhat, as our brain rushes to fill in the gaps. Kinda like hearing the punchline ahead of the setup.

Voices were great - clear and with cartoonish characterisation.

My on complaint is that personally I'm not keen on the overly rigid-looking houses, with the 'realistic' geometric shapes - I prefer something a little looser. That's just personal preference though.

Also, as I'm struggling to nit-pick, the movie icon was too low-quality (like a low quality jpg).

The show was a tad formulaic.

The end doesn't make sense to me - why are the police letting him egg Pat's house?.

It remained great though and definitely deserves its award. I wouldn't have been suprised had I seen this on TV.

-Review Request Club-

Pixmintro responds:

When I do the icons in Flash and export, Newgrounds keeps telling me I'm not allowed to use them because they have 'transparent backgrounds' and the only other program I have on the computer I use to upload movies is Paint. The thing with the police was my bad, I didn't got into enough detail to explain that their town is sort of 'Sringfieldian' where everybody is either corrupt or stupid, including the local police force. I've been writing for these characters for so long, I sort of forgot this was the first anybody has seen them. Thanks for reviewing!

P.S.: ICONS REPAIRED!

[Logic]

for the most part, a great watch.

Some of the jokes - like the pirate thing - were clearly based on material I'd heard elsewhere.

I liked the ninja theory and the voice was brilliant, perfectly deadpan.

Your graphics suited the stand-up-comedy-humour brilliantly, with nice colours.

The closing line fitted perfectly.

I felt some parts were weaker - like the smallvsbig guy, which felt like it was missing a punchline, but for the most part, a great watch.

Emptygoddess responds:

Everyone fears captain peghead.

[Yotsubato!]

A review with no compliments. You smell.

This animation brings to question one girl's lust for ice cream and her search for this foodstuff in the face of impossibility. Through the power of denial, can she transform the world into a giant ice-cream making thing?

The answer is screamed at the end.

The lines are simple. The tweens obvious.

I find myself wondering if promising to not give compliments in this review is something I should actually stick to...

Anyways, for the end frame, with the text at #009933 and #009900, maybe 'animation' could have been a slightly different colour?

And K.Azuma doesn't really stand out that much! If someone was colour-blind, that lime against white would be difficult to read! Do you have something against K.Azuma???? Do you not want folk to know his/her name? What's your problem?

Having the replay button go to the memu seems pointless - instead if it were gotoAndPlay("firstFrameOfTheActualMov e"), that might be better.

Overall, this movie does something to me that I won't mention but also makes me realise I should maybe watch this anime. Maybe if I knew it, it'd make me actually laugh, but it only makes me do something I won't mention.

You were totally right about Cowboy Bebop btw.

[Wegra Adventure 3]

Worse than #1.

Do you seriously think that voice is understandable? That's still my main criticism.

I think I preferred your brush-drawn pics and text to stuff made with a shape tool or other folks' fonts or images.

The flash seems unfinished - after Wade and Peach kick your arse, it sorta loops over without finishing the story.

After watching it 9001 times, I realised that you 'waited iver 9000 years for the police to arrive'. I like the way you worked that in.

I liked the CDI reference, but I'm still not gonna vote 5. I guess I'll rate it 5.

If the voices were understandable and you went back to drawing everything yourself, maybe I'd like this.

Wegra responds:

*Sigh* Well, at least I tried. I guess that means If I'm going to make Wegra Adventure 4 I'm goning to somehow have to get a microphone. But hey at least you weren't an asshole. Thanks for the review. I'll try even harder next time.