Bezman's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Adolf Hitler:CAI493+D SE1]

Enh.

I'm not too keen on the main series, but did kinda like your '-1' episode.

This, on the other hand, produced a momentary smile when I got to your pic and... that was it. I'm not complaining about that frame so much, but I just don't think it's worth loading the flash and going through the intro to see that single frame.

The costume was kinda cool but a tad 'obvious'. You could've maybe pixellated hitler or done something else to make it look more interesting. Enh.

kinggila responds:

The filesize is smaller than the majority of the flashes made by Afro_Stud himself. :)

[Ah - It's Halloween]

Top stuff. Funny and no faff.

My biggest complaint is that you use 'asshole' rather than 'arsehole'. Show those Americans the proper word! You shouldn't be giving in to the horrible Americanisms that don't make any sense!

Next you'll be saying you could care less! (that one really does irritate me)

Anyways, I loved seeing kids dressing up as AS/Graham, though I don't remember 33 or the keeper. The ending was surprising, considering the script is written by you.

As AS wrapped up the story, I laughed in disbelief.

Top stuff. Funny and no faff.

kinggila responds:

You know, I should have said arsehole instead.

33 was on 33 1/3 and 50, while Keeper isn't a flash character of mine, but Helloween's mascot.

Thanks! :)

[Bahamut's Clock Day 2007]

I like the vibe.

I liked the drawing for strawberry. Nice work on that!

The bright coloured hill and sky are a bit odd and abstract, but somehow they work really nicely here. I kinda like the way the gradients point to the right - it makes it seem more like a stylistic choice for abstraction, rather than a mistake. Yknow?

Though I suppose SBC's threat is a sort-of punchline, it never quite felt unexpected to me even when I first watched it, maybe because of the subtitles? Maybe you could have split that sentence into two and displayed the 2nd part to synch with him saying it.

Regardless, it was short etc. but I did get a smile out of it. I like the vibe.

kinggila responds:

Happy belated Clock Day. :)

[Stan and Joe Shorts 1]

fun piece, made me smile

The ideas for both shorts were great, as were the voices.

I liked the selective blurring effect and the simple lines looked cool.

I actually found the lack of arms at times a bit distracting and felt that more than one body pose would have helped convey a bit more emotion. Also, when stan is on the couch, the underside of his body looks a bit odd.

Regardless, this was a fun piece, made me smile, and I liked the letters in the first screen.

.:Review Request Club:.

adman responds:

yer the bodys are a but of a hassle im gonna put more movement into them for the next couple of shorts so thanks for the review!

[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.

[Bahamut's Newgrounds]

Can't blame you for jumping on the bandwagon.

I loved AlanAwesome's original version of this, but found the parodies a bit tiresome. Frankly, all the inspired efforts just seem to be changing the details, then making a lower quality version - and this does kinda fall into that category.

To be fair, there's not many places you can go after the original. I mean, he does basically cover all you'd want to so other than changing the medium - which you did - what can you do? I think it's an inherent quality of the idea - there's not as much potential for cool spin-offs as everyone seems to think.

I think you should've gone 'fuck it' and integrated some video anyway maybe - it might have been a change and interesting experience for you.

I think the graphics were generally a tad flat - losing the outlines and bringing in some shading might have helped up the quality a tad.

The last comment was unexpected and did make me chuckle (raising my experience from a '3'ish to a '6'ish) but the rest was just pretty derivative. Ah well. Can't blame you for jumping on the bandwagon.

kinggila responds:

Nah, no video for me. It might be a change for MY flashes, but it isn't for the My NG flashes. Still, thanks for reviewing. :)

[Edgar N' Locke 05]

I'm not the target audience

I wasn't too keen on this.

Pretty much a 'review' of 2008 - though you tried to keep a light-hearted theme and put in jokes with your 'interpretations' of various songs, this just didn't really have much amusement value.

I'm guessing that if I were into heavy metal I'd appreciate some of the comments - in much the same way as I enjoy the 1UP show or whatever.

I think it might be interesting if next time you do something like this and feel a need to spice it up visually, you maybe do some more cutting and pasting - maybe work some more collage-elements in? Just an idea to mull over.

Anyway, I didn't like this much, but assume I'm not the target audience. Oh well.

kinggila responds:

But the whole series is based on the heavy metal music and anything related. And you enjoyed some of the previous episodes, right? Meh, I knew this episode wasn't much besides the jokes and was just a review on heavy metal 2008.

Still, thanks for reviewing Bezman. :)

[Edgar N' Locke SE01]

I found myself laughing most of the way through.

Loved it!

I wasn't too keen on the opening screen - the band pic and FF-style text-boxes didn't sit too well together imo.

I still enjoy the voices - Locke's high-pitched voice and the woman's voice (a lad impersonating a lass) made me chuckle in a childish way.

I loved the general plot - some of the folk they preached to were hilarious in their ridiculousness and it seems to draw attention to the fact that no one band can unite everyone.

One note about the graphics - for some of the sections (most notably the town scene with the boy/mum) the bg bears no relationship to the movement of characters. Interestingly, I found myself more drawn to these scenes - it was visually cool and it reminded me of those collages at the bottom of the 1-page columns in Edge. I think it'd be cool to see you go further into a more abstract level.

I still think the final screen needs serious improvement. Even changing the grey/blue buttons to be similar to the FF-style buttons would be a massive improvement.

Regardless, it was cool and I found myself laughing most of the way through.

kinggila responds:

Oh yeah, scaling for some scenes are absolutely ridiculous. XD

And yes, I would like to make FF-ish buttons sometime. Perhaps when I'm in an improving mood.

Thanks for reviewing. :)

[MZ's G&W Collab Parts]

spend some more time practising

The music choice was actually pretty cool. I kinda recognised the tune but wasn't sure what you'd done to it until I read your comments.

The animation, in my opinion, was pretty poor. Just a bunch of unconnected bits and bobs badly animated. In my review for the green and white collab, I said, "for the most part it seemed to fall into an uncomfortable place without jokes or narrative and where neither the subject matter nor animation quality were of a high enough standard to be really enjoyable purely on their own merits."

Really, unless your animations are totally amazing (and frankly, yours are passable at best) you've got to support it with some cool subject matter, some jokes or some narrative.

I'm not gonna point out every flaw, but here's a couple of tips.

- think about line width. When we see elements drawn with differing thicknesses of lines, it looks incongruous. Why is the gun drawn with thin lines? Or the walking man? Or the text?
I'm not saying keep all lines the same width - one common technique is to use thicker lines for objects closer to the 'camera' with more distant objects or backgrounds being drawn in finer detail with thinner lines. However, here it seems to betray a lack of thought.

- Draw your elements with a more confident hand. When you're using the brush tool, use confident strokes. Otherwise you end up with wiggly lines where 'stop' is almost unreadable and the pictures seem like you don't have a clear enough idea of what you wanted them to look like.
I'd recommend you spend some time sketching a few hundred pictures in a sketchbook.

The tween of the guy walking seems neither abstract enough to be enjoyed at a purely visual level, nor is it a close representation of a walk.

One part I did like was the white blob with two holes cut out for eyes. Simple but visually appealing.

However, all in all, I'm just gonna suggest you spend some more time practising and maybe spending some time with pencils and paper.

.:Review Request Club:.

McZero responds:

BEST REVIEW EVER, Man your awesome. But I'm a very good artist. It's juts I suck with a mouse. I got 3rd highest grade in artclass.

[The Green & White Collab]

Why those colours?

I'd be interested to know the thinking behind those colours. I can understand having low-contrast colours for something slow or some old-timey scene maybe, but here it just seems like an attempt to induce a wee bit of eyestrain.

Seems to me that lowering the brightness of the green would have helped, but as I say I'd be interested to know your reasoning. I can only imagine it was set that way as a change for change's sake.

The actual animations were all reasonably well done and I did enjoy the changes between line-based animation and solid shapes.

However, for the most part it seemed to fall into an uncomfortable place without jokes or narrative and where neither the subject matter nor animation quality were of a high enough standard to be really enjoyable purely on their own merits.

FrozenSheep responds:

Firstly, I picked the color for no reason what so ever.
Well, that was very well written review and i agree with you about your last point.
Its found it hard to get group of fairly experience animators in a short period of time, so i picked anyone with reasonable aniamtion skills. I had a few good animators on board, but i'm still pretty happy to have fairly unknown individuals contribute.

So all i'm saying is i'm happy with it.