Bezman's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Newgrounds Tutorial]

passing com

Not seen a tutorial done as a movie before. Thing is, other than letting lazy people sit back and not bother clicking, and giving you - the author - less work to do, I don't see what advantage this has over a traditional format, with next/previous buttons and a well organised menu.

It was irritating to have to wait for the text to proceed and more irritating when it passed quickly on the one frame I'd have liked a couple more seconds on (agree/disagree>blam/protect).

The deity whistle is given to multiple people since a few months ago.

==
Essentially, when this info is already available, the only advantage I see of Flash versions is in making it better organised, better explained or prettier. Or adding more information.

Other than the passing comment of low level not showing you're a noob, this did none of those.

~Review Request Club~

Sidorio responds:

Advantage: I got more well known.

[Fuzz's Purple and lime]

the other,

++++ Great style. The colours and uncoloured lines work well together. It really is a unique way of animating/drawing and visually striking.

+++ Some amusing events. Fave parts were the lime swarm appearing and the zig-zag line breath.

+++ Great text.

- I felt the 'purple' was a bit too close to the lime. and maybe a bit unsaturated. Like maybe it should be a deeper, more royal colour. Maybe like an aubergine.

-- The liquid has a distracting jump in the loop (on the left hand side, where it falls from max to min height, in like 1 frame.)

--- All ends just as we're really getting into it... limited in nature.

-- Music on/off button doesn't really work. I mean, if we try and turn it off, it keeps coming back on.

??? Being properly synched could make it a lot stronger.

==
Like the other, I enjoyed it, but the length and sudden end did irritate me.

fuzz responds:

Thank you for your detailed review.

I was aiming for a piece that had style and im glad you piced up on that. I used bold colours, this could have effected my score because some people just want dark dingy black and grey. The text is standard in all my animations now, i love the font!
Yeah, maybe the purple was too similar and it didnt have quite as good an effect as my last two colour choices in my previous animation.
The liquid, it was fbf but that was too jumpy so i shape tweened the frames so they smoothly went to the next frame. Unfortunatly that didnt work 100% as planned, i will practice my fbf water skills!

Anyway, thanks for your helpfull review and im glad you enjoyed it :)

[fuzz's green + pink]

uch in the 'story'

What strikes me most about this animation is the stacatto tempo. Movement is fast and followed by a pause. I suppose it made it easier to animate, but it also lends it a certain defining rhythm.

I love the colours, the mixture of unfilled and filled lines and all the extra particles you draw for each collision.

It may be short, but it's a great, high-energy piece.

My only complaint is that it seems to end without any satisfying conclusion - the joy is simply in watching the movement and particles, not so much in the 'story'.

The ending was sudden and slightly unsatisfying, but it was a sweet ride.

fuzz responds:

Yeah, my new one is 10x better. Although the music is better on this one. It was fun to animate, the particles were easy and i liked the effect.

[Yellow Mustard]

How

Main movie:
.............................. .............................. .......

+++ Great font. Nice mustardy colour.

++++ Great mix of those 2 tunes sets the tone well.

--- Graphics were a bit messy in places. Disliked the way the graphics moved, revealing cut-line, before arm/end were added.

---- End kinda lacked dynamism. I think some radial lines, some starburst effect, may have worked well.

++++++ Had me chuckling away. Watched it 3 times, bewildered and grinning the 1st time, guffawing on the 2nd, chortling the 3rd. I chuckle now, as I think back to it.
Like my own DYMLB!!! animations, I think the humour is found as what we initially imagine to be a fairly long video gives a sudden cry, that overpowers all else. YELLOW MUSTAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRd!!! Nothing else matters. The video is resolved. And all in an instant, we find it to be a far simpler matter than we previously believed.

==
I laughed. How I laughed.

Thank you.

.............................. .............................. .............................. .............................. .............................. .............................. .....................
extras
.............................. .............................. .............................. .............................. ..............
--- Luigi and randomness had little or no humour for me.

++ The 'classic yellow' was a good pic for the song standalone.

?? Maybe 'lyrics' would be good? You could have a little bouncing ball, so we could sing along...

Frenzy responds:

Lol, thanks! Liked the review and tips. Great, great review!

And here are the lyrics!

On my shirt
A little dot
A yellow spot
I got it from
YELLOW MUSTAAAAAAAAARD!!!11

Song by Frank from the Newgrounds Audio Portal

Thanks again for the great review!

~ Z

[Rotting Brains]

animation

+++ When the last guy got to the end, despite (or perhaps because of) the awful animation and lack of characterisation, I really empathised and felt so jubilant. Then I cringed and shuddered as the final thing appeared...

++ The rotting brains story in the 'extras' really has me intrigued.
I have to ask... rotting brains... was this an actual TV show? What kinda traps? Which country was it shown in? How did it get put back on air?

--- Terrible animation. Only tweening. Fbf work shouldn't be above you and it'd help make this a far more interesting watch. As it is, it feels like we're getting an abstract icon-based depiction of what happened, rather than an actual 'movie'.

--- Partially because of the poor animation, it all seemed to really drag on. From around man 3 up until the end of man 5, I was pretty apathetic and kinda bored of it.
At around man 3, I was thinking of another flash, which had fbf men running through a trap-based thing simultaneously. Having it all going on at once made for a far more frantic and frenzied watch.

==
Good to see another animation by yourself, but I really think you should stretch yourself a bit more.

Frenzy responds:

Lol, yeah. This was my first movie that had assed jusgment!

To answer your questions:

was this an actual TV show?

I made it up. Inspired by 'The Running Man' and 'Total Recall'.

What kinda traps?

Lots. Maybe I'll make a sequel, with better animation someday...

Which country was it shown in?

All of them. The world was fascinated.

How did it get put back on air?

Pure human curiousty. Like a snuff film, but with multiple deaths.

---

Thanks for the great review!

~ Z

[The Adventure(s) of Snarf]

a massive factor

+++ I liked the ending, just before the credits. Interesting.

+++ Some well-matched music

++ The newgrounds tagline was vaguely amusing.

------ Voices were often hard to understand. No subtitles, which would help.

---- I hated the bad flash. At first gonna watch it all, like I normally do with stuff I can skip, ('just so I don't miss anything'), I decided that I could stand missing a few seconds of purposely awful animation. Dismayed to see the button didn't work.

-- The self-referential story of 'OMG, we're bad at this artform! Let's make another! Hey! It's still bad!' is overplayed.

-- The way the anchor moves around on your face and the way you only have 2 frames when turning, whilst the anchor moves kinda 'smoothly' is irritating.

==
As indicated above, the fact that I couldn't understand the voices were a massive factor in my displeasure at this.

It all seemed like it dragged on for too long, too.

Rather dull, I felt.

xthesnarfx responds:

My first review that tought me something. My next flash will not dissapoint you.

[Windows XP Start Hack]

many folk had fun

+++ Clear instructions

--- Near the start, some audio glitching from the left speaker really hurt my ear.

--- No links to programs needed.

==
Not as good a tut as the game, obviously.

I forgot to mention in the other review - you really should provide links and a full list of what we need to dl. The credits on the other one was a good resource, but having clearer 'what you need to dl' list would really help if I ever chose to do this.

I just noticed that you have them in your comments, but why not as a clear, clickable list in the flasH?

Funky tutorial and I imagine many folk had fun with this.

Question - can we put in kanji? I'd mebbe like to have it as: 'Gogo go [ji]!!!' (So the pun of 'go, go, go!!! o'clock' or '5pm').

jpoke89 responds:

Well, I figured int he other flash that if someone wanted to do this, they would just use the Flash, since it instructs you to click your new button and view the credits. plus, NG doesn't like URL tags in the submission comments sometimes... sorry.