Bezman's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Last Hour: Chapter 4]

Same old problems.

Your movie isn't the worst I've seen. I have seen folk with visuals even worse. You're a beginner. I can understand.

But please don't try and hype up your talent at the start of each movie. Don't compare yourself to Adam Phillips. We're both in a different league to him.

It's great to have high hopes, but comparing yourself to a master in public seems like an empty boast and it just irritates when your work falls so short of his.

I'm glad you changed the typeface for the title into something more futuristic and gave yourself a kinda interesting logo.

The main problem is still the voices - which were hard to understand.

Take more time over your drawings. Draw more drawings wihin the movie.

Make it longer.

I'm sure you can do better than this, but first you've got to start spending more time and fixing basic problems.

Incidentally, the 2nd time I watched this, I left the clock open. The text intro took 2 minutes, the 'movie' 1 minute. Surely you can see a problem?

Jaiba responds:

yes i'm still learning english i am an immigrant you know. but i have cut the intro length and we are working on the drawings and animation.

[The Last Hour: Chapter 3]

Horrible

The entirety of the pre-amble that accompanies your name should be cut. The movie just isn't long enough for that sort of thing.

It seemed like the text section was almost as long as the movie!

The voice of the lad on our left was specially ridiculous. It sounded more like someone being silly than someone actually trying to act in a serious story.

The music you've got is great - why hasn't it been credited by now? Still, don't play it for every single episode. It's starting to get irritating and can drown out the voices.

At least make an attempt at drawing various mouth shapes. Draw different body shapes, trying to convey emotions via body posture.

Use better voices or use text.

The title screen's asteroids were kinda cool and I liked the look of the photo.

Overall though, this is a horrible thing to watch. I'm hoping episode 5 is as big an improvement as you imply.

Jaiba responds:

sorry i have a bit of an irish accent being as i am an irish immigrant. to moved down to the south with my family. but i shall work on it.

[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

[Asaroki 02- Encouter]

Good in context.

I enjoyed this.

There were indeed a few problems - the proprtions and perspective is often wrong - the lead character's legs look inhumanly stumpy at the start and when cars are driving, it looks noticably like a picture zooming in, rather than us being able to 'believe' that it's a car. I think that's because of the perspective being subtly wrong for the way it's meant to be driving.

Her head when she wakes up or paints is far larger than it seems when we see her from nearby, in the head& shoulder shots. However, since you know it's not perfect, I won't bother going on. I look forward to seeing what your more recent animation looks like.

We're obviously still in the early stages of the story, this episode just introducing us to this character, reafirming that the little girl exists and bringing in some agency, in the form of the 'crow' right into the lead character's path.

Not terribly exciting, but after episode 1, I was engaged enough to sit it through. I just hope that the pay-off isn't a disappointment.

The length was near-perfect. Didn't feel like 5 minutes. We got a good amount of plot and it ended on a solid cliffhanger.

But if you're releasing these one a month, it's gonna be an agonising wait for fans.

ArtistGamerGal responds:

Thanks for the informative review. I think you're right, maybe I should try and post the other episodes sooner. Thanks for the advice! Please let me know what you think of future episodes!
-Laura<3

[like a duck (colour)]

Impeccable anim, but not chaotic or fast enough.

The graphics are wonderful, but I felt like they could have done more to express the fast, chaotic tempo.

Frankly, I'm mildly surprised this didn't get a daily award.

The morphings are a joy to behold as is the rotating rubber duck. The 'beak-synch' is similarly excellent. The transition from the pink dude to the robot's eye was specially astounding. Seriously, everything bar perhaps the sympathy for the beats was perfect.

I felt that when the harder beats came in (from maybe the explosion), you could have expressed that ridiculously 'full' sound better visually. Firstly, by having more elements on-screen, mirroring the ridiculous number of instruments we can hear, secondly by perhaps increasing the pace during those harder beats. The morphing/explosions looked great, but perhaps at 2x the rate, it would have better matched the mood - feeling like a chaotic rush of energy rather than the unfurling it currently is.

I loved the marching duck frame and the way the duck divided into elements throughout the piece was brilliant.

Looking forward to seeing more from you.

TheBoogley responds:

Thanks Bezman, it's great to get considered and critical reviews! :D
I'm not the greatest with music, I love it, but have very minimal understanding of it's mechanics. I'm going to try an collaborate with and get advise from musicians in the future to better interact between my visuals and their sound.

[The Food Collab]

ultimately underwhelming.

Loads of cool visual styles in this, from the wiggly line opening, to the retro solid shapes of the start, through various others...

The 'be an american' bit made me chuckle.

The game was horrible - why did you put the sights on the right of the pointer? That made it nearly unplayable for me. The actual mechanics were unoriginal and imperfectly executed, with a score I couldn't understand. (I shot targets but got 0 pts both times). If it's because of my low accuracy, maybe you could have just instilled some loading time between shots and had the score be #targets shot?

Not that the game matters much, but it felt like it would have been better to just cull it.

The quality varied immensely - as usual - and whilst the parts were connected thematically, the mood varied a bit. Generally humour-based, the tempo swung around.

After getting over the fact that the food is anthropomorphised, many of the jokes seem self-evident the first time, let alone the 2nd.

I loved your transitions and a few of the graphical styles brought a smile to my face with the textures, shape or motion. But by the end, I felt the standard had dropped slightly and felt underwhelemed.

TheBoogley responds:

Thanks for the thorough review, you're sounding like a "proper" art critic. :)

[Colours.]

Unique look

I saw this ages back on the forum and it still looks unique.

The simple shapes and the use of colours gives it a lovely, unique, look.

I liked the slight stretch/squash you had and the motions as the ball urges rectangle forward or invites him to ride.

I wasn't too keen on the 'dirty' yellow on like the 3rd screen and at the end, I kinda hoped your world would be completely dazzling and multicoloured. Still, it was a happy flash. I enjoyed watching.

Also, the typography is cool - great font choice, mirroring the simplistic shapes. What is that font?

Oggy-cheese responds:

i think the font is called Atmosphere. Get it from dafont . com, thanks, i remember you from the forums :D

[Purgatory Pizza Teaser]

Intriguing.

Like most trailers, this wasn't really entertaining in and of itself but the series seems promising.

The Times New Roman (?) fitted in well and I liked the 'twisted' word. Also, the ending with folk taking the pizza was awesome.

The first reveal of the characters had shock value, but I felt like they looked a bit hastily drawn - like maybe they could have had their lines refined or maybe some shading put in.

Well, in the end it's gonna be the script that makes or breaks this.

Sound-O-Vision responds:

Thanks for the feedback!

We've been refining the lines as per user reviews like yours.

The font was Trajan Pro, and the twisting 'Twisted' was my favorite part :)

Glad you liked the live action pizza. We're planning on using those as scene transitions.

Stay tuned ;)

[The Dot of Excellence 2]

Almost nothing of merit

Funky music. Again no credit. Loops badly though.

I liked some of the pics - but some are bad quality and the one thing you've actually done - paste them all in - doesn't seem like it's had a lot of time spent on it. You haven't aligned them or positioned them with a lot of thought.

I did like the winking circle. That made me chuckle for a moment.

-Review Request Club -

Wegra responds:

Uh, that circle is a dot. But thanks for the review!