Bezman's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Jim and Pals Shorts: Ep 6]

Chucklesome

I love the joke here - gets me chuckling every time - but there are a few presentational tweaks I'd suggest.

Firstly, the beveled title text and circle doesn't look too good. It's fine on its own, but it just doesn't fit with the flat style of the characters (the shadow on the title and play button seeming similarly incongruous to me when they're not repeated elsewhere on that screen). Maybe you could spend some more time on the opening screen - have some bg colour, maybe redo the logo to fit the flat-shaded style?

Definitely give the play button a proper hit box. Maybe even have it so you can click anywhere to play.

Your graphics have definitely improved - I really like the line-less style of the bench and the bg, end text, paper and bg also look good.

However, I feel you should consider changing your characters' style a bit. Maybe either make the outlines thicker or nonexistent. Just now, they appear glitchy.

Also, their shapes look vaguely flat on the bench and everything - having one level of shading on them might make a massive difference.

A replay button should probably just make the movie replay rather than returning us to the menu.

Voices were really expressive.

Anyways, it was a great thing to watch and your graphic abilities have definitely improved since I last saw something of yours. I hope they keep doing so!

Jimtopia responds:

If I ever find a moment I'll change the title screen, because it really doesn't look that great, and I could make a much better one now. I think I may start shading my characters for the shorts, because you're right, it would look better.

[Dragonball Z Episode 2]

dumb

The title screen is awesome.

I think using some photos/pics works OK - specially the earth. if you want to appeal to more folk though, I'd suggest taking more time over the backgrounds. Maybe take out the black lines and put in more detail. And redraw the characters with more detail.

Gohan slamming into the ground was pretty funny

The sound was quality

Goku's dialogue was just dumb - his first line after seeing his brother just makes him sound like an idiot and the 2nd line makes no sense.

Try putting dialogue and text in boxes or at least choose your fonts and colours a bit more judiciously. Using verdana just seems wrong in such a violent flash. Maybe even use a bitmapped font?

There are good elements here, but overall I felt underwhelmed by the whole thing.

Formalz responds:

Hah. Thanks for your review. Yes things could alsways be better. ;)

[The Music Video Collab]

Songs don't flow too well.

I love the idea, but feel the execution could have been better.

My main objection is that the pieces of music felt less like a crazy mash-up and more like short pieces of music that didn't generally flow too well. The few pieces after Cobalt Chloride's flow fairly well but differing lengths, fade outs or silence at the start of tracks, differing BPMs and moods all conspire to make this seem more like different things stuck together without enough thought.

Maybe changing BPM/limiting length or some overlap or more judicious song-choice and ordering would have helped.

Simple line and Raz had awesome pieces. Cobalt Chloride had a cool style too.

For the most part, the graphics are functional but nothing to write home about.

I like the idea, but it still seems lacking in execution to me.

Assios responds:

Thanks for your review

[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.

[Bahamut's Favourite PMs]

About as good as it could be?

I like that you focused on ridiculous PMs rather than genuinely informative or well-written ones.

The first 3 didn't make me chuckle at all, but I loved the last. Shame it wasn't read out.

The line "not because I hate them - and I don't. I like them!" was slightly confusing. You coiuld have instead said - "not because I don't like them - I do!" I feel that would have flowed better.

You could have drawn the graphical elements better - redoing the mouse to fit with the size of the computer, You need to stretch yourself!

And the use of fuck in the last section felt like overusage.

You worked well within the limits of a 'PM-based' Flash and I'm not sure if it could have been a lot more entertaining. I guess you need to have many hundreds of letters or be incredibly high-profile for a mailbag episode to be really interesting.

Anyways, congrats on the effort and I'm looking forward to #100.

Also, looking at past reviews, I'm astonished at the 0-raters.

Stay funky.

kinggila responds:

"You worked well within the limits of a 'PM-based' Flash and I'm not sure if it could have been a lot more entertaining. I guess you need to have many hundreds of letters or be incredibly high-profile for a mailbag episode to be really interesting."

I guess you're right about that. However, this was only a one-off and probably won't make another flash like this. I think a one-off was fine despite the little amount of messages that were appropriate for this flash.

[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.

[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.

[Wegra Adventure 2]

Hrm

Speakonia makes this kinda hard to understand. even after watching it 3 times, I still don't understand some parts. It is marginally easier than #1 though.

I think when you say, 'but that had nothing to do with X', it doesn't work in terms of absurdist humour. I think it'd be funnier if you actually MADE it to do with X.

Also, it looked better when all the pics were drawn by you.

I like the fact that you put stats at the end, but give us time to read 'em, maybe? Or is that the joke, that they're totally meaningless?

I think I slightly preferred the first.

-Review Request Club-

Wegra responds:

I kind of forgot about the stats in the newer episodes for some reason.