Bezman's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Wegra Adventures]

You've got the beginnings of a style here

the fast speakonia doesn't really make it funnier - just hard to understand. Maybe if you spoke quickly yourself, you could have it be more understandable?

Though it's kinda like a slideshow, that style of 'animation' works well for the humour I think you're going for - I mean, better pics wouldn't actually make it any funnier.

Have a pre-loader. Having movies start automatically, then run in a loop seems kinda annoying.

It was better than I thought it'd be, judging from the icon, but not really chucklesome for me. I felt like the absurdity was kinda forced at points, rather than flowing naturally.

Wegra responds:

Yeah I know. I slowed it down over the last 2.

[Skate Something ep.1]

Good stuff

I was watching some snowboarders this afternoon. They'd set up some real snow slopes in Kelvingrove Park and I watched on - amused as they fell over, disappointed as they didn't attempt anything daring, but cheered when they busted out 720s and even somersaults!

Watching these kinds of things done for real is far more interesting to me - simply because we're amazed by the skill of the person. We never experience that with an animation. For that reason, I normally find these kind of things boring.

I liked how you used the possibilities of animation a little and had him jumping over spikes. Go for more stuff like that - why not have really unrealistic situations - maybe he's skating through a labyrinth, a rock chases him, handplanting and jumping backwards onto a lower floor... or maybe he's riding over stars or rainbows? Or maybe mix up a fighting flash with a skating animation - having folk gang up to beat him up, but he jumps over them, goes over their heads, hits them with the board...

Music was suitable and sfx were good.

The shapes were all pretty simplistic, but I liked how the guy sorta shifted his body weight as he jumped or whatever.

I liked how the board turned. But when the board spun around a vertical axis, is that something that could be really done? It kinda looked to me like he just jumped as if he were to do a kick-flip, then the board somehow magically spun like that. Maybe you could study skating vids, prhaps on slowmo, and watch how their bodies move when they do tricks.

A great first flash and you show promise, but it has a way to go yet.

-Review Request Club-

sistem69 responds:

thanks for the review and yes that trick is impossiblr to do but hey its cool right?
im glad u liked it.

[Gravity's Just a Theory]

Whimsical and charming.

Beautiful animation.

Everything was paced really well to the music and the graphics and ideas were charming.

My favourite parts were the bowl of milk's sign and the nightime cannon.

Also, the swishing beard and rising fowers were cool.

My one complaint is that in the final scene, it's too 'messy' somehow. It doesn't really fit in with the gentle ending to see the shrieking face on the right and the clutter on the ground. Maybe if you'd had lights going off at that point, the clutter somehow cleared earlier in the movie and the shrieking face falling asleep, it may have been more fitting.

Otherwise, beautiful and imaginative stuff. A lot of positive vibes here.

Oggy-cheese responds:

thanks for your constructive criticism, and yes i know what you mean, but i was aiming for it getting a bit more fast paced and frantic as it went along, like the song does at the end, then all calming down again. Yea, the green face could've been something a bit better :P and what do you mean by the clutter on the ground? To be fair, i was running out of ideas by that point :D

[A Thousand Two Frames]

The starting splash is cool.

I feel like the strongest parts of these things - certainly in your case - is when they're bordering more towards pure abstraction.

The blue splash was certainly brilliantly done, and the red bit was cool too.

The scenes with the cavemonster, pooing blob, zombie and fish just didn't seem as strong though.

Unlike the first installment, this wasn't really connected - that had the theme of all the travelling etc. If you followed themes (e.g. dinosaurss, machines or jungle animals), it might seem more like a cohesive whole

Anyways, I'd really suggest you give us more splashes - those seem to be your forte. Maybe turn the animals etc. into more stylised blocks of colour? Maybe spend more time on them and sketch out different ways of drawing them before doing something on the computer?

As is, they bring the animation down.

I didn't enjoy this much, sorry.

blackcat2000 responds:

Mmm... Splashes... Mmm... Water... Mmm...
Block colors? Sure.
A plot to my randomness? Egad! I'll storyboard any future flashes. I'm sure it'll help. I'm drawing things (or was trying to) in (more) detail now, on paper. During classes. That way I'm totally concentrating. I can probably animate a strange monster if I reaaaallly wanted to. Maybe I'll compile some shorts. But connect them in random ways :D
Nah, that'd contradict your suggestion. I'll stick to some sort of theme :D
Thanks for the review!

[The Beelion]

Fun poem and idea marred by other elements.

I liked the poem at the start, but felt the graphics and the remainder let it down.

Your trees were nicely visualised.

The loop being on for so long kinda let it down though. I mean, where the poem talks about the nine creatures, maybe show them clambering around the trophy. And when they start singing Hakuna Matata, I thought it was gonna continue throughout the song and would have given up on it had it not been an RRC request.

I'd suggest you don't implement that song, unless you were gonna have the beelion dance or something.

The end kinda works well - those scenes at 1 frame a second are quite dramatic. When he finally gets the trophy though, as a moodshift, maybe you could have tweened him going through the cave?

I watched this last week and still don't know what to think of it. I love mixing animals together and your poem is cool. But so much brings it down that I can't really say I liked it overall.

I strongly encourage you to keep realising these ideas though. Look forward to seeing what you can do after garnering more skills.

blackcat2000 responds:

Heh. Thanks to the RRC for keeping some people longer than they would "normally" have. It was a slight fear when I submitted it that half the people would figure it's not going to end.
Indeed, indeed... motion tweening and movement to make the movie a tad more mysterious... have him moving into the darkness...
Thanks for the review!

[A Thousand Frames]

A step above the typical fbf experiments

What do you mean by 'rotating perspective', 'semi-3D things' and 'blurry movement'?

This was pretty cool - I specially liked the colours and liquidy motion at the start, as well as the fact that it all had a vague narrative, but the miidle and ending remained a slight disappointment.

Seeing that skull turn into liquid and splash away, then those colours shift, followed by the colours receding kinda like fungus was all incredible.

I felt that when you tried to be more literal - like with the fish, man, bullet... the limits of your abilities kinda showed. Maybe some colours would have improved it a bit and maybe you could have used the ctrl-Z to its full potential, trying for lines with style when drawing stuff, maybe sketching out a rough in a layer underneath, then redrawing it with more confidence and - hopefully as a result - flair.

The lack of colours worked well when the 'spedy' section started, but in the sea, I really missed it and in space it might have been nice to fill in the bullet/TV with some shade.

The narrative was cool - it was fun how racing along the road brought us to the cliff edge, bringing us underwater, bringing us into space. Maybe you could make more of some vague 'thematic flow' like that, maybe dropping some scenes, like the gumball bit , which didn't really work well imo.

Anyways, it's cool to see peeps experimenting and this was fun to watch the first time. Good stuff.

blackcat2000 responds:

Rotating perspective- I dunno... More like plain rotating, I guess... It's when the guy shows up for a short while, with his head spinning.
Semi-3D things- Well, more like... drawing with shading... The planet and all. I was a bit vague with that, but I meant shading :P
Blurry movement is another one... The fish swimming for example.

Sorry that i disappointed with the middle and end, but I figured it needed more action, then I sorta drifted into the land of animating madness :P
With the drawing underneath, I tried that with "The Beelion" and found it to be quite helpful... But probably would've been a tad boring with pure fbf. It's a good idea though, and I'll definitely remember it in future.

Thanks for the awesome review :)

[VZ Series:Naruto V Sasuke]

Just like hundreds

Overall, the movie bored me - the graphics are mediocre (excellently drawn by whomever drew them, badly composited by you for the most part) and the plot is the same old tosh. Essentially, it's just like hundreds of others.

What's the name of the font you used for the in-movie dialogue and opening text? It looks like a great decorative font, but for the size you're using it at (for the speech), you really need something more functional. Maybe a bitmapped font or a sans serif?

The sprites were well put together and all the speedlines, explosions and specially the 'charging up visuals' looks cool. Changing the bgs at that point was a nice idea.

However, there's a lot wrong.

Zoom-ins weren't a good idea with sprites - it doesn't look good. Work within the restrictions of the medium rather than trying to force it into places it shouldn't be.

You could have used a mask to blend the mountain and the 4 faces a bit better.

There were some examples of squashing - resulting in an oval planet at some points and a chubby Naruto in Sasuke's ending.

The explosions for Naruto's death looks fairly incongruous with everything else. Try to source images that match each other better.

The stuff I've said is just a bunch of graphical niggles - nothing that would stop it being enjoyed if the narrative was above par. Unfortunately, that's just the same-old battle scene and the 'true' ending, was just totally confusing. It wasn't as if it raised questions - it just made me wonder, 'wtf' and feel like you'd set yourself up to explain something that you won't properly be able to.

The charging bit and the bit where Sasuke first hits Naruto do look pretty decent.

I suggest you take a step back and think about what you're hoping to achieve with this series.

Tell a story? Work on it.
Improve your animation? Don't use sprites.
Show us cool stuff? Make a website - not flash animations.

-Review Request Club-

mortis5000 responds:

Thank You...The sprites were limited so I did have my hands tied behind my back...the camera systems that I used did distort some of my scence esp sasuke ending...I have adopted a new system actually that doesn't distort it...