Animith's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[CoolJaw: T.T. IIII-V]

Awesome.

Yay, number 4! It'll be interesting to see how you can tie up all (or maybe just most) of the loose ends of this chapter in these next two episodes without it sounding to long-overdrawn-explanation-y. Because you answered a lot of questions with the last episode, but opened up a whole set of new ones at the same time, so I'm hoping to see a few of those cleared up here.

On the first run-through, I can see a lot of improvements from last time; the speech bubbles kind of come in one after the other, so your eyes know what parts to read first so the story flows well together, and there's no obviously noticeable typos in the speech, which is nice, because it means crazy grammar pedants like myself can enjoy the rest of the story, xD Though I did pick up on three which my mind feels obliged to tell you about:

"And the man with the serpents smile..."--There should be an apostrophe in serpent's.
"Mason left, and Malik, and I were left in the hands..."--You don't need the comma between 'Malik' and 'and I'
"Now 3 decades later, I'm at Masons door"--There should be an apostrophe in Mason's.

---
Anyway. Still really liking the artwork! The way it's mostly black-and-white, but with the odd splashes of colour in the red blood and green uniforms kinda gives it this dark film noir edge that I really like. It also makes me think that maybe in the future (Perhaps the third chapter?) you could play with colour a little bit more, maybe even have some of the more crucial scenes in near-full colour, or completely devoid of it. Though I do really like this current aesthetic; it almost forces you to focus on the more gory aspects because your eye goes straight for the colour...which tends to be the colour of someone's open throat or something equally as delightful. The drawing between the panels does seem to vary more than somewhat, but it's not incredibly detrimental to the flash as a whole; the entire scenario's a little messed up and jagged, so I don't see why the drawing can't sometimes reflect the harsh mania of the reality.

The development of the storyline was really nicely done. It starts tying everything together; how they all met, why everyone's out to get Mason, why Malik is so very disfigured...
Though it does make me wonder. Scissors do seem to be the weapon of choice; with the man in the first episode, and with Malik here...they both seem to be going for the nose as well...perhaps there is a connection between the two? I almost get the feeling that Colin's going to be looking at an enemy who's not all quite there...but I guess that will (hopefully) be revealed in the chapter conclusion. This was probably one of my favourite parts of this chapter though, purely for the story arcs of it and how things have started to fall into place for the conclusion...though DAMN YOU for making another cliffhanger! :P You HAD to leave it right there, didntcha?

Anyway, I'll end my ramble there. Still very much enjoying this, looking forward to the conclusion of this and the beginning of chapter 3!

-Review Request Club

Celx-Requin responds:

Your rambles are always fun, and informative!
I need to end with cliffhangers, or else people wont salivate over the next one :D

Thanks again!
- Celx

[We will rock you]

Review Request Club

This one was definitely better than your other two recently-requested music videos...because this one seemed to follow the actual music more than somewhat :P Which made it a lot easier to follow than a whole bunch of unrelated clips, etc....because there was a link between what your eyes were seeing and what your ears were hearing and it all connected in a vaguely connect-y way.

The lip-syncing in this was again, a lot better...but some parts were better than others. There were sections where it looked like the characters were mouthing the words and some where they were just opening-and-shutting their mouths to indicate some form of speech, but nothing more advanced. Lip-sync is hard to get right, but adds a whole lot more to a flash when you do get it right because in itself it shows a lot of effort and skill on your part.

The drawing and animation in general was in a "parts could be better" kind of area, although some parts were comical in themselves; such as the character doing the crazy guitar solo just by moving his hands around randomly with the guitar. That's an instance in which simpler drawing/animation can be of benefit to you, because it can create something comical. I also liked the kind of morphing-text of the credits; that was a very nice touch.

-Review Request Club

MonoFlauta responds:

oks great, thanks for the awesome review!

And are you going to vote for the Review request club awards?

[La Vie Boheme]

Review Request Club

You get like, 3 points straight off from using a RENT song. Love that musical.

It's kind of the same good points/issues as the "rama lama" flash you had; maybe a bit too long a song to just have a long series of unrelated animations, the drawing and animation could be a little better...but in this one, I noticed a lot more syncing than the last one. Maybe just because I know this song better, maybe because there was more syncing...xD But yeah, I liked how everything lines up a little more. Though I remember the frame regarding the "The opposite of war isn't peace, it's creation" coming in a little sooner than the lyrics in the song itself did, which was a little confusing, but not overtly so.

I think there's nothing wrong with doing these kind of videos, but given the amount of work you put into them I'd say that you might as well put in even more work just to get the drawing quality aspect up a few more notches, because like I said last time, it'd really help sell the flash as a whole if the drawing was really top-drawer stuff, and it makes it a lot easier to watch a random video when the drawings are nice to watch, y'know? Regardless, keep up the good work, nice to see you doing a lot of collabs and the like :P

-Review Request Club

MonoFlauta responds:

yes we made fast music videos, they are not with a full motivation :p

Thanks for reviewing!

[Rama Lama]

Review Request Club

Well one thing I took away from this video is that you have a far more interesting real name than I do, ahahaha :P

This might have something to do with the fact it's about 6am here, but I found it kind of hard to follow...xD I mean, yes, it's random, it's meant to be pretty odd and out there in therms of cohesion, but given the sheer length of the song I think having your sections fit a little more, or tell more of a story would have helped a bit, because three minutesish of randomness can get a little excessive.

Drawingwise, there were some little clips that I really thought were drawn well, and a few others which were more simple/sketchy. Maybe focusing on fewer things, as Coop said, would have helped here just in terms of overall drawing quality (And as I said above, might've helped a little with the general progression of the video).

It's the same kind of story with the animation; some is good, some isn't as good. Which shows both that you've got the skill, but perhaps not the sheer perseverance to see it through every little scene; just getting everything on the same level, qualitywise, would have helped this a lot. All that pedantic stuff besides, I did find it quite funny for the first minute or so! ;D But more than that was a little much on the ol' sleep-deprived brain, lol xD
But you always succeed in making me laugh a little, which is never a bad thing. Keep it up man, nice to see the collab on this one. (:

-Review Request Club

MonoFlauta responds:

"Well one thing I took away from this video is that you have a far more interesting real name than I do, ahahaha :P"

Lol whats wrong with my name! hahaha

"Drawingwise, there were some little clips that I really thought were drawn well, and a few others which were more simple/sketchy."

All of them are simple and sketchy hahaha

"It's the same kind of story with the animation; some is good, some isn't as good. Which shows both that you've got the skill, but perhaps not the sheer perseverance to see it through every little scene"

Haha yes but yes the animation was bad itself...

"But you always succeed in making me laugh a little, which is never a bad thing. Keep it up man, nice to see the collab on this one. (:"

Haha glad you laughed haha
thanks a lot for reviewing!

[You can !]

Review Request Club

Definitely better than your "frozen banana" flash.

It had a nice simple storyline which was executed pretty well. But in saying that, I think the slow-motion of the last scene was too slow; if you were going to spend about a minute of the flash having him fall, I would have expected something extra visually to come with it, like flashes of memories of better times or something, instead of just having him slowly slowly fall for so long.

I liked the switches between the still frames and the lightly-animated scenes; it kind of created a difference between how trapped he felt in his life and how free he felt when jumping. You could exaggerate that even further by maybe making the colours less vibrant when he's at his job, or even the drawing itself even more sketchy and just...desolate, I guess.

I think with the still frames you could have done with a little more detail, or just some little variations just so when it does repeat, it doesn't get a full feeling of repetitiveness, like it starts to here.
This definitely shows potential for the future though, so keep working at it.

-Review Request Club

Icandraw responds:

:D i have potential ! yeay !

[frozen banana]

Review Request Club

I think this definitely needs to be longer than it is. Especially as my point of comparison for loops like this is the Weebl videos (Such as badgerbadgerbadger), which are longer, involve more scenarios, slightly more lyrics...I get that loops like this kind of have a lease of being random and attemptedly funny for it, but I think just having two words for a song is trying to push it a bit too far.

but I think more than that, the drawings are slightly more detailed than they are here. I mean, the eskimo is fine, but the whale coming out of the hole seems underdrawn, and animation-wise nothing really moves in any overly complicated way, to the point where because there's no real change to the screen movements, you're forced to focus on the song for interest...which isn't a really good point to focus on.

I think it's good, and the skills are certainly there, but that if you spent more time thinking up different scenarios or just animating it a little more, it'd be a great improvement.

-Review Request Club

Icandraw responds:

ok....

[Uzbekistan]

Review Request Club

The drawing in general was alright, though some of the backgrounds were a little sparse. Loved the first background with the bullet-holes in the wall, would have been nice to see that extended to some of the other backgrounds. It's just those little details that can really help improve the submission. And you can also use it to add humour, such as the "Obviously not made in Uzbekistan" scrawled on the TV.

The animation again, was a little static. But the lip sync was a little better than last time, and the drawings themselves as well as the changes in scenes helped it be less of a problem than it was in one of your last flashes. Even just having a few arm gestures or people moving in the background would improve this flash greatly, and again can be a great scope for potential additional humour.

The humour there was was good...but maybe a little few and far between? You could have thrown a few more jokes in there, I think. And especially if you did a few joikes within the drawing and animations, this flash could have been even funnier. Though it definitely had its fun points...I'm not sure a single person wouldn't find the singing at the very start very much epic, and the jokes about the gold/cotton I found perhaps more funny than I should have. The laughing scene was perhaps a little overdrawn, but I guess that's a matter of perspective.

In general, there's a marked improvement on the last flash (The one based on 21 Guns is what I'm really linking to, here), so I'd just say keep going in this direction and you'll definitely keep heading in the right direction. just keep it up!

-Review Request Club

MonoFlauta responds:

"the backgrounds were a little sparse."

Yeah i didnt care a lot about that.

"And you can also use it to add humour, such as the "Obviously not made in Uzbekistan" scrawled on the TV."

Yes that would help the backgrounds :P

"The animation again, was a little static. But the lip sync was a little better than last time, and the drawings themselves as well as the changes in scenes helped it be less of a problem than it was in one of your last flashes. Even just having a few arm gestures or people moving in the background would improve this flash greatly, and again can be a great scope for potential additional humour."

Yes it will improve a bit each time lol :P

"The humour there was was good...but maybe a little few and far between? You could have thrown a few more jokes in there, I think. And especially if you did a few joikes within the drawing and animations, this flash could have been even funnier. Though it definitely had its fun points...I'm not sure a single person wouldn't find the singing at the very start very much epic, and the jokes about the gold/cotton I found perhaps more funny than I should have. The laughing scene was perhaps a little overdrawn, but I guess that's a matter of perspective."

Yes a lot of people think that, but it has it stronges jokes :P

"In general, there's a marked improvement on the last flash (The one based on 21 Guns is what I'm really linking to, here), so I'd just say keep going in this direction and you'll definitely keep heading in the right direction. just keep it up!"

Oks thanks a lot for reviewing!!!

[KK NES Vol 04 R.K. Ransom]

Review Request Club

Markedly better than the last two flashes. I actually laughed at this one! xD

The storyline felt a little more fleshed out, there was more of a sense of development in this one, whereas some of the other ones just felt like a totally random addition to a game without much time to explore it completely. It could still do with being longer!

I think the phrase "Keep going in this direction" may be one applicable throughout this flash. The animation, while choppy, is better. The storyline, while still a little sparse, is better than the previous flashes I've seen. Keep going in this direction, and there's a definite potential for some massive and tangible improvements. If in the next one the storyline was longer and had more depth, and the animation had a little more tweening to it, it'd be pretty damn awesome. I think you've gotten in the right direction with this one, it's just a case of staying the course as you continue on.

-Review Request Club

PantyWipe responds:

This is prolly the best review I've gotten for a flash! It's typically either lip service from other KK kitties, or "FUKK UFAGGET Y0U SUXORZ!!!!!111111ONEoneuno" from 12 year old NG'ers. I am very happy I asked the RRC for reviews, you guys kick MAJOR ASS.

[KK NES Vol 03 Kitty Kong]

Review Request Club

Again, as with your last piece...kind of averageish. Has the potential to be something bigger and better, but never really gives the illusion that it thinks it's anything more than it is; a bit of animation in the hopes of making a few people laugh. Random, but fit for purpose.

This did have promise, but the ending and the abruptness of it kind of got rid of any prospect of a more...wholesome (wrong word, kinda) flash...I think if you WANTED it to be more developed and pristine, you could accomplish it with a little more time and effort in the work, and could definitely make this a more original flash, you could definitely incorporate the KK in a more comfortable way then just slamming it basically into the original game and not much more...but at the same time, I also think that this is the kind of thing you want to do; not the best, but good enough. Not as polished as it could be, but polished enough for people to see the joke you're trying to create. It would be nice to see a little more detail go into these things, but as it stands, as long as you're happy with what you're doing, you're probably doing something right, right?

-Review Request Club

PantyWipe responds:

thanks dawgie!

[KK Nes Vol 02 PaKK Man]

Review Request Club

I think the humour was a little most on me. Yes, Pacman wakka-wakkas into a pill, there's a little bit of a drug-trip, but...I don't know, I think it stopped a little short of giving the humour enough time to develop. You could have explored a lot more the directions Pacman took the addiction, and maybe how the ghosts reacted to the addiction...in general, it was just a little short and not really in my taste for humour.

That aside, I thought the "realistic" pacman sounds were nice, the game layout was good...would have been better if it was a little larger, but it's not that big of an issue. It would have been nice to maybe have a little more play-room as far as sizings go, instead of everything being in the same front-on dimension of the entire game field, etc., but in general it was alright. Animation was a little choppy, but I guess even Pacman didn't have to be that smooth all the time. Especially if he turns into an addict :P

It was okay. Didn't wow me, but I didn't think it was overtly bad, either. Just didn't make me laugh, and so half the purpose of the flash is kind of gone.

-Review Request Club

PantyWipe responds:

Cool, but keep in mind this is a Kitty Krew flash.