gel's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Blot shorts: volume 1]

Good job

Nothing too spectacular here, but it was worth a look. It was smart of you to include 2 movies you already submitted to NG instead of just the Zombie one. I think that got you a higher score here on NG, but not from me. If I wanted to see the other 2 movies, I know where to find them (as you haven't removed them yet).

I didn't like seeing Blot walk for 15 seconds straight in the beginning of each short. Gotta match that music, sure, but damn, how boring.

I know you know how to make a button, because you've done it correctly before, so you lose points for putting in "tons of effort" but being too lazy to make decent buttons in the movie.

Don't feel bad Haris, I'm a tough critic, and you know I don't care how much time and effort you put into something if it ends up mediocre. I'll bet they spent a lot of time on "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within," but the movie still sucked. Good job getting 5th place.

[Redneck Gangsta Rap]

Suh-weet!

I didn't care for the song much, but since you didn't make it, I won't mark you down for it. I thought the graphics were incredible. Not just the animation of "loose limb" characters (MUCH better than Legendary Frog, mind you), but the techniques used, the blurring, the zooming, and the direction. Man, the direction was good. I saw some of your other stuff and the direction was all right, but this time, you got it all right. "Right," in this case, is professional quality.

It would be awesome to see something other than a short from you. I don't mean this movie was short really, but your other stuff is, and this was more of a music video (a damn goo done). As I mentioned, even though I didn't like the song (I thought is was kinda funny, but I didn't laugh), with those directing and animation skills, you could make a truly kickass movie. That's when I give out my tens. You're almost there, man, keep it up.

[garbage day]

Good

It was funny. It was funny, like how a Saturday Night Live sketch is funny, until it's been dragged around after the joke is done and beat into the ground. I laughed, then I waited and waited for the movie to end. (Your score shot up to a 10 right in the first 10 seconds, but as time progressed, it went down...)

You've probably been told this before, but if you just streamed your sound instead of setting it to "event" then all your sounds would match up to the animation on EVERYONE's computers. Event sounds play back at different speeds on people's computers, and I don't mean because of the speed of their processor. Two people with the exact same 3GHz Pentium 4s will still get dffferent results. I have a fast computer and playing it on high and low made no difference (in the end it was off by about 5 seconds). If you can't do something as simple as setting your sounds to "stream" after using Flash for so long, I won't vote any higher than 4. Bad sound synchronization ruins a movie. That, and doing the same joke for 2 minutes straight.

AlantheBOX responds:

oh this movie is streaming! oh it streams, baby! oh yeah! oh! anyways, i felt like there was a definite punch line, but (assuming you read the description and saw that the audio was taken from the actual event depicted in this flash) i felt it would be unjust to the situational humor to cut up the raw audio.

so, this was really more of an experiment in a form of "true to life" humor.
thank you.
-alan

[Battle for the Portal Pt3]

Getting better.

Well I could go on for days about why I didn't like it, but I know you don't listen to any of my "nitpicking" as you put it.

Okay, just a few:
- that fading in and out while SBC went berserk was really annoying. I was about to just blam the movie right then.
- The Lego men have mouths, but why didn't you remove the black line behind their mouths when they talked? Just change the texture, you shouldn't put the open mouth over the closed mouth!
- I still want to see the other characters actually get HURT when they are hit. The clay guys just fell over when SBC hit them. Try slicing them up, clay is perfect for smashing!
- Clocks have arrows above their heads when they talk. As a film student you should be more aware of such things (and not just not do it because you don't think they should have it). It's a part of what clocks are.

All right, that's enough of that, everything else is still fine and dandy. Good sense of placement within the environment, nice actiony camera shots, good humor on SBC's part. You know, you can go back and reupload new imporved versions over the old files. Make it better, or forever stay in your comfortable position as amateur 3d king of the portal.

SecretAgentBob responds:

Nothing you said here was nitpicking. Nitpicking was telling me I had the wind moving through the wrong axis on my flag.

As far as the blinking is concerned, that's the only part I'm going to say is a matter of your own opinion. Personally, I love it, it's like a giant rave party with an insane piece of fruit running around killing everyone.

And deciding to not have the arrows above the clocks heads, that was a decision I made. Not ALL clock movies have them, they are used usually to help the audience understand who it is who is talking when the animator decides not to move the clock around as he talks.

I’m sorry if I made it seem otherwise, but I do appreciate your feedback, and I look forward to your review of Part 4.

[synjclock 'n the hospital]

Touching

Has anyone tried to kill you lately? You're invincible! Animation was great, nice shots, I liked the words EMERGENCY on the wall. Great smokey animation too.

Your shorts are quite short though. Can't vote badly on it, you just leave me wanting more...

[Battle for the Portal Pt2]

Better

I liked this more than part one. You have more going on here, and this time, there's animation!! Even if it's just the Lego guys moving their arms, it's nice to see a little more animation.

The clocks with guns is nice. I'd like to see bits of sprites and other guys blasting apart when they get shot, instead of just more particle effects, though.

You should work more on Joe Zombie's animation, even if he might not be back... That fire made me cry.

One guy gave you overal 0 for not putting in Krinkels' Madness guys, which is pretty harsh, but a cameo only? That's like having World War III where America and Germany will just make a cameo appearance. You don't have the Battle for the Portal, you have a battle in the portal.

Good job, the atmosphere and ambience of the whole mvie still remains from the first. This time you added more animation, and that's always good. I was very happy not to see just rotating objects floating around. I would have said more, but I know you've already made the other parts and probably wouldn't care what anyone said, you ain't redoing nothin'. Keep it up, don't go back to the crap that was part 1.