gel's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Oh My Goodness]

How did this pass judgment? I demand a refund.

At least that replay button had some decent code. Could've been better though (less repeats).

Would've given it only 3 stars, but Synj's voice is just too sexy.

Sherbalex responds:

youre the one who made the coding dont tell me it could have been better aaaaaaaa111111111ggeagagdbddehhhh

[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.

[Battle for the Portal Pt1]

What a load of crap.

Your graphics were just terrible! Okay, now that I've gotten that out of the way, the rest of the review will be constructive.

You're lucky the VGDC sprites have more than one frame of animation or your entire movie might not have had any animation at all. Here are some examples of where it showed you truly lacked any qualities or skills of animation:
- the first shot of the blue clay guys. They are badly animated and you KNOW it. The arms just raise up and down in stiff fashion. The models aren't clay, they're just 3d blobs. You couldn't even fix up the smashed polygons when they bent their arms.
- Joe Zombie's frames of animation are just the keyframes with the "tweens" filled in by fading the keyframes out.
- The fighting between the clocks and the VGDC sprites were just overlapped images, rotating and flying around.
- The flags are quickly rendered with some sine wave running through them and they don't attach to the flagpoles, they just float there next to them.
- When Joe Zombie jumps from building to building ala Spiderman, he has no thrust. You just see him fly from one building to another at a strange speed, likened to a poorly tweened Flash movie.
- Anytime there were particle effects onscreen, they would mostly fill up the front of the shot, making it seem like a lot was going on, but nothing was, just particles flying before the "camera."
- Whenever there was any 3d model that wasn't nailed down, it was flying through the air and rotating in slowmotion. Cars, clocks. Rotating. Always.
- If there was anytime you saw the flags in the air after that first shot, for more than 1 second, it's because you were too lazy to animate anything, so it was time to show the flags again, with explosions in the background. Perhaps that was better than more rotating sprites.

I give you pretty high marks for the sound editing, which wasn't bad. Lots of explosions, nice choice of music by the great Danny Elfman, and other miscellaneous sounds that fit the action onscreen.

Everything else is very very poorly done. I'm afraid my movies all sucked, since so many people who reviewed have said your animation was top notch and very well done. You know very well your grasp of animation, and I think you know that this movie didn't showcase very much of it.

Your directing skills are pretty good too, but I can't really say that without realizing that any good shots in the movie were just taken straight from other ones. The first shot with the speech has been done a lot, the tunnel view of cars blowing up inbetween buildings (e.g. Armageddon), flying around the buildings (since that was supposed to be like Spiderman, I can't give credit to you).

I'd like to mention again that if anyone thinks there is good animation in this movie, to just watch it again and look at how everything rotates. Nothing is animated, they just rotate. The only thing that might be considered animation is the clay guys bending their arms and slightly bending their legs to walk.

In summary, if this were submitted to any 3d forum, you'd have your head on a pike. Luckily for you, this is NewGrounds, and any bit of 3d rendering will win you accolades. You're certainly smart enough to know your audience.

If you think I'm just being a jerk, email me. I'll be happy to tell you again jsut what is wrong and you can defend your position or agree with me. I know NG will surely hate me, since I've seen all the good reviews, but perhaps they should watch it again keeping in mind what I actually said and they would see that I made several valid points.

SecretAgentBob responds:

As yes, thank you for telling me what’s “wrong” with my animation. Although I would assume I’ve done more “right” considering the very high score I have right now. So why is it then, that I have such a high score? Hmm? Could it be that your opinion is just that? Your own opinion?

Let me give you an example. Here are some reviews taken from your 99K movie:

“BORING NOTHING FUNNY OR GOOD AT ALL!IT'S A WASTE OF TIME!”

“to be honost and as nice as possible at the same time, i didnt like it. wasnt funny or nothing”

“it wasnt funny at all, it was bullshit”


Now, these people seem to think that 99K wasn’t worth watching and was a bad movie because it wasn’t “funny”, just as you seem to think my movie isn’t worth watching because you don’t like the way I’ve animated. Just like the people who left the above reviews, I think you’ve missed the point. 99K was genius because of the fact that you were able to put together a stylish 2D animation together in only 99K. It certainly wasn’t about detailed character design (you have circles and lines) nor “realistic imagery”, but what you did was more than sufficient for the animation you created, was very stylish and served its purpose – thus its high score.

So, what is it that my movie provides that warrants it’s high score? Read through the other reviews, it should give you an idea. Honestly, now, why does my movie deserve a “1”?

Sorry you didn’t enjoy it.

[Robocop:001]

Well, you've proved it

You've proved that most people on NG are very easily amazed by nice graphics but couldn't pick out the flaws if their life depended on it.

I give you props for the 3D rendering and models which is very nice. Cel shading, details, all there.

Since you say this movie is a test, you should be very open to suggestions on improving it, rather than just "THAT WAS THE BEST FLASH EVER!" Some of these have been mentioned before, but since I said your movie had many flaws, I better spell it out for you:

- Why did the police have such thick outlines compared to Robocop? Uniformity is key.
- What's with the nasty pixelation (very noticable in the beginning)? Try using a large image and shrinking, not the other way around.
- Your bloody was stylistic, but it didn't look it was coming from the police.
- I know he's robot, but man, Robocop sure moves slowly. I guess it's because none of the bullets even dented him, so he might as well walk over his enemies like a tank.
- This is the worst offense: The 3D models were terribly out fo sync with the background. Robocop slides all over the place when he slams that policeman into the ground, the police kneel down to the ground, the camera pans and pulls out, and the police slide around like they are kneeling on ice. You have to pay attention to that and make sure the models establish a good figure-ground relationship because it takes you right out of the movie.

I hope you take my advice seriously, if not to appease the picky NG viewers like me, but to better yourself as an animator. Sure, most of NG doesn't seem to notice or care that it's just a bunch of 3D poorly slapped onto 2d sketches, but if you take it to a non-amateur venue, you'll surely get the ass kicking your movie is asking for. I still liked the movie, I just thought you really put it together hastily.

MindChamber responds:

Well Since you took the time to write such an indepth review an a flash you obviously didnt like.. I'll glady explain myself here..:
1) you are right.. this was slapped together..
2)The backgrounds are from an older flash..
3)the models for the guards was a simple base model I downloaded..
4)Even the Blood was from the first Robocop I created..
As for Robocop moving slowly.. thats a first,he moves rather fast on my computer..upgrade
I originally was just going to show robocop in his various moves and positions, but later decided to give him something to shoot at, and some sort of location..
But Like I Said.. THIS IS A TEST... this is not a movie, short, or release...
And I don't mind comments and complaints.. that what the test is for.. But you obviously feel the need to present yourself as a dick ,by insulting me and insulting the viewers, to make those points.. and that part isnt nessasary..

[Stick Movie Tutorial 1]

Nice tips

So why is it that you beg and plead for folks to put sound in their movies and yet you don't put sound in yours? If you don't take your own advice, who will?

Davidus responds:

Tutorials with sound are just stupid. I'm talking about ACTUAL movies.