Decky's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[A Brooding Art Piece (NATA '15 Novice Round)]

Just amazing. I love the way you've drawn the character's expressions, a great source of visual comedy, similar to the drawing style of Oney or Psychicpebbles.

At some parts I felt like the graphics could have been improved, for example the bosses left arm (viewers left) looks very thin. There are only a few instances of these kinds of thing, so it really isn't much to pick at. The audio is a little off too but you have addressed this in the Author Comments.

When the dog put his hat on, I swear, I nearly fell off my chair. Brilliant writing.

Keep it up

TrohPee responds:

Thanks for the nice detailed review dude. It's been awhile since I made this, but its always nice to see it made someone laugh ;3
~ Keep it sleezy ,xoxo Trohpee

[Raw Latex 3]

So many phallic symbols! It a bombardment of the stiff and erect that only the loosest Magaluf bar girl would be accustomed to.

Just when I thought I'd seen the last from the land of truly penetrating headgear along comes Raw Latex 3. Would the USB strap-on be used for transporting viruses? Always a good aggressive strategy providing you can find a place to dock.

Funny jokes, smooth animation, great music, spot-on voice acting.
Here's hoping for a fourth episode.

Sexual-Lobster responds:

thanks! as you say, it would be a specialty strap on with limited use.

[Sweet Sweet Goo]

It's always a treat to catch up on Gooseman's and his antics, especially when said antics involve jugs full of urine, a talking Mexican panda and legendary levels of lettuce leaf lobbing. Good to Fernando make an appearance skulking around in full bondage attire as well.

The animation is smooth as well as sharp and the jokes are that great mix of dark and exquisitely random that has become a stable of your work. As always upon watching this I'm instantly wanting the next, truly one of the best active animators on Newgrounds.

Greatest respect and admiration

Sexual-Lobster responds:

thanks a lot!

[fart.]

I like the simplicity of your drawing style, the use of basic moving flat shapes in mat, pastel colours was a nice and safe way to go for your first animation. It showed a clear understanding of visuals. I would have liked more in the way of a plot but that's something you can work on.

I would have also used a different title, something like "Small World", "Bitesize" or "Gulp". Other then that it's not bad for a little taster of what you're capable of.

Well done and keep practicing.

neviens responds:

Thx u for your reply. :)

[Dr. Wily Wins]

I'm unaware of the limitations of this GoAnimate that you speak of, forgive me if anything that I point out for improvement is because of the software used. Having said that, you could have used Flash or After Effects so I stand by my review.

The sprites that you have used look unclear and a tad on the blurry side. Maybe this is due to them being resized at some point. My advice would be to never resize something unless it is a vector graphic.

Another thing that I picked up on was that there was no voice acting. I'd like to hear even a mumble (similar to that of Weebl & Bob) when the text appears just so that I don't feel quite so much like I'm reading a book with a jingle in the background. It made the whole thing drag a little.

The final thing that I would point out is that when you have small text on the screen at the same time as larger text the viewer instantly reads the larger text making it seem like that was said first. Especially when the larger text is three time the size. Maybe this should be taken into consideration in your future projects.

I think this could have been better but more time was needed at the planning stage.

RainingHotDogs responds:

I didn't use voices because the only ones available were text-to-speech and mic recordings, and since they both sounded utterly terrible, I decided to stick with text. But I forgot to adjust the text size. I will try to fix the text sizes in future projects.
Now about the sprites. I really don't find them to be blurry, but it may be because this video was converted to an mp4 in 360p.
Overall, I will admit that this was rushed. I'll add more effort into later submissions.

[good improv]

I like the idea behind this flash, it reminded me of the Africa Dudes flash from back in '10. Having said that I think it would of been improved by added a little bit more character movement, an arm moving, the TV guys head turning. I understand that this would have been more work and you didn't wish to sleep until you had finished but maybe it wouldhave been better if you had given it a bit more time. Maybe stay up an see what you write/record and then spend time animating it the following day. That way you get the "Improv" feel but with a better quality animation.

I'm not too sure about the breaking of the fourth wall at 01:08, it all seems to fall apart at this point. I'd suggest get a few random cue cards or something to bring up in the conversation. More things to bring up like the Heroin at the beginning.

I think you took the Improv thing to seriously. Like your character said "you gotta plan shit out". I do like the idea behind it though.

sketchnate responds:

I was gonna go on and on about why I really did this animation, but I'll just try to explain it in short. I haven't had the time or energy to animate for a long time, so I told myself "I need to make a cartoon tonight, no matter what". And I did. This was completed in 2 hours. I figured the cheap look would sort of drive that point, but it seems people didn't get that, because I'm getting really judgmental and condescending comments about it anyway. I equate this to a quick drawing in my sketchbook, it's just practice, just like everything else I've put up here. in no way is this the full extent of my skill.

if you want to see me actually animate, check out "Limbo Stuff", that's what it looks like when I actually put effort into something.

[Sugo/ Ep:1 (Preview)]

An interesting sprite animation, good dialog although it has to be said that I would have preferred it if it was voice acted. At the format the dialog is currently it has the feel that I'm slowly clicking through an RPG, not sure if that's a good thing.

I'm also not a fan of people submitting previews in this way either, I'm an old fashioned "The Portal is for finished pieces only" kinda guy, although I guess this is over three minutes long so exceptions can be made and I think this could just be me. I would have also made separate sprites for the close ups. At parts such as 00:32 and 00:45 the sprites become so pixelated that it's visually unpleasing.

Other then these little bits it's a good animation, great character movements with good touches such as one of the pumpkin guys falling over. I'll be keeping an eye out for the finished episode. One last thing might be to think of reducing the length of your ident at the beginning. 10 seconds is long enough, 22 seconds is far too long.

WingedRevelations responds:

Good points. I'll be sure to look into these issues and see what i can improve on. Thanks a lot for the critique, I was honestly hoping someone would tell me how I could improve~

[stop motion boredom]

It's always good to see claymation on Newgrounds. In my opinion there isn't enough people trying to create using this medium. Possibly because they are put off by the amount of effort that it can take to produce something half decent. So, hats off for giving it a try.

Firstly, I think that more time could have been spent on creating the character. Maybe more then one colour would have been a nice and also little details such as markings on the wings (?), seeing as they didn't need to be moved in the clip making me feel that you could have taken the opportunity to make them look good without ruining them between frames.

The character movements are quite flowing and well done up until around 00:10 where I have no idea really what it is you are trying to get him to do. Is he meant to be covering his mouth, about to vomit? It looks like he's doing a little dance. It also would have been funnier to have him fall quicker at the end.

The only other thing that I picked up on was the lighting. Make sure in future you use fixed lighting like a lamp so that the light levels stay the same through out the clip no matter how long it takes to produce.

It's a hard medium to master and I know that you stated in the author comments that you made it to "test out a camera" but I think it's not a bad attempt for a first go.

JellyJubJubs responds:

I guess, in my opinion, claymation doesn't look as appealing as flash animations nowadays. Efforts aren't that much recognized especially when the end results aren't that good.

I must admit, the character design and the entire animation itself is half - butt. I just put a slab of clay at the back and didn't give much attention to it thinking that its going to be off camera most of the time. As for the color, maybe I would have added something if I had other colors for the clay but sadly, I didn't.

I personally think the timing and framing sucks too, I had that huge frame gap cause I knocked the model over by accident and was too lazy to start the entire thing over. I also tipped my light over a lot of times. I'll make sure to be careful of my light source next time.

[I Like Vegetables]

Firstly, hats off to your animation skill, this is honestly one of the best things I have reviewed in my time with The Review Request Club. Truly worthy of it's Daily 3rd Place and Front Page, congratulations for that also. Anyway to business.

Starting at the beginning is always best, The instant I saw the preloader I knew that this was going to be at least a better then average flash. It's always best, I feel to not skimp on a preloader and you clearly haven't with the little details like the buttons beyond a simple play button. It sets it out from 7/10 of Newground flashes. So far so good.

As I've already said I find the animation in general to be great although I would say if I was nit picking, looking for something to improve, I would have spent more time on the frame by frame drawing, especially around the characters hand movements, they could just be a tad smoother with the lines and at one point in the animation, where the character is having veg conveyer belted into his mouth there is a little line across his neck. Just little things like that. Really small things. Maybe spend a little more time watching what you think is the finished product and really looking at every detail. Honestly there is nothing else I would say to improve.

It's a great animated music video, the song and the animation are both funny. You should be proud of it. Keep this stuff coming.

- Review Requests Club -

Yusuf responds:

Yeah with the conveyor belt part, I think something happened with it because the moving part of the guy's head is on a mask layer, and it screwed up. Thanks, I'll take these into consideration :)

[UMoN- Pandas]

O' okay, well I'll start with what I was confronted with once I had pressed the play button. A highly pixelated image of what I'm guessing is a bush with some calligraphy just placed on the top. You really can't get away with using such low quality images.

The panda itself was not a great illustration. Low res and with a stick of bamboo which I'm guessing was meant to be going from his hand into his mouth appears to be stuck to the back of his hand, more time should have gone into this, especially as the vast majority of the animation was a still image. Just a complete lack aesthetic.

Spend more time in the pre-production planning stage in the future and please, please, please, if you are thinking of making a simple, almost still image animation, make that image perfect. No more low res thanks, you're better then that.

- Review Request Club -

bamboo behind hand.

ForNoReason responds:

Thanks for the review!