Slackman's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[The unholy tree of doom]

Not bad

What you've done here is pretty intriguing, although it suffers from some critical flaws.

First, I laud you on your use of black and white, it sets the tone of the piece well, making it stark and somewhat moody. It stands out certainly due to an impressive use of color (or lack thereof).

The music also accompanies the piece quite well.

The animation shows a decent amount of hard work, but you should observe movement a bit more closely. All the motions in the piece seem to run into one another. This is because there is no pause in between actions. It's ok to hold a frame for a little while to provide a pause. It makes the individual actions a little more distinct and makes it appear as though your character is not just running through a series of predetermined actions. If you're opposed to having a still frame, you could trace the character a couple of times and cycle through 3 frames of it at rest to produce a vibrating effect.

Next, you should have a little more fun with the animation. Little embellishments and flourishes can really help make a piece. Take for example when his eyes pop out of his head. Having them just pop out and having him put them back in is inherently interesting because of the subject matter, but it would be even more so if you played around with the animation a bit more. Maybe one eye falls out and dangles a bit, and then the other one falls out. The bunny could put them back one at a time instead of doing both at once, and maybe they don't pop back in nearly as easy as they came out. All of these things would add a little more personality to the animation.

Also, as a side note: Stress Bunny bears a striking resemblance to Foamy the Squirrel at some points. Just an observation.

On a last note, your frame rate seems kinda low. This works in some areas of the animation pretty well, and others less so. The point where it affects it most is when Stress Bunny is floating around the screen with the little bunnies. I have the feeling it was supposed to look kind of peaceful, but due to the low frame rate it just looks kind of choppy. I'd recommend making a test dummy (basic figure) and motion tweening it along whatever path you want Stress Bunny to float, and then drawing over each individual frame, which would help alleviate some of the choppiness. Other than that, all I can recommend is upping the frame rate. You could animate some parts on twos and others on ones if you like, but if you want to create something a little more fluid, you're going to have to up the frame rate a bit.

But, congratulations on making an interesting, moody and intriguing animation. Good luck on your next one.

StressBunnyInc responds:

i never use tweening and i never will!!!! lol
and thanks for the extremly long comment :D
it will help me in the long run

[10 Reasons]

Cute

The audio on this is pretty funny. The visuals are pretty good, but they could use a little bit of work.

There are times in this when you use a vibrating effect. It looks like you're cycling through two frames very quickly. What I'd recommend is adding a third frame and slowing it down by adding another frame into each picture. This will make things look less violent and strange.

Honestly, most of the rest of my advice is to move on from the mouse and practice with the tablet a bit more. Your characters could be a bit cleaner, but I'm going to blame that on the mouse and hope that you can produce something a bit cleaner with the bamboo. You might want to experiment with a thinner line, or even using the pencil tool. Either would help make the drawings look a little better.

Your extremes are well done though, and while I'd complain that the cartoon is a little short and the ending is pretty random, I will say that it didn't overstay it's welcome. Rather it was short and sweet and pretty funny.

Good luck, and I look forward to seeing what you produce in the future.

HolyKonni responds:

Wow! Nice review! Thanks for the tips, I'll defenitly think of that when I make my next flash.

[First Date Goes Awry]

Not bad

You've got a pretty decent cartoon here, but it could use some work.

First thing's first. Your character designs are cute and effective. The biggest problem with them is that they are very rough, and would definitely benefit from being cleaned up a bit. You might want to take a look at the pencil tool rather than the brush, it'll keep things cleaner and with basic shapes like so many of these characters are made of, it'll make them look a ton better. The brush can be used, but I'd recommend putting in a bit more time and cleaning up your drawings if you want to take that route.

Your extremes are pretty good and your characters are expressive, but the animation often comes off as choppy. I'd recommend upping the frame rate a bit (I think that's the problem, but it's kind of tough to tell what's making things so choppy). You might want to look into easing, adding a few frames more towards the beginning and/or end of a movement to make it look more realistic and you might want to hold the extremes of your animation a bit longer.

I think you need a new microphone. Seriously. I rarely complain about audio quality, but this is kind of painful. It's especially painful because the audio is well put together. The acting works and the timing is fine, but the actual audio quality is... rough...

You might want to add in a few more sound effects, particularly when the car first arrives on screen. The beast-like rumbling of the engine would make help emphasize your point a bit more and make the car more threatening.

But otherwise, you've got a decent flash here. Hopefully this helps, and best of luck on your next animations!

PurplePlanet responds:

Well thanks a lot for the comment! I appreciate it.
It helps a lot. I usd 12 fps. Perhaps I should have done 24 fps.
It may look better that way. I did rush the design, It would have been better to use the pencil tool. Which I will do next time. I have put the smoothing down to 36 on purpose, I had it on 100 before.
As for the microphones, I had people record that didnt have good microphones, Trent Bell and I with Dario were the only ones who had decent mics. I had put the audio together back when I hadn't put much thought into the quality. I do now, thanks for the comment, it was really helpful. :)

[Ted n' Rick: [Episode 1]]

Could be better

You've got some potential here, but the short is sloppily done and simply feels as though you haven't thought it through to the fullest, which severely hinders it.

First thing's first. You either need to speed this up, or put in more jokes. This cartoon runs painfully slow at times where the characters are just standing around and there's nothing going on. There are long pauses between the dialogue, which need either to cease to exist or to be filled with something. You could have the characters move a bit more or do something interesting with them or you could add in more dialogue, but these sequences are often painfully slow.

A few sound effects may help make things more interesting. The first time you zoom in on the car, there's a notable lack of noise. Even if it's just a little bit in the background, a little engine noise, or wind passing by or a little bit of background music would help move things along quite a bit. The only time we get a sound effect is when something happens, but don't forget about ambient noise. It helps set the mood and makes things a bit more interesting.

If you want to make a faux instructional video, don't forget to push the concept. Watch a few of them and observe what they have in common. You could add in some cheesy instructional video background music, or a small child with a common name to ask questions of the instructor. If you want to push it further, add some ticks in the animation and screen quality to make it look like it's on a projector. I'd also make whichever character is talking to us a little bit condescending, talking down to the audience as though we don't understand these basic concepts.

The character design is alright. There's something a bit wonky about the eyes, but it's not too bothersome. However, the animation is lazy. Your characters look very immobile and stiff. The walk at the beginning is pretty well done, but there's very little movement from there on out. A few quirks would help liven things up. Even doing so little as adding in a blink now and again would help, but maybe a few head scratches, some pacing around the room, leaning on a wall things along those lines would make your characters look less stiff.

I will say that I liked where you were going with each of the jokes, but they were all to similar and none of them had too much punch to them. They all ended in the same car crash. Maybe, he could hit different things. First, it would be nice to see whatever he hits. You could animate it pretty easily by having a dust cloud dissipate over the car when it crashes, transitioning from the car to the crashed car. Maybe have him hit a fire hydrant, a tree, a building and a parked car or something like that. If you wanted to go a more violent route, he could hit a person (I personally find the idea of a granny bouncing off the roof to be pretty funny, but I don't know if that's you're kind of thing). Maybe while he's eating he can start choking on the food, and while I liked the lousy music, you might want to have him headbanging to something too. You need to push each of your jokes further to get a good laugh.

Anyway, I feel as though I've written enough here. I wish you well with episode two, and I encourage you to really put in the work and hit this next one out of the ball park. You've got a good start, but you really need to run with it in order to make something special.

KugelNosh responds:

Wow. I really appreciate the long feedback. I really like some of the idea's that you're giving me and I'll make sure to apply them next time. Thanks again for your suggestions and your time!

[He Who Holds His Breath]

Not Bad

Well, let me start off by saying that that was a bizarre short. It was funny and pretty well animated.

Your faces in particular are really well done, although I must admit that the bodies are a bit lacking, and in particular I'd advise you to work on the hands and feet. A friend once told me that when judging animation, the two key things to look at are the faces and the hands. Adding hands would really help you make things far, far more impressive and the feet just look a little off to me. You can keep it simple, but keep the feet in the shape of feet, instead of just making them blobs.

Your sound design is pretty good, no worries there.

The animation of the flower falling over is a bit off, it needs an in-between or something. The extremes are just too extreme. A blurred frame or two of the flower in between the extremes will help the transition. Everything else is pretty well done.

My last bit of advice is to fool around a bit with the water. Mess around with the alpha values and maybe use a gradient in order to show depth. It just looks strange to have a guy in the water and not be able to see into the water at all. You also might want to have the guy bob up and down a bit in the water, to emphasize that he's floating.

But this short is well done. It's strange, but that doesn't make it any less entertaining. Well done!

ChadsWeb responds:

Thanks for the constructive review. I understand what you mean by feet and hands, and I agree fully, it's just that they weren't doing much with their arms to the point where drawing hands would have just been a pest. The feet, if I'm remembering correctly for this short, wheren't shown much, but when they were, I think I gave them some sort of basic shape, similar to Homstars feet in the Homestarrunner cartoons (Shape wise). The flower falling did need some work, I thought it would make due for what it needed to be, though, so I left it as it was.

The background of the water did need something. I wanted to add some more stuff out and around, but couldn't get it to look right with the 2D perspective I used. Gradients never have looked good to me, though, so that thought wasn't very popular in my mind :P

Thanks again for the critiques :3

[A coconut up one's butt]

Pretty nice

The song is really catchy and the animation is fluid, bright and entertaining. There is one big flaw with this cartoon however.

As I said before the animation is nice, but it gets repeated constantly throughout the cartoon. It's a nice loop, but after the dozenth time without any change, I'd like to see something different. It could be as simple as different views. Don't be afraid to give us a side view, back view or even three quarters view. You could use different characters or something along those lines. Even changing the color of the character, so it looks like there's a swarm of strange bug things of different varieties would be nice.

This piece suffers from a lack of variety. It goes on too long to keep using the same animation, and the little asides, while nice, just don't provide enough padding to get over the fact that most of what we're watching is the same loop over and over again.

I liked the singing coconuts though, and I liked the animation of the bug thing (the first dozen loops of it or so) squatting, and maybe this is just me, but I think it'd be hilarious to combine the two.

But, well done. The piece is entertaining, catchy and pretty memorable. It could use a bit more work, but what you've got here shows great promise.

NightShadowTWO responds:

I was actually quite worried about the repetition thing. I didn't have much time to animate more squats so I just went with what I have trying hard to make it look as varied as possible in each scene. Thanks for the suggestion slackman. Will keep your comments in mind!

[Raptor Burgers]

Very cool

Very cool! You've got a lot of style, and I must admit that I'm partial to pretty much anything with raptors in it.

I can only give you a couple pieces of advice. The first of which is that you should work on your hands a bit more. Everything else has kind of an angular, hyperstylized feel to it, whereas the hands have like... Mickey Mouse gloves or something like that on them. Keep with the style. A great piece of advice I was given was that when people look at your animation, one of the biggest things they're going to judge you by is the faces and the hands. The faces, while nothing special, are fine. The hands could use a little bit of work however. I'm not saying they need to be completely realistic, but something more angular would probably fit the bill.

My second piece of advice would be to add in a little more FBF. This would come in handy, particularly when something is changing direction. Just flipping the symbol is unimpressive and distracting. Adding in a couple of frames would really help even things out and make the animation a bit less choppy.

But besides that, stylistically, your piece is awesome, your choice of music fits perfectly and the plot is twisted and funny. Very entertaining!

Sh0T-D0wN responds:

I see, I see.

:D.

[Theories and Practice]

Very cool!

This was pretty impressive. The visuals really matched the music quite well. The message was strong and clear. Furthermore, the audio you added worked nicely with the cartoon, and everything was well synched.

Here are my criticisms of the work. First of all, your drawings could be a little more clean, or a little more complex. Generally speaking those are the two routes you want to take. If you want to use simple characters, you should clean them up so although they look simple, they are bright and attractive. If you want to use a dirtier look, you should probably use more detail to compensate. This would make the drawings a bit more impressive.

You also might want to work on hands a bit. I only remember one shot where it really bothered me (the guy is shifting gears I believe), but I was once told that when people watch animation, the thing they're going to pay attention to most is the face and the hands. You might want to put in a little extra work to make your hands a bit more impressive.

Lastly, pay attention to scale. In some shots you use it really well. The morbidly obese lady in the small apartment for example. However, in the last shot which is a long shot in which nothing else is going on, we see the logger, who is bigger than a lemonade stand, as big as a tree and as tall as a piece of heavy machinery. You might want to shrink him down a bit, or make everything else larger.

Otherwise though, this is a really cool animation. Well done!

jackbliss responds:

I marked your review helpful as you have given me some wonderful guidelines and tips to help me make even better movies next time. Thanks for the time and effort :-)

[Crappy Days]

Friggen hilarious!

Well, allow me to say first that when the emo first popped up, I laughed my ass off. Well done. A story with a moral to it!

I've only got a few pieces of constructive criticism for you.

First, when the emo throws his hand up in the air, you might want to add a blurred frame or two. It doesn't look natural, like you just hit two extremes and missed the in betweens. While you get away with this in other places in the short, it just doesn't work that well there. It may be a lack of squash and stretch or something like that, but it's just a little off. Nothing big, but it's a little irritating.

Secondly, when he's bashing his head against the wall, I'd like to see a bit of a reaction from him. Here he's pounding his head against the wall, but we're not seeing any damage or reaction from him. I'd like to see his head swinging back and forth a bit, if nothing else. Have it rebound backwards a bit upon impact, or give us a frame of it smashing against the wall and being squashed upon it. Really, we need something to help us feel the impact a bit more.

One last thing. I'd never recommend doing the flashing, seizure-y thing that goes along with "moving all week with you". It's just kind of annoying to the viewer, and I know with me at least it's something I've come to associate with the large amounts of spam entering the portal. It does little to add to the cartoon, and it's just not that necessary.

But otherwise this is a fantastic piece. It's really funny and it got a good laugh out of me. Very creative, I can tell you that and it certainly brightened my day.

DAGamesOfficial responds:

LOL thanks, appreciated :) yeahI accept all constructve critisism, cus in all fairness it just generally gives me ideas for how I could improve in the next ones :) I take all your critisizm, and Ill mkae sure the next one is better xp

[Broked Heart]

Pretty good

Let me say first that I approve of how much FBF you did in this cartoon. Well done. There are only two things that I would take a look at if I were you.

The first is the guy's walk as he enters the stage. It's very unnatural. I'd recommend taking a look at how somebody actually walks. Stand next to a treadmill for awhile or something and actually observe it. It'll make things look a bit less awkward if you're working from observation. There's also a pretty decent tutorial under the Flash Tutorial section that can probably help you out, although I've found that there's no substitution for the real thing. Same thing with the dancing. Their legs aren't moving. If they were off the ground and floating, I'd understand it and it would looks less strange, but because they're on the ground just circling one another without moving their legs it just looks strange. Have them skip and side step a bit, or maybe hovering up and down in the air, whichever you prefer.

Secondly is when the girl's dress changes color. It's a cool effect, yes, but I'd be even more impressed if she was moving at the time. Something like floating into the air a bit while holding onto the guy's hands. That'd be cool. Really it just looks unnatural for the two of them to stop completely while the effect is going on. I'm sure with a shape tween it wouldn't be all that difficult to achieve a similar effect. Maybe she should just look down and raise her arms in surprise as it happens. Just don't have the two of them stop completely, especially after having done so much FBF earlier in the animation. It just looks strange.

Otherwise, good job though. It's a bit short and unpolished, but it was intended as a demo and was done in a few hours, so I suppose that's forgivable. That being said, you have time to shine it up a bit, just remember that your deadlines for the project outside of NG don't affect when you can put the final product on NG. No harm in putting in a few hours extra work to give it that extra touch if you know what I mean.

Prid-Outing responds:

WOW! Thanks for writing that LONG review :D

I know what you mean. But I had such a little time to finish it, so I had to do it as quickly as possible to show those other people! And thanks man, you've given me some ideas for my next romantic animation =)

Your review was long and nice. And I hope that you also find true love if you don't have one <3

Prid