Slackman's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Nasty Pig]

Well done!

It's good to see that you're experimenting with something new! With all the acclaim you get for Madness, it would be easy to just coast and keep making those, so I'm glad to see that you're trying something different.

The animation is highly stylized and well designed. It works and gives a decently strange vibe, like most of your work. The only thing I would recommend is to do something when he turns around. Flipping the pig in one frame is slightly jarring and doing something along the lines of tweening his nose and eyes a bit before flipping him as a lead in and following through on the other side would make the effect a little less off. Some sort of transition would help, and whether it's a little extra tweening or an extra drawn frame or two, it would really help.

I can't say much about the content, because I have no idea what you're trying to say with this, but it's interesting nonetheless. Style gets you through here, and it's well done.

As always, the music perfectly complements the animation.

All in all, well done. Besides a bit of jerky animation when the pig turns, this is a fantastic flash. Glad to see you're doing something new and I look forward to whatever you do next.

[Dead Spyke 2]

Its OK

Generally speaking, it's ok. It does what it's supposed to do, but you should try and take it further.

One of my bigger problems with this is that it's just too short. There are only a few options and while each of them is pretty well done, they just don't take that long. A few more options could really perk this piece up.

Your animation is done relatively well for stick figures. Some things seem kind of abrupt, like when the guy stops before the pit. You might want to ease him into it, put in a few more frames and have him approach it more slowly. You might even want to have him look in the pit or something and then look at the screen. Something along those lines. It looks kinda jerky and unnatural to just have him stop. Also, when people walk, they tend to swing their arms. You may want to have your character do that in order to make him appear more human.

But that's not your biggest problem. Your biggest problem, hands down, is that you're simply just zoomed too far out. The viewer can't really see what's going on and there's a lot of dead space, which is both visually uninteresting and unnecessary. Zoom in on the pit a bit more and give us a bit more detail. It will make things interesting.

Your music, while not entirely appropriate, does seem to work strangely well with the piece. I would say that it doesn't reflect the material... being death, but somehow it works anyway. Good job. You could definitely benefit from some sound effects, but the music works.

You do show some potential here, but you need to expand upon it. Practice a bit more, and have some fun with it. You'll turn out a better project. Good luck on Dead Spyke 3!

xtended12 responds:

Oh thanks a lot!!! I be more careful next time with stick figure and I really do more stuff with arms and zoom in animation... About a music, when i was working on this project I was just downloaded Trance type music like Dj tiesto , it was fantastic to me ;) .... And really music works with animation... And yech I don't forget to put SFX on next my project.... Really thanks for the comment !!!!!

[Mario's Suicide Struggle]

A good first try

Well, for your first sprite animation, this turned out relatively well. The animation itself was okay, it was a little bit bland and could use a little bit of sprucing up, but that's not really the biggest problem with this animation. A lot of the animations are very apparently simple loops, which gets a little boring, but they work.

Your biggest problem, without a doubt is your lack of sound design. The music itself works fine, but you need sound effects to help push your point home. There are plenty of cries and yelps that Mario can deliver, we've seen them in plenty of other animations and I'd recommend putting them to good use. Smacks, explosions and other cartoon sound effects aren't that difficult to make, and can be found easily on the internet. They'd really help emphasize every action, which just doesn't have the same punch without it (particularly when you're working with sprites and can't do any squash and stretch).

As far as content goes, it is reflective of Mario's Castle Calamity. There's nothing particularly wrong with it, although you should trust your viewer to understand what's going on. In a short called Mario's Suicide Struggle, a viewer should be able to surmise that Mario is depressed. As soon as I saw Wario and Peach together, I knew what was going on, and that wall of text really just wasn't all that necessary.

If you could find a way around the wall of text at the end, it would have been a bit more entertaining as well. If you want a happy ending like that, you could have Mario succeed at committing suicide, and then look up to see a gigantic Miyamoto or something who explains to him his purpose and gives him an extra life. Just telling us what happens seems lazy and uninspired. You can also go the other route and actually have Mario succeed and that be the end of it.

All in all, it's a good first try, but you've got a way to go until you become great. Work on the overall production a bit more, and in particular your sound design could use some work.

[Tellers Tell All]

Pretty funny!

The writing on this short was pretty decent, so I'm not going to bother critiquing it.

What I will say is that your animation is VERY stiff, and kind of offputting because of it. Take for example when the guys walk, either of them. Their arms to swing at all, they just remain at their sides. There is very little movement in general in this short, which at some points acts as an advantage, but sometimes just comes off as lazy. The teller shouldn't be moving that much, he is calm, cool and collected, but the customer is getting more infuriated as the short goes on. Have some fun with this, maybe he runs his hand through his hair, clutches his fists, pounds on the desk a few times, shakes his fingers at the guy, grits his teeth... something really is necessary. As far as the teller, having him scratch his nose or something would add a lot, but isn't really necessary.

Lastly, the punch. This is the punchline of the entire short, so you've got to push it. If you want to keep it short and clean, that's fine. But make sure that this is the biggest punch physically possible. Have the teller swing back first and then hit the customer in the face. This is known as the anticipation. The bigger the punch, the bigger the laugh. You could add some blood, but I don't know if you'd morally be able to rate the short at mild violence anymore. If you wanted to take the joke further, the teller could hit the customer on the ground. It's not necessary, but it's the little extra touches, you know?

All in all you've got the right idea, but the execution could just use a little more fine tuning. Keep it up!

[Through the sky]

Unimpressive

Well, I don't mean to me rude, but this is an unimpressive piece. It's a short loop, and while it's not a particularly badly done one, it's still just a short loop.

That being said, if you want to mess around with wind effects, you should try messing with the alpha values. Depending on what version of flash you're using, there are different ways to do this, but if you turn the wind into a symbol, you should then be able to turn down the alpha value. This will make things transparent, and will help with your wind effects.

As far as the frame by frame goes, this works. It's not particularly amazing, but it works. You might want to put an extra frame of the dragon when it's wings are fully up in order to put a bit more emphasis on the movement. Also, you might want to turn up your frame rate a bit to make things more fluid. Adding in a few more in betweens would help even things out if you did that. Lastly, when its wings return up, you might want to have a frame of them folded going upwards. I personally think it would look a bit more natural than just having the wings go from the down to the up position.

All in all, you show ability to animate, but you're not really doing anything with it. I look forward to seeing you produce something a bit more ambitious. The skills are there, but you need to actually use them.

Mazzelh responds:

Oh hey, thanks for the con crit, I find it quite useful~

Thanks for the tip on the wind stuff too, will see if I can try that out. Don't think my version is has the option, though... It's not actually Flash, but an applet with the basic functions of Flash (shape tweening, vectors, paths... I dunno, most basic stuff, I think).

There is an extra frame of the wing going up, though, but since it's a five frame animation, it's gone pretty quickly when viewed, so no wonder you didn't notice its existence~

Still, again, thank you.

I shall now await the blamming of this. x_x

[Give Me Some Skin]

I like the concept

But the execution needs a little work. For one thing, the audio could use some beefing up. If you're ripping off skin, it's gonna make a noise. In order to push the concept, you should really add a ripping noise, maybe some grunting... you know, the works. Use your imagination.

The lip synching is fine. It works. It's nothing spectacular, but it gets the job done.

But really, you should try and have a bit more fun with the animation. When the guy starts ripping, you might want to try having him cringe. Experiment with the faces. If he struggles a bit more, it pushes the joke further. He could twist and turn, try and get a new grip, maybe he reaches a point where it gets stuck and he pulls out some scissors or something to finish the job. If you're going to go macabre, you might as well push it. As a finisher, maybe his organs could fall out? Something like that?

If you want to have him keep smiling, then push it further. Make him the sociopath that he seems to be. Push the smile, make it a bit more psychotic. He could show some gums, clench his teeth, open his mouth, stick out his tongue, start chewing on his tongue (I can see him struggling so hard that he bites his tongue off, that'd be pretty funny). The point is that you need to push it further.

Lastly, you might want to add a background or something. Just a gradient would add a lot. Music isn't necessary with a piece this short, but you can add a background in like no time flat and it would really help.

warefish responds:

Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you THANK YOU!!

I will keep allot of this in mind. The only exception might be the background. The flash is based off of a webcomic I make, and this webcomic generally only has the three colours: white, black and red. If I added too much depth, it would defeat the abstract, geometric purpose of the comic/flash. If you have any further advice on how to create background with this concept in mind, it would be appreciated muchly. :D

But thanks again for the advice!!

[Desert for Two]

Not bad!

Let me start off by saying that this is probably the best clock submission I've seen recently. Well done!

Well, first off your drawings are really detailed. This definitely works towards your advantage, given how little of this is done FBF. Given you probably traced them, but it works.

Animationwise, there's only three things that I would change. First, there's a shot from the side in which we see the tires of the car rotating through a tween. Watching tires on actual cars, one tends to notice that it's not nearly as clean. Things get blurred and you really can't see detail all that well. I'd recommend looping a small FBF animation here of the blurred tire spinning, or finding some way to use blurring effects.

My second comment is about when the ship drops. I'd recommend easing the tween to make things more natural. It seems like it's dropping at a pretty constant rate which just looks unnatural and offputting. A little bit of easing will make things look more natural. I'd apply the same concept to when the clocks on hoverbike things rise in the distance, and you might even want to have them overshoot it a bit and waver back down to make it look that little bit cooler.

Lastly, when we see the side shot of the car being chased and the ship forming in midair, the background could use a little bit of tweening. We see the little things on the side of the road moving, but if the sand dune was moving in the background, maybe from one side of the screen to the other over the duration of the shot, it would be less offputting. Seeing all the debris flying by on the ground while the sand dune remains stationary just looks wrong. It doesn't need a lot of movement, but a little bit would go a long way.

But these are minor complaints. This is a well made animation, and it's entertaining to watch. On top of it all, I must comment that I liked both the music choice and thought the pre-loader was pretty funny. Well done sir!

RadioTubeClock responds:

Thanks, I'm glad you like it and that's all excellent advice. A couple of those things I probably could have put more time in making look good but I wanted to get the animation done in a relatively small time frame. That being said, I'll work on making things move more naturally in future movies and put some more time into them. Thanks for the review.

[Hot Girl in the ComicShop]

Pretty good

Well, I like the character that you're using. He's pretty well designed. The backgrounds are well drawn too, although they're a little bit simple. I've never been in a comic shop that clean before, and adding a little detail to the background can go a long way. The song is funny and you're style matches up with it pretty well.

Alas, that is not the major problem with this cartoon though. The biggest problem is that you rely far too heavily on tweens. The arms in particular, and especially the joints seemed kind of slippery and just unnatural. I always suggest FBF if possible, but if you wish to tween, then might I recommend that you try cleaning it up a bit more. For example, it seemed like the elbow joint was a bit slippery in some parts, especially when the entire arm was moving. You might want to contain all of the arm within a symbol and then tween the lower arm to its key positions, and then move the entire arm in order to keep things from looking so disconnected. That might end up helping a bit.

One last piece of advice. When you change the alpha value of a symbol with different layers, we can see what is behind it on each layer. This is particularly evident in the segment when you zoom in on your main character's thoughts. Might I recommend that for that part at least you break apart your symbols and put them all on one layer, that way we won't see the lines behind, but rather just a translucent figure.

But all in all a good effort. It could definitely use some shining up, but the cartoon is funny and entertaining.

[Nutty Room]

I like it!

It was funny, quirky and it had atmosphere.

There's only one piece of advice I can give you. The quality of modern animation is often judged by the two most complicated parts of the human body. That would be the face and the hands. In this case, your faces are drawn well, they're expressive and fun. Your hands range from passable to non-existent. Drawing balls for hands is easier, no doubt, but it's not as impressive. I would recommend animating the hands rather than just reducing them to spheres. It's all that much more awesome if you put in the extra effort.

But it's your choice. Either way this was a funny, well made and impressive short! Well done!

[wind of changes]

I like it!

It was serious and poetic. I like that.

There are some things that can use improvement however. Mostly, I'm speaking about the animation. You seem to be running at a pretty low frame rate, you might want to speed it up a bit to make things a bit more fluid. It's not painfully bad, but a few more in-betweens and a little higher speed would make things more impressive.

Your art is impressive. It's pretty detailed and well drawn. This has the upside of looking great, but the downside of being difficult to animate. There are a lot of moments with very little movement, but you get away with it because of the little special effects you put in, the quick cuts and the high levels of detail within the work.

Your biggest problem however is that much of the movements in the cartoon come off as stiff and overly tweened. When the guy is moving his arm on the counter for example. You might want to have his hand moving at the wrist as well, seperately from his arm. This would make things a little bit looser and more realistic. It just seems mechanical. When the main character is walking, and his body moves up and down, you might want to ease the tweening a bit to make it look more realistic. This applies to a lot of the tweens that you use, you should toy with it a bit and see what happens.

The audio is alright. The music works well with the piece, but the footsteps are in no way coordinated with the visuals. This only became apparent upon close inspection, but that little extra effort can go a long way. It's not a big problem, but on the other hand it's simply not that impressive. The narration was appropriate for the material.

All in all, good job. You've made an interesting and original cartoon.