Skaijo's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[My name is Layka]

That was just too silly. :P

I liked the detail in the lighting throughout the movie. You obviously put much attention in that. The pace of the movie was a bit too slow. There simply wasn't enough happening in the first 30 to 45 seconds to really captivate my full attention. Perhaps if you edited the song before hand, possibly making it shorter, you could have concentrated the scenes so that it wouldn't look as if you were stalling for the music to pick up a beat. Also, since you were using English, it wouldn't have hurt to show your flash in the forums here on NG or to a friend who's more familiar with the language.

Still, I did like the song. The odd-ness of the song fit the mood of the animation and graphics quite nicely. I just would have appreciated a more consistent means of animation (for example, Certain objecters were outlined while others weren't).

Overall though, I was entertained.

[Exploding Fungus (silent)]

Everyone has to start somewhere, nez pa?

But the fact that this movie has a score above 3 absolutely surprises me. Still, here's my objective review:

1. The movie sucks ass.

Heh, just kidding. Honastly, your first attempt at animation shows basic knowledge of the basic properties of Flash. You used tweens, mild frame-by-frame movement, and basic button use among other things. On a side note, the fact that were you were capable of doing this after 7 hours puts my efforts to shame. It took me nearly a day and a half to learn how to tween alone.

So why is it that I don't like this moive? Well:

1. You finished it in 7 hours.
2. The style was inconsistent and overall poor. By inconsistent, I'm referring to the color of the buttons. Nearly everything in the movie was a solid off-value of purple and moved through tweening. The blue linear buttons that were animated in a fbf manner through me off. Perhaps a large purple button that says play. At least then I would know for sure where the button even is and what it does. By poor, I'm referring to the graphical quality of the animation. If it was intentional, I would respect this style as a whole; however, the supporting attributes of the animation gave this .swf the appearance that the poor characters were drawn poorly due to lack of skill.

The overall interactivity was hindered due to poor button design. I honastly didn't even see the buttons until my mouse inadvertantly hovered over them. The poor execution of the flash as a whole failed to adequetly deliver the puchline in your joke.

I do love the fact that this flash lets me see how much you've improved. <3

Much love, Bez

Bezman responds:

This is probably the best review I have ever gotten.

I actually think a purple button with 'play' written on it would be a mistake. I'd like it to remain more abstract. I do concede though that I should have made it more obvious and clickable. At the time, I didn't know how hit-boxes worked.

Review of your review:

You start off, conceding the few 'good points' about this movie and that - yes - it did take /some/ effort (however little).

You then go on to eloquently state just a few of the problems with this movie.

constructive criticism/suggestions: 9
exposition of experience: 10
praise/encouragement: 11 (it's just incredibly so)


clarity of expression: 9
(had to e-mail to understand the phrase 'supporting attributes' and still don't 100% understand it)
elaboration & being specific: 10
coverage (how much): 9

overall: 10

[Badly Drawn Stickman]

Hey--that was a badly drawn stickman! I'm shocked.

Based on your author's comments, it sounded as if you tried to deliver a very deep complex idea. I can those what you were talking about in the animation. It clearly was a badly drawn stickman, that evolved and interacted with it's surroundings.

I can't say that your concept was executed well, however. The buttons were user-friendly and functional. However the movie fails artisticly. First of all, I don't mean artistically in terms of style. The style was constant so I respect that and your manner of drawing. What I mean in this case is that art is meant to convey meaning. In my humble and kick ass opinion, Badly Drawn Stickman did not convey the "evolution in artistic ability". What I saw was two stick men and a third in a pair of shoes. The amount of effort put into the flash did not match the depth of the message you were trying to give.

Constructive crit:

1. I'd suggest making the differences between the stickmen more evident. It wasn't until my fourth time viewing the movie that I realized that the first stick man failed due to the fact that he was drawn too poorly overall, the second due to his wobbly legs, and the third due to its lack of eyes.

2. The clothes on the walking stick man did not have proper tracking. During the brief fbf animation, the shoes had shoelaces, then didn't have shoelaces, had wavering depth, etc. Since the shoes were perhaps the most detailed part of the sticks body, it wouldn't have hurt to "clean them up" between frames and make their frames more consistent.

3. That 7 seven second gap at the end of the movie after the stick fades a way has got to go. It truely causes the movie to end on a very sour note.

Overall, the graphics were not used properly to convey your message to me. The style was consistent, however, the addition of sound wouldn't have hurt your style or movie. In terms of "Violence" I'm going to suggest that when you have stick man #3 walk into the apple, that the apple should at least show some sign that it has been hit. Perhaps a swaying of some sort. Overall that part of the animation was just too stiff. Hence, the attempt at humor was weak.

Bezman responds:

Thanks for all the kick-ass input.

Pretty much everything you say is true.

If I were to redo it, I'd probably change a lot, but you've given me food for thought for when I do return to the concept.

Specially the note about needing differentiation.

['Asteroids' music video]

Gosh...

I love those kind of flashes that make me feel warm inside.

Graphically, there there wasn't much to look at, the simplistic nature of the animations matched the simplistic nature of the song. In many cases, that type of realtion is so much more important than a mis-match between audio and visual attributes. I appreciated the fact that you used a 3-4 frame graphic for the purple figures at the beginning of the movie. That kind of Squigglevision is a key note that you were aware of the typical attention span of your audience.

There was no violence in the movie as none was really needed. Hence, your use (or in this case, non-use) of violence gets you a ten.

Here's my biggest complaint: the entire file size as a whole was less than 1 MB. That left plenty of room to optimize the quality of the sound clip that you used in the animation. I'm not sure if you were attempting to avoid an excessive loading time. However, I still found the quality of the sound much too low to really enjoy. An extra 24kbs wouldn't have hurt, but that's just my kick ass opinion.

Still, when the space man (*and space woman) came into the scene, the flash became magical to me. Maybe I'm just a sucker for cute people floating around astroids--but I certainly know what I like--and that was it.

So overall, the graphics were still were not too complex--yet the supporting attributes of this flash clearly showed me that you were going for a specific style. The song was a great choice--and perfect length as the the entirety of the animation ended on a crisp high note. I didn't necessarily laugh out loud, but there was an emotional feeling that came over me in this animation. That alone makes any cartoon great.

Bezman responds:

Thank you for so many wonderful reviews. I'm obviously glad you enjoyed this one and it means so much coming from you - as I've seen the brilliant stuff you yourself are capable of.

review of your review
=======================

In many cases, that type of realtion is so much more important than a mis-match between audio and visual attributes.

The above sentence is a little unclear. Did you mean to say that "that type of relationship" makes for a massive improvement?

Or by when you talk of a "mis-match" are you meaning the timing?

I understand you're... Korean? I don't know. But really, your English is great and I feel slightly bad pointing such things out. But where your meaning becomes unclear, it is a slight problem.

Also, I'm not entirely sure what 'Squigglevision' as you call intentionally wobbly gfx has to do with short attention spans...

The filesize/music quality issue: you're totally, totally right. To be honest, I'm not totally sure if I understood all the export quality options at the time. I may have been overly worried with making it bigger than necessary.

The part after the astronauts enter is my favourite too. :-)

I'm not at all sure what exactly you mean by 'supporting attributes'. I noticed you use this phrase a lot in the reviews. I'll maybe have to e-mail you regarding that.

overall:
========
constructive criticism/suggestions: 7 - Just the low quality audio.

exposition of experience: 8 - You really let me know how it made you feel. I'd have maybe liked to know whether you looked at the comments and whether you liked them or not, but that's no biggie.

praise/encouragement: 10 - Obviously easier in cases where you like the flash. But seriously, your review is great, ending on a high note, and it makes me want to animate a bit more than I did before.

clarity of expression: 6 - a few bits I didn't understand, but you do a better job than many native speakers of English.

elaboration & being specific: 10

coverage (how much): 9


overall: 9

I love the way that you focus on aspects of the 'artistry' which others don't often mention. You really seem to approach reviewing from your own angle and I really, really enjoyed reading this.

My only real complaint is the few parts that were unclear. I feel like a bit of a prick for saying that though, given that English isn't your first language.

[Exploding Fungus 2 silent]

Bang! Huzzah! Bang! Yipee!!!

*smiles

Aren't first attempts grand? ^_^

I'll try to give this my most thoughtful review despite the fact that many of the things that I advise now may already be obvious to you.

Although I found the graphical representation of the fungi, bacteria, and assorted gentlemen much too simplistic--they all fell under a consistent style, which I did find original and somewhat entertaining to see. When the gigantic bacteria beemed down from their poorly drawn UFO, I couldn't help but laugh to myself. The laughter would not have been at your artistic capability, but rather if you had a full and sophisticated sound track in the background, the score would have contrasted with your art in a comedic sense--and would have made the animation that much richer.

In turn, I found the art lacking. If there was some way for me to know that they were drawn in such a basic manner intentionally, then I could asses the matter differently. However, the supporting attributes of this flash did not give me that impression.

The "battle scenes" with the fungi were my personal favorite parts of the animation. I especially enjoyed the over-the-top outburst by the adjacent bacteria. However, despite the fact that I liked the explosions, they still were not animated that well. Still, something tells me I'm going to happily remember those few scenes for the rest of my life.

I have a functional problem with the interactivity of the movie. As you may already know now, the buttons were poorly made. I did not appreciate having to write where the text was drawn rather than the approximate area of where the text was written. It's simply more user-friendly to create buttons that have an invisible "box" behind them; so that way viewers will not have to snipe letters in order to activate buttons. Moreover, I had a hard time determining what was actually a button from what was actually just text. This left me (more than once) just staring at the screen waiting for something to happen--when of course nothing ever did.

Additionally, I think it would behoove you to use a font that mimics hand writing over using actual handwriting. If anything at all, it will help people like me, who do not recognize English as their first language, understand what you are trying to say with a greater clarity.

Overall, I found this movie to be frustrating at some points, and very enjoyable at others. The concept of bacteria vs. fungi has great potential, and the entire concept as a whole was ultimately only limited by its delivery.

6.8/10

Bezman responds:

The art was all deliberately drawn to be as simplified as possible. If I were doing this now, I would of course make curves more graceful, fill everything with the bg colour so stuff behind doesn't show through, etc. Artistic capability got me almost but not quite where I wanted to be.

Bgm is something I didn't put in due to not thinking it was important. At the time I often watched stuff with no sound at the uni library and so hoped to start a trend of silend stuff. It wasn't until afterwards (when I'd started bringing in headphones, then had the internet at our flat) that I realised how much a bgm could add to something.

I'm happy that those scenes have such a positive impact. It was kinda sparked by one scene in Usagi Yojimbo. If you've not read that comic, you should if you can. It's my favourite comic ever (the only one I still buy).

I didn't know about hit-boxes at the time.

Yeah, having some text be buttons, some not, is something I only later realised was a mistake.

Sad to hear it's still out there doing its fiendish stuff and causing aggro.

I wanted my text to represent ME and not just be some off-the-shelf font, yaknow? I'd now probably be able to draw better letters. Maybe make up my own font for this.

Glad you liked the idea and only disliked the delivery. I'm seriously thinking of remaking my first 2 movies sometime. Maybe after I've gone through my rite of passage and have upgraded to Flash MX.

Thanks for the great review.

I give this one a 10 also. This is better-written, but the other was just amazing, considering the movie and how encouraging your review was.

This is just totally thorough and awesome.

If you ever want more feedback on your stuff in progress, let me know. I'll have to get round to rating your existing movies sometime...

[Mazinger Intro]

Heheh

I love 'em wacky.

[-SFS 7-]

Heheh

"Me and my Asian friend." That slays me. xD

Well, as far as sticks go, the animation quality was poor to below average at best. However, the concepts used in battle were fairly original. Despite it's chopiness, there were some great touches to detail that kept me interested to the end. Still, the movie did not feel as if it ended on a complete thought--but, then again, without a backstory, character development, or even a plot, who am I to be picky?

slowz responds:

ty.

[The king of the mountain]

Kray's stupid. Don't worry about it...

You've got style and sweet tunes. All my protection points to you, bud. Good luck.

[Bill Nye The Science Guy]

*sigh...

Ah.... Memories...

Thnx for the nostalgia.

[sand animation fight]

Nicely done

This is the first time i've seen a sand animation on NG. Too bad it was another stick fight. Still, transitions from white figure to black figures were done very nicely. And great camera angles too. Nicely done all the way around. This is a great and intuitive twist to something that I thought had been long played out.

Stuntastik30 responds:

Thank you. I'm not trying to bring back stick fights or anything. but doing detailed sand characters would be hard and would take a long LONG time to complete. I would like to apologize in advance but a lot of other people would like to see a longer version of the sand fight so i might bring it back one last time. But since its made out of sand, you'll forgive me.