Skaijo's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Amazing Professor Layton]

SO much more of an improvement over "Link at Home"

Though Link at Home was a great first crack at animating, I think this is the first flash where I can really appreciate and trend the work you've completed. What a technically massive improvement you've pulled off.

The three biggest things I noticed:

+THE SOUND SYNCS WITH THE ACTION ON SCREEN. Great job in switching over that Sync/Event issue from last time. I still suggest that you fix that issue in your other .swf and replace the file here (as well as on DA) so when your future fans ultimately want to see what you've made in the past, they can comprehend it.

+The animation quality is even throughout the work. In Link at Home, the level of animation near the end was noticeably better than during the first half, and I think I can only connect that to you learning the fundamentals while you were still making the animation, and not going over the first half again to "even it out" in terms of looks. In this work, the poses, lipsynching, and overall look remained consistent. Great job.

+Really nice sound mixing. That's something I just started to learn to appreciate since I'm still learning it myself. You're working on so many levels, not just with your art, but also with your sound--and there's been dramatic improvements in both. But really, I love the care you made into making the sound file, the music doesn't overpower the voices and the ending theme was a nice touch too and expertly faded in.

Improvement Suggestions/Things You Might Like to Work On:

Now that I've seen multiple of your projects, I'd like to help you out with some things to try out in the future.

+You need to embrace a more dynamic camera. Try to incorporate zooms and slow pans in what you do to make scenes more dramatic. Don't forget changing to other perspectives. Read about the 180 Degree Rule on wikipedia and check out the .fla I sent you before as it should have some good starting examples. Continue to experiment with perspective.

+Add more easing/bounce to your animation; easing is when something accelerates when it starts to move or stop; bouncing is self-explanatory. I think some easing could have been added to Layton's hand-movements with some slight full-body bouncing just to give off more movement to the animation.

I'm flattered that you made this--please continue to experiment with whatever YOU want and continue to spread out as a flash animator.

LordCanas responds:

Many thanks, dear miss. I actually rewatch your stuff a bunch of times, I've learned this way also. Drawing other camera perspectives and angles is going to be quite a lot of work but I'll try it. I think I'm going to make an "Amazing Professor Layton" series out of this.

[Link at Home]

Let's Talk NG for a bit:

NG is weird compared to a lot of other sites you can host videos on because the judging is done by experienced animators, hobbyists, and talentless cynics alike. The judging is uneven--so numbers and rankings don't matter or equate to squat. Always remember that. Same for the reviews, a detailed thought-provoking critique should never be summed up to a finite numerical amount. And there's plenty of that here. Views are just another number, an empty statistic--real money is in the comments. And not just quantity of comments, but thought that have been put into them. It's really rewarding when someone I've been inspired by drops in to talk about my animations for a bit.

That said, this is a great site for exposure and developing an awareness for the drastically difference audiences you'll grow compared to sites like youtube or deviantart. My advice is that you use DA as a soundboard for what to improve on and build a supportive fanbase (block any dicks instantly--keep that filter strong), make those corrections, and submit to newgrounds (or post in a NG opinion forum for more critique) for the most unbiased critique.

Also, never read any review below an 8.

Never respond to anything that isn't a 10.

Reading enough poison comments can actually make you feel bad. Especially when 80% of the people comment here don't understand the craft. If someone has something very profound to explain to you in order for you to improve, they'll do it via PM (that happens pretty often, and those messages are far more supportive and open to extended conversations). So just skip overy anything that can be potentially abusive to keep this hobby fun.

That's about it.

LordCanas responds:

Thank you very much for your kind advice and support. It means a lot to me, especially coming from someone like you. I do understand how important comments can be, numbers like views or favorites just aren't the kind of feedback which really help to improve. It's all about the reactions which make any work really worthwile for an artist besides realizing his own visions.

I won't go down that easily, that I can assure you. I always strive for new challenges and new achievements, such as completing a really hard project or making "that one thing you always wanted to". I'm all about this. So expect my next flash project already in near future.

[knife training]

Things I would improve:

+The model could use some light shading as the contrast on her is completely flat. You can improve this by adding shadows to detail contours on her body.

+There's a couple of frames where you see the bottom part of her leg as a stump in the loop. You can can fix this by drawing the leg a bit more or adding a dynamic camera that'll frame that out.

+The part where she jumps and kicks is clearly slow-motiony but the effect is loss when the bg keeps scrolling at the same speed behind her. You can fix this by slowing (easing) the background when she jumps and kicks mid-air.

+Just a thought, you can really enhance this spin and chaos in the screen by having particles in the foreground and mid background. For example, the particles could be stars in the background that scroll slightly slower than the purple clouds--or sakura leaves flowing fast in the absolute foreground and slightly more slowly just behind the fighter.

+last note, if you added a dynamic camera pov, you could shake the view a bit upon each impact to emphasize it a bit more.

GOOD STUFF

Gekon responds:

oh yes, there was a background that gave it more 'camera dynamic' look, but with all blurs and gradients my PC couldn't handle that ;/
by the way, the cloud in the background has a blur filter too, but it seems that it doesn't work? anybody got any hints about this?

[Life Sucks at 40 by StiK]

I hate numbering systems.

I like the concept and the smart character design (which based off your past work your pretty damn skilled at). This is a simplified project, and I think you could add a bit more features to improve the UI and storytelling without too much effort.

+There needs to be a numbering "page" system so the viewer knows just how many pages he or she is into. Clicking through the pages one at a time was a bit exasperating once I realized that I never knew when this project would end. A simple fraction of pages read would be helpful once included in the corners.

+First page takes a while, and other pages take less than 10 seconds to finish. It'd be nice if you could structure your stories to balance the time spent on each page.

+Some minimal animation might help per page. I know your capable of fine art, and wanted just make something simple, but a 3 second loop may maintain more interest in each page while the narrator speaks at length.

+ I also suggest eliminating as much text as possible--even for dialog in-between characters. It's hard to read that, interpret the picture, and listen to you all at the same time. It's literally three different forms of communication at once and all nuances are lost in the storytelling. For example, I would opt for symbols or smaller graphics in the dialog boxes rather than actual text.

+StopAllSounds tage should be added in-between the final page and the restart of the new story as sounds overlap into the replay.

Keep at it!

stik responds:

Thanks man. Will do.

[The Parkour Collab]

Woopiteedee

Nicely done. :3

I liked the character model of the very final collab entry the best, and the touch of humor it offered. Really great pieces all around. Very imaginative, and a great spectrum of skills and ideas.

Fizzled responds:

Wow, thanks :)

[Professor Fucking Layton]

I'm really glad I didn't let this slip past me

I'm a big fan of Professor Layton and it was getting kind of lonely being the only one making animations (and poor one as that xD) about the game. I laughed out loud a lot watching this and I really like the dark angle you took over this. The choice of colors was great--even the icon is pretty ballsy. :3

The VA is great--it reminded me something straight out of CSI. They sound so damn smexy. Especially Layton! My guys could learn something from you.

I don't know what I could offer in terms of constructive critique aside from the pitch effects on the voices kinded added a noticeable warble on the higher pitched characters. I'm not a big fan of looping either, but that's my personal taste.

Anyway, great stuff dude!

backwardcompatible responds:

Thanks for the crit man-

In terms of Layton flashes actually it'd be fun to team up with someone to make something larger- if you're interested I'd be real delighted to do something with you and your team.

[Pika VS Onix]

Some questions...

I love the comedic touch at the very end, and the audio mixing was superb.

Some quick questions that'll help me improve:

The light show effects that you used, especially for moves such as Onix's hyper beam, were those originally done as just a sliding batch of shapes that got turned into a movie clip--and then had a glow filter attached to it after you knocked out the base image?

Also, there was a lot of blurs used in this but the final size of the animation was less than two megs and there was virtually no lag. Did you keep in mind anything to intentionally minimize lag--or was a fluke?

For fight scenes like this, did you add the sfx before, during, or after the animating process?

I appreciate the help in advance!

SunnyRays responds:

ok well for the hyper beam effect you hit it dead on (I kinda discovered that by surprise)

as for the blurs, I don't think they actually would take that much memory because I assume flash player just needs to recognize it as a blur and its properties...but I did do save and compress...it was only 456kb without the sounds, the lag issue is well generally depends on your comp and graphics card, I did find that you need to get the right balance of different blur qualities and amounts to reduce lag and make it look good...

anyways as for sound effects...I am noob at it, for now I just make the movie first then add sfx, but sometimes I find it to be better if I add sfx first (eg talking scenes) I'd love to learn how professional animators do it

well hope that answers your questions
also keep in mind I pretty much didn't do any prior planning for this
like an idea popped into my head the night before, and the next day I just animate
off the top of my head, then at the end of the day (15 hours later) I submit...so I wasn't sure if this was all the most practical ways to do everything but I did gain some more experience and hope the next movie will be even better

cheers

[Ninja Vs Samurai]

Pizza Pirate

This work inspired me to finish working on my own projects. The attention to detail and muted palette (I've done mostly black and white animations before and it's really tricky filling in white objects on a white background--I feel your pain!). But this animation was so focused and fundamentally light and awesome. This reminds me a whole hell of a lot of my first animation--except I wasn't anywhere near as ambitious to try out fight scenes. Either way, you've got a great future ahead of you as a hobby. Thanks for helping me stick with it.

If you have any questions animating, feel free to PM me.

Pablo-M responds:

wow, I'm really glad this animation helped you continue your work! It really is flattering to hear someone say that. I wish you good luck with your projects!

[Cod-Cod Introduction]

Laughing Kumquot

Great camera work! Very straight forward and it made me wish that there was more to it. The animation quality was great.

Were you using bitmaps in any of your backgrounds? It seems like there was a bit of a lag a few seconds into the introduction of those "speed line" backgrounds you had as well as right after Blue jumped into the bushes. I wasn't sure, but it was fairly consistent.

Some helpful advice following: Anyway, if those were bitmaps, you can avoid that problem by using smaller images and then stretching them out, or "under loading" by introducing the pictures in a layer under your fight scene so that it's already "playing" by the time it's needed on the screen.

Stone-Steven responds:

Actually the only bitmap that was used was the blur-speed backgrounds. Other than that it was solid flash.

Thanks!