Kwing's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Antares punch animation]

Pretty good, but room for improvement.

So there's four shots in this super short animation. The close-up of the eyes, the close-up of the face which transitions with the first, then after the punch from the side, and finally after the punch head-on. It strikes me as a little anticlimactic that we skip from the 2nd shot to the 3rd - you never actually get to see the punch, or even what was being punched. The third shot also has these weird wave effects, and the slow pace they move at feels a little awkward, including the big wave which is used to transition to the fourth shot. The fourth shot has the slight breathing animation but would probably look a bit better if the movement were LESS smooth. Think of heavy, ragged breathing. It's not a consistent in-out kind of motion, but rather tends to happen in short heaves.

Add in the actual punch and clean up the 3rd shot a little and you'll have something that looks way nicer. Also, even if this is only a proof of concept, sound effects would have made this a lot more impactful as well. The angles are so cinematic that it almost feels criminal not to have some audio to go along with it.

As to what was done right... The graphics themselves look phenomenal. And not just the linework, but also the color choice, with everything being in different shades of blue. Very captivating to the eye.

ai0950 responds:

Thank you very much for your feedback, it's really helpful! I'll definitely try to implement it in future animations

[Frog Flood 15: FlipaClip]

The fake watermark was legitimately funny gag, and seriously faked me out for a second when I right-clicked the animation and saw the Ruffle context menu. That said, it would be nice if this were a bit longer. I could see this being more enjoyable in the context of a larger collab.

[Fire squad episode 1]

The art and voice acting are fine, but it basically looks like PowerPoint presentation. Couldn't you juxtapose the frames of the comic next to each other and pan between them? Maybe animate speech bubbles?

Full-on animation isn't totally necessary for this style but just a little something to make this pop would go a long way.

[Lolcat History (Part 3/6)]

This randomly popped into my head today and I figured I'd go back and watch this. What a weird animation. The animation quality is mediocre and the way the images are pasted in is really awkward, but I think that's kind of the point. The low budget animation is sometimes quite charming (though sometimes not.)

If there's anything that needs work here, it's the sound. The lack of background music and stiffness of the voice acting (pauses between lines are definitely too long) makes the animation feel slow and clunky, although the swearing ends up being pretty funny due to how unexpected it is. The diabeetus cat also has some background noise in his voice clips that should be edited out.

[Micwizard 2 (Doors 5 part)]

Holy shit dude. So many Doors submissions are like 5 seconds long. This thing is deluxe. The effects (which you're pretty well known for) are absolutely stunning - honestly parts of this look like they could have been animated by Xenophoss, definitely some inspiration from Ghost Fight BOS as well. Though it's still very much your style. Just wow!

Miccool responds:

Yeah, I definitely looked back on a lotta old school stick fights to draw inspiration from as well as modern anime. Ghost Fight being the big one forsure. Also my friend gave me extra time to work on my part which is why mine's a lot longer than most.

Thanks for the kind words!

[The 10 Second Obstacle Course]

It's clear this is new to you, so I'll try and give some tips.
* Try and move the camera smoothly if you can; get a nice, even pan from point to point, so that it's easy to track the stick figure visually.
* Your slow movements look decent, but fast stuff (especially running) looks bad. Take a look at some walking and running cycles online and try to model your animation based off of this. Walking and running are boring to animate, so you may consider using a loop for this.
* If you can, try to make your animation too slow at first. Only then do you begin to remove some frames to speed it back up again. This ensures that each movement is meticulously drawn, and not just a slop from point A to point B.

[Pencilmation #1]

I remember seeing this on Stickpage a long time ago, then realized I never actually reviewed it on Newgrounds.

There are a lot of things done right here. The pencil and paper (as well as facial expressions) give this so much more of an interesting aesthetic and personality than "black stick figure on white background" as was common at this time. The stuff the pencil draws is varied and creative, and I was really surprised by how LONG this video was!

Perhaps my only real criticism here is that despite each individual segment of the animation being quite creative, there is a certain pattern to them that can be a bit tiring. Whatever the pencil draws is usually destroyed or erased, bringing things back to neutral before something else is drawn. This prevents the animation from having cohesion from beginning to end, and combined with the music can feel quite redundant.

That aside, this is way ahead of its time and this is evidenced by how you've managed to keep the series going for so long.

[Phillip's Song]

I was kind of curious what your earlier work looked like, and found this. It's interesting. The signature liquid morphing is still there, though it's clear you've come a long way since this. The audio quality here is really rough, and many of the shots are just stills of 2-frame animated outlines. Not a whole lot happens here, and in the absence of surrealist physical humor, the lacking script does very little.

[You Lovely Lovers]

As a huge 2D frame by frame snob, your work never ceases to amaze me. The surrealism and humor are one thing, but the smoothness and complexity of what's actually happening is really beyond description.

A few parts did get very abstract (for instance the bird face in the middle of the tongues) and it wasn't entirely clear how some things were supposed to be happening (is this suspension of disbelief, or is the head somehow inside of the other head?) and that made a few of the sections devolve into a bunch of (very smoothly drawn) random lines. But that aside, there really is some serious talent here - probably the best on the site.

[Freaky Fred Reanimated!]

Wow, this is really next level. There's a pretty good average quality to these clips (though some are better than others) and this really is watchable as a single episode. The constant shifting of styles also works really well for Courage, since the show was known to do that a lot anyway.

Great concept, great execution.