Kwing's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Dreamy Collide (Oneshot) Movie]

The length of this animation is pretty impressive, but it's flawed several times over. The dialogue is pretty broken in terms of grammar and it's not especially clear what the plot is. The subtitles and pauses also slow the animation way down and make it a bit tedious (some voice acting, even Speakonia, would have made this feel a bit faster.) At the same time, a lot of the animation loops (like the wings flapping) happen way too fast and the quality of animation just isn't there. Especially for a looping animation the audience will see over and over, it would be a good idea to put some more time (and frames) into loops like these even if you have to cut corners on other parts.

HantomPro responds:

yeah,i can see,in episode 2 i can get better to give a good explanation in things to happen in animation,and make a storyboard,improve the fluidity and everything,about the possible voice acting,my preference was to do something that reminds me of undertale.

[School Dayz]

The animation is really well done but I can barely understand what the characters are saying so I can't even begin to understand the jokes. As a quick tip, this is how you can keep Flash from compressing your audio:

Publish -> Publish Settings -> Audio event/stream -> Higher bitrate and "Override sound settings"

A couple things like the dick cutting gag weren't unfunny in the sense that they were offensive but rather that they just felt boring. I'm not sure if it's just that the joke was fundamentally unfunny or if a difference in timing could have sold it a bit better.

RagingStreetTaco responds:

Thanks for the critique. Yeah, I sort of kept the default audio settings to mask my terrible on-the-spot voice work, especially for Hellanna's voice. The modifier made some distortions that can be heard when streaming the raw audio.
As for everything else, you're right. You would not believe how unhappy I was with how it turned out. When testing the movie, I felt a very strong emotion. My friend called it duress, I'm not entirely sure about that. Frankly, I hated most of it.
The dick gag was really off due to the fact that it was literally made an hour before submission. It was supposed to be a main part of the movie and have an actual payoff later. A lot in this movie are artifacts from when it was a bigger project. I really just want to overhaul everything and make it less awkward and more coherent. Trust me bro, it would've been g8.
If you want to know more, just hit me up. I'd be happy to elaborate on everything.

[The 10 Plagues of Egypt]

The art style for this is REALLY good. These are decently funny, with a few being a little too short (death of firstborn) and a couple being really entertaining (I liked how the livestock keeled over so suddenly, same with how abrupt darkness was.) Couldn't ask for too much more for an interactive movie, this is great.

[Catch that Goblin]

I actually found this looking for the music from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, only to find the guy that made Castle used it in a 2005 animation? Wow!

The cinematography and timing of the audio is really fantastic here. The art and animation are serviceable but look almost more like an animatic than a finished product. Then again, for over 3 minutes of animation it would have taken forever for something like this to be as fleshed out as a more polished product, and that's not taking into account that even the very best Flash animations in 2005 didn't look much better than this. A few sequences feel drawn out when it's obvious you were trying to get later sections to sync with the music but overall this looks great.

[Sonic Bowls in Hell]

This reminds me a lot of Jehtt's redubs, although a bit more shitposty of a vibe with the intentionally bad animations, graphical glitches, and random swearing.

I like Sonic shitposts in general (the "plus I'm in hell" really got me) but this is really too short for the humor contained within it. Bare minimum I think the audience should have at least seen the aftermath of the his bowl.

ZabuJard responds:

i hate all e stars including jehtt, thnx for review, the point of this (side point) where the humor is for me is that u dont SEE the climax, u totally miss the ending, the taking away of thw whole point of the cartoon is like a funny spit in the face of the v iewer, it comes out of nowhere, and ends nowhere, imo

[Artifacts]

I really liked the comment you made to the effect of new tools not being made to solve old problems, it's a really compelling argument for Flash as an artistic medium being impossible to replace (even if the technology is.)

Putting that aside, the visual effects are really cool and trippy (sometimes painful on the eyes) but what I really liked was the moment I realized that the visual effects and what you were saying were related - there really are a ton of things going on here that would be difficult or impossible to recreate with other software, and the smorgasbord of frame by frame animations piled on top of the effects helped to give context to what you were talking about (though I wish you had included more of them.)

My only real criticism is that one of the voices toward the end of the animation had such poor audio quality I struggled to understand it.

[INVADA]

My first time watching this I wasn't a fan, but on second watch I realized you actually told the whole story of a first date and then the two characters getting sick of each other. Syncing up with the music also works quite well.

The animation style is a little simple but it's not bad, and there are a few cute creative decisions (like how the sprites are dragged onto the map for the first date.)

I wish it was a bit longer, since there's no way the actual song is this short and it has the feel of a music video.

[Real Golfing Hours]

In terms of animation and sound design, this is pretty well done. It's smooth but more importantly the aesthetic is really clean and feels polished. Similarly, the sounds are sampled from a bunch of different places and put together form a really complete picture that doesn't just describe actions but gives the animation personality.

My only personal gripe is that the concept itself isn't especially funny or interesting. Someone misses a putt, then misses again, then the same joke gets kind of played out, without establishing characters or any other context.

As a technical display of animation, this is great. As a piece of entertainment, it's very simple.

[A TRICKY ENCOUNTER]

It's very bizarre to see this 1st person format with an animation - I really thought it was gameplay footage for a second. The textures and models both look fantastic, and the movements are smooth, though I wish the action had been a little more fast-paced.

[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