Kwing's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[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.

[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.

[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.