Kwing's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[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.

[31]

This is really nice. The images are all beautifully drawn - I'm a huge fan of your work so it's no surprise I enjoyed that much. The editing is really effective, though. It's just a damned slideshow and I still got goosebumps watching this thing.

Things did start to feel a little repetitive toward the second half, however. If it's JUST meant to be a slideshow, that's fine, but the amount of time each image was shown could have been irregular to make things a bit more unpredictable. The whining "hinge" sound effect that was sometimes used could have also been pitch corrected, as using it over and over led to it becoming very routine.

[The Time Machine]

This is extremely well done, particularly in terms of color and lighting. I'd have liked to see some smoother motion, however. Right now the character movement feels kind of stiff, without much acceleration/deceleration.

[FURRY APOCALYPSE]

This went from 0 to 100 real fucking fast. There are a lot of great things about this animation, and a couple flaws. Strengths? The sound design is outstanding - the way that guy screams as the furry humps him is ON POINT. The color is also phenomenal, and makes the entire animation extremely vibrant. Weaknesses might be a couple pieces of the animation having weirdly low framerates. It looks like this is done intentionally, but I can't figure out why. A few other things such as the fire are also conspicuously lacking in detail.

Overall, great animation. Funny, engaging, and well-executed.

[Salad Fingers Episode 11]

Having been spread over the course of 15 years, it's kind of hard to follow the overarching plot of Salad Fingers without a marathon. That said, these episodes unfold slowly enough that I wasn't especially motivated to do that, so I'll review this as a standalone.

The quality of animation has gone up considerably over the years. The subtle blurring to bring things in and out of focus is a nice aesthetic, and the mirror effects work great as well. Some surreal elements (like the mirror Salad Fingers' teeth) are grotesque and intricate, but things like Salad Fingers himself (or the way dialogue is shown onscreen) have remained mostly the same, which is nice as it keeps the series feeling consistent.

I liked that this episode had a decent plot to it. Regardless of whether or not the characters are hallucinations, we have two people abusing Salad Fingers, and Hubert Cumberdale acting as a sympathetic character. Then we get Salad Fingers trying to rescue Hubert. You did a great job building tension, as well as making the audience feel for the protagonists, which I honestly wasn't expecting.

Strong episode.

[Madness Combat 11: Expurgation]

So... it finally happened. It's really crazy to see this after so many years. Hopefully it's not another seven until we see MC12!

A lot of stuff feels different this time around. The environment of MC has been degrading and getting more unpredictable since the Improbability Drive early in the series, but this is the first episode where it feels like things really go over the edge.

I like that after all this time, you still keep the camera work minimalistic. A lot of animations (and films) have too many cuts, making it hard to follow the action. Keeping the camera planar, and only moving it as much as needed to keep the characters in the frame, really makes it easy to see everything that's going on, and there's a lot here! Some of the scenes with both Hank and Sanford are still a little hard to follow, since you're effectively watching two fights at the same time. That said, it would have been much HARDER to follow had you pulled any camera gimmicks, which you didn't. The few times the angle changes (eg. showing a first-person view of the gun aimed at Sanford) are well-done and don't take anything away from the final product.

Visually, things are as stunning as ever. You didn't use as many particle effects as the past couple episodes (fire, energy beams, etc.) but the weird black spider cracks give the animation a darker mood and aesthetic which is really cool. The black and white with red is also a lot more striking than it has been in the past, mainly because we don't see ATP agents staining the screen yellow.

All in all, this is a damn good animation. The action is a little slower this time around, but after ten episodes, there's plenty to watch for anyone that just wants to see bodies pile up. Plot-wise, I do think this episode is a bit weak, seeing as the episode is pretty self-contained, centering around Tricky having the halo, only for the Auditor to get it in the end, leaving things roughly the way they were toward the end of MC10. I really wanted to see something more substantial happen.

[JCTLM]

I had no idea this even existed, but to be honest it didn't wow me. Miccool and Terkoiz are some of my favorite animators, but the framerate here is just too low for the final product to look good (sans the particle effects which still look pretty nice.) Nice work with the demon, also the facial expressions are highly reminiscent of some of Endo's animations. But overall the quality of animation just isn't up to snuff with what these guys are capable of (even for its era - SHOCK2 was miles better than this.)

dkuo responds:

im shocked anyone's found this in 2018 lol. looking back you're absolutely right haha

[Zips 3D Particle/Fracture Logo Animation]

Not having used After Effects, I don't know how difficult it is to make something like this, but ultimately I wasn't wowed by it. For an animation it's too short, but for an intro it struck me as too long and oversaturated with effects. In particular, having the word "football" appear diagonally and then right itself seemed unnecessary, and its fade back into the Zips logo looked a little cheesy. It may have taken time and lots of processing power to render this, but sometimes less is more.

JakobePaulobe responds:

Thanks for sharing your perspective, I really appreciate all the feedback you've given me over the years.

I put together several alternate versions/takes for my bosses and coworkers every time I added a new layer to the animation, and the most obnoxious ones always seemed to get the most overwhelmingly positive responses, so I just kept going back and adding more and more.

Honestly, I agree with many of the points you made, this animation is obnoxious and VERY cheesy in a lot of ways.

Probably got a little too carried away with this one... :D