MistyE's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[FBF: The Ant Experiment]

Well, the effort is definitely there.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Good:

- Smooth animation.
- Nice environmental art.
- Fitting sounds and background music.
- The coloring.
- The shadows.

Bad:

- Really jittery movement. This is mostly because there's practically no proportion.
- Sloppy inbetweens. I freeze-framed a lot and a lot of times, the line quality was fairly sloppy.
- Timing. Before you do the fbf, it's advised that you time and plot out the actions, and time it well.
- Jittery camera movement when it does the close-up.

artistunknown responds:

Well, glad everything that was intended to be good was good. The jittery movement is most likely due to everything being drawn over again (and I'll admit sloppily). Sometimes I do have trouble with proportion (usually when walking a character of mine tends to gradually get shorter) even when using onion skinning, so that's something I need to work on then.
Most of the bad line quality is because I had started this project with 100% smoothing, then it somehow went to 50%, then I went back to 100%, and finished it up with 40%. I could have gone back and polished up a lot of these lines, but again, that would be adding a lot more time that has already had a lot of time put into it.
Since it started out plotless, and then I decided to somehow have an ending, I guess things would be a little poorly timed, which they are. Of course, if I did something scripted, I would be sure to time everything right.
Honestly I'm not sure what happened with the close up, it was smooth in flash, plus by logic it should have gone by fast, and not look laggy like that. Either that or adding more frames there would help, which I did attempt to do. Originally I think there was only 3 or 4 zooms, then I did an inbetween for each of them, and apparently that wasn't enough. But whatever.
Well, at least the good out numbers the bad in this one :D.
Thanks for the review!

[FrogMan the Series Episode 5]

Good

This is good

artistunknown responds:

That's all you have to say? Wow, then I know this episode is going to do very well, and the next one even better.

[[CD10] Colin on Clock Day]

Easily the best submission on NG. Fav'd and 5'd.

Punisher responds:

True story.

[The Average 7th Grader 1]

Great animation. Same here at my school. The only difference is, it's not a 7th grader doing it - it's my math teacher. He does exactly this

InkClod responds:

Haha, shitty xD

[The Squirrel King]

I realize this submission was made a couple years ago, but I'm still going to judge it in every aspect as I would if this made now. Granted, it holds some level of quality considering the programs you made it with, but I personally don't find it "Newgrounds-worthy."

Though, I must compliment you on your title screen; it looks decent, and to a viewer who doesn't feel like reading your long description, misleading.

The guy looks quite awkward; most notably, his arm, head shape and the curve of his body. Of course, having been forced to do it with MS Paint by your unqualified technology teacher, may have impacted the brush smoothness inconsistencies. Though one thing that I'm still wondering about is his lack of an eye. That was probably the most awkward part.

The squirrel was somewhat passable in terms of art, though. He still has some flaws, but it's still fairly decent for what it is and what it was done in.

I realize this is a class project, but I'm still going to say this: for a cartoon as short as this, there has to be a decent punchline. Your typical "abrupt ending" or "stupid joke" probably would've worked better than a generic "King rules, guy disobeys and gets shot" sort of thing.

The type of humor present in most of your submissions is the kind of humor that only works well in a situation, but when tried to be molded into a short, to-the-point punchline, would fail, so a really good joke would be needed for something as short as this.

Those last paragraphs were not so much a complaint of this project rather than a suggestion for future videos you intend to be shorts.

2/5

artistunknown responds:

Well, I'm glad you recognised that a lot of it had to be limited. I'll admit, it could have been better looking, I'm guessing the whole "no eye" thing is in the beginning. Is a lot of the stuff going through the portal newgrounds worthy? Most of it yeah, but this is still better than a lot of the things that aren't...
I might have been better on the art, maybe making the image size bigger, but at the time, I hadn't payed attention to what size the image was, and it was to late to turn back. Some of the art could have been improved, but thanks for the compliment on the squirrel anyways.
Yeah, the lack of humor in this is probably what's going to kill it. A lot of other shorts I've written have better jokes (or just have jokes for that matter) of course those shorts only exist as scripts and have never been animated.
Anyways, thanks for the review, and thanks for the suggestions, not sure how I can put them into use, maybe when deciding on the punch line for a short, haven't made to many shorts though... It will come eventually though.
Again, thanks for the review.

[FrogMan the Series Episode 4]

I see an improvement in the animation, most notably the use of shading and shadowing. Or maybe that was always there, I just didn't pay attention. I see the characters are more mobile, as well.

I also enjoyed the humor in here, I already enjoyed it much more in the first two minutes than i enjoy lots of flashes.

The racecar exploding in the beginning kinda reminds me of that one Simpsons episode. :) Also, I'd suggest more background noises during the race, with no background noises, the race track feels practically empty.

Also, in Flash, you may already know this, but I suggest motion tweening for the race cars.

A minor problem I had with this is that I felt more time needed to be devoted to setting up the plot - it all happened kinda fast.

I actually kinda enjoyed this one. 4/5

artistunknown responds:

Yeah, the animation and art quality did improve a lot. Shading was not present in previous episodes, this episode was the first one professionally done (using my sound studio and pro mics for recording, plus it was entirely made in flash, and in HD too) so I decided to go a little special on the art, but some things still look a little bad, cause I'm still trying to define my style. A lot of the scenery in ep five is better (plus I actually start using filters, so there's some visual effects). Yeah, mobile characters was always a problem, not sure how well I've improved since then... probably not by much.
I enjoy my humor too, heh. Not sure how much time went into writing this one, but since it only has one plot, yeah... But the jokes were worth it.
Hmm, which episode is that? I haven't seen a lot of them, so I wouldn't know, but yeah, I thought it would be funny to have a car explode, and since that character isn't important, yeah.
Yeah, background noise would be nice, can't remember if I have that much more in ep five, but there's definitely a lot more stuff happening in the background, I'll make note of it when my editor is handling sound fx.
Yeah, I don't use tweens to often, I like doing everything myself, heh. Plus, since these also go on youtube, I can't really have movie clips, and tweens, I've tried it before, and from what I've seen, it doesn't work in video format.
Well, this was building up for a while, but yeah, it did kinda happen fast, plus there wasn't really a subplot, I think that that would have helped this episode a lot, but yeah, couldn't think of one at the time.
Well, I'm glad you enjoyed this one. Hopefully episode five will be up within the week, that one will be better.
Thanks for the review.