Celx-Requin's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

["EXTINCT"]

Nice fusion piece...

Hello,

I applaud you on the way you've integrated the 2D, & 3D elements together, it was very well done with only a few instances that I felt could have been better. To be more specific at times the 3D stuck out quite a bit, and ruined the whole illusion of the world you created.

That said the animation was very smooth, even considering you were animating cats, because as any animator knows anything with four legs is a bitch to animate.

Nice use of effects, it would have been cool if you made some of them dynamic though, hearing stuff move on the left, and right speaker is always cool, and adds a layer of realism.

Nice story, a little too generic, and "cute" for my tastes. I'm sure the majority of newgrounds will dig this though!

Sincerely,
- Celx
~Review Request Club~

manuelberja responds:

thanks man!

[Shoe- "Egg"]

How wonderfully absurd!

Hello,

I like this quite a bit, I think you did a pretty good job.
I do have some issues with it though...

I did not like that you used the trace bitmap feature on the bands faces, I felt you should have actually traced over there faces as this would have integrated better with the overall feel of the film.

The animation during the part where the film switches between landscapes didn't work that great, I feel it could have been tweened better.

For example if the background was blurred, then you zoomed out then blurred the foreground, and un-blurred the background it would have looked so much cooler.

And adding a menu with the option to turn on subtitles, and change quality would have been super awesome too.

Aside from that I don't have anything else to critique, although I do have a question, since this was a commissioned project, does the band now own the character designs too?

Lastly this will fix your button issue:
on (release) {getURL("http://www.desiredadresshere .com","_blank");}
Put that actionscript on the button, or movieclip symbol you want.

Sincerely,
- Celx

SpamClamberton responds:

Hi Celx,
That's the code I used, and it works everywhere apart from newgrounds. It's a mystery error.
Also I didn't trace-bitmap the faces. I traced them by hand. The reason I divided them into colours like that is because when you just trace the features with the line tool it doesn't really look like them anymore.
Yeah I suppose I could've subtitled it and done that quality thing, but this was just originally intended to be in video format, for music channels and stuff. I just slapped the play button and stuff on quickly before submitting. I'll be less lazy next time. Thanks for the constructive review!

[Snow Wars]

A fine milestone...

Alas it's finally here, I must say it's pretty cool stuff, I like the special effects, and most of the jokes work...

For a newgrounds submission it's quite long, adding to the overall epic feel of the submission.

The menu design is above par, although not amazing, the info on the characters is pretty fun though.

I guess if I had any big issues with the piece it would be that the video quality isn't up to snuff.

You would have done better if you used the flash video stream component,
then made your film load from an external server. This would have ensured high quality video, and made the file size around 1mb, opposed to importing degraded video into one large flash file.

It becomes an issue because the submission is so large if I want to watch a little now, and watch the rest later I need to re-download the whole thing.

Whereas if you used the above method you could break up the film into chapters and then stream those individual ones according to what the user selects.

And you could actionscript the end of each chapter to start the next video so as to have a continuos flow.

I don't blame you though, the only submission on the portal to have pulled this off is "tarboy" (some of the special features use this technique), I guess it requires specific knowledge of the flash tools.

Aside from that big thing good work,
Sincerely,
- Celx

P.S. I glad to see you picked up fifth!

Fro responds:

That's personally something that I don't know how to do. Is this something that I could ask you next time I'm in this situation?

[The Shape N' Shape Collab]

The menu was the best part...

I feel this collab was really weak, the voice acting was bad (although at least the audio quality was good), the concept wasn't that great, and even worse in its execution.

I'm all for lampooning stuff, but even the original newgrounds staff shape movies weren't that great, so this callob was almost certainly destined to fail.

The B.B.S. topic added some interesting backstory though.
Thanks,
- Celx
~Review Request Club~

ChandlerThompson responds:

Thanks for the review man, you gave some very good points.

The collab was sub par on execution, it was a rushed attempt at the end. Glad you checked out the BBS topic too, hopefully some insight could be provided from that.

Thanks again for reviewing, I really appreciate it.

[Stick Trouble in VG World]

Not bad for a first submission.

Unfortunately not up to snuff when compared to other submissions in the same, & overpopulated genre.

The sound effects were well done... Sadly the sprite animations, and stick animations were extremely choppy, I know that 12FPS was a requirement of the assignment, however when reviewed honestly this submission has various flaws.

I also would like to mention that you didn't offer anything new, or "fresh", in terms of story, & execution, so I lost interest early on (although I did view all of it).

Hopefully these will be things you'll take into consideration on your next project.
Thanks,
- Celx
~Review Request Club~

AkujinRuukasu responds:

The next movie will definitely play at least 30 fps. This will surely smooth out the animations. I think you are right about the storyline. I guess it needed at least an introduction. Thank you for your time to review this movie.

[MSPaintWhatDoYouWantToBe?]

Poor execution, & mostly forgettable art.

Hello

I like the idea of the collab, as I feel the concept of seeing what art people can come up with using ms paint is pretty cool.

Sadly the execution was really sloppy, & lazy, you didn't even have a jump to a specific picture option. The drawings themselves ranged from cool, to god awful.

The music was alright, but not to everyones tastes so you should have included a mute button, or additional track.

Still this could be a good submission, if more effort was put into it, so should you decide to have another stab at it down the line with the recommended changes, I would be interested in seeing how it turns out.

Thanks,
- Celx
~Review Request Club~

DaveCoulierClock responds:

Too bad none of us requested your opinion. derp derp

[Hurshnenglurper 2009]

Too short, and lacking...

I don't mind random animations when they're done well, unfortunately only about 20% of the random animations I've seen are any good, the rest aren't.

Your film falls into the former, for the following reasons:
- The animation was lacking.
- The narrative needed more of a setup to be humorous.

I do respect that you worked with various different mediums, although I also feel it should have been significantly longer...

Thanks,
- Celx
~Review Request Club~

Surn responds:

"The narrative needed more of a setup to be humorous."

That's something worth mulling over, building anticipation would be a good idea.

"I also feel it should have been significantly longer..."
You're not alone, if I do make short shorts I should try to slip it in with some longer shorts or with a bunch of short shorts.

Thanks for the review.

[Sketchy Friends Dance 2]

A good example of something simple yet elegant!

Hello,

I must say I admire how you pulled this off,
the drawings were well done, and the animation was top notch.

The reasoning behind my saying this is simple is due to you recycling the same animations over and over again.

This was obviously what you were going for, seeing as how you created an animation for each musical beat.

You did such a good job on the animations themselves I was entertained even though I was re-watching the same animations.

So well done,
Sincerely,
- Celx

By the way I think you could have gotten away with a T rating...

TheBoogley responds:

thanks man! Yeah, I didn't realise that partial nudity would make the rating be classified so strongly :)

[Ashura The Hedgehog Ep 1]

Generic Sprite film with programming problems

Hello,

I don't know what to say other than I've seen this kind of thing before,
the sonic characters have been used so many times before, that it takes something
really fantastic to make a sonic sprite animation stand out.

The sprite animation is good by the standards of the genre, however there wasn't any real innovation, plot, and actionwise.

I guess my biggest grip however was the actionscript problems made it impossible for me to watch the film unless I used the flash menu to advance the film.

Work on these things and I feel you'll have a significantly better product...
Thanks,
- Celx
~Review Request Club~

Light-Spriter responds:

how did it make it impossible....

[Magic Guts Power!]

Short and sweet.

Hello,

I liked this, I must say it was fairly random, which is usually a negative in my book,
however in this case it was so short, that the weird frantic energy the film had didn't dissipate.

I do feel that the animation was lacking in some bits but overall it was pretty solid, the drawings were basic, and childlike, which I feel added to the twisted lighthearted feel of the piece.

I don't really see too much wrong with the film aside from the animation, I guess it's almost as good as it can be.

Thanks,
- Celx
~Review Request Club~

topatisen responds:

Thank you. I will put more time into the next one that I am making. Harder, better, faster, stronger.