Celx-Requin's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Nolwandle's Story]

Hello,

You have style, I like the message of the animation, and the sound is solid, unfortunately there are too many serious flaws that drag this piece down.

I guess my primary issue with this short film is that the animation seems really lazy and slapped together, it's mostly just tweens of simple shapes that have been blackened to hide their lack of detail. Unlike your film "Tarboy" which used similar techniques masterfully, I could tell you were cutting corners on this to fill the length of the audio.

Another issue I have with this piece is the art style, while interesting, doesn't seem to like a good fit to the serious tone of the message that you're trying to convey, I feel something more realistic would have been more appropriate given the subject matter.

The use of colour is probably the best thing aesthetically in the film, the use of dark blue gives everything an ominous feel.

Again I like the message, but taking an objective position on the film, I think the material could have been handled better.

With love,
- Celx

P.S. When is the next Tarboy coming out? Everyone's waiting!

[DinoYacht Club - Finale]

I would buy this on DVD,

No seriously I would, I love the character designs, and while the animation is lacking, the writing and voice acting compensate by hitting all the perfect notes.

I absolutely love the concept, and humour; the jokes are methodically paced and delivered with perfect timing. The writing never went for cheap non-sequensial "shock" laughs, instead choosing to take the high road and have the jokes come from character based humour that never felt out of context to the situation.

Throughout the series, the humour felt like it was intrinsic to who the characters were, Charles is a prick and elitist, but it may be because of a complex caused by his short arms, these aspects made the characters feel real instead of just puppets regurgitating silly lines of dialogue.

The last thing I liked about this series, is it can step back and show empathy for it's characters, even in a comedy series I think there should be some room for "serious" moments, if Charles was just a prick throughout the whole series without this being acknowledged it would make the character so unlikable.

The ending was touching, and a perfect coda to a damn fine web series!
Sincerely,
- Celx

[The Raging Vagrant]

This is great,

The black monster reminds me a bit of the grasshopper monster from "The Naked Lunch" film directed by David C., your film also shares the same kind of surrealistic black humour.

I like the unique character design, the medium used, and the smooth (albeit minimal) animation.
The writing is great, and the voice actors all did a fantastic job, my only complaint is I just wish it was longer, on the other hand it ended perfectly, and I'm not sure what else you could have added.

Regardless, this one is going into my favourites!
Sincerely,
- Celx

[Dyc: Ladies First]

Hey psychicpebble, is this what we're doing now?
Penalizing people who had the gumption to form a group to work towards a common creative goal?

Even if one were to grant all your arguments, is wanting to get a paycheque from doing something you love really that bad?

I mean isn't that why you consistently have produced parody after parody, running the newgrounds ads? These guys can't even get the ad revenue given that video doesn't support the flash api, and your bordering on fascism if you think there is something wrong with people volunteering to give these dudes money for a cool shirt, or these guys trying to make a buck off their work.

Plus if you're gonna play the "you're stealing awards from people" card, don't you feel it's a little hypocritical given the parasitic nature of your cartoons to leach off popular media?

I think what's worse than a studio submitting stuff and doing well, is when someone submits a short cartoon that overshadows better ones purely because of the pop culture references it manages to cram into it's narrative.

At least these dudes have created an original series, that's pretty fucking awesome, & funny...
That's not to say the series doesn't have problems, the tweened animation is really off putting in some scenes, and at times looks rigid; there are parts of the cartoon that need polish and cleanup (some of the cockpit scenes come to mind).

But giving a submission a zero because your upset that it was crafted by a studio is fucking lame, and petty 13 year old shit.

For all we know these guys have inspired some kids to write and animate their own stories, it raises the bar higher, and makes people strive to be better artists. It might get people to collaborate with other people and form there own animation groups, and that can only be a good thing.

My point is you should base your score based on the merits of the cartoon, otherwise you'll come off as an ostentatious cad.

-Celx

[ZTV News Episode 3]

Like murder, rape can be funny...

First off excellent animation, drawings, sound design, and voice acting, this should be a great series, but the thing that keeps hampering it is the fucking shitty scripts.

The last two entries into this series were dismal failures, this one is marginally better in that it at least invoked a chuckle out of me with the bit about "Lemme".

However you lost my interest when the whole "dungeon rape" aspect of the cartoon came into play, it wasn't because I was offended (although the concept of real rape repulses me). It's just that whole bit was played too seriously to be funny.

I get that the joke is that these are cartoons, and Zone Tan is supposed to be a psycho-bitch or something, plus the idea that there is some sort of sex dungeon where cartoons characters are enslaved is kinda funny.

The thing is the tone of the scene didn't fit within the context of the rest of the upbeat cartoon, it maybe it would have worked if the series was darker, or if it was played differently with a kind of "wink wink, this is a cartoon, nudge nudge" attitude.

To be fair making rape humorous is a hard sell, I think only "South Park" has gotten away with that consistently, but again it maybe because of the art style is very cartoony and hard to take seriously.

With this cartoon, it almost seemed like you were condoning rape, which made me really uncomfortable, probably because this isn't meant to be erotic, and that changes the context of the scene.

If you were making a porn film, and it featured rape in it, (even if it was hardcore) it somehow wouldn't be as off-putting to me since the only purpose of porn is to be erotic, and people certainly find rape erotic (not just men either, "Story of O" was written by a woman after all).

Porn isn't supposed to carry a message, it's meant to get people off, and in that sense allow people to live out impossible fantasies, which I think is a good thing as long as no one is actually being hurt.

People seem to root for mass murders, look at the "Madness" series, not much of a story there, so the way I see that kind of senseless violence is as a different kind of pornography. Instead of the money shot being a chick getting loads of man-milk in her face, it's a dude getting his head blown off.

Which one of those is worse? Somehow this form of Sadistic fantasy has become socially acceptable, but the fantasy of sexual sadism isn't. That's probably because it makes people uncomfortable to think that either they themselves are attracted to this paraphilia, or there are individuals out there who are.

I theorize this may be because sex hits closer to home, not everyone is born with the natural desire to kill another person, but 99.99% of the population is born with the desire to fuck, and when ones sexual tastes are illegal it becomes an icky issue.

So I hope you know I'm not accusing you of actually condoning rape, all I'm saying is the scripts for your series need serious intervention, well at least if you want them to be funny...

Lots of love,
- Celx Requin

[DeX]

Telling a story using verbiage instead of spoken dialect is one thing, but when the majority of your submission relies on text without offering something visceral to look at (even if it were just static stills) it reeks of sloth...

If you just wanted to use text you should have written this out as a short story, and done away with the pretentious "movie" aspect.

The god awful tweening infuriates me, and the lack of anything visually significant bores the fuck out of me...

There is some merit in the narrative though, too bad it's hampered by such a poor attempt at animation...

Sincerely,
- Celx

ATICE responds:

I set this flash to "Informative" for a reason.
Why DeX prefers to say "compute" IS a major part of the story, and will be explained completely in the sequel.

[Batman : The Droppings]

Mick,

I gotta say man I'm impressed, you have some nice smooth animation; a major step up from the first submission I saw from you (That twilight parody). I chuckled a bit at the joker's kinky masochistic sexual preferences.

I can't really say anything too negative other than I wish you would have had an extra documenting the frame rate, running time, completion time, and flash version used... I'm a junkie for that stuff.

Also given your skill, I think it would be cool if you started working on an original project instead of all these parodies you keep submitting, that said at least they're high quality works; and if that's what floats your boat don't let me stop you.

I just think it's a waste of potential...
- Celx

["The Worst"]

Hello,

I rarely write a review for something just submitted to the portal, but wow , but I felt I needed to write one for this submission considering my eyes can barely comprehend what they've just seen.

First off, I love the art style, it has a really unique aesthetic, I've honestly never seen anything like it before. The animation was near perfect, however you had some parts in the cartoon that didn't seem to mesh as well in comparison to other parts, to be specific when the "trainer" kicked the mutant off the platform and the camera cut to the creature falling, it just looked wrong.

Also at times some of the mutants were hyper detailed, and at other times they seemed to be less detailed.

Excellent selection in music, it felt like a heavy metal music video, really great stuff, and it fit the content perfectly, it was a sick track to compliment a sick video.

I also really appreciate the no hold bars nature of the video, you showed not only obscene amounts of violence and nudity, but you also had some of the most grotesque creature designs I've ever seen.

I do wish you had some extra's at least some kind of production diary, because it looks like this took a while to make, and it would have been interesting to read about your development process, and the inspiration for the film.

It was a nasty disturbing video, and I guess that was the point, not everything on newgrounds needs to be pleasant I suppose...

Great video!
Sincerely,
- Celx Requin

Sherbalex responds:

if anyone wants to know my development process its going to come at a price. that knowledge isnt free