Celx-Requin's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[48hr Film-fest entry]

Wow, simply amazing...

Hello,

Unless your a damn dirty liar, I must say I can't fathom how you managed to pull this off in two days.

I do see some of the cheats you used, like the duplication of the movieclip of those bug things, and those very basic doodles on the T.V. that were placed in your film as filler, regardless it's still very well made.

I don't think I can give you any critique you can use anymore, looking back at your older stuff one can see your skill has been steadily improving, I think you're aware of what makes a good cartoon, opposed to a shitty one.

I guess if I needed to point anything out, it would be the backgrounds are rather dull, I assume this is due to the time restraints.

I'm amazed that you continue to produce consistently high quality submissions, in relatively quick succession. Most animators have what I like to refer to as "down periods" where they need time off from drawing stuff, otherwise they tend to commit suicide or something.

Alright that's it... Pumpkins
Sincerely,
- Celx

SpamClamberton responds:

Suicide... now there's an idea...

[frozen banana]

I guess I'm the odd one out...

Hello,

I don't know why everyone has given you such a high score...
Frankly the drawings were pretty bad, the animation was terrible.

The loop itself was cute, but very simple, consisting mostly of tweens.
The audio was alright, however you should have used some dynamic sounds,
(making use of the different audio channels and such).

When there are so many good loops such as "objectionable apparatus" I, & II...
This seems boring, and I couldn't fathom giving something like this anything higher than a 2.

A little while ago someone submitted another loop, (which probably took a little longer to do) and everyone in the R.R.C gave it a fairly low score. I can't see why this received such a high score in comparison.

I digress, next time try to have more animated bits, even if it's only more detail
on the background and such.

Sincerely,
- Celx
~Review Request Club~

Icandraw responds:

ok thanks

[SpeedE The WFD]

Inconsistent drawing but I admire the effort.

Hello,

I like that you submitted something other than a stick movie as your first submission.

The drawings were solid, although at times a little off, and disproportionate.
The animation was mediocre in comparison to other submissions, and sadly quite choppy.

The voice acting was well done, and the sound effects were well selected.

My main gripe with the cartoon was the story, it didn't really make sense to me... Why did he turn into a super hero drummer? it was random and out of place.
The submission was also terribly short.

I was considering giving you a seven, since it is a very good first submission, however pragmatically when I think about it it wouldn't be the right thing to do.

I do think you show immense potential, and you should continue to produce content!

Sincerely,
- Celx
~Review Request Club~

McAfee-Enterprises responds:

Celix, thanks fro your input! With the success we have recently had with SpeedE in WFD The Game, Worlds Fastest Gamer and especially all the awesome suggestions here at Newgrounds, we are very inspired and exciting about the possibility to do a longer more involved episode of SpeedE......

I agree with your comments and we really do need someone in the creative story writing area............. Once you try to beat him in WFD The Game he makes a little more since possibly but yea we do need to build more storyline to why he transforms and more siuations etc........HELP!!!!!! :)

[shroogy the alien prequil]

Way too short...

I have no idea what the point of this animation was, the drawings were really basic, and the animation was mostly bad.

Expand on the concept of an alien coming to earth, work on your drawings, add some quixotic music, and you'll have a significantly better product...

As it stand this bordered on being spam...

Sincerely,
- Celx
~Review Request Club~

["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!

[Another Day Two]

Perfect music to compliment the flash...

I rarely write reviews for stuff not listed in the R.R.C. but I needed to write something for this.

The animation appears to all be frame by frame, which gives it a nice "dreamy" quality.
"Emergency 72" is one of the bands most intimate pieces of music, aside from there more powerful "The door"...

I applaud you for using their work since they really aren't that well known stateside,
I think this is the only flash submission to have done so aside from a super old submission I did a few years back...

It was really sweet, something quite rare for newgrounds.
Sincerely,
- Celx

[The Death Alphabet 2]

Expansive imagination...

Hello,

I must say I'm impressed with all the skits you came up with (although some were lazy in execution, & conception).

I'm also very impressed this is your second time doing so.
That said there are a plethora of issues I have with this film, the animation ranged from being decent, to down right horrid.

The art was simply bad. The sound was mostly well done, although there were a few parts that felt "iffy".

I think the charitable aspect to this is quite nobel, but truthfully the submission is fairly weak...

Sincerely,
- Celx
~Review Request Club~

[Rape is Bat]

Basic premise yet a horribly effective execution.

Hello,

I'm not too sure what to make of the piece, on one hand I did laugh at the humor, on the other the artwork, and "animation" held it back significantly.

The music was well selected, and gave the film a dark, and ironic tone.
I say this since that is the theme song to the old batman T.V. series aimed at kids,
whereas your film is anything but kid friendly.

The whole concept of batman being gay for robin, has existed for a while, so this again is playing on the batman mythos to great effect...

The submission is rather short, and could have gone further, thus increasing it's shock value, as it stand it's not bad but not really memorable either.

Sincerely,
- Celx
~Review Request Club~

[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?