SquidBonk's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Arnold]

great effort and experimentation

Clearly took a lot of time and you put much care into it. Though it's definitely not my kind of animation style or story preference, I do want to see what you make next. Keep at it!

Suncomes responds:

I find it very gratifying to receive an 8 / 10 from someone saying that my style is not necessarily his favorite. Thanks a lot.

[Seven Episode III -SKY-]

At least the effort was there.

This film has a perks such as decent settings and atmosphere. And the effort is obviously there. I suggest that for your next creation, you be careful with your pacing. There are issues with animation, but the pace of your film is much more critical at this point. Try showing your creations to friends and family and see if they can get into the story. This honest opinion should be something you always try to get so that you can grow as an artist. I barely made it through the first 'scene' but only because it has such a high score, so I expected more. The action scenes were really lacking because the pacing was so slow that it didn't feel like a struggle/battle so much as it felt like a slow motion dance that tried to accomodate some sort of story. The whole first scene was wholly unnecessary and just a place to insert a well liked song. Try to watch your films completely without music. If your attention is still being held to the film. that's a good sign. Try this even when your timing is done to music, the visuals should be able to hold up on their own. Good luck with your next creation.

Black-Crystal responds:

Actually my style is not to go straight into battle so u might think the scene 1 is useless..

My flash animation isnt perfect so the battle seem lacking and i know that i have the problem of getting people to understand the animation.

I am still improving from making these flash so my next creation will surely be better!Tks for your review

[Neil's Scrapbook]

stab stab stab stab

ooooaaAAGGHHHHH!! That shit burns worse than the syphilis!

Gaizka responds:

Well, I'd rather you had it than me, you worthless cunt.

[Negative 001 - The Call]

Great effort

Great effort on this, have a few pointers for you, seeing as you're willing to put time into your work.
The character motivation and staging is flawed in some places. Your characters look alright but there are many areas you could improve on. For example, when the black guy says "don't stand there, we gotta get outta here" The black guy was just standing there. You could have had him turn and run to the door noticing his buddy in shock before yelling to him. Not to mention the fact that there was no initial reaction or dive for cover after that first shot.

As far as staging goes, alot of it was fairly poor. I never understood that the girl was in the vent at first because of how bright it was, you could have darkened her up a lot having rays of light showing through from the vent openings. Not to mention the fact that she got into the vent and had to unscrew the opening... you think it would have been left open as an easy way to pick up the money after everyone ran off. There could have been a better conflict for her, getting stuck like that just made her seem ditzy.

I really like how you showed the drive of the two characters in the initial money trade by having them turn back for the cash, it helped round out their characters more, but the fact that they were meant as side characters yet easily outstaged the main characters was a mistake. Showing them in the initial shot makes the viewers think that they are the main characters in the story while the sniper and the girl in the vent are just supporting cast. Find a way to introduce the main characters and have their actions lead into the conflict. Also, be sure to use action to explain the story rather than speech. If you plan to create more past this, you could have easily left out the "alliance never happens" bit and left us wondering what the sniper's motives were. This would be rounded out and discovered in later episodes resulting in a greater climax and overall appeal to the characters and their situation.

And I just found a random helicopter flying in and stealing the suitcase just plain funny and ridiculous. It seemed like you couldn't think of anything else for these characters to run up against soooo... mmm... random person flies in, steals money, flies away. Even though the sniper can pick off a guy from a skyscraper in a standing position is already trained on their position.

Again, I like the effort you put into the animation and you said this is a first draft of an old comic. Be sure that you stage characters and situations clearly without using dialogue. A great story doesn't always need spoken words. Using it as an aid is alright, but not when it comes to story development. Stopping an alliance isn't nearly as interesting as a sniper getting his gun ready, trained on some stranger on a tower, the iron crosshairs ready to fire, yet remaining quiet. You see two shady people enter the scene knowing all the while this sniper is ready to take SOMEONE out. Why he does it isn't important at this point, who's going to get it becomes all that matters, and then the character development afterwards will do all the explaining.

Good luck on your next work, I hope you take some of the suggestions. Oh and good sound quality too.
(holy crap, long review)

Gear-Zero responds:

Yeah, when I started this I was alittle self concious about my fbf. Which was back in early spring when I didn't feel like fbfing a bunch of movements.

As for the vent situation, I've actually thought about those rays of light but for some reason I just never... layed them down. Azi IS supposed to be dizty but that's not I wanted to portray it.

The 2 guys making the deal ARE the main characters.

Thanks for the advice, I appreciate it very much. I'll keep things like this in mind in future episodes.

[the owners 2]

story! es muy mal !

bad story.
The man who was 'protecting' the bald guy didn't do anything. There was no reason for him to be there at all. One dimensional characters and plot. I'm sick of bad stories. The best graphics, music, or actors in the world can't save the worst stories. Work on it.

cicla responds:

ok
you know this its part of a history...
if you want action and blood and gore wait for the chapter 3... where: The man who was 'protecting' the bald guy will fight against the other one...so dont get desparate....

gracias!!!!

[A New Beginning.]

I'm voting based on the first part

Because that was awesome! So funny! The music sold it for me. Great job :P

bigbadron responds:

Jesus smiles upon you.

[SFVS Episode #3]

Right on. Glad you listened to suggestions

That's looking much better, Listening to your commentary, there were a few things that were unclear that you intended. Such as I wasn't really thinking there was a lightning storm, might want to try to allude more to that. The tree was a bit too far in the background so when it was wobbling, I didn't really think it was going to fall on him either. Although, the unbrella destroying his cranium is a great touch. That made me snicker. All in all, fairly well made. good job.

shampawnya responds:

Thanks for the review!

[SFVS Episode #2]

not too shabby

The big downside is that all jokes you could see coming from a mile away and the 'punchlines' have been overused. On a positive note, the graphics were looking pretty crisp and the sound worked well too. Spilling shampawnya all over your boobs was by far the funniest part of your films too. Is that voice clip from somewhere or did you make it? If you made it, good job. :) if not, good job anyway.

shampawnya responds:

The "Shampawnya" line is from an SNL sktech with Christopher Walken called "The Continental". ShamPawnYa was the nickname I got at my last job based on that sketch and my last name (Champagne). Sorry bout the jokes being lame, but Episode 3 promises to be less predictable. Thanks for the review.

[Gun Poet : Ace of Spades]

Anatomy issues but colouring is quality

You've got too many scribbled lines in your work. It looks like you're going for the hatched comic style but the scribbles just look messy. When you animate, try to work in a keyframe to keyframe method. [By Keyframe, I mean key drawing] The foot animation you had was very obviously just straight ahead animation. It seemed like he was just slipping in place. Space out the key drawings and you can skip a whole lot of work. foot down is one keyframe [drawing]. Foot up is another, then draw however many inbetweens you need, and it will look a lot smoother.

Shitty deal what happened to your backups, I feel your pain. Good luck and even though key drawings are tougher, and maybe a bit less exciting, you'll always come up with a much better final result. So keep practicing :)

Oh, and your colouring was fairly well done. Much higher quality than most in the portal.

Cel-Mare responds:

thanks very much for the constructive criticism. What pains me more is that a good number of the issues you talked about were fixed in the newer version :( It's ok though you'll get to see the level of my work as it is now in later submissions. Thanks for reviewing.

[Nightmare On Floor 53]

Quite a few things you could spruce up.

if you want to create an eeree atmosphere, the first thing you could try is to not have such vivd colours within your film. Remember that colours don't have to correspond to how they look in real life. Manipulate your colours teh way you would with your composition. For instance, If a character is wearing jeans, they don't have to be blue. A viewer will accept almost anything so long as it's believable in the context of your movie. In the case of your flash, try not to use just a black screen to represent darkness, give us outlines of objects within the room, making us know it's dark, but want to see farther into the room. There are so many scary implications when you can immerse yourself like that. There were compositional choices you could make too to get a better effect. You could have had the can REALLY big perspectively in the foreground so that it takes up almost half the screen. Then, when the character opens the door in the background, the light from the hall lights up the words "red paint" on the bucket. And the guy just keeps screaming when he sees it.

Anyway, nice effort on it. Maybe research some composition basics and try substituting colours in ways you wouldn't think before.

SuperDuck-Spanjj responds:

hey thats some excellent advice, thanks for taking the time to write the review. ill defo try to do some of that :)