MRat's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Me Bill]

Lots of potential.

There is something very depressing about this, and it has nothing to do with the content. This was one of the most potentially amazing things to hit the portal this year. A stunning concept, design, and director's approach with some very very powerful music. So it's with alot of remorse that I say this, but you simply cannot draw or animate well, or if you can, you didn't here.

All the ideas and thoughts were there. The design work, the imagination. All right there. Seemingly though, you never learned how to proportion and lend weight and volume to your poses and characters. The only thing giving the drawings depth was the shading, when ever line should be making a convincing argument for a drawings existence in space. I will say this though, the "Doctor" was very well rendered in comparison to everything else. Rather than rely on processor heavy filters that don't even look that good in the first place, I'd recommend spending alot more time working on your line-sensitivity and variation to convey the characters.

Another thing was the animation. It was very lifeless. The frame-by-frame was watery and didn't convey any sense of muscles or anatomy at work in the characters. They just sort of morphed from pose to pose. Your tweens too were bland, and not well timed or spaced. It's almost always the case when tweens are used by amateurs, but you should always be cautious with them because after just a few frams a tween really reveals itself and becomes a distracting eyesore unless it is very well timed and dynamic. I think you should go ahead and try your hand at some really simple practice exercises getting a feel for weight. Gravity has got to exist, or if it doesn't you need to make it apparent and make a point of it.

Anyway, even as a brilliant and imaginative concept with a mediocre execution, this was a joy to watch, and I hope you'll only continue to practice and develop your skills so that your technical prowess can match your creative vision.

[Re: >L:....LAAccA}=..]

Hypnotizing.

I was gripped. Couldn't tear my eyes away until it ended. Very spectacular. I don't think I have a single complaint about it. The music really helped bring it together too, without it I think this could have ended up pretty flat.

Commendations to you both.

notorious responds:

thanks boii

[Ghost Crush.]

God, what a lovely little masterpiece.

I don't think I can even come up with the words I want here, but I'll say that I love it. It's equally heartwarming and heart-wrenching. The music with at imagery is just so powerful. Also, all those adorable, sad, and disturbing creature designs just make me giddy.

Seriously, brilliant work.

[Weak Sleepers]

rtil hehing

rtil definitely hehed in this.

Blordow responds:

hehe

[Flecko's Halloween]

big fuckin' lol

Ok, first off, I hate Flecko. I hate that character design, I think you poorly voice acted him, and I even felt like he was less well animated than the gravedigger.

That aside, I loved this. That slow beginning was the funniest thing I've seen in a halloween Flash yet. I hope half the people who started this just closed during that. Friggin' hilarious, man. Then you get the gravedigger who said "swishy swishy with the dead fishy" which made me happy. I think that volume joke was lame and fell flat, however.

The great joy for me was the animation of the Gravedigger/Igor thing, and the way you staged the shots in the graveyard.

FleckoGold responds:

First off...ouch... But I can't really do anything about it now. I agree with the voice acting...

I'll just have to work on Flecko...

I think PresidentZen would be most happy by this review. He wrote the lines for Igor. Great stuff.

Thanks for reviewing.

-Flecko-

[forage]

Simple and lovely.

I was wondering I might see something new from you. This was so simple and fresh. Completely without pretense. I think your drawings could have done with a little more line sensitivity to give them a more dynamic volume, but they all moved quite well.

Can't wait for another!

Andrew-Buckley responds:

Thanks man, i havent looked at your new stuff yet =). Yeah its a bit different form me. I was doing a kind of angled design on the characters, plus the line quality wasnt that great because it was scanned from paper and then bitmap traced in flash, i dint want to have to redraw it all again just to get smoother lines for such a small thing =). Yea i think my animation skills are slowly improving.

[Funniesss!]

Better than a duckbra

ye its betta

[Ill Fate: Ep. 1]

Pretty Slick

This was, for the most part, a work that was interesting both visually and through the script. It's nice to see such a fully round work with attention spent to a number of varied details. We don't get many like this on here.

The animation ranged from mediocre, to good, to nearly great at points depending on how heavily your through your weight on the crutch of tweens versus how much frame-by-frame you did. Your best animation was clearly in the middle ground, as is evidenced by the scene with Fat walks towards the portal and the lines wobbled without conveying any true sense of movement, and some of the Kaiser's tweened arm movements that were stiff. The bit with the robot and its laser eyes was mesmerizing. Simply magical. Well timed, well spaced, and very well rendered.

Still the visual dwarfed the animation. The colour choices were impeccable and your subtle gradients gave alot of value to simple things that otherwould would have been flat as a result of the lines. My only gripe is with some of the design work, specifically the technology in the lab. I've seen that same basic teleporter and specimen tube 100 times over in nearly every sci-fi story. It'd be nice to see a fresh design.

Better yet than everything else was the script and the very solid voice acting delivering it. While I think that influenza virus thing was plain stupid and makes no sense the way it was written, everything else so far is a highly immersive mythopoiea that is clearly well though out and rounded to a full development. I'm sitting here saying, "WOW. What happens next? Who are these people, and how are the so real with so little information given me?"

Very nice work, sir, very nice.

professor-fate responds:

Thanks a lot. I really appreciate the detailed review.
You have a keen eye and appreciation for animation that very, VERY few reviewers on this site have. I giggled as I read which bits you thought I had cheaped out on vs. what stood out as the best, because it was pretty much spot on with how much time I had spent on those scenes. I was doing a lot of university work when I made this so some parts were genuinely rushed (i.e. tweened), and as for the robot part... well, would it surprise you to know that one scene took me eight hours?

As far as the mythology of the Vector is concerned, the Vector wasn't actually my idea. We had to include our characters interacting with the Vector, and in everyone else's entry it was just a case of "what's that thing? Let's go chase it!", and being sucked into the Vector's portal. I did my best with what I was given to do something different, but what can you do. XD