blackcat2000's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Cereal Wars!]

Pretty good! I like it!

The voice acting was good, the animation was good, the drawings were good (although I saw the radial effect for a lot of things... but no matter). The fight scenes and script were pretty well done too.
A little complaint though. It would be a major (for me, at least) improvement if next time you put either a darker section for your subtitles or outlined them in a different color... There were frequent times where the yellow subtitles were hard to read from a white background.
It was an original, at least to a certain extent, idea too, and I suppose in a smaller way, almost touching (at least there was a solid ending =D)
Anyways, This animation was pretty good, I hope to see more from you in the future =)

[Random Street Crime]

Very little animation, not very good as a whole

Here's the compiled list of issues I have with this animation:
MS Sam voice
Simplistic/Not very good looking graphics (i.e. the people)
The picture on the wall could've been traced (there's a sprite tutorial in the NG Flash section which can teach you to trace bitmaps and remove the white bits)
Hardly any actual animation besides a bit of motion tweening and lip-syncing.
Some parts with bad grammar which makes it hard to understand (like "how did you call me?")

So basically, you can obviously draw a person to some extent, and made a decent background (simple yet somewhat effective, I hope you drew it yourself). There wasn't a ton of background noise (I'm not sure how MS Sam works if you record it and put it into a flash, but despite me not liking the voice, it was alright).

So work on actually animating something, try to make sure all the grammar is at least understandable, work on your drawings a bit, maybe try to voice act yourself or get someone else to, and... learn to trace bitmaps I guess.

Overall it was almost decent, I guess. You're not bad though =)

Adulcar responds:

Well... thanks for this review, I'll follow your wise advices !
Anyway... damn I worked so hard to be sure the grammar were understandable lol

[Stan: don't do drugs.]

Not bad, but definitely not good

You can draw to a certain degree, and animate a bit too. It didn't look bad, that's for sure, and you did a bit of lip-syncing, which wasn't too bad. However, the dialogue didn't really make sense (even the guy who didn't take drugs... he just randomly asks Stan if he's an idiot?).
Too bad it was in some random foreign language, but even so, it didn't sound very clear. Also, your replay button doesn't work.
Now the main reasoning for my score. I already said you can draw, and it looks alright. However, for the most part of your animation, it was panning back and forth between the two guys, followed by something that seemed like Stan was taking drugs, followed by a motion tweened drawing. Then back to panning back and forth between faces, except one of them changes. Then the other guy motion tweens away.
If there was more 'actual' animation, or maybe if you submitted all your shorts at once, this would do better. It seems your animations have substance though. Plus, I agree with not taking drugs ;)

SilverCrab responds:

Well, anyway, thanks for good review.
P.S. language is russian.

[Happy Birthday Phoenix!]

Not good, I'm sorry

It's not grade A new age video game perfection, and I'm voting as such =)
Anyways, there's not much to say because you acknowledge that your flash isn't necessarily that good:
Stickmen are a minus.
I don't think there was a proper plot... Not even sure what happened.
The looping which I think was meant to be to the beat of the music wasn't very good.
And the last thing which is probably the easiest to fix and that'll improve your flash would be if you would stop the music when you go back to the first frame. If you don't, the music will sort just continue playing two versions at once.
Anyways, happy birthday to your friend, and keep working on your flash =D

[Found flash]

Congrats, it's not completely bad

First complaint is that it's too short. Part way through the background changes to black (where a red dot becomes a whirlpool of some sort), then later back to white, arbitrarily. Then it zooms into something which develops fire in its hand, which then goes away along with his hand.
It looked Almost decent, which means you have some animating skills, but it's too short, no story, doesn't make sense (even for an animation with no story) and the music wasn't very good. You probably don't need the stage to be so huge either. Most of the time you were using less than half of it.
Keep trying, you'll get there =)

indesisive responds:

Ha yea well the truth is, usually to an audience an animation is never long enough (mine was short tho) the animation-wasnt supposed to make sense. The music quality is actually alot better than regual beggining animations and maybe that just depends on ur taste of music. But yes i will use a smaller canvas next time.

[Don't Bite That Apple]

'Twas funny =)

Simple, short, and pretty hilarious... until you showed poor Timmy, but oh well.
It didn't quite make sense why the apple would explode, but the voices were very well done, and so was the animation. A nice simple drawing style as well.
I really don't know what to improve on this... Maybe just to make the story slightly more comprehensible (I still don't know why the apple exploded =() aaaand... I'm not sure if it was intentional, but when it's zooming into the dad, the background color seems to glitch a bit.
I liked it =D

[Sonic & Mario: NO DRUGS!]

Actually, not a bad animation!

One of the first thing i noticed was Mario picking the shrooms (or... potent fungi... I'll call them shrooms) and how it was actually done pretty well. Furthermore, I agree with the no drugs message, but that's not important.

As it went on, there was decent, if not good, music and consistently interesting animation, with your own version of sonic and mario (yay for no sprites!) and the uh... special people. I suppose my only suggestion would probably be to put a bit more variety into it. This animation focused mainly on them going somewhere and doing something, which is fine, but my (only minor >.>) suggestion is maybe they fight each other, pick fights with people stronger than them, and jumping off high buildings... I dunno, but I must say, good animation =)

sorbitol responds:

Thanks for the detailed review!
Glad you liked the animation and the "secret" message :D

You got some good ideas and I'll see what I can include in the sequel, "Sonic & Mario Save JFK".

Look out for it!

XD

[obie episode 14 : brawl]

Wow... but the lag made it pretty unenjoyable

I don't know how well the movie is without lag, but it was pretty bad when it was there.
Personally, I found your flash to be mostly different pictures, essentially a slideshow, with the animation seemingly limited to some minor arm movements and lipsynching.
There wasn't really a story, but I also suppose it isn't necessary for something like a music video. Some things may not have been needed, such as the "5 miles later" notice. And telling us your age again at the end of the movie. I'm glad your proud of it though.
Anyways, something to suit the title (which has brawl in it) could be something liek a fight, rather than a bunch of nintendo characters and random cameos of it. More references would be better, I suppose.
Your flash was alright. Good potential too.

-Maybe your own sound effects rather than just a song next time
-Less slideshow, more animation
-More theme
-Less/No lag (a tip would be to put the sound clip to 'stream' rather than start or whatever else it is on. I would do it for all soundclips)

I liked it quite a bit otherwise.

Tokumo responds:

I'm sorry the lag was terrible it was fine until I exported it, but what are you gonig to do?

[Under My Voodoo]

Wow, really good animation

The animation was really well drawn, and so was the lipsynching and all of that. However, the music lyrics wasn't really all too audible (I did hear "Under My Voodoo" a few times though!) so if there was a story within the lyrics, I didn't hear it... Maybe subtitles would be nice. And improve the sound quality some.
Besides saying that I like your drawings, not much else. Good work, and looking forward to more! :D

Voodoo responds:

I don't even know what the lyrics say :D

[Music Video Collection]

Decent work

The lipsynching was fine, in my opinion, but a few things got on my nerves. Firstly, the looping of a lot of things were off (like the building lights) and the motion tweening. Too much of it. Such as:
The ground the guy walks on for the WHOLE of "Go West" and "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" (yes, emphasis on the whole, since I thought you were going to do that for all the rest, which you fortunately didn't).
In addition, when things were stretched, it wasn't... awesome to look at. Like the pikachu, for example. He wasn't just drawn thin, he was quite obviously squashed. If necessary, just make him "normal" then obscure the pokeball a bit. It's worth covering it.
But overall, it was a pretty nice piece. Looking forward to future ones!

Assios responds:

Thanks for your review! :D