blackcat2000's Reviews

[The Naruto Collab II]

Pretty sweet!

It wasn't one of those super long collabs, just the length of a good song, which seemed to work quite well with the animation. The variety of animation styles was also quite appealing, and despite the variety, all the submissions were of good quality. It was extra awesome when the parts would match the music.
My only real complaint would be that section without animation. I'm not sure whether it was intentional or not, but the music seems to glitch a bit during that scene (I don't have a real problem with the lack of animation). Furthermore, maybe a little biography on the artists would've been nice; perhaps a little cliche, but sometimes I like to read them.
Overall though, very nice collab, I enjoyed it!

[Blue Tot and Birdy Bird]

Short and a bit scrappy

The art itself was slightly less than decent on the whole, unfortunately. Whilst it looks okay, little things stand out as scrappy, for example the 20cm or so river, the tree with its roots put in through erasing part of it, and the uneven brush lines (in general).
This animation featured mostly motion tweening and looping symbols. Furthermore, the little bit of frame by frame was quite obviously rushed. Animation is a pain in the butt, but if you could just put in a few more frames and be more careful about how it's done, it'll make your animation look much better, like when the bird poops on his tongue, he seems to wipe it away, and it sort of disappears. Perhaps you could animate it being slowly wiped off onto the ground.
Lastly, besides the length, you need more sound. The sound the blue fuzz makes when mocking the bird would almost be more appropriate for the bird defecating on the blue fuzz. Other sounds could include frustration at the bird and something similar but not quite the sound you used for him mocking the bird.
It was alright though, keep working on it!

[Stress Bunny]

Pretty nice and smooth

A relaxing and well done frame by frame animation.
The detail put into each frame seems great, and personally I'd struggle to have the patience to do something (for a specific example, I'm looking at the waves near the beginning of the piece).
Whilst I like it and it is very good, there are still a few issues with it. The length is decent, but sometimes small segments seem a little jerky or rushed. Furthermore, the song is a little soft and fuzzy... Despite that, it's not bad, and it sort of fits into the background as a song which isn't too obtrusive.
Simple tip though- end the song before the animation starts again. As is, the music is playing multiple times since it's running as I"m writing this review, and it's starting to overlap each other many times, ruining it ever so slightly. All you need is to put a keyframe at the end of your animation, select the song, and set it to "stop" instead of start, as I'm guessing you have it set to.
It was good though, looking forward to any future work of yours =)

StressBunnyInc responds:

thank you for your very detailed review
i didnt realize that my video would loop like that while uploading im goiing to fix that and repost
you had said that certain parts of my animation seemed rushed, may i ask which parts?
im probably going to delete this video and fix it
it took so long i was just kind of rushing it finaly being done
it is very tiresome drawing every frame for like 735 frames

hope to hear from you again soon k<3

[Interactive Kitten]

Not particularly interesting...

There were decent music choices which fit your animation quite well, and the art wasn't terrible. Everything was recognizable and really quite presentable. I'll have to say that this was decent, besides mainly the essential actual content of this 'game'. It was horribly short, and there wasn't that much to do. Mainly buttons which would cause the cat to do something when you put your mouse over it.
The backgrounds were really quite simple, and there are little imperfections which annoy me such as when you make the cat blink (what kind of cruel person pokes their interactive kitten in the eye??!) the lines in one of the kitten ears changes a bit.
Furthermore, whilst having to wait until an animation for a certain part of the cat to finish before another one will start has its advantages, it is somewhat more difficult to catch all the different aspects of inter-activeness of the cat.
Overall, it was good but too short with a few quirks here and there.

[The Shark Dossier]

Yeah... Some actual animation would be nice

Either that, or actually finish your series, then follow it up with this. As is, it's basically a resubmission of your first animation. Why do that when you can promote your WHOLE series? =)
But seriously, as some people have mentioned, the mystery buttons should say coming soon, or you should mention that it's not yet complete somewhere (if you don't like the advice about submitting a complete version of this after your series). Not to mention, you could name your series and link them to each other within each animation without the need of a "dossier" (i.e. on part 2 you say "Watch part 1, Snowblind UC" or something like that).
Not to mention that no one will be likely to refer to this submission... It has a low score already, and you might as well link the animations together as i suggested above.
I see what you're trying to do, but I think there are probably better ways... Good luck with your series =)

Celx-Requin responds:

I see your point,
now that I think about it, your idea would have made more sense... Fuck

Anyway thanks for the review,
- Celx

[TNEJ (art collab)]

It's an alright submission, I guess

It was indeed an art collab by many different people, so I won't need to comment on lack of animation.
The art as a whole was alright to the extent that even without the relatively tiny text (decently legible though... consider sans serif next time) it was almost possible to understand what was going on.
It was very random, and unfortunately, not very funny to me. It was also very long. I know it was called "The Never Ending Journey". but halfway through I was forced to stop reading and click to see if it did indeed ever end- it did. The thing is the art isn't spectacular, and the text is a pain to read paragraph after paragraph, and attempt to make sense of it.
The music isn't too bad- it's calming and sort of a good background song (maybe a little quieter). However, I don't think this piece needed to be 5.8 MB long. Perhaps next time you could choose a shorter song/loop and optimize the audio so it doesn't become so huge. Maybe you could do something about the image sizes too. Oh. Add a mute button for the music next time too, in case.

So in short, I rate this animation as an 'okay' and-
Optimize your audio/video further
Sans Serif fonts are easier to read than fonts like times new roman
Mute button

Decent story though, if not a bit long =)

[extrallusionist]

It's not bad- almost worth the wait

It's a little slow and takes a while to build up, but what's added seems to be pretty solid; it fits in well. If I may call each time you add in or remove a little jig, my suggestion would be to possibly add/remove the instruments every time the initial tune repeats.. as far as i can tell, things get changed every 2nd tune, so this might help it progress a little faster.
You obviously have skill with the beats and all though, with a variety of skills, such as background/bass noise, changing a sound from left/right speaker effectively, and timing. So I have to say I'd like this a whole lot better if it wasn't in excess of 4 minutes, as it is a bit long to wait, despite it getting good at parts.
So all I think needs working on it is speeding it up a tad (sorry if i just repeated that 3 or more times in this review >.<).
But it's good! Will look forward to more work from you =)

Silent-G responds:

If I get bored some day I'll remix this and definitely consider what you said. thanks for the review.

[You have mail!!!]

Uhm... I don't know =X

Seems a little bit unplanned. The quality of the clip wasn't bad... Occasionally in the beginning (maybe later too, I'm not sure) you could hear a bit of breathing into the microphone, and I'm decently sure it wasn't intentional.
Back to it being unplanned... At the beginning, I would safely say you were doing different versions of "You got mail", which is okay I guess. However, about halfway through, starting from before someone says "thats", it becomes a half script as if it suddenly became a dialogue between 2 people. I say do one or the other.
Overall, not a bad idea and I can tell there's some decent voice acting too.

NekoMika responds:

Yea, the mic is over 7 years old and sucks horribly so yea. Breathing might be because you have to yell in it sometimes for it to work and whatnot. Trust me it's me al lthe time, there is no second person and thanks for the review.

[Passionate Playing-UMSL]

Awesome, I likes it much!

Indeed though, the pauses inbetween the parts of the song either needs to be shorter, or an uh... stretchy thingie should join them... hopw you understand what I mean :P (sorry, not a music person).
Overall, the music was nice to listen to, and quite a happy song. I also enjoy the ending with the bass and all. Awesome work :)

umsldragon responds:

Yup, I know exactly what you mean for those breaks... though I haven't found a nice synth for it yet... still looking. Thknks man!

[may I take yours?]

Sort of scrappy

I don't feel any particular styles being used in your piece. The background, his body, and his speech bubble (and text) are pretty solid lines, but then his face is all sketchy. The person isn't colored in contrast to the background, and I'm not so sure (perhaps this is a lacking on my part) about what his "question of etiquette" means.
As a whole, it seems sort of random and all over the place. I'd advise choosing a style, in this case either sketchy or solid lines, and implement it. If you wish, it could be a combination, but for example, people will always be sketchy, and background will always be solid, etc.
Perhaps the text was meant to look warped, but in doing so, it also sort of looks out of place. I'm not sure about that background either... In reference to the stripes of color which are in no particular rational order... I thin kthe brown things are mountains though.
It's ok... Needs a bit of work though =)

Silent-G responds:

nothing is ever in any particular rational order. thanks for the review.

[Rock On!]

Ooh, Art portal...

Was looking around and wondered what this art portal was... I clicked "Art", clicked around the links (in the event that i wanted to post some random sketch of my own) and BAM, I saw a thumbnail of a pyro.
Naturally i had to click it.

I think it's an awesome picture, with a fitting background. However, (despite me being no artist) I think it might be just a bit too sketchy, although I'm sure sketchiness was intentional, for example on his right hand, the sketchiness on his finger makes it a tad messy.
Really, there's nothing else to comment on. Nice pyro- do you plan to draw the other classes? =)