artistunknown's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Stick-up]

It's nice to see more stopmotions popping up on Newgrounds, and this one wasn't bad either.

This was pretty good, the movement was alright, and the image quality was okay. I also chuckled at the end. I sense a bit of inspiration from Keshen, are you a fan of his? The ending and the music reminds me of his style. It was used well though, so good job.

There are some ways you can improve though. Try taking more pictures, as the movement wasn't insanely smooth. The movement was alright, but it could be better. The jokes could also use some help. I did chuckle at the end, but the buildup was a bit stale and it felt like it dragged on.

Again, this was pretty good, not great. I see potential in you as a brick-filmer. Keep at it, and I'm sure you'll be as good as Keshen one day. Good luck on your future projects, and hopefully you'll upload more of your stopmotions to newgrounds. I'll be looking forward to it.

TheDemonRick responds:

thank you so much and yes i am a huge keshen fan but mostly forrestfire101. i got the ending music sound effect from a website and i watched some of keshens videos and yeah its the same music

[William, I'm Coming Home]

Simply put: this was beatutiful. I really enjoyed everything about this. The animation was great, the visuals were great, and the timing was great. I enjoyed the subtle little jokes, everyone who storyboarded did a great job, especially Exedor's storyboards, beautiful direction. I can see that later on the animation was getting better toward the end. I'm glad you decided to use more frame by frame than tweens, it really paid off, and it looks amazing. In fact, this was so amazing, I had to watch it twice. As I've said before, the direction in this was great. After King William loses his car, he tries several other ways to get home, like riding a horse, a ship, and even climbing up a mountain. I think the mountain climbing sequence was my favorite part of thee animation. It was handled very well. Also, best ending ever, was so not expecting that.
As amazing as it was though, it does have its share of cons. Sometimes, the visuals were inconsistent and looked a little messy. When King William is laying on a grassy mountain, and the horse is standing, the drawing of the horse looks a bit unappealing. It's also hard to tell exactly what they are on, which I'm guessing was a mountain, but because of the same shade of green being used, and no shading, it's really hard to tell. There was also one continuity error I noticed this time: When King William is climbing up the mountain, he doesn't have his crown on, when he's standing on the mountain, in a brief shot, he has it on, but then in the next shot, he doesn't have it again. This is only a minor thing since it is brief.
Overall, this was more amazing than I thought it would be. I enjoyed every bit of it. Everyone who contributed did a great job!

MistyE responds:

Thank you very much for the review! Yeah, I agree, the coloring on the grassy mountain could have been more varied. I'll probably end up changing it.

[Adrellia Village #43: SE]

Alright, I'm not sure how long this review is going to be, since I can't think of a lot to say about this one, I guess it's a shorter review for a shorter episode, heh. I enjoyed helping with this episode. I think my writing and voicing of two lines helped the episode a bit.

Now then, the writing. There was a nice mix between comedy and drama. The opening scene was pretty well written, and would have been great if the characters were actually yelling, but we've been through this: the voice actor isn't exactly young, so it's probably not best for him to strain his voice. The scene was still handled well though, it was pretty enjoyable and nicely paced. There was nice direction throughout the rest of the episode as well. Though the silent scene with King William was short, I think it was a nice highlight of the episode. The dialog in th episode was also enjoyable. I feel like an asshole for saying this, because I wrote it, but I think the writing in the last scene is the best. Drake has a little monolog, and the scene has a lot of emotion. The music also helps with this scene, and Drake's voice actor actually did a good job in this scene, and I think it really helped it. This episode is very short though, and unfortunately it suffered from everything that was cut. Overall, I did enjoy the writing in the episode, everything was well written, and there was a nice balance of comedy and drama.

Oh the animation, where to start... For the most part, the animation was pretty much the same as the last episode, which is a shame. It was a mixture of tweens and frame by frame, though a lot less frame by frame was used in this episode. Nice coloring though, very appealing to the eyes. One thing I think you need to work on is scene transitions. For the most part, they were okay, but the transition at the end of the first scene really bugged me. You used a fade after Angus said "My bacon". A fade doesn't really seem appropriate there, since the camera is just fixed on his face, and that line isn't really the best to end a scene on. A hard cut would have been better there, since with a fade, the camera is fixed on his motionless face longer and it just looks wrong. With a hard cut to the next scene (or a brief clip of black like I do) it doesn't linger and flows more nicely. I think fades should be left to more ominous or foreshadowing bits of dialog or imagery. Like at the end of the last scene, perfect use of a fade. The line "I hope King William and the others are okay" is a foreshadowing line, and the fade really helped that. Scene transitions do add to the tone of the scene. Aside from that, I did enjoy the direction of the episode for the most part, though some parts could have been handled better. There were too many moments of characters going to do something and cutting to them having done it. An example would be Rachel going to use the portal and then being in the world of destiny, but you didn't show her using the portal. While in some cases this could drag out a scene, it does help lessen confusion, and when the episode is as short as this, I think it would have helped.

The voice acting was about the same as before, except there's a few additional voices this time around. Gee, wonder who that was :3. The voice acting in the beginning was a bit unenthusiastic, but we've already discussed the yelling. After the part where they should have been yelling, it does get better. For the rest of the episode, the voice acting is about the same as usual. Drake's voice actor is improving and doing a fine job, he handled the hotel scene very well. Rachel's voice actress is a bit meh. Why is it that Drake's voice actor has improved, bur Rachel's hasn't? Maybe it's because you don't have her record lines as much? Either way, it still works, and she did try, so that's good. Some of the pronunciation was a bit awkward, but what are you gonna do? I can't really say anything about the voice of the bear or the reporter since I voiced them, but yeah. I'll just let other people talk about that, heh. That's really all I have to say about the voice acting.

Overall, I did enjoy this episode. I think it's either a step backward or a standstill in the quality of the animation. The writing was an improvement over the last episode, and the voice acting and music really added to the feel of everything. My major problem is how short this episode is. I really think it should have been longer, because this just feels like nothing happened, and just serves as filler. It was still a good episode though, just some things that need to be touched up on. I hope this was helpful, and good luck on future episodes.

MistyE responds:

Thank you very much for your helpful review! Yeah, I'd definitely have to agree that the writing in the last scene was the best, it was very heartfelt and well-written, and the background music definitely contributed to it too. I appreciate your comments on the direction, and I will try to improve the scene transitions in the future episodes. Thanks again!

[Breakdance octogan]

You submitted something without telling me?

I would think that since I told you how to upload videos, you would at least inform me when you upload something... oh well, it's alright. I am rather impressed with what you got done with anime studio, far more than I could have accomplished with it (which is why I switched to flash). Your field of depth on the robot from different angles is convincing, and his motion is good. As others have stated, there are some graphical errors, but that's obviously the limitations of the program. I can tell when you start using flash, things will improve greatly!

JoeSketchConcepts-NG responds:

Sorry that it took me a long time to respond to you.

I have done allot of work on the motions of the robot to look like a real life machine and following the animator's survival kit by Richard Williams. the bad part is that I tried to make it look like 3D in a 2D program. and I totally did not think about shadow, more detailed background and camera angles until a friend from class told me so.

BUT! I will do better at animation from what I learned from this project and more studying. I FINALLY GOT ADOBE FLASH in the fall 2011. It was priced at around $150 to 200$ dollars. But it will be totally worth it. once get started on a new project.

[Candle Light Dinner]

Ha, Great

For a short for an assignment, it was really well done, and executed flawlessly. Also, a little note, on his silhouette he was wearing his glasses.

Ayai responds:

darn it hahhaha. i wasnt aware of that. thanks for the note! i'll fix it :D

[OmegaX S1 Ep1 [The Omega]]

A good start

It's a good start for a series, although it needs to be longer. Also, I hope the display is bigger in future episodes, 'cause it was a little hard to see. Also, if you could find some voice actors, that would help too. Text can get annoying, especially when there is action going on, either you read the text, and miss the action, or watch the action, and miss the story. The art was detailed, and animation was smooth, so all that needs improvement is length, display size, and possible voices, or text control. I look forward to another episode.

LycanX responds:

@artistuknown thanks for this tips, when i posted this on FA the only thing i got was "where the **** is the animation" our "your sound quality sucks"
also about the display size, i believe i checked " do not resize but it turned out like this. ill make sure it wont happen again next episode. Also, voice actors is hard to find D: