Luis's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Cat Gang]

promising

Hi Clifton,
Good job on the flick, 10 mins is an insane feat in the flash world so I will give you props for treading on unsettled territory. Its refreshing to see people really workin at their stuff. And now on to my criticism.
The animation was great, perspectives were well chosen and interesting and the facial expressions of the characters were also very well done.
Work on the lip synching a little bit.. one of the tough things about going with such a high frame rate is that it gets tougher to decipher where to fake the lip synching. I think you need to work with it some more and figure out when you can hold lip movements out longer than necessary .. right now its just a big jumble of mouth movements and you end up either ahead or behind the actual audio.. a good rule of thumb is to make sure the start and end of a speech is cued at exactly the right point.. drag out the last sylable if needed, remember thats the last movement the viewer sees so you definately do not want to get caught behind or ahead or it'll be very noticeable.
My second suggestion would be to work on your characters a little more.. the animation is great but when they are idle their extremeties seem very stiff and inanimate.. same with the props and furniture.. add a curve here and there even when the furniture is perfectly straight.. it'll feel more inviting and less rigid.
My last criticism would be to not blow your whole wad in one toon.. i think its great that you went after the 10 minute mark but i also think that the toon tended to drag on more than it needed to.. save your tricks and goodies for future episodes.. i liked the channel flipping incident for instance but it becomes forgotten by the end of the film because of something else you introduced such as the three cats.. i forgot all about the owner cause you introduced me to a new plot.. so i mean pay attention to things like that you dont want your toon to have so many different plots going on that people overlook the hard work in the previous set of frames.
I dont hate you on the sound because this is homemade and i am perfectly fine with it being crude. Good job, and i got my eye on you.

-Luis

karr420 responds:

WOW! now this is an honor. a renowned flash artist throwing his 1.2.3....4... yes 8 cents towards me :P. neways about the lip synch, that is a problem because of how long the flash is. and it all results on how well your computer is. wehn i would test each scene, the lip synch is in absolute perfection. but when it comes to viewing the whole flash, the lip synch tends to randomize itself because all voices are turned into one fat gigantic MP3. that is one thing that irritates me so about this cartoon. now about the ridgedness and stiffness of some scenes. i totally agree with you. those are points in the movie where i was burned out from drawing. i regret doing it that way also. another thing. b4 cat gang was pieced together it was seperated into multiple .fla's. the actual goal time for this flash was 5 minutes. but when i pieced together the .fla it was 8 minutes long. and this is in spite of a few scenes missing. so after i pieced together the few scenes missing it ended up being 10 minutes long. i figured while i was at it to throw in a preview of whats to come :P. i figured it would eliminate some suspense towards fans. neways thank you for the review. it was very inspiring. i must say, you did an awesome job with "til death do us part". that flash is incredible. and again thank you

[Aura: story mode]

good noir

Just finished watching the first one, I do like this one better, the black and white is working well with this piece, the sound was very appropriate. and the artwork is amazing at times.
As for my constructive criticism, well im sort on the fence. Although I like this one better than your first I miss the line work that was more evident in your first piece. There was something very stylish and expressive about the crude outlines of the characters. This one seems more polished and delicate and in hindsight i kind of missed the unpolished.
Also while I think the 3d effects are pretty cool part of me feels as though the sharp back drops arent working as well with the crude figures/animation they seem too sharp and become almost foreign objects... I think maybe you could either either bring in a little more randomness in your linework to your backgrounds or simply hand draw your backgrounds like you handraw your figures (no real straight edges, very horsey brush size, little gradient use).
I look forward to seeing more of this series, your very talented and your characters are quite interesting.

-Luis

Sarkazm responds:

do you miss the "pureness" of the original Aura? well, sadly it's not coming back:))
backgrounds - i tried to keep the backgrounds as unoffensive as possible to make the viewer concentrate on the characters.
thanks for the constructive criticism.

[Legacy episode 1]

tech. difficulties?

The animation just restarts itself after the first conversation scene so I never got to see the fight scenes. This might not make a difference but was it built on Flash MX 2004 or something? Not sure why its acting so erratically. Anyways based on what I did see I had a couple things to say:
1- camera angles were very well done and appropriate, you made a serious, normally boring conversation scene, rather entertaining merely by always keeping the camera angle fresh. Good job.
2- My biggest gripe from what i saw or heard rather was that the sounds seemed to been imported at different bitrates or quality levels, and its very noticeable and distracting. I would go back and make sure all your dialogue sound files atleast are at the same sampling rates. Wouldnt hurt to increase the export sound quality in flash either, theres alot of static going on.
Well id give more feedback but i couldnt get very far into the movie so it'll end here. good job

[William the Demon Killer]

dude your getting a bell

Good Job on this one, the Carl Orff soundtrack you chose was particularly effective. The lip synching was right on, and your storyline was equally well thought out. Rather than kiss your ass the rest of this review I'll give you points to consider on your second one, granted it was very difficult to find things i didnt like about this piece.
Dont be afraid of using interesting camera angles more often, I found that you became a bit more adventurous in your camera angle selection around the end, it really gives your piece mood, I think the early scenes in the movie could have benefited from interesting camera work. For instance when the guy is running, the side view is expected, spice it up, quick cut to a birds eye view, or a worms eye view or maybe a security cam view?.. might be a pain to construct but it will really give your artwork more suspense because you dont really expect it.
Lastly, I think at times the transition animation was a little choppy, as much of a pain as frame by frame animation is its really a necessary ingredient for some things, for instance characters turning their heads, its a little akward to go from side to front view without a 3/4ths view or sometin in between to transition it.
Overall though again great job, lookin forward to the next one.

Bleeg responds:

Hey thanks for the review, your Murray the Monkey is one of my favorites! You make some very good suggestions. Believe me, when I look at this movie I can see a lot of room for improvement... There are a lot of techniques such as you mentioned that I hope to incorporate into my future work. Looking forward to your next Flash!

[dependency]

promising

First off, I like how you pulled off the faux 3d. Difficult to do in flash and you did it a good job in executing it.On to the criticism:

Style-I like the style, the use of the textures with the faux 3d was a good touch. You may be on to something with it. I'd stick to it.
Animation-the perspective changes are well executed. I would be careful to not over do it though, its a fine little visual gem as long as you dont beat it to death.
Points to consider:
I think the pacing could have been better integrated with the music, i have never heard the song before but it has vary noticeable and predictable crecendos, use that to your advantage. For instance when he breaks loose rather than a slow tween of the straps breaking, it would have been more exciting to start slow and then boom they are yanked off along with the beat's climax. not only will the song feel more integrated but your animation will feel more believable. no need to slow mo it if there is no specific purpose for doing so.
I'd also work on your running poses. keep in mind that when people run the body sags a little on each down step. your character felt a little stiff in the final scenes. again it winds back to making your animation believeable.
Well thats all, i look forward to seeing more of your future work. Good Job

-Luis

HeRetiK responds:

thanks for leaving me a review! Very much appreciated.

indeed, I still have to improve my skills considering lifelike animation.

[Evanson High Episode 1]

good first stab

I thought the main thing going for the movie was the character style. its a little different than the regular breed of flash animations, id stick with it. Now to the nitty gritty on improving your flash technique.
1- Music: I'm fine with the music playing throughout the toon but i would knock it down in volume a couple notches during dialogue.. its still a bit too loud and competes with the speech.

2- Lipsynching: I dont know if the bandwidth at ng is necessarily to blame for the off cue lip synch? I think the key to lipsynching is always keeping the animation 1-2 frames ahead of the actual dialogue. The key to keeping pace with the speech is to emphasize very noticeable sylables and skip over unnoticeable ones. If you attempt to animate every sylable you will fall behind in the end, and will throw off the whole thing as it develops.
3- Concept: I agree with the previous post. I think for this to be any sort of ongoing episode you have to give it a little more substance than just a bunch of kids thinking about what to do.

-Luis

CopyCatDS responds:

Whoa! big review! you a flash critic?? ok, heres my rundown... movie's kinda sloppy, i know! but i did my part, now i learn from my mistakes and lets hope that Part II will do better!, okie dokie? oh, and btw, sure, i'll stick with my "No-lines" animation style! its me dude! Meeeeee! ^_^

[NG Halloween!]

good ol' Stamper

It's been awhile since I've come across your work. Im glad I caught this one, VERY well put together. The music was on cue, the graphics sharp like scalpel, and the animation quality equally impressive. I guess my only criticism would be to try and cram one of these bad boys into the 100k file limit cause this would blow all definitions of an e-card out of the water.
You've come a long way over the years, the sophistication in your technique is an inspiration to all new artists and seasoned veteran ng contributors such as myself. Keep up the fine work Will.

-Luis

[Village Raiders]

pretty good

First off, this was a tough song to build that animation around so I commend you on that you were pretty successful. Theres so much action going on in a rather short period of time and the song is considerably slower paced yet it still feels like it belongs there. I did like some of the interesting perspectives of some of the scenes. I think some scenes are stronger than others. Be careful not to cut harshly across the scenes so often, it lessens the impact and stops feeling suspenseful. It is appropriate during the action scenes but at the beginning maybe you could use less dramatic transitions to sort of set it up for the fast paced raid. Good job thus far!

Luis

[5 More Minutes : Foamy The Squirrel]

This series is growing on to me

I must admit that i was a little skeptical about the first episode. I just wasnt to sure if a predominantly dialogue driven toon would work out much less for a continued series. However the dialog had to deliver and it has done so both times. Great job, thats something thats quite difficult to do. I can live with the crude drawings and static backgrounds just fine. The script is just golden. If i had to suggest something however is maybe make the backgrounds a little more interesting. I mean if we are going to be stuck in that one scene for the whole toon may as well make it the best lookin background you can. But suggestions aside this was a good piece. i think ill go watch it again for 5 more minutes.

Luis

[Rival Part 2: Escape]

Promising little series

I havent seen the first one yet but this one was pretty good, the car chase had particularly good perspectives. I think my only hang up is with the tailend of the movie, there is all this action and suspense in the first half of the movie and then the second leg of it just seems to be them cruising around in the car. Seemed to drag on a little too much for my taste and it slowed the momentum you had built. My advice would be to snip out the long driving sequence during their trip to the ammo cache, you dont need to physically show the actual time it takes them to get there, then you could feed off of all that momentum and give greater thirst for a sequel when you get to your cliffhanger ending.