Score: 6

"Acceptable, but a few things need fixing"

submission: Sleepless Ep.1

date: July 28, 2009

I've looked at some of the reviews, and some are complaining about your art style, how the lines look like they're unfinished, and you counter by saying it's just your art style. However, in the author's comments you say that there were problems keeping it under the 10mbs limit. If you were to clean up your lines a bit, it would help with the size problem. I'm not saying make completely clean lines all the time, but extra, unnecessary curves and lines just devour resources. There's a function in flash where it decreases curves, I think it's called simplify shape or something like that. You don't need to sacrifice style for functionality, but since it was so graphically intense, I had to watch it on low quality, making the lines a tad unbearable.

The story seemed a bit formulaic as well. Unless you can redo the dude-with-amnesia-plot so that it isn't like all the other dude-with-amnesia-plots out there, there's danger of the following animations to be rather cliched. Also, the 'gah you destroyed my village' part at the beginning absolutely reeked of cheese and melodrama. I don't know how difficult this would be to fix, as everyone has a different writing style, but I have faith. I remember you responding to another review stating this, saying that you feel that it would appeal to a larger audience if it was cheesy. Please, don't go about thinking like this. You'd be losing quite a number of intelligent people who are looking for something that would make their life/day/that moment a bit richer than it had been before. Also, it's my personal opinion that the author should create for themselves, not for the masses.

The script reminded me of Dragon Ball Z, with the obvious inner monologues and the expository nature of the phrases. It was like you were trying to get as much information out as possible. This is understandable, as this is the first installment, but it's better to show instead of tell, or maybe to hint and leave cliffhangers. For example, the part where amnesia dude (I can't remember anyone's name, forgive me) started flickering in and out of existence. His companion said something along the lines of "I don't care if you don't know who you are. Ever since you rescued me... ... ..." Do we REALLY need to know that he rescued her at that VERY moment in time? Right there you're telling us that a) he doesn't know who he is, b) only remembers that one village, c) flickers randomly in and out of existence, d) rescued his companion, e) that she feels the need to pay him back and f) gives possible leeway into a romantic interest subplot. That's a lot in just a few lines, and feels a bit forced.

Now on to audio. The music was pretty decent. There were some parts where it was a bit unneeded or excessive (like the amnesia dude scene), but other parts where the music fit perfectly, like the scene after that. It also looks like you wrote all the music yourself, and I respect that. Good job.
The voice actors however... they're a different story. It seems to me that the people who are raving about the superior quality of the voices are confusing it with the quantity of different characters, and the fact that there were three people doing them instead of just one or two. Quite often they were excessively melodramatic, which just accentuated the melodrama in the script. Try toning it down a notch or five. It will be better because of it. I'm NOT saying that you have to replace them with Tomamoto or Egoraptor, but maybe a few more tries going for that perfect, natural sounding tone. Think to yourself: would these words actually be said like this?

Last point: the subtitles. I can appreciate subtitles. They help to make it so that people can understand what your people are saying. But they are no help when they are distracting. And when there are blatant errors in the text, it pulls the viewer away and diminishes the immersive quality of the work. The blatant spelling mistakes qualify, same with those instances when the words didn't line up with the audio.

Overall, it was decent. Not groundbreaking, but I'll keep watching.

Score: 10

"Awesome"

submission: Akira the Don - Hypocrite

date: January 4, 2009

Just wanted to let you know that this was the first animation that I ever saw on Newgrounds when I came here a year ago, and that it still sets the standard for me when looking at other flashes. What can I say? You've made me a fan of both you and Akira the Don. Be proud.

Score: 2

"Could be better with improvements"

submission: Stickman on Google

date: July 11, 2008

First of all, I'm giving this a low score because I didn't find it all that interesting, by no means am I calling this crap, trust me, it isn't crap (this is my opinion). You put effort into this and it's pretty good considering the amount of practice you've had beforehand, but there's some stuff I think you might want to improve on:

-The frame by frame wasn't too choppy but I can't say it was fluid either, next time try animating with a higher fps.
-The lack of sound ceased it from having any excitement (and subtitles don't make up for that), learn more about the 'library panel' and 'importing sound'; there both pretty important.
-It loops. To fix that, highlight your last frame, press F9, and type 'stop();' (without the quotations) in the actions panel.
-The pace of the movie seems a bit weird, and it's kinda hard to understand what the stick man is doing at times. Try to adjust the timing it so it flows better.
-I guess it's a bit much to ask for camera movements, but extending your knowledge about symbols, timelines, motion tweens, and motion guides would help.

Although I found it pretty uninteresting, I did like the parts where the stickman increased the text size and drowned in the water. I wasn't expecting any of those moments and it shows that you have quite a bit of imagination when it comes to this type of thing.

Score: 7

"Strange"

submission: Moving Line 4

date: July 4, 2008

Kind of like the things I make only different.

Score: 10

"That was AMAZING"

submission: GO CANADA

date: July 2, 2008

We laughed all the way though, I love the bloody part.

Score: 10

"YAY"

submission: supermans destiny

date: June 24, 2008

I just finished my lunch and I came upon this. The ending surprised me but it was still delightful. I really hope this passes judgment. (just so you know, I was the second person to watch this).

Score: 3

"A bit better"

submission: Xguala Ep. 2 Trailer

date: June 23, 2008

I like how your drawing are improving and for the first time you decided to use a song from the Audio Portal, but you kinda ruined the song by talking in the middle with that crappy microphone (and that and a good song too, but the second version of EnVHeaven is better :P ). You can easily get a good quality one for around $16 (Canadian currency) and I advice you do. Good luck with future submitions FD.

Score: 10

"AMAZING!!!"

submission: the epic journey

date: June 22, 2008

I just found this by accident and I'm really happy I did, the music fit very well, and the plot line was very imaginative. Why didn't you tell me about this at the church picnic?

Score: 2

"Could be much better"

submission: The Pokerap

date: June 20, 2008

My problem with it is that it's a slide show without much animation. Next time please put some animation in there, it would make it much better.

Score: 4

"Kinda like the Yuyu"

submission: Turtle Walk 2

date: May 25, 2008

Well drawn but boring. It would be nice if you made it have more of a point to it, instead of just watching a turtle do whatever it was doing. Maybe add a story to it.