Rational-Delirium's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[A Glimpse of Life, 1]

The script and the visuals don't match at all.

There's lots of subways in Toronto, so animating flourecent lights outside the window in a dark tunnel wouldn't have been hard at all. When it comes to storytelling in movies, showing is more important than telling, and all this does is tell. I don't see any examples of what the scipt is saying, I only hear them. Maybe instead of the script saying, "everyone here has a story...What will my story be" you could have an advertisement on the subway wall showing various figures of success, with a caption at the bottom saying "What will YOUR story be." This would let us have insight into the main character as we see his reaction to the advertizment. He could show feelings of being disgruntled or inspired, a conformist or a rebel, or just plain apethetic about it all. He could also perhaps look around at the people around him, looking at their quality of clothing and the objects they're holding, such as a wedding ring or baby food. This would let us see their aspirations/daily lives. If you don't have a voice over script, and instead give the watcher the clues to what's going on in the story, they'll feel much more engaged, and willing to put their mind into what they're watching as a result.

Also, you might want to put a Preloader in your movie so it doesn't loop :p (Remove the spaces from the URL)
http://www.newgrounds.com/downloads/p reloaders/

enh264 responds:

Hey, thanks for your comments I really apreciate it. It is still a work in progress, and I am still working on adding all the details now as I wanted to have all the scenes done first. And I agree with you that the quality of the visual and sound matters as much as the story itself. I'll edit some advertisements in there as well which would engage viewers emotions. And last, I still need to ad the sound effects and some camera shake to the scene inside the train and go through some color correction.

The scenes took me a while to create, I was wondering if you could give me an idea or example of a different script or some change to what I have now, while keeping the same movie?

[Stick Man]

THat's so cool. It's like he's about to go into the guy's mouth, and then he turns into a robot, and then he goes backwards. You should continue this, or make his explode somehow.

theo1231231 responds:

Thank you, so glad you liked it :)

[crow the magician]

First of all, you'll want to put a loader on:
http://www.newgrounds.com/downloads/p reloaders/
(Remove the spaces so the URL works)

Secondly you'll want to put sound in so that we can understand the character motivations and the story arc. I understand that he changes, but why does he change, and why at that time? Is it to get to work? And if he gets to work, why does he go back immediately, and change into a bird? And why does he drop the watch? Is it to give to the poor so they can be more fortunate? The art style is pretty good, and is only going to get better with practice.

urbanninja3 responds:

he travels through time at the end, that's why it loops. he does give a poor person a watch, that he origanaly stole from the jeweler that the poor person turns the watch to. It wasn't ment to have sound, but I can re-write the discription to explain that.

[Bunny Hospital]

My internet is pretty slow, so I couldn't watch it. Why don't you go here and put a pre-loader on it:
http://www.newgrounds.com/downloads/p reloaders/
(Remove the spaces from the URL so it works)

Without the ability to load it first, a lot of people aren't going to be able to watch it.

Rantdog responds:

thanks for that. good to know!

[Tales of the Jesusaurus]

I laughed

Short and sweet. Good humour too. Overall, very nicely done.

[Wolf]

I can't help I was born a metaphor either

When I saw the wolf-man, I thought to myself, oh dear, another furry. But the dialogue between the two really was great. Really awesome, actually. The main thing I would change would be to lower the volume on the footstep noises, or at least change it depending on how close the camera was to her feet. The last footsteps in particular were too loud.

[Sleepless Ep.1]

Acceptable, but a few things need fixing

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.

Sci-Fi responds:

ok... hmm lets try to do this point for point. what i meant about my art style...i meant that i draw that way in real life. to be honest its really hard for me to try to shake out of my usual style of drawing. the only time i clean up things is if i'm cg'ing it and then i ink it. but i try to do most of these drawings with only 2 steps. by that i mean basic outlining, and then going over that with the actual cleaner version. maybe 3 times would help? i'm also not really sure how the clean lines would of helped the file size, but it might be my inexperience in flash...tho i do know what function your talking about, it really does take some style out of the art, because it basically conforms everything to a more unified shape. this for me would be a greater sacrifice.

as far as story plot. i write a great variety of different types of stories. and as far as formula's, i could very well have just fallen into ones that i use often. i agree with you there. and Sin's plot isn't as bad as it seems now. though just saying that is no excuse. i realize i may have introduced his character's plight as "oh no i got no memories!!!", but thats where i messed up, with the emphases! the amnesia plot is not important at all and has nothing to do with the main story. i think that the melodrama is a taste, because i absolutely love the lines(i'm a bit bias i know) but i think you mite be having a problem with the delivery of the lines. if so, also a taste thing. because there were also alot of people who like that style of delivery. for this type of animation, where its serious, people judge the voice acting alot harder than that of a comedic animation, where you can get away with anything. about the timing. you hit every nail on the head. you are very perceptive and right. and though i said that i thought that type of melodrama would appeal to a certain type of audience, i absolutely did it for me. its almost exactly how i wanted that scene to feel. depending on how you like your stories would probably change the way you viewed certain scenes. other than that. yeah i'll be forcing as much plot into as few lines as i can for this and the next 2 episodes, because the majority of people wont view the extra's and read what i wasn't able to put into the actual animation. so i save the time, and someone kill the pacing. it bothered me too, so i cant blame you. i hate that scene completely.

and thank you. i'm really really glad that you .liked the music, and the placing, because above all, i pride myself as a musician rather than an artist. i find your comments after this, though very well thought out and expressed, a bit contradicting to the lines where you say "dont make it for anyone else"(not actual quote) i loved every voice, and even though there was a hell of a lot of complaints, they for the most part arent changing for these characters. hopefully people will warm up to them, i think they may seem a little unusual to people not use to this style of presentation(voices i mean) again the 2 you point out for voices further prove my point that, comedy can get away with anything. sure a voice actor is considered great when they can over-exaggerate comedically. but when its dramatic, people tend to frown to it. its a taste issue. and yes when you think to yourself..."would these words be said like this", i say yes...for these characters.

i know i had spelling errors and grammatical errors, and diction errors because some lines didnt even match lol sorry i'm actually ashamed.

yeah over all i consider this the best critique i've ever, and probably ever will have gotten! i really appreciate it. i also hope that my reply didnt come off as arrogant or me just making excuses for my own work. i really do hope to improve for next time. and i feel flattered because the way people are seeing my animation is basically the the "bottom of the best" which i dont mind. anyway thanks again
-Sci

[Akira the Don - Hypocrite]

Awesome

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.

[Stickman on Google]

Could be better with improvements

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.

Super-FZL responds:

Well, it wasn't a serious flash. Just experimental.

I just wish I had flash at home so I could disover my full potential.

[Moving Line 4]

Strange

Kind of like the things I make only different.

sunburn-zebra responds:

Yeah,I saw your videos after you replied they're pretty similar.