redminus's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Super Mario bros Z ep.8 (old series)]

huhhh

This is not my thing at all, but I'll definitely give you props for the ambition and the commitment involved in making the sprite scenes work.
It seems generally thought that sprite animation is "easy" (so i've noticed), or at least "easier" than more conventional animation... perhaps there is less actual drawing involved, sure, but the planning and organization are of a different kind and easily just as challenging--granted, in different ways-- as other forms of animation.

So, nice work on some really over-the-top fight scenes using really traditional characters (can we say traditional, now that Mario and Luigi are almost 30 years old? Wow. Think about it.)

The plot was kind of hokey, I get that it's being grifted from an already existing series which in itself is pretty effing melodramatic/excessively epic, but even with that in mind the dialogue is suffering a LOT. Some of the few critics of this series have said so as well (and been shot down... how dare they challenge the masses!), but then again, this is a fanfic and what would a fanfic be without some silly out-of-character exchanges.

If you were to get voice actors to fill in, the dialogue scenes would be improved about 1000%.... as it stands, the samples from games used as cues seem a bit out of place. The vibe ALMOST fits that of an in-game cutscene, so I can see what you're going for, but to me it really seems like you have to make a choice and push it to one extreme or another: full-on real-life voice acting, or completely traditional in-game format, ditching the closeups and so on.

Good work in fostering a series that earns nothing but adoration, though!
This is almost unheard of nowadays on the internet.
And if you weren't certain about whether the time spent had paid off, check out this formula:

Providing that the movie is 5 minutes long (and i know that it's longer, maybe even double that.... then again, not ever view yeilds a complete play so this might be a fair analysis):

At the time of this review, it's recieved 350,000 plays.
multiply that by 5 minutes, and that means that juding solely by number of plays, it's been watched for a total of 1,750,000 minutes.
Which is equal to 29,166 hours.
Which, in turn, would be 1,215 straight days... and further, just more than 3.3 years.
So basically, the amount of manhours spent watching this are equal to one person watching this on repeat without sleeping for almost 3 and a half years.
And in about a week and a half.

That is so crazy intense. No matter how long you spent working on this, your creation has in turn soaked up more time than was spent to make it, by a considerable degree, in virtually no time at all.
To me, that's always been a strong sign of artistic success, or if the "art" is debated then at least a good sign of the success of entertainment. And being an entertainer is harder than being an artist, let me tell you.

I'm rambling now, though.
The most important thing about all of this is that it means that you have a very interested audience, and evidently you've been doing a good job with keeping them intrigued.
Take advantage of the momentun and you won't let them down with your next installment!

[Splash Attack]

FFFUUUCCCKKKK

omg what.
I was so ready to be disappointed by the fact that this was originally submitted 2 and a half years ago, but god damn it's so accurate and awesome. The fact that it virtually goes on forever is even better.
I dunno if it was just me but the quips that hapened later made it even better. "this bitch be trippin all up in your grill magikarp!"
"team rocket...??"
ET CETERA ET CETERA.
so rad.

[Losing Track]

Really good

My ONLY complaint was the length, but animating is a painstaking, time-consuming biatch and who am i to presume that this was intended to be an epic feature-lengthfilm fest entry in the first place, so whatever.

The use of color was awesome, I really enjoyed the minimalism in the animation and how it established a real sense of feel with just some sparse audio and small amounts of actual motion. The sky in particular really worked, to me. in some small way it reminded me of Glassy Ocean, which is one of my favorites.

To me, this was all about style and atmosphere. GREAT SUCCESS, SIR

Rutger responds:

Thank you!
I like minimalism. Still I feel a little awkward, since I can see why people complain about the animation. But like you said, it wasn't meant to be a super epic long movie.

[Schmooper-Schmeroes]

amusing

This was awesome, not as smooth and polished as the last one of yours that was up here (cupcake was it?) but as this was for a contest screening time was obviously an issue, and your previous stuff is evidence that you could be capable of cleaning up the rough parts if time were less of an issue. or so is my guess.

excellent concept, i loved how weird alternate forms of the animals were and as usual your style of animating really brought out their characters.

PS, That sounds like an awesome bar if they screen animations once a month.

The few asshats on here complaining that there was no violence or pornography are literally the dumb jocks of the animation world... most of whom don't have the drive, interest or ability to create anything themselves and therefore have no place complaining whatsoever.

TheBoogley responds:

Ah redminus, I just checked out your userpage and love your drawing style :)
You are right about the bar, it's fantastic. Always screening weird locally made short films or music clips, they have an experimental music and video festival on next month! :D

[Squeak]

awesome

a really good showcasing of how flash-based animation has a place outside of the confines of the flash player. I immediately had questions about your process and order of operations, which parts came first and what was trimmed up later etc etc. which is a good thing, i think, because the more questions there are, the better a job you've done at achieving your goal without showing the "seams".
in short, really cool. maximum props.

gene-goldstein responds:

Well, I made an animatic first, which was set to a different song, which you can see in my deviantART gallery. Then I filmed my hand doing stuff while watching the animatic to know when I have to do those motions. It took a few tries to get it close. Then I threw the edited video file into Flash, and animated almost the entire thing frame by frame. Then I put the video file and the swf into After Effects, added sounds, the reflection on the table and tracked the cheese. I did some other stuff, but I don't remember. Then, I simply exported it as an FLV, put it back into flash and added a replay button and such.

[Telefrancais collab]

!!!!!!!!!

oh my god, this was pretty much straight amazing.
i remember being forced to watch this show in french class when i was 11 or 12, and even THEN being like "what the fuck is this trippy shit on about?!"

though its kind of an obscure premise for a collab and i think you'd kind of have to have grown up in canada to get most of the jokes, at least for the most part (correct me if im wrong as i actually wouldnt know?), the overall quality is really good and everyone seemed to unanimously capture how absolutely bizarre and unsettling the show was on it's own to begin with.

great job, all.

[The Crew Talks Art]

JEEZ

this is really amazing. i loved the family-guy-style akward ly paced banter with all the newgroudns cliches thrown in. the arrows that pointed above their heads when each one was talking was a nice touch, for example, and the parodying of NG's non-stop cock obsession was pretty on point. 5/10 FAVORITED. AND I NEVER DO THAT.

KartuneHustla responds:

OH thanks man!!! I feel SPECIALL!!!!!!

[Crotchless Chaps]

PHENOM

this is really funny. easily as good as stuff on adult swim, like i love sealab 2021 and the brak/spaceghost stuff and this is easily on par. awesome man

[WTF_Action]

omfg

just straight amazing, too bad you cant seem to enlarge the flash size, my only complaint is that it wouldve looked (or "felt"?) even better if it were larger.

all the same, great energy and awesome directing style. i hope there's something more that follows.

andreasng responds:

ah ok. yeah i blocked that sorry. i didnt think people would want to crank it up, since its flash and... yeah ok. sorry. but thanks for the review.