Psychopath's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Ever Been On The Smiler?]

I never like it when someone just repurposes a video from their Youtube account to here. How lazy do you have to be to not splice out the "please subscribe!" segment of your video? It's a splash page of social media links that don't work because Newgrounds doesn't have annotations and of course you'd be too lazy to throw together a SWF file and god forbid you have to do two lines of programming to make your social media links actually work.

I was going to vote five on your movie until I saw that.

FoxyHazarDar responds:

Jesus christ. Does it really matter?

[Emo Fudd]

That was actually pretty decent. However, I can't help but feel it would've been better if it were someone else, like Yosemite Sam, Sylvester or Pepe. The emo scene doesn't really click with Elmer Fudd, but it's obvious why you chose Elmer; it's because "Emo" makes for a fitting replacement, but only on the verbal level. At the very least, a reference to the Loony Tunes opera skit would've been a nice touch, since that's about the only time Elmer shows lament for trying to kill Bugs Bunny.

I wish I could like this more, but something just feels missing. Something about the two concepts just don't make a connection, sadly.

thisisaok responds:

Nothing makes a joke funnier than over explaining it. Thanks!

[The OMNIS© Powerglove]

That was legit a breath of fresh air compared to a lot of things that tend to end up on the front page. It's really nice to see a cartoon that isn't completely fucking obnoxious for once, even better when the author actually appears to care about being entertaining, rather than soapboxing, lazily sputtering gibberish for a cheap laugh or edgelording as hard as possible.

It's great to see dark humor that isn't pushing for the greatest logical grimderp extreme and shows a bit of personality.

The only drawbacks I can remark on are the technical ones. The animation is storyboard tier & the lip syncing doesn't match the dialog half the time. The other half, the character's mouths don't move at all. It looks like way too much effort was centered on the filter effects & not on what really matters in an animation, which is the animation itself. The specific way the lip syncing is delivered really reminds me of the days when I used MS Paint because I didn't own a copy of Flash, how it's just an alternation of two frames; one with the mouth open, the other with the mouth shut.

I'll have to admit that it's not at all surprising that something this authentic came from an outside presence and not from anybody who has their roots in Newgrounds nomenclature or even the internet at large. If the otherwise were true, the people you credited in the description would be listed as authors with their own NG accounts, or at the very least the description would've been littered with social media links.

The pale color palette, the art style & the psychotic robot dog mascot are very reminiscent of early Flash movies & 90's cartoons. If I had to pick from each category, I'd say it's like Neurotically Yours blended up with Sam & Max.

Scrappo responds:

Hey Psychopath, thanks for your response! Your languemic systemic variables have been noted for future reference. We are inexplicably happy that you didn't find us "fucking obnoxious". It's true, we do care about entertainment. Entertainment to subvert the masses to bend to our will, teehee.

Tis true indeed that from Newgrounds venture forth not did we! I did post one film on here, ages ago, on a different account named after a villain from The Great Morano comics. It was about a cat, that fires lazers from its face.

But alas I'm rambling, let me address some of the animation notes. I honestly view this more as a detailed animatic, or something more akin to Neely comics where the focus is much more on the story and characters than the fluid animation. Plus everything looks shiny so you can almost look past it. Well at least some of us can, you psychopath! Boy is it fun calling you that.

You see the reason the animation is so incredibly limited, is because the truth is I made this on a 3 day sleepless binge as an assignment for a science class, and I also ended up using it as my final animated film for the year. Sometimes I do wish to go back and edit the movie, add more animation, but I have far too many current things to do to George Lucas myself.

I am definitely inspired by early Flash movies and 90's cartoons, so that would make sense. I'd say for this short in particular I was mostly inspired by Mickey Mouse himself, and perhaps some simpsons and invader zim.

Thanks for commenting on the film, we're really glad you liked it and it makes me especially happy to see people actually thinking critically about the work. Thanks!

[REBIDENT EBIL]

It makes me glad to see that people are finally realizing that this style of parody is completely unfunny garbage. There is nothing funny about giving characters retarded facial expressions & reducing every syllable in a sentence down to gibberish. What moron came up with "REBIDENT EBIL" for the title?

I can bet dollars to donuts that the only reason you took this key jingling approach is because you saw other hacks like Oney, Spazkid & Screwits do it with unwarranted success. It's like the olden days of fanmade Awesome parodies, only those were made in earnest fandom & not a calculated measure of coattail riding.

That would explain why instead of making jokes about things that happen in the game, you invent all new non-canonical shit that never happens. Why is Jill wheelchair bound? Why is Chris an oblivious spastic? In my day, parodies were written to satirize something that was true to the property in question. At no point do you satirize anything that's exclusive or even relevant to Resident Evil. You could've taken the same script and replaced the Resident Evil cast with wholly original characters and it would've made absolutely no fucking difference. You could've even kept the same character names & I still wouldn't have any way of inferring it ever had anything to do with Resident Evil.

What point is there in making a parody when the content is so utterly divorced from the source material?

PhantomArcade responds:

Definitely a warranted observation! Though I've also never been huge on parodies that feel exclusive to only fans. If I'm going to take the time to make a cartoon, I'd like for anyone to be able to have fun with it while also tickling fans. I would have liked to think that RE fans could enjoy it even with friends who don't know the source material.

Definitely something to consider going forward, thanks anyway!

[Sublo & Tangy Mustard #4 - Katy's Birthday]

Word of advice; in the future, it would help you a lot to set your Paint Bucket tool to Don't Close Gaps, because I see through each character like Swiss cheese. If your outlines refuse to fill after setting it to Don't Close Gaps, you may want to consider using something other than the Brush tool for your outlines. The way the Brush tool works is a major handicap, which would explain why your animation seems to run at 2FPS. Both the Line and Pencil tools are better, using the Brush tool is an amateur's mistake.

Other than that, respect. It's been so long since I've seen an author who's done a full series like this & make it past episode two. I didn't notice any flaws in the audio work, no reverberation of noise, so props for that.

Aaron-Long responds:

I've used Flash for years and I'm aware of the limitations of the brush tool and the 'Don't Close Gaps' setting, but for this episode I decided to experiment with leaving things a little rougher. Sorry it bothered you but it's not an 'amateur's mistake', it's a deliberate choice. I prefer the brush over the pencil, although really none of the drawing tools in Flash are ideal. The framerate wasn't affected by the brush tool though, as it's a video file not a SWF. That was just me not doing enough in-betweens for your liking.

[Lisa the painful RPG fan animation]

It was great up until the voice acting occurred, because the voice work was neither very convincing in inflection nor was it very present in general. In fact, the specific dialog given doesn't help, it comes off like a writer's first attempt at gravitas and it only serves to give the impression the author is an amateur, especially since this dialog entails an immersion breaking tonal shift.

If it were me, I would've presented the dialog as momentary breaks in the action, only occurring when Brad gains momentum in the fight and breaking out of it when it serves to his detriment; he loses focus and get's smacked back into reality. In fact, with that in mind, it would've been much more powerful if there was no dialog to accompany the hallucination, much like in the actual game.

The ending was too stylized in my opinion, nobody in Brad's group really gave a shit about him apart from Terry & Otto. That said, those bizarre, casual poses don't really reflect the tone of the game or the characters for that matter. If anything, Guan should be hanging onto Terry with both hands and Olan should be pulling back on Guan. The tears falling down from Brad's face was also a bit much. Not only is the ending goofy but it's also a poor attempt at subtle drama.

The fight choreography wasn't very good either, honestly. I had no idea what was happening when Terry used his "Hottest Dance". I only realized what had happened after the fact. The way I would've choreographed that would be to show Terry giving a running start before jumping at the unnamed bandit. If I hadn't played the game myself, I wouldn't have any idea what had just happened.

Another great example was when Olan fired his arrow and there was this dramatic pause before impact. If you're gonna do something like that which comes off as humorous, take it the full 9 yards and have a closeup of the arrow slowly reaching the guy's eyeballs to his inescapable horror or something. That dramatic hang time followed by a jump cut to a grey explosion just doesn't work.

Overall, the pacing was quite poor for the most part. The tonal shift between the fight and Brad's introspective hallucination is merely an example.

I dig the art style, for the most part. You did an excellent job in accurately portraying Brad's facial features. Everyone else, however, is just "I'm an anime character". I really wish you paid more attention to detail regarding hands, because reducing fingers to rectangles is something I used to do in MS Paint and it was very obviously done that way to cut corners.

You've got genuine art talent but I think you need to have a heavier focus on scene choreography.

One last thing, I don't know what software you're using but those JPEG backgrounds were pretty awful. Their shittiness drew my attention away from the action for the most part. I don't know if it was a deliberate compression thing or if you merely neglected to optimize your export settings but I'd recommend looking into that.

D-slick responds:

Thank you so much! I will be sure to take this in account in future animations.

[Murder Dream]

If I were your teacher, I'd give you an F since you thought these "animated" loops, each with only three frames of animation, make for a passable presentation. To be more in depth, tilting pages so the frames will sync in the proper positions without trying to hide it harms the presentation even further. No, it does not lend to the "honesty" of the artist, it lends to the idea that you're an amateur. Even better is that despite you tilting the pages together so they'd match, the characters still dance about the screen as they sit still, most notable of which being the cyclops.

Another sign of excellence is the constantly changing aspect ratio between the chicken scratch loops and dialog cards.

Speaking of the dialog cards, if not for them, I'd have no idea what was going on. You are completely lacking in the ability to convey anything using sequential art. If I were you, I'd fire your art teacher for his negligence.

linda-mota responds:

I'd be an F if I was in school for animation, though you are indeed right I am an amateur with animation. This was an excuse to slime into the creepjam, but it was fun. If I was toting this particular short around as the epitome of my body of work you have every right to call me the F student. Thank you for giving your time, but I think this stuff should be reserved for more serious stuff going after more respect.

[Baby Boy]

I like the style.

noiserover responds:

Thank you!

[HellSpawn]

Yeah, thing is that guns don't work on demons in Spawn. Violator made that pretty clear before he started pimp smacking Al Simmons.

That is unless these generic looking fuckers happen to be the monster cyborg people Twistelli made out of his own thugs like Tremor, in which case they should be mowing him down just like the Violator.

RebWasTaken responds:

I actually don't follow Spawn's story. Not even into superheroes or whatnot.
I only made this for a contest and I just like Spawn's appearance, this has no correlation whatsoever with the original comic.

[Pyromane]

Obviously "inspired" by Adventure Time or Steven Universe. I don't care which.

ZeTrystan responds:

Well, surely! I know everything about both those series, it would have been weird if I wasn't heavily influenced by them.

To bad you didn't like it! ;) And too bad you said you don't care. At least you cared enough to comment. *little kiss on your forehead"