Psychopath's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Scarlett Johansson Nudes]

You're pathetic.

Yes Eddache, "It's too short" is, indeed, a legitimate complaint. By all means, this should have a lower score for just that exact reason. If the prospect of someone complaining about the lackluster qualities in your movie are enough to scare you off then you're a massive puss. Ericho's review was fair & kind & you regurgitated it as if he kicked you in the balls. I'd hate to see how you'd respond to truly negative critique, which is what I'm about to give to you now:

#1: The animation and artwork are shitty.

First & foremost, why do your characters only ever have three fingers when it's widely known that three fingers is not a stylistic choice of studio produced content but rather a budget cut? Your movies aren't dependent on a budget at all, you make them on your own & in your spare time, that means you don't have to answer to anyone nor do you have an actual deadline, which means that taking such a shortcut is nonsensical & fucking stupid.

Furthermore, why is it that whenever your characters clench their hands into fists they always cup their thumbs underneath their other four fingers? Hell, they even punch other people with their hands clenched like that even though in reality it would break their thumbs; the thumb is supposed to curve over the other four fingers, not under. Hell, that's something that people learn when they're in Kindergarten.

It appears as though you don't even know how to properly use Flash. If you do, then why is that freshly opened soda can bent to shit? Oh wait, I see, you didn't use the Oval tool to create the top of the can with with but rather the paint brush tool, the amateur's animation tool. And are you really so lame as to use a white to transparent radiant gradient to simulate light? I guess you had to, after all the shading on the characters face suggests that light is coming in from behind him rather from the monitor, despite the fact that the monitor is clearly the only light source in the room. I'm not even saying that the use of gradients is the problem, it's how they're being applied that blows; perhaps if you used a linear white to transparent gradient to convey the light beaming at him rather than this miniature star lookin' shit clamped between the monitor and the character's face, then it might be fine. But no, wait, then we'd still have to problem of the nonsensical shading to contend with.

Oh, and motion tweening? Really? It would have taken you only three frames of frame by frame animation to convey him extending his arm forward, but not only that, the way it's done suggests that his forearm is twisted at a 360 angle because it's origin point is jabbing half way into his arm. The monitor stand suggests that we're seeing the monitor from directly behind the screen, but to the right it's angled to look it's facing the character, so which is it? Don't tell me that this guy just has a fucked up monitor that's curved into a hump, that's obviously not what you're trying to convey here. Learn some perspective.

#2: The programming is lame and uninspired.

It's becoming more & more accepted by this point that, unless you're using copyrighted content in your video, if the author doesn't have either CPM Star ads or the NG API ads installed into their movie that the author is relatively ghetto in terms of understanding the absolute basics of action script, even despite the fact that the NG API comes with instructions on how to install it. If you don't care to make a legitimate attempt then why should I care to be nice? There are no controls for operating the movie, that is to say for pausing, rewinding, fast fowarding, returning to the menu ect. Hell, even I program keyboard commands in some of my shittier Flash submissions and I'm regarded as one of the shittiest authors on this site. At least you have a preloader set up, but I wouldn't be surprised if that were an uphill struggle for you to pull off with all things considered.

#3: Inb4

Before you try to retort my critique by critiquing my content, please note that ad hominems do not a solid argument make.

Eddache responds:

Ha, oh you. Writing a full blown essay of severe critique, ripping apart every square inch you can, for a 15 cartoon about a man ejaculating all over himself.
But, I'll assume you're also talking broadly about my work in general, not just specifically this. So I'll do my best to respond to your points.

Length-
There is absolutely no need for this cartoon to be a second longer than it needs to be. What is there to be added? The character sitting down and starting up the computer? Him standing up at the end to go for a shower? It was just intended to be a very quick and silly response to the nude pics with no need for further elaboration. There is no predefined limit to the length of cartoons so there is no point needlessly stretching out for time. My original point was that the frequent complaints of "It's too short" drives these short silly cartoons to other places like YouTube where no-one cares if it's short. In fact, it often works better. So Newgrounds could be losing out on great super-short toons because commenters are unhappy that it wasn't longer. Things can be too long and drag or too short and miss the point, but more often than not, toons are as long as they need to be.

Hands-
It's not a budget cut. I can afford to draw 4 fingers & a thumb. It's a method that makes hands easier to draw. Hands are tricky, I guess because they're so recognisable that flaws are obvious. So cartoons give them sausage fingers so that gestures are clearer and easier. But with big fingers, it often means losing the extra digit. It's a stylistic choice many adopt, myself growing up on Looney Tunes saw it all the time, along with giant eyes and noses.

Deadline-
Technically I do have a deadline. It's when my free time runs out. I have a life that I don't need fill up drawing perfectly proportioned anatomically correct bodies. I'll go out on a limb and even say that no-one gets that anal about it unless they were being professional. I think everyone can tell I'm not a professional.

Brush Tool-
The amateurs animation tool? Hah! You better tell all the top artists of Newgrounds because I think most of them use brush tools! As for the oval tool, or the line tool in general, that's a much lengthier process which I only really employ for cartoons such as Edd Egg.

Light & Shading-
Yes, I used a shortcut for lighting. And the shading was actually meant to be a glow, but in retrospect that wasn't clear. I guess that means I won't be winning that Tank Award.

Motion Tweening-
Hah! There it is. I was waiting for that. I'll be the first one to tell you I am not an animator. Nope. I just make stuff I hope people like. Some miss the mark and some get a lot of positive feedback. Ultimately, I hold content in greater priority to presentation. You knew it was meant to be his arm moving so job done. It could have been animated better but I'm not trying to be Disney here.

Programming-
This whole bit is laughable. I don't see how programming knowledge is even relevant artistically. I don't care about ads & I never use controls (I'd just watch it on YouTube if I was that bothered). In fact, this was meant to just be on YouTube so I just lazily threw in the NG preloader thinking I doubt anyone will care.

Overall, many of your points are correct. I'm not great artist nor a great animator. I'm not a programmer at all and really only use flash as a means to make silly things that some seem to enjoy. My interests in animating have wained anyway and I've made more and more shortcuts in production, but still with the aim of getting the content across.

Your critique, while correct for the most part, seems to wish for more effort poured into something that really doesn't merit it. And also over-the-top about extremely minor points that no-one really cares about.

I would argue that you ought to learn some perspective too.

[Super Slumber Party]

You know what's specifically irritating about this new, retarded and essentially broken video player you guys have? Youtube is better, most of the videos that are being uploaded through this player are on Youtube and Youtube videos can be embedded into an SWF file. The saddest thing is that a Youtube video player actually has more controls and options than this Newgrounds player does, so it's completely pointless. In fact, allow me to relay instructions on how to do it in AS;2.0:

#1: Create a Movie Clip Symbol that's height and width proportions are equivalent to the Youtube video player.

#2: Create a black box using the rectangle tool without the outlining, select the black box and hit CTRL + B. Alternatively, if you have the Object Drawing setting off, then the CTRL + B step is unnecessary.

#3: Click the first [and only] frame in the timeline of the Movie Clip Symbol, open the Actionscript tab and input the following code;

this.createEmptyMovieClip("video_mc",
_root.getNextHighestDepth());
this.video_mc.loadMovie("http://www.y outube.com/v/7QD6V9ZEo8o&feature=g-u-
u&context=G2b62625FUAAAAAAAPAA");

#4: Replace the HTTP code I used as an example and replace it with your own Youtube video.

#5: Bring the movie clip symbol to the main timeline and center it with the frame; since you're embedding the file, you can change the height and width proportions of the Movie Clip Symbol without corrupting the contents therein.

Done. See how easy that is, additionally you can make money from both the NG API and from Youtube's ad revenue system, where as with this Newgrounds player neither can be accomplished.

Ultimately the problem isn't that it's broken or it just lacks features, the problem is that it removes ingenuity from the content creator and creates a bland, brick in the wall system with no originality or thought process invested toward the programming aspect thus affirming that ignorance is not only permitted, but ideal.

*Middle finger*

[Ninjas]

I might be able to like these if they at least had English subtitles. You'd have a wider audience if you did.

And really with all of these submissions you're littering the portal with, it's somewhat disappointing to not see you monetize them with the Newgrounds API, AdSense, CPMStar, StuckAds, MMD Cash, Funny-Games.biz, MochiAds, Ad4Flash, Kongregate, Paypal Donate buttons or something. It's frustrating really, especially since the content is entirely original and you could do it.

I would complain that it's black and white, but I'm gonna let it pass on the pretense that it's black and white for stylistic purposes, but what I will complain about is the unnecessary widescreen crap that you don't need; either enter in the height/width proportions that fit the movie's actual size or if this is what it really looks like when the right height and width proportions are entered in, remove the black brackets from the top and the bottom. No, it does not make it look theatrical and it doesn't compliment the quality of your animation, the reason why such a thing as widescreen exists is because everyone's television screens are not proportionate in height and width with the films being played on it, so they format it like that so the whole movie can fit on the screen, but since this is a SWF file on the internet, that means that the file autofits with the screen which is also the reason why it's required that you type in the height and width proportions of your SWF file into the submission form on Newgrounds, so they can adjust the page to fit the movie. I'm sorry, but it's always annoying whenever someone decides to do that to their movie.

mileyniko responds:

mmmm si ya se como les digo a todos pido disculpa porque sinceramente no se ni 2 palabras en ingles asi que no puedo poner subtitulos...ahh y lo de blanco y negro osea era que me gustaba dibujar haci igual ahora ya lo modifique http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/594028 aca te dejo una animacion que hice ayer con mouse (porque se me rompio la tableta je) esa tiene color y todo....y lo de la anchura y la altura es algo que me acostumbre a dibujar asi no se porque (igual todo lo que son los dibujos y animaciones estoy aprendiendo todo solo apretando todos los botones je es que aca no hay nadie que enseñe nada de flash.... y hay muchas cosas que me decis que la verdad no las entiendo porque ya te digo no se mucho sobre flash y no entiendo un monton de cosas je muchas gracias con tu aporte y tus opiniones!! la verdad fue el comentario que mas me gusto espero quesigas viendo mis animaciones!! saludos y un abrazo!!1

[Knowledge is power]

Meh.

The problem with this story is the poor narrative structure, if I didn't read the description then I wouldn't have known that this demigod was named "Athenos" or that these bipedal creatures were "Huminods"; the film shouldn't have to rely on a description alien to the actual content, it should speak for itself.

I find it strange how Athenos materializes a book and he just hands it to them without teaching them how to read it, so I'm not surprised they tossed it to the ground. Avatar of knowledge my ass, what did he expect them to do? Even if he tried to school them in how to read, they probably don't have the mental capacity to comprehend what they're being taught, they're basically neanderthals.

Overall, it has relatively decent animation with a decent message with a interesting premise that ultimately crumbles apart due to the poor writing execution given certain plotholes. The movie has to be sensible first before I can even take the symbolism into an account, because if I were to disregard such qualities that would mean that moronic abominations like Animatrix are deserving of praise.

Impkid responds:

You can see beyond some primal acts if some species are curious and have the intention to learn, or their potential is limited by their ignorance or stupidity, you can see that in nature. Well i think maybe you are right about that writing the story was a wrong idea. But after reading all the incredible comments of so many people, i think that i can say that "the short speaks for itself". Knowing about the names of the characters is something that people wants to know after they watch an animation that they like. I know it because it happened to me a lot of times before. That people named my characters because i didn't write their names, and that is just AWESOME but i wanted to them to know their original names this time, and i know that they can appreciate that.

Animatrix is an amazing performance of skills, wich explains a lot better the CONCEPT of the movies, by strong and powerful sequences of animation. I don't know about your animation criteria but, i suggest you to be a little more open minded. Thanks for your comment.

[The Steven Seagal Show #2]

I can't remember the last time I actually had this much fun watching a Flash movie brawl, I think it might have been Madness Depredation and I was eleven when that first came out, that was seven years ago. Funny thing is that most of the animation here is motion tweened and I've never seen anything that was motion tweened this well, almost to the point where I didn't even notice it. The reason why I almost didn't catch on to it was because it uses a mixture of frame by frame animation mixed with motion tweening, for what it's worth it was pretty well balanced.

Nowadays, whenever I see a Flash movie brawl, I'm pretty much trained to expect lame ideas like people just endlessly smacking each other across the room or ripping off fight scenes from other movies; when Seagal grabbed that emo kid by the hair, I was half expecting to see an Indiana Jones ripoff through means of ripping out the emo kid's still beating heart. To put it shortly, I was expecting an utter lack of technique and creativity in this fight scene and I was pleasantly surprised to see something fresh, even if it was an almost unbalanced fight, but it's the execution that matters, not the premise. Even a mop-up fight can be entertaining if there's a sense of challenge to the dynamic.

[- The Wedding -]

Meh

First problem above all is that the dialog outpaces the mouth movements. It appears as though the reason why is because the audio is playing at a different frame rate as the animation, I can tell primarily because the audio is in sync at first but quickly derails; I tried lowering the quality settings via right clicking and selecting "low" from the drop down list, but it was still out of sync.

That tells me that you have the audio file set on Start mode instead of Stream mode and I think I know why; when it's put into stream mode the audio has to adjust to the frame rate of the movie which means it'll crapify the audio quality, so you set it to Start mode to increase the quality standard.

The proper way to remedy this would be to import the audio, set it to stream, adjust the framerate settings in the FLA file to the same as the animation and export the audio as an AVI file, this process will reduce the framerate of the audio to the same framerate as your animation, this way, once you reimport the audio as a WAV file, the audio will sound crisp and pristine after being put into stream mode again.

You see, the reason why it sounds like shit in stream mode now is because when the audio's framerate doesn't match the FLA files framerate Flash is forced into compressing it so that it will sync up, putting it on start mode will allow it to move at it's own framerate and effectively go out of synchronization with the animation.

Beware my instructions though, Flash likes to export huge AVI files. You might end up lumping a 1 to 2 gigs of artery clogging goodness onto your hard drive. After converting it into a WAV, delete the original AVI.

[-The Guardian-]

Pretentious, plagiarised & poorly animated

Let's start with the plot; the plot surrounds this "guardian" who's looking for a successor, because why? Why does he need a successor? Is he dying? What prompted him to do this & why is it at all necessary? How about some fucking exposition? Furthermore, why does he check someone's heartbeat to detect their valor? It would have been more intelligent if he had brought a squeegee with him & collected the sweat off the kids forehead just so he could assimilate the kids pheromones, but I guess that wouldn't have been as poetic now would it? Wait, did I say "poetic"? Sorry, I meant "pretentious".

So after he checks his pulse for his valor he decides to take the kid flying over the sea & through the mountains during winter to have a party with all the other aliens... Can anyone say "The Snowman" or "shameless plagiarism"?

The biggest hole of them all is the antagonist, I'm expected to believe that he just sat there the whole time during the guardian's absence just so that he could try & corrupt the guardian's successor, because why? Ignoring the sheer lack of exposition & motivation, this has to be the dumbest tactic for tying to attack your enemy ever.

Let's analyze this, surely the guardian couldn't have found his chosen successor on his first try, if that was conceivable then why would he have to check your pulse to evaluate you? So obviously this took him more than one try to accomplish. Additionally, let's consider the matter of distance, obviously he had to travel far & wide to find each possible successor because he chose a secluded area to make camp. The antagonist has every opportunity to drag his ass over to the pine tree & steal the oracle or whatever it is. So, why doesn't he? If the guardian is his enemy then why not strike when he's most vulnerable? He can't possibly be scared of the guardian, he outright assaulted and took him down with a spear within the first few seconds of their fight. Why does he give a shit about corrupting the guardian's successor? Sorry, but 'adding insult to injury' is only as poetic as it is intelligent, by which I mean it's pretentious; why would he expect the kid to listen to him? He ruined his party and potentially killed his buddies, the kid couldn't possibly find any benefit in listening to a guy who had already fucked him once, furthermore, the reasoning he gave to him is just retarded; "Take it, think of the power!" doesn't make any sense in this context, it's not like the kid has used it at all before and understands the depth of it's power, so the temptation aspect is completely absent. Additionally, if the antagonist really does have an understanding of the the oracle's depth & dynamic of power, why would he try to hand it over to the successor of his enemy and not try and take it for himself? I would understand if the author was against using dialogue to convey exposition, giving effort to try & keep the plot implied through visuals for the artistic challenge such as "The Masquerade" by Pahgawk, but NWL gives dialogue to the antagonist through text so that excuse is out the window immediately. Exposition would be nice.

Another thing I hate about this short is the protagonist. He's some useless fuck who does nothing & conveys no personality traits of interest; he's a Mary Sue character. I'd get about as emotionally invested with a used condom as I would with this kid, I wouldn't want him as a guardian of any kind considering how he stood idly by & watched as his sole defender got roflstomped & killed in front of him, which was the point where I stopped giving a shit about the protagonist's safety entirely; not only is he a schmuck & a vapid Mary Sue, he's also a coward. Fuck him.

The animation is crap, most of it is composed of 3 frame loops & unfinished ones at that, I think the core problem isn't the tool in use but rather the person using it; others such as TheSwain have shown competence in using the brush tool for animation, but NWL obviously struggled in using it & it shows; big gaps between frames & no shading to speak of. I recommend the line tool for future use.

NeroGeist responds:

Haha, I've been waiting for a review like this, didn't expect it to be so long though. Well here are my two cents on this. You sir, look into things too deeply! I mean seriously, I get that there are plot holes in it, I get that some things don't make sense, but I guess your too uptight for that kind of stuff. What I was expecting from this was some CONSTRUCTIVE criticism. All I got out of this was "I recommend the line tool for future use." Yeah, could have told me that BEFORE your novel of bitching about "oooh this thing doesn't make sense! I'm going to bitch and moan about it and make the author feel like a dumbass!"

But, regardless, you are correct on a lot of things. Yes, my lines are crap. Yes, the story doesn't make sense if you look at it in a realistic perspective. But think this, a lot of cartoons don't make sense if you look at it in a realistic perspective.

Well, I admire your trolling skills and view on cartoons, but in the end, you lost.

Have a nice day!

-Nick