Psychopath's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[STARBARIANS - Episode 3 (April Fools)]

It might not be a real episode but it's still excellent. I really like the retrograde comparisons of past artwork, showing how far you've come & the difference in attention to detail you put into your work as opposed to five years ago. I actually had to take screenshots of both just to look at the differences and they're all pretty subtle, apart from obvious things like glow effects and layers of shading. It really speaks to how the slightest changes can make all the difference & it also speaks to the growth of the author.

The jabs at motion tweening & GoAnimate were great. The only things missing were the hand puppets, crappy 3D animation and popsicle puppets.

[Anxiety]

He's afraid of a computer fire burning his house down but has no qualms about running across moving vehicles, jumping into a ditch and jumping through glass?

[Blockhead: Episode 9]

I didn't know you were a Malkavian fan. What's your favorite discipline to use? My bet is on obfuscation. It'd be impossible to beat it without using auspex, which is why I typically never pick from clans without it.

[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.

[SOMNIUM]

This is so 90s.

[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.

[Suction Cup Man!]

Funnier than the actual South Park show these days.