Sekky's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[DVP: Soul Vengeance]

Brilliant Artwork

I'll start by congratulating you on the still artwork. The various walls, bridges and other scenery drops were amazingly drawing with impressive attention to detail, and they slid into perspective perfectly and seamlessly.

The voice acting was realistic and expressive but could have been improved with a hiss reduction. Your sound effects were synchronised and atmospheric and blended with the style of voice and with the background music.

Usually in a movie with artwork that is of such a high quality the animation begins to lack, but the animation in this piece was stunning. Not only the frame by frame animation of the main character's movements, which is a seriously impressive sequence, but also the gradients of the stormy weather changing brightness. The walking animation of the character when he first seen I thought was a little extreme, but it isn't a big problem.

The plot I'd say was purely generic, if I can even say there was a plot at all. I'm not sure if this plans to expand as a series but it a quality piece of animation in any case.

[The BlooKat]

Mellow And Entertaining

Ok, there was really no plot to this movie at all. If there was humour there, I missed it. I think this just passed as an example of your drawing techniques which I like quite a lot, some good lowlight techniques there.

The animation however was lacking significantly. Mouth movements and subtle character movements were there, but sparse. I did like the perspective changes accomplished by foreground tweening though.

Although there were no sound effects (perhaps a plus, I've yet to decide) the funk beat was very fitting towards both the drawing style and the atmosphere of the movie itself. It sounds as if you could have composed it yourself but there were no credits to suggest so. Kudos if you did.

On a more technical aspect, there was no replay button or end screen, it just stopped black. I think this should be fixed.

The originality is there, the concept is there, I think this could prosper.

JamesLeung responds:

There is no Plot its all Random.
Thankyou for the advice.

[Blanco y Negro]

Cool Atmospheric Piece

Although it's a pretty generic and lacking plot, it's not a genre of movie which gets attempted much in Flash. To be more precise, it was submitted a while ago and probably one of the first of its kind.

The graphics were there, but they weren't all that. Sometimes shading in black and white can be difficult as you can only use a limited set of colours, but I think your highlights and lowlights worked well.

The music was there, it really set the atmosphere perfectly. I though there were too little sound effects. Besides gunshots and creaks there wasn't much else. Having said that, the text instead of actual spoken words added to the atmosphere and made it much better. I think it would have lowered the intensity if you could hear him speak. I hope it was intentionally done the way it was.

In terms of animation, there was little to none. The occasional tweening and change of graphic forced this piece to rely heavily on simple change of scene and progression through backdrops, which although it was nice it may have benefitted from a little more effort.

Well done for trying something a little different.

[Murray the Monkey ep. 1]

Amazing FBF Animation

You have serious graphical talent, I don't know how long it took you to draw those cool FBF animations but they worked extremely well. Every fighting sequence included them and the movie flowed perfectly.

I especially liked the use of the still gradiented images of what was not being animated, they were drawn and worked very well and gave an effect to the movie I've never really seen before.

The sound was nothing special, just music, no effects, but in retrospect it may have actually damaged it to put some sound effects in, so I think it was better that way.

Although both the plot and characters were pretty generic, a lot of people use monkeys and saving princesses, I enjoyed this movie a lot and chuckled a bit at times and I will definately make time to watch the next installments.

[Behind the Portal: B]

Saying What Now?

Ok, this was short for a start. It had an original idea which I don't think you executed very well.

Virtually all your graphics were traced to vector horribly, even the bitmaps themselves would have had a smaller filesize than doing that. You drew little more than a few pictures, because the StrawberryClock wasn't your's either.

You must use the worst TTS program on the earth. It was far too fast to hear without the text being there, which was often out of sync and started either too early or too late, usually the latter.

The humour and the idea where both there, and the method of how he created B made me giggle, but then you spoiled the entire humour with the unnecessary swearing. You don't need to swear for a movie to be funny, and often it kills the rest of the humour surrounding it which was the case here.

Put a little more thought and care into your work instead of rushing an idea which would have worked much better if you'd taken a little more time developing it. There's no point to humour if it isn't presented well.

MacintoshClock responds:

1) I'm not the only one who uses traced bitmap backgrounds. Many other users, including fellow Clock Crew members, use this sort of background all the time.

2) I purposely made the voices a little speedy to make it funnier.

3) This is Newgrounds, not elementary school. If you have a problem with the swearing, I suggest you leave this site. Most of the movies here are intended for mature audiences who won't get in trouble if their mommies catch them watching a movie with potty language in it.

4) B is so cool.

[Knoxs "Mortal Kombat"2]

Unimpressive

A lot about this movie irritates me. All you did was simply import an movie file and dub over it with our own voice acting. The screen size was far too large as the actual graphics only took up a small portion of the screen. There was no need to make it so big. But rather that than enlarge it to the size of the window and create even worse quality than it already was.

Although the humour was there, and it was a fairly well thought out parody, it doesn't justify such a large filesize and doesn't show any graphical skill, or skill with flash itself besides being able to synchronise some speech in the timeline.

Perhaps I may have found it a little funnier had I actually seen the film, and I may have appreciated it. Films made from games are rarely any good to begin with, so parodies are obviously going to be limited. There were points I think you may have been a little desperate for humour simply to find something that would fit with the order of play.

You really shouldn't make any more of these, try and show you have a little talent in using Flash.

Knox responds:

at least you admited it was funny,ha ha....but still......SCREW YOU,just kidding,ok..what ever..but im not gonna take your advice..i mean you gave me a 2!...and you expect something in return?

[Incarnation part 1]

Fast Paced

When I watched the intro scene a couple of things caught my attention. Your strange style of graphics made the perspective of the movie skewed and most graphics such as the file cabinet and the desks just looked well out of place because of the angle you drew them at.

I thought that this did allow your loop animations, like that of the bouncing movements whent the clocks spoke, to be much smoother but weren't boring or repetitive to watch.

The intro music was annoying on so many levels. Although I'm not familiar with the song you used, it was out of key, time and was of extremely awful quality and unbearable to listen to.

The rest of the music didn't get much better, but you used a TTS program which had a lot of fluxuation in the pitch of the voices which was enjoyable to listen to and kept the movie running at a fast pace with no irritating stops between different people's speech.

The dialogue and storyline were well thought out in my opinion and kept the story interesting. The "artist's renditions" with your intentional misspelling and crayon style drawings were an original idea. The dialogue and graphical humour cooperated with each other well throughout the movie but it ended pretty boringly, even though it was supposed to be a cliffhanger of sorts.

I really want to see what happens in the next episodes.

MonkeyClock responds:

You're the first person who didn't like the music =O

[Floor of Mist and Rain]

Showcase

This just seemed like a showcase for your anime art which was good, but there was little animation in it besides some perspective tweening and a few facial changes. One piece of animation you tried, specifically the kali-yuga clip, was fairly jerky but managed well.

You seem to concentrate a lot on highlights and lowlights rather than shading in your graphics, something I liked to see. You also used little or no vector lines, using the pencil and pain tool to achieve all your graphics.

The music was fitting and created a background atmosphere, but the very little vocal content you put in there was of extreme awful quality.

The cliche white text on black background was a little irritating, because I've seen it used so many times before, especially since there was only one word used per blackout, something also overused but still a fair device.

If you do decide to turn this from an art clip into a movie I would support it and view it.

maxmao2002 responds:

that's a lot for me to consume, but that's a very sincere review. but in counter of the lack of animation, i really spend a lot of time on the guy spinning the pole, even though it breezes through in a second

[Incognito]

Stylish, But Short

I enjoyed this movie, the shading and lighting techniques were quite well done and helped a lot. The sticks were made with quality smooth animation, but I did notice some jolts in the walking animations of the guard people, and another little lag before that when the guy shot the people. Maybe it was just me.

The music was suspenseful and added to the feel of the movie dramatically. The sound effects were synchronised perfectly, the footsteps being bang on time with the sounds, no lag.

I noticed two typos throughout the movie, you may want to look into that and correct them.

The movie was a little short and didn't have any real plot to it, but what was there was quality. It may have benefitted from a few more changes of perspective, there were three short perspective changes which you could have exploited to be a little longer. I also liked the way you integrated the preloader into the first scene of the movie.

~Sekky~

[Mystical Odysee]

Interesting Graphic Style

You've labelled it as a trailer, but you didn't actually reveal any plot so it's more of a teaser.

Your graphic style was rare, you've not once used any actual vector lines, if you did I missed them. Instead you used pleanty of pencil lines in your characters, and no outlines to any of your other graphics, such as your flames and the like.

However there was little real animation in the movie, you seemed just to create two or three frame loops for the fire, grass and some animations of that character where his clothes were wavering. Other than that there was little change in the graphics themselves.

There wasn't much to say about the sound, the effects such as the explosions were nicely synchronised.

The full length piece of music, along with the pencil graphics I assume accounted for the unnaturally large filesize which could have been optimised easily. That, coupled with the fact that I don't like trailers or teasers all that much, brought your score down a little.

I also tolerated the blackouts with the white text, not to say I dislike it, but it is a little overused and generic. Although I can't think of a better way, so I'm not going to sway either way.

I will watch the full version if you decide to make it.

~Sekky~