helmutlord's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Red Ball]

We need more of this

I would have preferred not to have the ball spell out exactly what all the emotions he saw were. I enjoyed working them out for myself.

Rest of it excellent, but could have used a little more polish. Rough edges and sketchy style is fine, but you don't want to remind people that they're watching something made in Flash.

[Larry The Knight]

High potential

"Where's the enthusiasm?"
I think I can explain why people are feeling this. This is addressed to Sephor Rud:

You seem to be a good voice actor, the problem is instead of coming up with 'voices' for different characters, you're only coming up with 'pitches'. Main character is a medium pitch, that tough Knight is a low pitch etcetera

There's nothing really WRONG with doing that, but it means you have to keep Larry's voice at a constant pitch or it isn't Larry's voice anymore. When he's whining, I want to hear him go high - when he's angry, I want to hear him go low. At the moment he kind of pushes forward at almost monotone. It makes for very lack lustre listening.

I recommend coming up with some distinctive voices, even if you keep Larry's the same. Then when you're recording the voices, makes sure you do it when everyone else is out so you don't try and restrain yourself, really go nuts with it - experiment with many different ways of saying lines.

--

As for the actual style, I thought it was beautifully presented. I've never really liked the line tool, but it doesn't bother me here. The backgrounds are beautiful, you've managed to come up with something that is fun to look at without taking attention away from where's it's needed.

I love Larry's design. Now if only you could make a few more characters that match him.

[Street Cats]

Something wrong

I kept confusing by which cat was which. I think that's for three reasons:
1. They all have the same voice
2. You keep jump cutting between them, without any establishing shot
3. Matt Groening had a rule that said that if you have your characters in silhouette you should still be able to tell them apart. Give one of them a hat or hair or a chin or something.

The voice acting was alright, but it sounded a little bored. It kind of sapped the energy from the movie.

I hope you're not discouraged. I can see that this is something that could become great. Keep at it.

[Koden X Prologue Part 1]

Didn't earn loose

The visuals are loose and unpolished, but that's fine. I am of the mind that as long as you have a good story and the visuals are enough to tell what's going on, it's all good.

Unfortunately the story was either unclear, or generic. Sorry man. Either improve the visuals or the story to get a good score out of me.

[River Ob: The Project 1.0]

This is really well done

Let me tell you Calum, being able to make projects like these got me through some tough assignments really easily.

Even though all the information contained in here would have taken up about a paragraph on a piece of paper, it feel like several pages worth.

Keep it up. I'm very impressed.

The music suits it very well. Where's it from?

CazmoV responds:

Hey mate,

Thanks for the feedback. It feels great looking back at my work here. As for the music, it is Angels & Airwaves :)

[Forrrrest PREVIEW]

alright

Don't make me download 4.5mb worth of stuff, for about 100kb worth of animation.

It's nice, but with Shape tweening you really need to handle it at every stage so that it doesn't flip out like yours did occasionally.

Newgrounds is for completed works only.

Keep practising.

[Jackie]

Character study, without questions

First of all, I really enjoyed it. The adjective that jumps to mind is... masterful. Choose your favourite positive review, and I'll probably agree with it. Also, visually nothing new - but that IS a good thing. An excellent mix of polish emotion and style as usual.

Now, I'm a writer - I understand the importance of setting up a character arc, and then at the end either twisting it or not meeting it. It makes the audience think, rather than just coast through it. You've shown many times you well understand this principle.

However, I really wasn't a fan of this ending. There is nothing to think about.

She just doesn't change. Not in a 'I'll never get out of this cycle' way (like the original), not in a 'I'm so guilty I don't deserve a happy life' way, not in a 'I can't change now, but oh there's a glimmer of hope at the end' way, not even in a 'I've been happy this whole time' way (she wasn't). It kept building towards something, but then the ending robbed it of any meaning.

I also don't think it was enough of a punch-line to act as a joke, you created too much sympathy and made the consequences too real for the old 'Ha ha She didn't learn anything' line.

Now I'm only pointing this out because I reckon you were so close, not because you were way off.

[Saturday Morning Watchmen]

'Whoa' is a good summary

What did we do, us Internet folk, to deserve such perfection

[Sketchy Friends Dance]

I... can't stop watching!

Is there some trick to not spending hours at a time watching the damn thing?

But seriously, fantastic. I want to make my own now!
The eagle character at the back = worth making special note of

TheBoogley responds:

I also want you to make your own now! Get inanimating! :D

[HOSUE [sic]]

Loose

It feels like you had drawn these (admittedly excellent) caricatures, and didn't know what to do with them.

If you had have spent a bit more time working out what this animation was supposed to be, this would have been an easy 10. All points are for design.

TmsT responds:

I'll let you hang on to those 2 points andwork out what this animation was supposed to be for yourself. ;)
Making stuff up as I go along was fun for a change.