Van-pl's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Across the Universe Ep.2]

Damn

I'm sad beacuse of the enormous wasted potential in this movie.

I became fan of it since your first installment, "Delusions of Grandetur". But since then, you propably got lost in the snow with the concept. The plot of your film was painfully standard, shallow and turned to some random shit happening. You didn't really managed to recreate all that atmoshpere of melancholy and soliture from the first episode. All that was left was supposedly "thickening" plot and action.

I didn't liked that this guy and him being extremely naiive. The girl was smug and arrogant, but i pretty much disliked all that boasting about how the gravity suppresing gun is fucking awesome,OMG OMG I JUST CAME. Meh. Let the watchers develop their own opinion, don't force it into them.

So, summarizing, plot was pretty pointless, it lacked the cause-effect link. The acting was horrible, the voices were good, but totally unfitting to what we saw. All that running into window and other quick action scenes lacked the speed, and "kick", i didn't really felt those scenes.

Going to animation/gfx, i found this massive amount of 3D really fucking repulsive. I mean, srsly. Movements were choppy, the people sometimes looked more like a dolls, you really need to work on recreating emotions, lip synch and all that crap.
What hurt my eyes mostly was inconsistency of character drawings and overall lack of detail in scenes. One time they looked nice and stylishly posed, while in others they lacked anatomy very bad.
Backrounds really could use some polishing, buildings didn't have almost any details, and looked more like a bunch of boxes, it was especially painful on the close-ups.

But you had some virtues in your movie. The voice acting was pretty decent, the music was really awesome. Also, i bet your story is really good and could kick some balls, but so far you didn't really let us have a taste of it. You barely and vaguely introduced the watchers into the Outerverse and its creatures, but still it don't make any sense, more than "I don't know what the fuck is going on, but hell, as long as we're running it doesn't matter".

I'm pretty disappointed at this third installment of your series, but it doesn't mean i'm not curious and won't watch next ones. I really belive in you, that you can make it a great series, but you need to really work on it. I'm still looking forward into next one :)

good luck!

3/5

crystalpencil responds:

Thanks for the review! Based on what alot of people have said here, the story needs some revamping. I'll definitely take that into consideration for the next installment. As far as the 3d goes, this would not have been made if I had not gone in that direction. In all of my previous submissions the comments were about the lack of animation etc, so with the introduction of this method the majority agree it has improved a little bit. For now its back to the drawing board.

[Lucky Day Forever-trailer]

Nice

Nice to see that you've been hired as a professional animator and given the opportunity to make something serious.Traditional animation in Poland isn't so popular as a form of art, so its future is really up to young generation of artists, such as yourself.

I just wonder if you want to animate this whole thing in Flash..

Good luck on your work! Pozdro!

[Meet Larry]

Niice

wow, I must say im impressed.

Story is great. It seems like a random everyday shit at first, but when you unwind the story it's greatly directed. The sence, hidden in between phrases is greatly and subtly presented. It's great that its actually a short serious story hitting hard, not some wussy emo bitching about world.

One more thing really worth noticing was your voice acting. It suited the movie suprisingly great. I could say you have another talent worth developing further.

The only flaw was the graphic side, character design and backgrounds could use serious polishing, the detailed car model on a vectorised bitmap of background looks awful. I bet that even the simple siholuettes of buildings could do the job better. Noir graphic should be a play of light and shadow, in your work however you use mainly diffrent shades of gray.

Well, i'm looking foward to see more of your works. Cheers!

MonkFlash responds:

Thanks alot,

Yeah I know there is much to improve.
I'm taking the feedback here,
and we will see what kind of interesting creations will arise in the future.

Glad you liked it

[the Last of the Dashkin]

I'm speechless..

It's so nice to see that the legend is back, kicking ass! Right now, the current score of the movie is more than 4.80 and it's far away from being licking-ass score.

Your character and storyline truly have matured, naturally evolved into something else.. The true face of the Bitey you've revealed is really fascinating, and I'm really looking foward to unravel the story you're writing right now.

Speaking of mature, new thing in your animations is the narrator, who is doing a really good job, letting you to fully jump into your world. Music is reaching it's highest class, fitting in perfectly. That alternative song to the typical Bitey theme is really something else.

It's good to see that you've stopped doing heavy, overetailed scenes that had always took you something near forever to finish. Instead of this, in your art you nearly perfectly balanced form and detail, only prooving us, that you have matured. And animation, fluid and natural as always.

Truly, in this two years of your absence, many things happened on newgrounds, many people have shown awesome stuff. But you came, after those two years, and again became the unofficial king of the Newgrounds.

You're creating a legend, good sir.

5/5 and anxiously waiting for the great story to continue. :)

[Towel Boy]

Go to your fucking room, NOW!

That was freakin hilarious, as always you made my day!

Humor and ideas aren't on "cement" or "knock knock" level, it's still you, and it still rock balls!
Every time he said "touch my towed" i lol'd hard.
Keep up the great work!

[Skull in Connemara]

Well

For an introduction to the theatre play it's great! While watching it I thought of some medieval wood carved illustrations, there the characters and siholuettes of pepole are also "massive" and "carved in wood". Of course its atmosphere has something to deaf movies from early 20's, since only music was heard.

I loved the thick, mysterious, book-like atmosphere you've created. I bet the play itself was awesome with such nicely done prologue.

It's fairly good and entertaining ;)
4/5 8/10
Ah, cintiq! You lucky bastard!

TheBoogley responds:

The cintiq was a gift from Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, he gave us all $900 for easter.
Something about the economy going down or something...

[Bunnykill 4]

That, sir, was fucking awesome.

Well, it's great that awesome series like Bunnykill, Fallen Angel, Madness or Retarded Animal Babies are still continued and with time they tend to get even better and better! I bet most pepole nearly forgotten the BK series, and *poof*, you came back kicking ass with killer continuation.

Action was intense, animation was fluid and stylish, drawings were clean and awesome and the plot was fairly good for that type of submission.

You put large effort into this aniamtion and from score (now it's 4.65) I see it's greatly rewarded. You maintained level of animating, plotting, ideas and action at the whole movie, there were simply no weaker moments, awesomness is soaking from the monitor from every scene, at every moment.

It's stylised very retro, old-school carnage in all-shiny and stylised graphics, the last scene with showdown was the example of it. From the storyline you from beginning will suspect that some kind of interaction will occur between SnowBall and the Ruby (bunnygirl). It's all fairly predictable and you didn't do anything new and unique, but it's still old good show, plus animation, music and style of yours make the watcher want to watch all old stuff once again. And yet, the watcher still enjoys it as much as the first time he did.

Splendid job, I'm already anxious to see next BunnyKill installment :)
5/5 10/10

[cupcake?]

Nice!

It's very nice, animation is very cool, and I like psychadelic flashes like this one.

The "pixelation" effect you've made is totally awesome, also dualism of what you present is very nice and gives your mind a thought of parallel realities of what is real and what we want to see (that's my interpretation thou).

Music was also awesome, but you could work even more on the audio mixing beacuse the interruption of the rythm is quite annoying and don't allows to fully enjoy the show. I don't now if it's unintentional or some "scratch mixing" did on purpouse but I disliked that.

Nice animation, keep it up! 4/5 7/10

TheBoogley responds:

The audio mixing was clumsy because I don't know anything about music, next time I'll get someone to help me. This was just a quick animation I made in a few days, I didn't think it'd catch on like this :)

[War, Snow and Fire]

Suprisingly disapoiniting

I looked at the score and WTF-d. The mere thought of getting my balls crushed by incoming awesomness from such hi-scored submission made me shiver. I was very disapointed after watching.

I expected something totally fresh and sucking in. I prepared for a trip to unknown lands. And what?All my hopes went into shit.

Your movie, even if nicely drawned, stylised and audioed (hay Harry!), was repetetive, predictable and utterly disapointing.

Story was intriguing at first, but later became yet-another independent anti-war artist personal thoughts put into motion. Too bad that most artists(including you) have suspiciously same interpretation of war.

Ultimately, you've created a "touching" animation with no substance, which didn't gave me anything to think about, with shallow dragon alegory.

You had nice idea though, drawings are very stylish and nice. It's VERY decent piece of flash, but not legendary and propably won't be remembered as newgrounds very part of history.

I guess the score is so high beacuse of the "chain effect", dull pepole who don't have their own opinion, share it with others, giving away 10's and 5's. For me, it's worth about 4.20 beacuse it's still the great piece of work, and you should keep flashing!