Van-pl's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Me Bill]

Humm, suprisingly good

Seriously, I've seen some experimental movies recently, and I categorize them and throw into two bags. The bag with label "mindfuck" and the bag titled "another stereotypic pseudo-conformless emo shit". Well, after watching I couldn't thow your submission into either of them. It's very unique, and it's standing up from the 'averageness' crowd.

In one hand you have very good, entertaining character design and animation at decent level. On the other hand, you've avioded all that crap, you might fall in, while watching other exp animations. You did amaizingly good character background- especially for the Bill. You avoided random randomness. Of course, some actions were random, however it didn't interrupted your main flow of thinking and it (that's how i felt it) turn out tottaly your way.

Also, you weren't any one of those 'genius-artists/scenario writers', who have shit loosening of 'great' ideas. You really made it an intimate experience, for example by throwing your pictures at the credits. When watching, you really get that feeling, that there is a living person at the other side of the Monitor.

great work, keep it up!

[GunChest Episode 05_02]

Intellectual and emotional shallowness

I've followed by the GunChest series since the first episode, and beacuse of sympathy to all the amazing 3D work you did here, I holded my opinion, guessing, that your plot and character development are still warming up. But here came the episode 5, and you still hasn't made any progress in that matter(I 'aint saying about any audio/visual aspects, beacuse in your league you're the absolute champ). It's stupid teenager Power Rangers and dragon hairy Balls influenced movie. It's so naiive and childich, it hurts soo much.

I also don't know, why everyone is so under-valuing their vote and throwing 10's and 5's all the time. Is that series so deep, emotional touching or giving to think, that you giving away the best score whole the time?

I bet you wanted this to be something really cool, addicting and all, but (maybie to archive the wider target audience, dunno) unfortunately, you put it through the meat machine, and made an "Instant meal". It's tempting, I know, "just wait untill it loads, and you have cool, disobliging childish fun 4 all, just click the damn link already".

Okay, to the audio/video stuff.
I'ts obvious, as I wrote earlier, that you are totally professional at that narrow 3D animations niche, and as along some flash artists use 3D spontaneously, you're propably my favourite among them. One flaw I see in your visuals are that you use too much jpg (I know, you cut the filesize, whenever you can), but you could give them a bit lesser compression, then your movie won't be a mix of hi-res vector/prim animation with crappy pixelated jpeg backgrounds.

The biggest thing I appreciate in your movie is that you went through such great effort to make double dubbing, i'm literally moved, how greatly are you devoted to this series.

But i'm sure you already know this from the previous comments.

Overally it isn't bad afterall, but all that plastic and unrealistic dialogs, stupid arguments between Black and Bee (fuuuck, Bee's propably the most irritating character, ever), this looong, and boring long fights, where you know nobody important will die, or anything, it all makes me feel real anxious in waiting, that you'll FINALLY put something, aside from humansXrobots, that will be true satifsying entertainment, leaving you hungry for more. Sorry for the long sentence.

Keep up the good work and plz, I know they're robots, but try make the characters less artificial and plastic.

6/10 3/5

To the devoted fans of GunChest series: Don't press the 'red minus' button, just beacuse i gave this flash something other than 10/10 and 5/5.

[The girl who dreamt of...]

Good start

I can't say it's bad, it has its strong points.

Idea of sad fable is quite likeable. Hovewer, while watching, you get that sad, funspoiling feeling, that you already saw something like that earlier. That means, your fable is awfully predictable.

You are an really promising Flash artist, however you must improve your craft. Animations were choppy, they had many missing frames and all that shit. Since you've decided to minimize all visuals to the girl, the bird and the ground and show them in two colors, you could polish up the animation.

Oh and one tip for your future works: if you once decide to draw the characters with pencil, stay with your decision. Or with brush. I personally prefer the brush, cuz it shows your sekching design.

Music was nice and amusing, kudos for that ;)

Overally it was good 3/5 6/10

Practice, practice, practice!

[Fallen Angel Ep. 1 (Pt1)]

Oh shiiit....

Oh man! Incredible! I thought the Fallen Angel:Teaser, i've watched over 4 years ago was a lone concept, a skill test of yours! Back then I was like tottaly amazed by your work.

When i Looked the "Fallen Angel Ep.1" title of the submission, my heart just started racing like crazy! Immideately I've watched the part 1, and then, still thrilled I launched part 2, so my review will cover them both.

First impression you make is really great and stunning. The story flashback back to 9/11 i found very nice, the concept of the comics-image was the best choice for the movie like this.

I liked, how you polished your movie to every single detail! The idea of showing the nuclear retaliation between countries contrasted with the lazy sunbathing on the beach on the nice sunny day was an excellent concept! Frame by frame is very good, the pacing is very fluid and not choppy, which is awesome. The EMP charge causing total chaos, making you watch with opened mouth. There is more tons of stuff i found great, but I guess many pepole will have them also anyway.

I won't comment the story, beacuse i'm still waiting for the part 3. :D So far it's excellent and I can say it's far better than any real Holywood political-fiction/appocalypse movies, i've seen lately.

Sound and music is excellent, you didn't leaved the watcher with no seconds of the 'deaf movie', there always were some subtle thrilling ambient pouring out of the headphones. Kudos for your sound-buddy for that!

Your action leading is almost perect, your cameras and backgrounds make you a real good director! (Her scared eyes, when the car was flying down)

At the ending, I belive it was worthwile and overally an MASSIVE work, but please, try make episode Two earlier than 2012 :P

5/5 10/10 Keep up, dude, you are one of the best Flash artists here!

[Custodial Catastrophe]

Enjoyable

The whole animation from the beginning was quite interesting and pretty random

There wasn't much of a plot here, but it's still enjoyable, and you've shown that you don't need hell of a story to make the watcher interested and amused. You've developed quite good and funny ideas such as cleaning stuff with beard.

Sound was pretty enjoyable too, not something awesome, but still at decent level. And unlike many flash submissions it had good quality, so I fully enjoyed it in a full headphones. Only flaw here is some noticeable echoes in voice tracks.

Animation surely went awesome, the nuke explosion was totally nuts! Also I liked thy fire and the colouring, they were definetly adding points to atmoshphere. Only thing i found weird was that the enviorment and stuff- it all cast a shadows, except for the character. It make him look really 2D and flat. Of course every frame-by-frame animation was truly professional.

Very good, I've enjoyed it a lot, especially totally random ending :)
9/10 5/5
The cigarette was quite an cliche.

VillainousTurtleSLC responds:

Thanks for taking the time to write a review, Van-pl! Have a good day!

[Shinukoto!]

Quite tough

This movie is quite tough to interpretate your point you made with this movie. I watched it yesterday to have some lolz, and after a fat contemplating i came with conclusion, that I have to watch it again, this time by taking it seriously. And it kina helped me.

But whatever. Animation was INCREDIBLE, you have amazing talent to draw anime and stuff. The ending scene was truly a masterpiece, i was moved what mood and atmosphere you've created back there.

Sound was awesome, yet by watching it second time i found it somehow psychadelic. Especially the ending music made entirely with voices. Staying in topic, the voice acting was great, she sounded wafully sweet, which made nice contrast and kinda bold the hypocricy of the suicide topic among the japaneese society.

Now, to the controversial part.
I'm very into Japaneese culture, so I didn't found out this disturbing, such as some pepole here do. But it's quite interesting, how you show the whole suicide stuff. The rope-suicide part mixed with hot short yuri scene with two girls kissing made me think. Also, when cute fan-service cat-nyuu is getting pwned by the bath tap, instead of frying herself with a toster.

At first glance, the final scene may seem pointless and psycho-fun-spoiling, but it has it's important meaning, makink the point for the whole masqerade with suicide methods. It's showing something really important and simple, that pepole who actually commit suicide, don't recieve a chance to even understand how important the life is. That's why i liked it soo much!

Overally i think, that some pepole give it low score, beacuse it's their taboo and it's thier natural defensive reaction to the matter they need to take more objective, and from the angle diffrent than catholic.

Cheers, and keep up the great great work! Lov ya!
5/5 10/10

[Madness: Bar Brawl]

Ehh...

Well.. Graphically it aint' bad, you had nice idea with expressing emotions and whole new idea of madness, as the guys had continous bodies. Also, you gave here a hell of an frame-by-frame animation and I understand it really was a hard-timer, but...

It made absolutely no point at all, some fhucked up guys flying/shooting randomly in every direction. Also pacing was too fast, and i understood maybie a half of the movie.

Animation is kinda not-cool, beacuse you don't feel the "flow" of characters walking, shooting and dying.

Yet, the biggest flaw in this movie is that you don't feel violence soaking from monitor, which is the essence of madness.

You made madness, but purely in negative meaning of this word, offering nothing else beside that. Too bad, really, it had a potential!

[Covenant of the Sword]

Oh Shit

True piece of animation from such a legend, as you are. I loved the blonde haircut. I simpy got no words for that. Just awesome!
10/10 4/5

[Intruder Returns]

Dude...

'Twas very effective, i'm truly amazed, how did you shaped out all those dust effects, scars on every items and stuff. Gunfire animation was absolutely perfect, as great as movement of the pepole, which was so smooth and realistic that i actually belived it was a real's person shadow back there in the smoke.

Your perfectionism in all those tiny details and effectivness of a fight is both a great feature and a flaw. I belive that making dynamic movies in flash, authors do some incredible work, by making animation balanced. It's no point in drawing a simple 1-2 sec scene in one week or more, beacuse your beautiful backgrounds fade away faster, than you can even interpretate them.

Second big flaw was that whole action was predictable, and very pointless. You should make something that actually have any plot. Even movies from the Madness series have some silly background story. If not the graphic quality, then what could you sell with this movie? If I made the same movie with the same actions but without graphical fireworks and stuff, the score of my movie would oscillate somwhere around 3,4.

Overally: You made something, which only pretended to be something big, beacuse your movie in my feeling collapsed under it's own weight.

Well it leaves the vote: 7/10 4/5 Keep up the good work in the future :)
Powodzenia!

mmankt responds:

I wrote in my comments that my aim was to achieve great animation and graphics quality. It doesn't pretend to be something big, and it haven't collapsed.