Masquatto's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Who Wants Turkey?]

Not much change...

Hey. I'm the guy that said: "Looks like we got a review responder here. :] Cool." in a previous review. This time I probably won't go into as much detail, because it seems that most of the visual and audio work is basically the same. It's nice like the last one, but I still don't see masking on the blinking, the mouth animation is still funny looking, and there's still spots where there should be easing and there isn't (or the value is set so close to 0 that it's not noticable, but that's unlikely; if you really need an example -- the green space bird's eyes when he looked around). You asked for me to tell you if you've improved, and well... the answer is, "not really," to be honest. :[ I've yet to see any noticable differences between the quality of this piece and the quality of the last. Sorry if it's a little harsh, but I prefer to be honest about critique. :0 Most of the changes aren't too hard, just some masking here and some easing there, but I think it could really make your work look nicer. Again, if you need help or want to talk about it, feel free to contact me. :] Keep working on it.

JKR responds:

Well thanks for the honesty. The main reason you may not see much in the way of change isn't because I didn't listen the first time, but because I try and do a cartoon a week for FredtheMonkey.com by myself, and that usually takes all of my time. So I just haven't gotten around to implementing the things you mentioned. Except the tweening. I did put that in. I swear, every single motion tween had it there. But like you said, the value may not be high enough. I think when the tween is only 5 frames long it has to be 100 in or out otherwise you don't notice anything. Perhaps one day I'll up the framerate to 24 or something, but for now I'm just trying to make the cartoons. I appriciate you being honest though. I think I can sum in up best as I plan to continue making these toons for a long time (if all goes well) so I guess I'm okay with improving little bits here and there instead of all at once. You know what I mean? But it is still great to hear constructive feedback like you wrote, and I'll continue trying to improve slowly over time (as soon as I have some spare time to implement things!)
Hopefully the quality of the cartoons is still at a level where it is enjoyable to watch, even if there aren't vast improvements every new cartoon.
I'll keep working on it, and I hope you'll keep writing these great, well thought out reviews. They really are extremely helpful. Thanks!

[The Touchtone Genius]

Heh. That was rather amusing. :}

The touchtone genius was delightfully and randomly insane, which is great, with a funny voice and a funny ending line. It was a tad short, though.

[littleFoot]

Beautiful.

Hate to sound like a fanboy, but here goes...

Graphics: Stunning, really. I've never seen better visual work done in Flash, even from TV shows done in it. The backgrounds look good enough to be framed and hanged on walls, and the animation itself it fluid and spotless. The visual aspects of the movie are put together with such detail that I wonder as to how you can stand to work that hard on a freely-distributed movie. The perspective, shading, shadowing, and backgrounds--key factors that usually weigh down Flash movies--were done flawlessly. You used Flash 8's blurs very well too, which seemed to be difficult for a number of animators. The -only- thing you could do to make it better is up the frame rate on the characters' movements (I noticed that). It appears you used the same technique Synj does, which involved working in a high frame rate for camera movements and the like, but still animating characters at 15fps to save time on the fbf work. The average viewer probably didn't notice, but I did. :} Even with that, I haven't seen anything more visually pleasing on this web site than this movie. Props.
Style: Of course it's stylish. It's Brackenwood. If you took any frame of that movie that other than a frame of faded black, I would instantly know it was your work, without even seeing the rest of the movie. Your movies are just done at a level that is unsurpassed in the Flash animation world; nobody even comes close. Yours movies show a level of perfectionism that I truely appreciate.
Sound: You did a great job on the sounds. A few places were a bit more silent than I'd like, but everything was used correcly, and the musical score fit perfectly. The fact that you made it yourself is a big plus.
Violence: Eh, not much in that department. Obviously, it's not what the movie was about, so it didn't affect your overall score.
Interactivity: -
Humor: A few parts were chuckle-worthy, but most of it wasn't all that funny. Again, I don't think this was totally your main focus. I think your plan was to introduce a story in a visually pleasing way, and that was accomplished without jokes.
Overall: A wonderful movie. It's top in my favorites list, and I doubt it will go down for years, if ever.
Truely inspiring.

P.S. Adam Phillips, if you're reading this, I'm the one that emailed you about home viewing of the swf file. Apparently your NG version is protected too. >.< Ah well. I suppose I can work with the movie navigator, glitchy though it may be.

[O.N.E.]

Hm...

Well, I can't say I liked any of the songs, or found the story to be interesting at all, but the visuals were definitely very nice. You should try to aim towards something with some plot direction, and better songs... your music choices were old and annoyingly mainstream.

[Our First Halloween]

Decent.

Graphics: Well, the faces were good, and the rest wasn't bad. Coulda used more shading and shadowing on the characters, backgrounds, and objects, though. The mouth animation definitely could use work. Some movements also seemed abnormal in a few places.
Style: The anime style wasn't all too original, and Jo's chest was way too prominent and exaggerated. Just nothing really stylish or fresh about it...
Sound: It was all good, except for Jo's voice, which sounded like it was done on a bad microphone, different from the one Smiffy used.
Violence: -
Interactivity: -
Humor: Amusing. The garbage thing was a little comical, and the fat kid was funny.
Overall: You've still yet to come up with a truely unique style. However, your biggest concern right now is Jo's mic. She needs a better one.

[BadGuys3:BatteredMonsters]

Dude!!!

The things that made BadGuys great are those funny groups of weird people. This one was just a guy handing out candy and yelling at halloween characters. Major disspointment. :'[

[Joan and Mark]

I'd describe it as "fun."

Easiest way to do a strongly analytical review is to break it down into categories. Here goes.
Graphics: Very nicely done. The camera movements, character animation, and background art was done very, very nicely. Only problem I could find was the lack of shading and shadowing on the characters themselves, so that docked you a point.
Style: It's an appealing mix of anime (which I'm usually not too fond of) and traditional style animation. The characters, their expressions... they could all be related to both American and Japanese styles. Very nice. The movie's overall style itself was good too; solid story and well-developed characters.
Sound: The song's music was definitely catchy, though I can't say I was too fond of the singing. To me, it seemed a little repetitive (might be because I couldn't understand it), and it was clear that it did not rhyme almost all the time.
Violence: Wasn't really the aim, obviously. There was a little bit of blood, and some still shots of hits near the end... In any case, I don't think violence was a goal with this, so I didn't have it affect the overall.
Interactivity: -
Humor: Very, very midly funny. As I said, it would be described better as "fun." The only part that really gave me any sort of smirk was how the spider was acting.
Overall: A solid work. It was upbeat and enjoyable, and was very unique. I'd recommend a better song, making it a bit more funny, and adding shading and shadowing to the characters.