GamerTheory's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Fight]

The animation is good, especially the 3D-ish rotation. Seeing as how this is practice, I can forgive the lack of a story or smoother art or anything, but do try to use higher-quality sound effects in the future. The music is all right, but the sounds literally hurt my ears. You can record your own sounds or just search Google till you find something you like.

Also, you may want to select a song that matches the length of the animation. Either that or cut the song when the animation ends. It's a fun song, but letting it carry on after the apparent end just seems unprofessional to me.

DillonBrannick responds:

Thanks for the review.
I'm trying these days to put in rotating camera movements, although at times it does get tricky and confusing, I'm sure I'll get it eventually.
I'm planning to start recording my own sounds as soon as I can get a decent sound recorder.
As for the song I did what you said and faded it out near the end.
I love constructive criticism it's what it's all about, thanks.

[The Rolling Stone 3]

Honestly, I hate blamming things because I believe all creators deserve to have their content seen, but this animation is completely pointless. I detect a heavy dose of sarcasm in your description, and, well, I have to wonder what you expected to happen.

The animation is the same few frames repeated endlessly to extremely loud music that ends while the blobs keep on running. The art could have have a simple charm to it if anything else was substantial enough to hold any kind of appeal, but honestly, I wouldn't have enjoyed this no matter how nice the art was.

A quick glance at your user page shows that you're capable of better things than this. If I may ask, what drove you to post this kind of thing? It's detrimental to your reputation, if nothing else. I'm paying for Internet by the megabyte on a horribly unethical 3G plan, so any animation I watch has to be worth what I pay. This wasn't, and it makes me not want to watch any of your other animations, which I'm sure are a lot better based on their ratings. But I won't watch them. I don't feel confident that it would be worth the money, this being my first impression of your work.

I like to assume the best of everyone, so I won't judge you based on this. Please, though, don't do this kind of thing to yourself. Posting a low-quality thing like this does more harm than good, even if you were trying to be funny.

[Wrinkled Thoughts:The Kid]

The art in here isn't too bad, though I'm not sure a homeless stoner would have perfect teeth.

The voice acting could use a lot of work. Both characters lack sincerity, or that aside, humor. It sounds like they're reading a script rather than speaking naturally. As I'm not a voice actor, I can't advise you much on how to do better, but a thing we writers and artists do a lot is leave our work alone for a few days before posting it, then we come back and look at it with a clear mind. We get into a rut when we're working on something, and we call that tunnel vision. Taking a break clears said tunnel vision.

Go back to your animation after a day or two and listen to your voice acting. If you're not convinced by it, chances are your viewers won't be, either.

Next, the logic could use some work. The stoner's advice doesn't make the slightest bit of sense and I'm not sure how young I'd have to be to believe it. Chances are, if I was young enough to believe the guy, I'd also have been too young to know what a C-section was. If the guy's that stoned, his logic probably wouldn't make sense anyway, but a kid almost certainly wouldn't believe anything he said, much less come to him for advice in the first place.

The ending wasn't surprising. The stoner demanding some kind of compensation was entirely predictable. I didn't see it coming, which is a good sign, but when I saw it, I wasn't surprised in the slightest. Generally, with twists, you want your viewers to say, "I can't believe I didn't see that coming" rather than "I didn't see that coming." Most writers know that, and I'm willing to bet you did too. However, I think something should be added to that. You want your viewers to say, "I can't believe I didn't see that coming!" with passion and with either a huge smile or tears starting to flow. With this animation, I barely raised an eyebrow.

The animation itself is smooth, but slow and obviously tweened. Characters don't gesture as would in real life and their movements are just off in nearly every way. For example, blinks should be super-fast. I shouldn't be able to see the frames of the eyelids going down or coming up. I should only be able to see they eyes fully open, fully closed, and fully open again.

The music, I have no comment on, as I don't think I'm experienced enough in how music works with other elements of animation to give you any worthwhile feedback.

Though I hate the star rating system and wish I could just give feedback without having to assign the degree to which I liked or disliked this animation to an abstract pseudo-numerical value, Newgrounds forces me to. You do show promise, and I'd like to see how you improve in the future. Just--don't pay much attention to the star ratings. They do nothing for you but make you feel bad when they're low and good when they're high.

[iPhone 5 Ad Parody]

While this wasn't a bad attempt, most of the humor fell flat due to the monotonous voices and slow pace. Right from the beginning, we expect nothing but bashing on the iPhone--which is fine, but the problem is that there's not a single thing in here that I didn't expect. Since I expected all the jokes, they lost their humor, and really, while Cyanide and Happiness is funny, it's not a copy-paste formula.

It wasn't a pain to watch though, and it has its entertainment value. The art was simple, yet smooth. The voice acting, while monotonous, sounds like you actually spent the money on a decent mic, which is good.

I think you'd be much better off bringing something (relatively) new to the whole iPhone parody table. A lot of possible humor lies in comparisons to Android, monthly phone bills, and Apple's music DRM.

I don't intend to judge you based on one instance of plagiarism, but please refrain from copying Cyanide and Happiness (or anything else) so directly in the future. If you can't think of funny jokes on your own, perhaps you're better off writing more serious Flashes--which isn't by any means a bad thing. Also remember that the best humor is often the most unexpected. So writing serious stuff and then having one hilarious joke in the middle of an otherwise-dramatic story could really improve the individual quality of said joke.

I've gone on way too long. If nothing else (or if TL;DR), just don't plagiarize.

MistyE responds:

Thanks for the review

[The Noob Adventures Episode 11]

This had me laughing and wishing Minecraft had hitting-zombies'-heads-with-shovel sound effects.

I really couldn't ask for much more from TNA. The humor was spot on, the Wilhelm scream was classic, the animation was great, and the voices were top-notch. As usual. Please continue making these movies. They're a great inspiration to me and I'm sure that's an opinion shared by many.

[Terraria Heaven]

I am now three times happier from having watched this. Also three times as likely to buy Terraria and Rhythm Heaven. Also, the reporter girl is just way too cute.

I know very little about either game and very little about animation. There's motion tweens, but they're used right and the animation flows naturally. The only thing I can find wrong is that there's no replay button. And with a song and video as catchy as this, a replay button would be very welcome.

[The Virtual Fighter]

There are so many decent stick fights on Newgrounds that you really have to push yourself to stand out at all. Unfortunately, this one doesn't. On the upside, it gave me ideas. And you know what they say about ideas in Inception.

Anyway, the first thing I noticed was that your speed lines lacked any feeling of motion for some reason. Once, it felt like there was movement, but that was once.

Second thing I noticed was that the dust from the guy sliding along the ground didn't even look like it came from him sliding on the ground. I'd suggest showing the guy fly a little ways, hit the ground, then cue the dust, so the viewer can see that the dust wasn't there to begin with.

I feel like the special effects come and go too fast. They have almost no impact, it seems, and no significance. I'm not quite sure how to explain why I didn't like them. I think that's the best I can do. No impact. Too fast. Insignificant.

The music gets going and the battle ends. Generally, don't you want your music to match the length of your movie so the climaxes are simultaneous, therefore providing a more compete feel to the animation as a whole?

Finally, the credits. Having your name be the only one under every category could be funny if done right, but it goes on too long. If the credits were 5 seconds, I'd like them more. As it is, you could just write "Everything" and then your name.

DJFyatChoonZ responds:

Tl;DR bro!

[SHORT No Knives Allowed]

The last animation I watched didn't have a replay button when I wanted to replay it, and this one doesn't have an ending when I want it to stop.

On the animation itself, the lip syncing is decent. Not perfect, but decent. To make it better, I'd take the sound file, see how long it is, and match the mouth movement exactly to that time.

The animation is mostly stills, and what movement there is, I have no complaints about.

The voice acting is all right for how little of it there is. It sounds just a little fuzzy, but unfortunately, I have no idea how to do it any better.

The other sounds work fine. No complaints.

It's been said, but if you're going to submit an animation this short--especially with no preloader or ending--it must be funny. And it's not, really. I won't talk muchabout comedy theory here, but generally, humor comes from the unexpected or the out-of-place. I expect that knife to go straight into that guy's eye, and that's what it does. I don't laugh. If the knife had been sniped out of the air and the knife thrower shot next, that would have been funnier because I wouldn't have expected it. Of course, there's a lot more to it than that, and doing what I said and nothing more would still be fairly lame. Like voice acting, I'm not sure I could do much better.

RainDash responds:

I also don't find it funny :)
Well I didn't expect such a helpful rewiev, thak you!
Ye, I will have to learn how to add replay buttons and stuff