Blessing's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Princess Ruto Didn't Forget the Promise]

Art is decent in some places and not so much in others. The audio is random and pretty dumb. You should really warn people in the title or at least the mini description thing if it's a Games Grump thing. I hate these and would have avoided it if I had known, rather than zero bombing you. Because that's what I did.

gamegrouches responds:

That sounds like a "You" problem

[Abo and Karo Mini Movie Kickstarter!]

The animation here is quality stuff, like all of your animations, however I'm not blind to the baby-kissing-politician tactic of having a child completely unrelated to the project sit next to you while you ask for money.

Now don't get me wrong, you're using your talents to present animations and honestly it wouldn't be wrong for you to look for compensation for your time and effort. People often forget that making art is a job and, at the very least, contributes as much to entertainment as a football player who gets paid insane amounts, sometimes just for warming a bench. So please don't think I'm saying your time and effort aren't worth anything, but this video has left me with some questions.

Well, one question really: What does that $75,000 go to?

Over on your Kickstarter page you somewhat vaguely address this question, but I was hoping to get more information. You repeatedly compare the animation you're hoping to make to animations on television. Is this animation you're hoping to make with $75,000 going to be on television somewhere? If it's just a thing for Youtube then your reasoning seems a little suspect. Also you go on to say you need money for a recording studio. Wouldn't it be faster, simpler, and potentially more effective to find voice actors online rather than taking local ones or whoever to a studio? The voice work in this animation is already high quality and doesn't really need improvement, so the studio would presumably be for someone else. I believe you could cut that cost altogether and then you'd be able to lower your goal, which would work out better for everyone other than the studio owner. Additionally, the animation in this video is already great. Are you planning to have the 11 minute animation in a different art style? In the time you've specified as your deadline you could complete the animation on your own without the aid of a studio, so if people end up seeing an 11 minute animation with an art style like this video, they would likely suspect that you just pocketed the money rather than hiring anyone. Which studio do you plan to use, by the way? I would like to check out their prices personally, just to satisfy my own curiosity. I get that you want to pay your voice actors which is admirable, but even if you paid them $50 per line in 11 minutes I can't see that costing you more than $8000. And you have character designers as a cost. That's another thing that you could probably eliminate and cut your goal down a bit in cost too. You seem creative, I believe you would be quite able to design your own characters.

Like I said before, if you were saying "making these animations for you guys takes time and in that time I'm not making any money at all, so I would appreciate anything you guys are willing to donate" then I would agree. It's work and it's not unreasonable for you to get a profit out of it. But since you're very clearly stating that none of this money will end up in your pocket, I would really like a more specific breakdown of where all this money is going and I think anyone preparing to send you money deserves that. So if you could be so kind as to explain how much, specifically, you're planning to put toward each cost (for example "$21,000 will go to licensing sound effects, $11,000 is set aside to pay 22 different voice actors, etc") I feel it would go a long way toward putting any potential investors at ease. Thank you and good luck!

Sykohyko responds:

thanks for the feedback @blessing! We just posted a pie chart of all the costs on our kickstarter page and facebook fan page https://www.facebook.com/moolt

[ZTV News Episode 7]

This series is brilliant. You make 3 motion-tweened animations, copy and paste them over a 5 minute video, and with 20 minutes worth of "animation" work you've got a 4+ star video. Very clever. Even the writing is just a lifeless odd-looking woman thanking her fans and swearing. Probably finished in one trip to the toilet. This is arguably the most efficient flash series on the internet. Minimum effort with maximum returns. Kudos.

[Pico's Average Day]

This is more of a gadget than a movie really. I'm guessing you wanted to be entered for the larger prize pool, eh?

That said, "nothing too new or interesting" is really rather accurate I think, so I'll vote 2. The voice acting is nice and the art isn't too bad (though I think you should dial back the lines a little, Pico looks wrinkly at times). The animation is smooth enough but it's kind of overdone, as in the gestures are.... Well... There's a lot of unnecessary movement. It's like watching someone pick a coin up off the ground, but first they whip their hand high above their head and then whiplash their face down in front of it and wiggle their hips as they crouch and hop clockwise around the coin and wiggle their mouth like they're chewing and.... See what I mean? It should be one simple motion, but there's so much unnecessary extra tacked on. That's how all of these gestures you animated look to me.

IvanAlmighty responds:

I didn't do this for the prizes, but I do agree with you that this isn't a movie, I had more scenes that would have created a story but I didn't have time to finish them unfortunately, I wanted to exaggerate the poses, but some of the scenes have unnecessary motions, though others still feel warranted to me. I tried animating the words rather than the sentence and it's feel, but I agree with you, there really isn't much to this cartoon.

[Smash Bros Christmas!]

"As usual we created this cartoon in only 48 hours. Al thought it took us some extra days to polish the whole thing and work in the sound design."

Lol?

Then it was created in more than 48 hours. Is there something confusing about what that means? By your definition I created a flash in 20 seconds, but it's taken me a few weeks to draw the rest of the frames, put audio in it, and decide to someday submit it. But I can still claim it was created in only 20 seconds, right?

I wanted to like this flash. It's rather funny and well animated, but having both the author's comments and an in-flash voice lie to me about it taking only 48 hours (which would NOT include "some extra days") has influenced my vote.

[The fall of sonic]

This is so well done and SOOOOOOO accurate. I voted 5.

[A Kickstarter Video]

Interesting.

Here's what I liked:
-The animation was exceptionally smooth. I rarely see anything so smooth. Good work.
-The audio was really solid. Both the voicework and the music were really good.

Here's what I didn't:
-This wasn't very original. This joke's been done to death. I can even remember seeing the whole "with your help I can be rich" thing way back on In Living Color like two decades ago. This video didn't bring anything new to the joke other than screaming.
-The screaming. Humor comes in many forms. Sometimes humor comes from complete stupid nonsense (which makes me laugh), sometimes it comes from excessive amounts of violence or swearing (which makes me laugh), and sometimes it comes from clever wit (which makes me laugh). This attempt at humor comes from volume, in the vein of Chris Farley for example. Some people, apparently including yourself, believe that the louder someone gets the funnier they become. That doesn't do it for me though.
-The art was inconsistent. While the animation was great, when the talking guy started to scream the art style drastically changed. Ren and Stimpy did this well, but all of the imitators (such as this flash) just end up looking rather ugly.

Overall, this wasn't a bad flash, though it wasn't groundbreaking either. Above average.

[SpongeMen SquareWatch]

I hate Watchmen and I hate Spongebob, but there's no denying that you did a wonderful job combining them with this animation. The creativity, animation, even the voices were all spectacularly done. Great job, dude.

[Hey I'm Spider-Man: 2]

This was so stupid that I'm in physical pain right now.

RyanStorm responds:

Why are you wasting your time commenting then? CALL 911!!! You need to get to the hospital ASAP!

[Staven Universe]

I'm extremely confused. The art looks right, but no one acts or sounds how they would in the cartoon. Your author's comments make it sound like you're a fan, but then nothing anyone says or does is even close to what they'd say or do in the show. The closest thing this reminds me of is when you're in 4th grade and you like a show/game/movie/whatever but you know that most people don't so you make fun of it and act like you don't know anything about it in order to fit in.

A parody is defined as "an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect."

I suppose you imitated the artist nicely enough, but didn't really exaggerate the art. You didn't exaggerate the writing because you didn't imitate it in the first place. That would mean that by definition this isn't really a parody...