Ken-Vermette's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

["R"]

Good work Dinictus.

Very well made, and thought out.

Lets start with graphics...

9, because you did an exellent job with nearly every aspect of the graphics. On part though, I did dock 1 point because there were a couple area's that were a little off.

Next, sound.

10, it was perfect. I'm unsure if you compressed it, but it sounded great! I also liked how you used an actual voice, because anything else for that long would drive anyone crazy.

Interactivity.

1. For movie's I record the interactivity as the amount of buttons/options you have. I consider the play button one of these. also, its a movie, plain and simple. its not made for interactivity.

Style.

7. It was well thought out, and although a philisophical lecture wouldent seem cool to many, I myself like it because so often I ponder many meanings on which you have discussed.

Violence.

3, Moderatly violent on an ocasion. (I'm kinda curious, was it just a dragon, a dragon from a game or somewhere, or D-DragonClock?). I dont know, I think for this movie impreticular, this is a good thing to have low.

Humor!

10. It deserved it. While the philisophical stuff wass goof, the occasional clock doing somthing, clockish, was quite funny. Also, the little toss of words near the end between you and redemption was pretty funny. "Kiss my blue fuzzy ass"

Overall

9. I liked this alot! Quite classic. Very thoughtful. I would give this a 10, but a couple of the times in through the movie, there were just some things that seemed a little, off. Also, the fact that you needid to right click to rewind factored in. If you wanna fix it, simply at the end of your movie, make a button, and enter this actionscript.

on (release) {
gotoAndStop(1);
}

Anyway, great work! I voted 5... twice so far ;).

Da-Dinictus responds:

To be exact, friend Hexagon, that dragon was the Zebesian Space Pirate Meta-Ridley from Metroid Prime. I thought the epilogue did mention that... Ow well.
A very extensive review. Honest, to the point - you get a gold star! As for the replay, since I worked in movie-instances, Flash always is a bitch concerning that. Add to it I worked in scenes, and you've got a movie without a goddamn replay button. And with two sleep-deprived days after that, I just dropped it, even after all the help I received from you guys on the forums - it didn't friggin' help.
Again, thank you for your kind review, and the votes! ^_^

[MERCY!!!: Episode 1]

Good work Tsurara!

I like the way you made this, and you did some nice work. You had some exellent idea's for the characters. Technically, you had the character idea's perfect, I mean, for example, the cat-demon. Cats are all cute and cuddly, but we all know how evil they can be. ;D

But anyway, TO TEH REVIEW!!!

I gave graphics an 8, the characters were well drawn, and there very consistant. But there wasnt too much anumation with the characters themselves, and that dumbed it down a bit. With your character design, you have an advantage because they would be more less easy to shape tween.

Sound was alright, however the quality of some of the clips was a little staticy. But I'll admit, compressing sound is a real bitch.

Theres nothing really extreme about interactivity in movies. The point of a movie is not to interact. But I award interactivity points if you have a stop, play, pause, rewind, ect. Maby a fast foreward button if you have the know-how.

Style was well done. I see where people get the pokemon idea, but I dont see why they would mention it. You had exellent characters, and I was surprised, when, in two lines you managed to explain almost the entire past of Nameless.

Violence was alright in this movie, but the battle scene, was slow for that kind of thing, and the lack of animation in the characters themselves took away from it.

Humor wasnt bad. Its more of a serious short, but it has its moments. "HEY NAMELESS!" "shut up" "OKAY!"

Overall it was well made, but the only thing I would reccomend, is a play/stop/rewind/fast foreword bar. In the forum, if you would like, I could show you how to make the more advanced rewind, fast foreword, and minimize the functions.

I would also highly reccoment more character animation in the fights.

MushiX responds:

Thanks for the in-depth review, I'll keep all this in mind when making the next episode. The more input I get from people, the more output I can produce.
One of the main hurdles was that all of the character animation had to be drawn by hand first. I personally drew every frame for each character on a light-board, just like traditional animation. Then I gave the drawings to Tsurara, who scanned them, re-drew them in flash, and made them into movie clips. While she did that, I was drawing more frames. We couldn't really avoid that, since there weren't many shortcuts we could take by tweening. Drawing them in flash without the hand drawings results in lower quality, and I wanted everything to be precise when it came to how the characters looked.
The fight scene was the bulk of the work load. So many frames... It came out to about 1:25 minutes. The fight scene in the next movie will be 2:30 minutes. In order to make the work easier, I'm studying budget animation in anime. A lot of anime is made on low budgets, with limited animation, so there are certain techniques they use to make fights more dynamic or scenes seem more animated. Tsurara's trying to get us a copy of Ninja Scroll for us to study. So, we'll be using more anime techniques in terms of execution, but not in terms of style. The style will still remain my own.
And lastly, for anyone that's still reading this out of interest, the story is the most important part of the series. It comes in small doses at first, making one believe that the focus of the plot is on fighing. But, it isn't. The focus is on the characters themselves. For me, characters are the most important part of anything, be it a cartoon, game, novel, movie, etc., if the characters are hollow, there's no point. The characters in this story develop well, despite how short the story had to be.

Anyway, I'm working on a website, and it'll be up early this month. There I can post a lot of info about the characters and setting.