StitchedInk's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Do Not Remove]

Seen it

Yeah this has kinda been done to death and the animation wasn't great. I'm keen to see you develop further though because there were a few good things.

I like that you've picked a limited palette, it makes things clearer and easier to watch and the art wasn't half bad. Parts of the animation weren't too bad but it was kinda lazy overall.

Chimbley responds:

Yeah, if only you had submitted an animation. Then people wouldn't have to suffer through this. Ya kinda let me down bub.

[shell 6]

Needs some work

This was very lazily animated. I see you've responded to something similar to this by saying that animation is hard, and yes you're right somewhat, animating can be difficult. But that is only a reason to change, adapt and get better.

A few things I think you shoud take into consideration. What you have done is obscure any action. There are opportunities there to get into some animation. Also the only thing that seemed to be animated were the same 2 pieces of art.

Also you have missed opportunities to work in some dialogue animation. All you have to do to start off is set up some mouth shapes for paticular sounds. Such as Aaah, Eeeh, Eeee, Oooh, Uuuh. Then have an extremely wide opened mouth for an extreme vowel sounds. Then Have a shape for Bs, Vs and Ls you can use alot of the vowel shapes for most other sounds. I may be missing a couple. Then put them in the right place on the face, and change them when the dialogue calls for it. You need to move on from this eventually but it's a good place to start.

Try to do things from different angles too. You have your character at the same zoom level and just of his head and shoulders. Try to get some shots of the rest of his body. Also try and design more than one character. You've just got the one main character and shillouettes for eveybody else.

There seemed to be something that resembled a fight scene, which you filled in with a black screen and flashes evey now and then. A great place to work on some animation. Even just character stills moving towards each other and then the black screen, flashy stuff, with cool, fight scene stills between.

You need to get some better voice recordings too. Get friends to record for you so you have some different voices. Direct them if you need them to speak in a particular way.

All in all what you have here is very sub par. You could do alot with what you have written in here. My rating may seem harsh and unfair, but It is with reason.

1 for the interest scene you have set. I have taken off stars for the art style, grab onto some art styles and get better. The voice acting. The story, it's not my cup of tea and I do say each to their own, but write something a little more involved. Killing some guy who's trying to save him is pretty harsh and all that really happened was that he shot some guys. Spend some more time on these, make it shine, not sparkle if you hold it in the sun right. Watch what other people do and learn from them too.

cris17 responds:

this is the way i chose to animate ths series and its not going to change. if it bugs u sorry but it aint changin for this series. altho i can do better drawing and animation wise i rather this style for this story sooo yeah. and dude seriously look at all my other parts..........do you honestly think i would change anything from the other parts? and also animation is hard yeah but i never said im only going to do it like this forever on all my stuff, look at project 7 teaser.......i dont just animate this way i also do my own backgrounds etc in others. this project however i chose to do it this way for fun, and theres a saying you should know "it doesnt take graphics to make a great story, its the story its self in wich makes anything great" im not going to bash you for not submitting stuff on account you put more effort into your review other then "it sucks and you cant do !#!$#@!$". also this wasnt "lazily" approached, this is a certain style i do my self called "ADD animation" where i focus on the story and nothing more. hey if you dont like how this is animated thats fine but i really dont understand how anyone who looks at this and then goes back watches all 5 parts then actually says "improve" can think that and not really see that... well.......if it hasnt changed after 5 parts.....why would i change it now?

[Jombilation]

Good animation

You have very good animation skills. Alot of your shorts demonstrated some animation principles rather well. Like the stretching, although it's not nomally used the way have used it, it was still done well.

Some of them however were not so good. The Thrust was one that really stuck out to me as one that could have been done better. Also your anticipation short didn't really show anticipation effectively. For an anticipation to work well it should quickly stretch or snap to the intended anticipated action.

It's also a shame that you used some very good animation talent on stick figures. Get some good art going on in there and you'll have a winner.

4 for the animation and 0 for the art. Keep up the good work, but put some artistic effort into it.

Jombo1 responds:

Well, some parts of I agree with, but I consider stick animation to be a form of art. I mean, anyone can animate sticks, but it takes a good animator to do it well.

[Brawl Funnies [dick 3]]

Yes...but

I commend your cause and agree with you whole heartedly. The flash content that is front paged and adored here is sometimes ridiculous. This brawl funnies crap is a shinning example, the clock crew should be viewed as a cancer on the lungs of animation, and the glorified red B on a white page is stupid.

I see your point, validate it, and hope that other NG users grow a brain and blam this sort of crap.

But, the flash you have submitted, along with your heart felt soap box speech, almost shoots down your cause, no matter how noble it may be. Your point would have been far better recieved had it come with an example of what sort of things should be front paged.

Also this unoriginal game humor you refer to isn't all bad. I think the awesome toons are very good. Yes the art isn't the best (I kinda like it), but if you watch the actual animation, it is pretty good. I love to play games, I love the game characters and a little humor that springs from gaming experiences, that I can also relate to, is fun to watch. Also Egoraptor is a very talented voice actor and his view on what he animates is very interesting, more so in how he presents it.

All is not lost however. There are many good animations and animators on NG. There's Adam Phillips with the Brackenwood series. The Swain with Blockhead and Mastermind. Harry Partridge with his animations, I especially liked A Slice of The Action and Timmy Tickles. I'm a fan of the Tankmen animations by Johnny Utah, it's all here.

There is alot of crap on New Grounds and I won't deny that at all. I'm not out to defend New Grounds at all. But, there are good animations here. If you don't like what turns up on front page the most you can really do about it is vote against things on the portal. This sorta thing isn't going to stop the idiots, it's only going to fuel them.

I commend your effort, but feel it may land on deaf ears. If I were to rate the animation I would give it no stars. But I give you 5 for speaking out on what is very apparent on New Grounds.

dreftclub responds:

A few months ago ashford pride made a movie with a foreboding title. It was called "Awesome Grounds".

Well ladies and gentlemen, that's might as well what this site should be called (at least right now), with the top row on the front page slot dedicated to an "awesome" movie and an "awesome" parody, an "awesome" t-shirt in the newgrounds store, and pretty much every "awesome" movie in the top 100, along with han's "awesome's creed".

I can't go to newgrounds with seeing something not about egoraptor or his coveted video game parody series. It makes me wonder sometimes if pursuing anything but half-assed cartoons making mildly funny observations about video games laced with profanity is even worth it. Truly, they are what bring the masses of 13-year olds to this site, and thus increases traffic and competition in the internet world. But you have to ask yourself, with this sort of two-bit audience increasing in numbers, are they really interested in watching anything else?

I understand that it's a dog eat dog world in the online entertainment business, and to compete you have to pretty much put up content that a majority of internet browsers would click on. This includes either women or video games. Things they already know they want. And that's all they want. They sign up, watch more, and come back and do it again later. They're trained to know that what they want is easily accessible and is promoted all over the site.

Original content is often shuffled off to the bottom of the page, or never gets any attention to begin with. Now comes into play the whole 'they won't click on it unless there's a boob for the icon', etc etc. That's because they've been fashioned to think that way.

I'm not saying i have all the mysterious answers to the way people's minds work. But this much is true - if all people click on are breasts and video game icons, and you give them breasts and video game icons, you're not pushing the envelope.

Newgrounds is the epitome of user-generated content. We already have a massive advantage over youtube in the fact that making a cartoon involves so much more creativity than snappily editing your webcam footage. So instead of 200 cartoons coming out every minute, we have 200 cartoons coming out every day. That gives someone a better chance of breaking out and being discovered for his hard work, and a reward for a job well done.

But in the same way that viewers are trained that they don't have to go out of their way to avoid original content they would otherwise enjoy, authors are becoming more and more disenchanted with their personal creations and are turning to nerd culture icons and cheap tactics to get viewers.

I can't tell you how many animators I have spoken to that have shunned their own creations in favor of sub-pop culture parody and disjointed scripts sprinkled with toilet humor and profanity. a cartoon catering to everyone who's forgotten what cartoons are all about. And here we are shoving away everything about cartoons that was originally appealing and magical, because we're pretty much forced to.

I'm not pointing the finger at any one person here. I think it's part of the bigger picture - bigger than Newgrounds, too. But if people really care about the future of cartoons and animation, we wouldn't be seeing this kind of blatant favoritism.

People will find what they want if they want it. They don't need to be spoon fed it all.

For thirty years animators who strive to create something genuinely unique have gotten nothing but a slap in the face. It's sickening and it has to stop someday, before they all disappear.

Lastly, this post is not about me. I'm not writing this out of self-pity, bitterness or spite. I'm being honest. I care a lot about the future of animation, and what I see around me is very troubling. The industry is bad enough, but where the future lies is in the small corners of the animation world. Newgrounds is one of them. I spend a lot of time trying to encourage and teach frame-by-frame animation, and creating your own characters and scripts. That is what is important

[Reservations for None!]

Haha Awesome

This was great nice graphics, good animation and the voices were a good quality and nicely acted.

Loved Dhalsim's voice and character design. They were all pretty sweet. I think it's very fortunate for this not to be in the collab it's awesome on it's own.

Have a well deserved 10.

punbeard81 responds:

Thanks, I tries.