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psychicpebbles

78 Movie Reviews

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I haven't laughed that hard in a while,thank you.

Gonzo, man. I'm at a loss for words on this one, but I really need to say something.

I need to preface this review by saying parodies are not bad, there is nothing wrong with parodies. Many successful shows currently are parodies or mocks. However, you shouldn't parody things JUST to parody them knowing they'll get views. Even if you do do that, make it not obvious by only releasing parodies relevant to that week or month.

I never give anyone shit for JUST not being funny, but man, script is really important. I didn't laugh once, or smile once. I just stared at the screen waiting for something to happen. Some of the voice acting was really bad. Your cartoons always look visually appealing and really unique, I'll give you that, but fuck, cut back on the face close ups and screaming.

I have no program with wacky faces, funny faces and characters making interesting facial expressions IS A CARTOON, that's what makes a cartoon interesting and fun, I'm not giving you shit about that. However, the XD faces, the CONSTANT facial close ups every time a joke is said is just painful to watch. Use facial close ups when necessary, they're a good tool for a joke, but use it super sparingly.

One of the biggest obstacles of doing a parody is making it funny to people who are outside the reference bubble to what you're parodying. I think you fell the flattest here. I know TF2 players who didn't find it funny, and I have never played TF2, but wasn't amused by this. While I'm on the subject of bad writing, I was flabbergasted you used a fucking Skyrim/Arrow to the Knee joke in LATE JUNE 2012. It wasn't funny in February, why would it be funny now? Skyrim has NOTHING to fucking do with Team Fortress 2.

Also, if you're making a parody, give it a theme, dude. Team Fortress 2 is hard, Team Fortress 2 is easy, the players on Team Fortress 2 are dumb, etc. This was just, look at this character from TF2 saying something wacky and having a weird voice on a close up.

Again, I must reiterate as strongly as possible, silly faces and silly dialogue MAKE a cartoon, look at Ren and Stimpy or Spongebob. Abusing these and making them your crutch is not, however, how you're supposed to write a cartoon. Try to seriously do a video without XD faces, with two normal people talking. If you can make that funny, then the faces are a bonus.

The animation is icing on the cake, but if your written cake is garbage, you just have trash with icing on it. The purpose of cartoons is to entertain, and you failed on that aspect for this video. Does that mean you're a bad artist? No. Everyone flops. Every single animator, TV show, movie, musician, artist, everyone flops. It's in our nature, but you look at why you flopped and don't to it again. You can pander to young TF players who are going to laugh and giggle and fart because they get the references, or you can make something that's legitimately funny to everyone.

That's the biggest issue, is I've seen other artists tell you your mistakes, and not only have you repeated them, but you've started doing it MORE than before. Take this review as a gentle shove in the direction of the other countless reviews. If you don't, that's fine. I'm not forcing you to change your writing, or anything at all. However, if I (or anyone else who has left a review) didn't care about your improvement, we wouldn't post at all. You have a shitload of potential, and seeing you waste that on XD faces and loud screaming that's so loud it clips is more than disappointing at this point, it's a shame.

4 years ago parodies weren't a giant deal. Since 2010 or so, I've noticed an exponential increase in people doing parodies JUST TO DO THEM. If money is your only motivation, you're in the wrong field dude. Become a lawyer. If you seriously want to make something people won't forget about in a few weeks and not be inspired by, continue the way you do things. If you care about what you produce, and how it comes out, follow not only my advice, but follow other peoples. Criticism isn't HATERS BEING HATERS, it's people wanting to help.

Good luck.

Gonzossm responds:

That is one huge as review! I'll respond back to it all.

I don't just parody things just to parody. I'm a fan of TF2. Meet the pyro coming out around the same time I finished this was a coincidence. I was going to release this last month but I got interrupted with personal matters. I haven't released anything in near 3 months. :P

I can agree with you that the script did have a lot of problems. Didn't really notice it till it was released tho. The animation mostly caters to the Team Fortress 2 fan base. So a lot of the jokes are basically inside jokes, only people who'd play the game long enough would get the jokes. So I did screw up by not making the animation open for everyone.

About the facial close ups I got a few bad responses on that aspect. So I'll tone those things down.

Arrow to the knee was just a small suttle little thing. You can dress up as dovakiin in TF2 so EH I knew going in it some people would get annoyed with it if they spotted it.

Theme; Team Fortress 2 is addicting.

I try n listen to what other people tell me and try to apply them. Sometimes I just screw up. That said people still enjoy the animations for what they are.

Why dont you stop making parodies?
I have my reasons why I do what I do. I still dont just do them just to only get money from them. Money does play its role in animation, but I do try n get better with each animation. I try out different stuff in each animation. Sometimes it sucks sometimes it dosnt. I dont plan nor want to stick only to parodies.

Anyways thanks for the Review, and criticism I'll do what I can to get better at what I do.

The artwork and character design was good, creative, and interesting. The colors were spot on and really popped out, and weren't dull and gray.

I loved the animation, you used all frame by frame. You also use a lot of frames when you do, which makes it a really dangerous place to go if you don't know how to handle it correctly. Many people use a lot of frames and it sort of turns chaotic and into a mess, but you understand animation and the characters moved with a flow and a rhythm, and you still obeyed the basic principles of animation. The fast paced style and frame by frame almost reminded me of SuperJail in a way. I am curious though, do you do straight ahead or pose to pose?

The music suited perfectly, RicePirate did a great job as always, and you used great sound effects when needed. The soundscape was good.

The writing/jokes/material was also good. It got straight to the point and was funny. The only thing I must say though, is you should've bashed Ray more if you were going for a video to bash Ray. He sort of just gets tortured and plugs his shit, which is funny, but to an unbiased viewer who isn't familiar with Ray might feel sympathy for him in this since he's being tortured, so you could've added more to make him look a bit worse in that way.

OVERALL, I loved everything, but I really love your animation style, it flows nicely and semi reminds me of Super Jail. Keep up the great work niqqa.

OrganizedApeShape responds:

LOL Thanks I'm really glad you liked it,
Mostly pose to pose as to not lose the shape of the character,
But some times I did it straight ahead cause I fucked around with this a lot :3

Golly. Why does this seem familiar to me? I can't quite place my finger on it.

You know, using that "How to" formula isn't copying off of Oney and I, but you literally ripped several things right from our video. I love how you even USE a few things in this video that you bash (i.e., stealing jokes and content).

Let's get the stuff you blatantly ripped off so I can actually review this.

1.) The field when the narrator is speaking.
2.) The black background and white text when the narrator is speaking.
3.) The title is even partially ripped off.
4.) The entire fucking formula, it even starts off with "Step 1".
5.) The entire :
6.) The "chances are" is the exact same position and size and nearly identically drawn to "Let's Go!"
7.) The random curse word part was an entire bullet point for our video.
8.) The entire steal other people's content was also essentially stolen word for word.
8.) "It makes things way funnier" is a direct word for word copy.

Let me say though, I wouldn't mind if you had stolen all of those things and written a well rounded parody with stingful satire at a certain audience, or were at least bashing a certain thing. I'm also going to say not everything listen above was clearly INVENTED by Chris and I, but the context you used it in was near identical, and that was obvious. I'll take these copies as a flattery I guess. Now that that's out of the way, time to review this video by itself.

The art work didn't stand out a lot, they were for the most part bland and obnoxious. Tracing characters shouldn't be too hard, so I'd expect the Peter Griffin trace to be amazing, but it was really messy and awkward. Drawing Ray's face as a caricature would've been funny, however instead you've just cut out his face. The narrator was the one of the only characters that were fully drawn and not stick figures or cyanide and happiness style. It was bland, nothing stood out, and it was cheap. I would expect if you're going to draw so few characters you'd at least put effort into the few there were.

There was little to no animation, the animation was was there was a bit awkward, and there were very few inbetweens. The inbetweens that were there had some sort of stretched out effect, like you tried to make it look like it was going fast but it went by really slowly and it was awkward to look at. For animation improvement, I'd highly suggest purchasing "The Animator's Survival Guide" by Richard Williams. You'll learn a lot from it and your FBF will improve. Again, though, like the artwork, didn't stand out to me. I was sort of hoping the characters would stop moving so I wouldn't puke from vertigo with all the lines having a seizure.

The music was from Ren and Stimpy so I can't credit you with that, but it did suit at least. The voice actor did a good job, and is probably one of the only highlights about this video. His audio quality was clear, he spoke properly, and said every line with precision. He did a great job. It's a shame you had to cut out his other 4 things, couldn't you have just switched the cut off joke to the end?...

The writing is where I had the biggest issues. Stealing jokes aside, the writing was scattered and chaotic, not really pinpointing anything relevant or current. Chuck Norris, yo mama jokes, Family Guy, and Ray William Johnson? I'm not sure who you were trying to make a satire about. 13 year old's is very vague, but again, it was scattered and moved around to random subjects really quickly. Chuck Norris and yo mama jokes aren't anything to be angry about unless you're living in 2003.

You also seemed to bash Tomska at the end, which is weird. He came out of nowhere. Regardless of whether you think asdf is funny or not is irrelviant, it's undiable he can pull off what he's tyring to.

In the end, this seemed like you getting angry at your shitty shit getting negative reviews. So improve, don't blame the people, blame yourself. They're not the ones making you bad. It's you. Just improve and get better with every video instead of saying "IT'S YOU NOT ME THAT NEEDS TO GET BETTER".

Good luck.

A flash cartoon on Newgrounds?

WOW EGORAPTOR MUCH?

Here's 5 stars.

God Damn, Man

This was really short and a loop, but your frame by frame, shading, and line work has gotten outstanding. This is TV quality.

Really nice job.

Hulalaoo responds:

Zach ; )

Good Job Dick

Lovely colors, smooth animation, great shading.

Also funny and all that shit.

Here's a 10 okay bye.

Congratulations! You Fixed Nothing.

You would think, you would actually think, after reading the several EXTREMELY in depth reviews left for you on your first TOME episode you would fix something. You would especially think that said things would be fixed after you acknowledged you read them with a response. The response you left me was quite lengthy, and assured me I shouldn't watch anymore of TOME because it wasn't my cup of tea.

Let's start with the artwork. It actually seems like a downgrade from the first episode. This leads me to believe this was quickly done, and that the first episode of TOME was polished which is a horrifying thought. Again you've decided to use dull disgusting colors, simplistic characters, and strange looking anatomy. Your line work is god awful, man. Save up and purchase a good tablet, perhaps a cintiq or something. There is a GREAT tool in Flash called "smooth" which will take care of a shaky line. I mean, good fuck, they looked like they were drawn with a blind man with Parkinson's.

I complained about shading last time and using gradients, which thankfully you have not done, but sadly instead of just shading PROPERLY, you decided to not shade anything at all. Shading takes minutes to do, if that. It gives your characters depth and makes them look not as flat. Your characters look horrifically flat and are actually cringe worthy, shading would make them pop out. Back to the entire COLOR concept that not only I pointed out, but egoraptor also did in his review (which you didn't even respond to). Use bright colors, or use dark colors. Pick a style, and study color theory. Your colors were all over the place and didn't make much of any sense. If you were going for dark, you could use a dark color scheme, but instead you AGAIN go with awkward muddy green/brown colors that physically make me cringe to look at.

When the video first started and I saw you decided to actually use proper lip sync for the raccoon, but abandoned that seconds later and went back to recycling the mouth loop. For Christ sake Kirbopher, I just got done doing lip sync for a scene, and I can tell you it does not take that much extra effort to make the characters look like they're speaking and not a lifeless puppet or something. Hell, you can even RECYCLE the lip sync for individual mouths, but fuck sake at least show that the characters are saying different letters. You didn't even do mouths for the two characters talking to each other (the two humans, one who got smashed by the giant rock).

The voice acting was also another downgrade. I'm not sure what happened, but the raccoon decided to randomly go into a terrible French accent that was inaudible, and then I THINK a Dr.Phil impression? I'm not sure, but it wasn't funny, just really, really awkward. "Doubling" again randomly cursed, which I told you in the last review is alright as long as you don't use it horribly, which you've done again. I hate to sound like a broken record here, but you act like a broken record by repeating your same mistakes that EVERYONE tells you to fix. If you're going to make him swear, have him do it in situations that ACCOUNT for it. You know, because everyone says it that casually. "Man, look it's my fucking dog eating some fucking food, holy fucking cuntshit." I shouldn't of said that, you're probably going to resuse that. Make him curse accordingly, not awkwardly in casual situations.

You're probably going to read that last bit and think, "Well, it wasn't a casual situation, it was intense!". No, it wasn't. There was nothing at stake. I suppose this short was supposed to be some sort of character development, and I really hope it wasn't. These villains couldn't be more stereotypical. The only thing that makes them "badguys" is the fact they do bad things. That is it. Make them have some fucking depth, make them have a reason for what they're doing, make them be bad PEOPLE. Wacky people don't do horrible things. Horrible people do horrible things. I don't know if you know this, horrible people don't act wacky.

I have run out of room to continue.

Advice. Take it.

Come On Kirbopher

Kirbopher, let me first start out by saying I don't leave reviews to be offensive, I leave them so you can improve. The last few reviews I've left, and reviews I've seen similar to my own pointing out identical faults, have gone obviously unread, obviously unnoticed by you because you keep making the exact same mistakes.

Your artwork isn't fun to look at. It's improved since you've started, but hardly improved in the last few years. It's stayed the same, and it's extremely boring to look at. You need to learn how to draw hands and bodies. Study muscle and anatomy. Make your characters look interesting and not basically identical. It's like you're trying really hard to achieve a bland anime style, and you can't do it. Also, I still can't believe at age 22 you're still using gradients. I've seen dozens of people leave reviews telling you to stop this, myself included, and you've continued to do it. Gradients look terrible. STOP USING GRADIENTS. Shade properly, JohnnyUtah has an excellent tutorial on shading technique. Make your characters colors a bit lighter too, they're all sort of dull and lifeless. I see a lot of people using a sort of muddy dark color, and it looks bad and not interesting.

There was no animation in this, at all. I wouldn't call this an animation. This was essentially a sprite movie. The characters bodies were just redrawn, no in between frames. It looked bad and felt awkward. The only other real movement was the mouth movements, but that was set on a loop and you just recycled it. Mouths takes a bit of extra time, but make a huge difference in the end. I know you had other movements in there, and some walk cycles and some characters standing there set on a loop, but nothing stood out. The point of ANIMATING is to BRING TO LIFE something that isn't alive. It's to bring to life a picture. When you're hardly doing that, why not just do live action or something?

The characters voice acting was bearable, although no one really emoted, and no ones voice was really funny or interesting. They were all bland. It sounds like you use the same voice actors for every video you do, I don't know. It's like the same, bland, emotionless, generic anime voices in every one of your videos. The constant 8-bit music playing in the background over and over made me want to puke after a minute. It doesn't sound good and is obnoxious.

The thing irritated me the most was the entire story. Yes, the entire thing a cartoon is built from, the story. I've never been as bored as I was when I was watching this video. The story is boring, the characters are forgettable, and all have the same jokes and personalities. For every character you make, you take on small trait they have and magnify it, and that's the whole character. That is not how you make a character, and especially not a likable character at that. Not only were the characters not likable, I actually hated a few, just because they were so pointless. Especially the green lanky guy, why was he swearing so much? I seriously don't mind a good fuck, cunt, or dirty shit rag here and there in a cartoon, but why include it at parts where it's completely pointless?

It was like watching an 8 year old who just learned how to say fuck. He swore nearly every sentence in one portion, and I was sitting there thinking; "Why?". It isn't funny, it isn't cute, it doesn't add to the story, why is he adding this? Oh, and to top it off, he bleeps out his own fucking cuss words. Guess what Kirbopher, the whole point of swearing is to swear, what's the point of censoring yourself? It's especially frustrating when you don't even HAVE to censor yourself. IT IS THE INTERNET, YOU ARE FREE TO SAY WHATEVER YOU LIKE. No one is forcing you to censor yourself. If you don't like saying the word fuck, shit, etc, then don't even write it in the show if you're going to take it out.

Kirbopher, you went to college and have been animating as long as Harry Partridge, if not longer. If that doesn't say anything to you, I don't know what does. People leave reviews for YOUR own good, not ours.

Advice. Take it.

Kirbopher responds:

Y'know what, I can understand where you're coming from on a lot of this, but for the most part, this feedback is being lost on me, because it sounds like a lot of what you're upset about is the "point" of this project.

I'm not setting out to do groundbreaking animation and art. The fact is, no, I'm not a spectacular artist. I'm not trying to hide the fact that there are still BASIC things about drawing that I'm a total novice at. However, the purpose of this series is to be able to easily produce episodes on a monthly basis (if possible) by using limited animation techniques. The setting of the show, being a game world, is also the reason why it's set up very much like an in-game engine, or even a machinima if you wanna put it that way. Doing this way allows me to get the story across the way I need it to, and in the amount of time I'm setting myself to make each episode.

As for the story and characters? I honestly can't justify or apologize for any of that. I'm gonna just chalk it up to "it's not your thing". I have plenty of my own FRIENDS that aren't into any of the stuff I do, but then I also have plenty of people that really, really like my characters and my sense of writing. I'm not belittling your opinion here, but you're genuinely the first person I've seen who has such a massive problem with the writing or how the characters are portrayed.

I know the generic phrase of "if you don't like it, don't watch it" is old hat on Newgrounds, but that's really all I can say. I DO appreciate the fact that you're going out of your way to try and -help- and not just flame, but in this specific case, there's really not much I can do. I hope you'll understand that. Maybe you should skip on watching any future episodes of this project.

WOWZAH

Alright, I don't ever like giving negative reviews, but I leave reviews so people can improve. That is the entire point of leaving a review, is to let the artist know what he needs to improve on.

Let's start off with the artwork. You used the same facial expression for the Pokemon trainer in the preloader, and in both shots where they just stare while the Pokemon is screaming. The backgrounds were sadly unpleasant to look at, the line work was sloppy and the colors you use are dull and unappealing. Try to use brighter colors that are visually appealing and enjoyable to look at, instead of dull, muddy, shit looking colors. It's really hard to watch this with the color scheme. Also, work on your shading a bit. It seems a bit chaotic and unorganized, there isn't really a defined light source anywhere. Where there is shadow, the shading is drawn sloppily and doesn't look even, it looks extremely awkward. Try to fix your line work in general and this will not be an issue.

The animation is where I had an issue. The boiling effect (where you highlight the character and use the "Smooth" tool to make it appear as if you've redrawn the frame) was overused and nauseating to look at. The whole point of that is to use it when you've done a lot of frame by frame, and you use that technique on a still shot, or a shot where not much animation happens. You used it on everything, and it got irritating. The animation you did was extremely minimal. Trust me, I know about deadlines and how fast you want to get stuff done, but it was unacceptable. There were no in between frames between poses. It was just a new pose, and the character bounced a little bit. Work on your lip sync a little bit too, it never quite matched with what the character said. It was mostly open mouth, "t" mouth. That was it. Try using a mirror when you animate to capture what mouths look like with different words.

The audio was were I had a slight issue. He wasn't a bad actor by any means, he just didn't emote that much. It felt bland, like he was trying to keep his voice down so his parents couldn't hear. The tone of his voice was as if he just stubbed his toe, not got CUT IN FUCKING HALF. Try to find a voice actor who can do the job perfectly, or at least pull it off. Without that, you hardly have anything.

The writing aspect is where I had a massive issue. This joke has literally been done at least a thousand times in the entertainment industry. Movies, cartoons, video games, etc. You name it. The whole violence, screaming, and I have kids joke has been beaten to death. Hell, I'm even guilty of it in my latest video, and I fucking regret it badly. At least I put a spin on it, I had the kids introduced first and had another joke to it. You basically quoted the joke that's been done a million times; "I have kids! And a wife!". It. isn't. Funny. On. Its. Own.

That isn't a joke by itself. You could have done a lot with this joke, the concept is good but you went for the easiest route here. Shock humor is a really good way for a laugh, but you have to pull it off PERFECTLY. If you fuck up with it just slightly, it becomes awkward and extremely unfunny, like this cartoon. You could have had the Pokemon scream and throw up blood, crawling toward the Pokemon trainer, screaming, his intestines dragging behind him, the Pokemon grabbing at the Pokemon trainers legs, and the Pokemon trainer screaming in horror. Her little bird Pokemon could throw up.

If you're going for shock, go all out, don't stop halfway because it never works and never will work.

Literally the only thing that was good about this was it being over so I could write you this review. I can only hope you take all of this into consideration and improve on those areas, as you said in the description. I'm not trying to hurt you as a person, I'm telling you as a fellow artist you need to improve on these things badly if you want to get better at animation.

Good luck.

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