GoodL's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[KARMA]

While I like the idea behind this, and certain parts of the animation style, I think it needs some work overall. First off, the animation is a bit choppy and just overall doesn't have enough keyframes to give it smoothness and fluidity. Take for example, the face of the ground. It just changes too quickly for the viewer (in this case, me) to be able to process what exactly is going on. I had to watch it several times just to see each change get what was happening. You don't ever want your viewer to HAVE TO rewatch something just because it was too fast. The other example would be at the end, I couldn't read the text at all. It must have only been on screen for a few frames at most, meaning only a fraction of a second. As a general rule, if you're going to have text on screen you should keep it there for as long as it takes to read it out loud three times. Once again, I had to go back and play the animation again, and PAUSE it just to read it! So for both of those cases just adding more frames (in the case of the text, A LOT more frames) should help an incredible amount.

The next thing is that i think your characters could be a bit more over the top. The thing with animation is that it allows you to portray things in ways that live action film could not. So, take advantage of that. Make the reactions bigger, the emotions more clear, and maybe focus on improving character design so that the viewer can make more assumptions about the character just from their looks.

Another thing is I think this animation could benefit a lot from the use of some simple sound effects. You can find lots of free sound effects online with a simple Google search, so I'd recommend you try that out for your next cartoon, it makes them more fun to watch, and there is even plenty of room for comedic value in sounds!

So overall I do like it, I think it just needs to be polished a bit. If you have any questions about anything at all (what else could be improved, exactly how to go about doing so, etc.) do feel free to message me, I'm always happy to help! Keep it up, I hope to see more from you in the future! Good luck! :)

[The Little Old Land of Lard]

Oh my wow. I love this. Awesome puppets, also the 2D animated parts look great. It's dark and it's funny, plus the music is excellent. Really well done, great work!

GruntVonVeizatun responds:

Wow, Thank you so much! I did the 2d cartoons in illustrator/after effects. I used to animate in flash but I havn't touched the program in years. I mainly do puppet videos, and I was a bit nervous posting them here simply because the focus of NG is animation. I figure TECHNICALLY you are animating the puppets manually so I hope this counts. Either way I'm very glad you like this one. Probably my favorite puppet video. Glad you approve!

[the BEAR trap - Tech-shaggy]

Damn that was pretty funny. Really good mood changes and stuff going on throughout this piece, I dig. I think sometimes the backgrounds could use some work (like the hearts background is kinda low res), but that definitely doesn't diminish the humour at all. I think maybe the biggest problem is that the voices seem considerably quieter than the music so I had to turn down the volume during the intro, then turn up the volume after to hear the characters. Other than that, it's really good work. I like the style and everything. I just see little problems here and there. Good job.

theBEARtrap responds:

I agree! Thank you, Your feedback is very helpful, the audio and BG will be worked on more for future episodes to.come.

[Alien Abduction Stop Motion]

There's really a lot to love here, I think you did some awesome work. That said, i also think there are some things that need improvement. Starting with the audio, I don't really understand your choice in when to raise and lower the volume of the background music. It seems more or less random. Not all of the sounds are equally loud either, so the character's voice is just sometimes really quiet ("come on boy" for example). Once again, I think you should be a bit more careful in taking your frames so that you don't end up with sporadic spurts of choppiness. Just generally smoothing out the animation would improve this a lot. Also once again, I love the way you use fabrics, and the backgrounds this time around look really awesome! So great job there.
My favourite part in all of this is the general aesthetic and I really love the part where we first see the alien ship(?). It looks so cool, such an awesome visual affect.

So overall, really great job. work on that audio and the animation fluidity, and I can easily see you becoming one of the best. Good work, keep it up!

ClayDay responds:

Thank you for your constructive feedback GoodL! I will work on making a more cohesive audio, and taking more time to create better flow between frames.

[Stick Baits cartoon - Men fooling around]

Super funny, you've got a good knack for comedy. Not a lot of things really get me to genuinely laugh on Newgrounds but these consistently get me. I've got some notes, aside from the obvious smoothing out the animation.
While I really like the backgrounds, I think you're living room scene looks a bit weird just because you've got that sort of 3D perspective going on with the corner and the door, but the couch just looks flat like a cardboard cut out. Make sure that if you've going to be doing perspective drawins on anything, you do it for everything in the scene.
Once again, good voice acting and the sound effects are a really nice touch.
Nice work :)

acentertoons4 responds:

Will do my friend, thanks again

[Midnight Drive]

Background and foreground look awesome! I really like them. The car looks good, but the wheels are a bit wonky and don't really move as far as i can tell. I'd really like to see something like this more developed! Followed, hoping to see more in the future :)
Good work

TacoCanada responds:

Thanks for the honest review, I realize that it's only 2 seconds haha, but it did take me about an hour to make, so I was just looking for some feedback on my technique :).

[This Time on Jon Ep. Not Specified]

This is really good, I dig the style. Also fairly funny. I could go for some more background work tho. Good work overall.

kewbles responds:

thanks for watchin! i was going to put backgrounds in but its all so close up, youd barely be able to see them and i didnt think it would improve the video that much. also im lazy.

[Stick Baits cartoon - Men and roaches]

That was one of the best stick figure animations I've seen in a very long time, and I DEFINITELY think you've improved your style a lot. The animation looks really great, and the fluidity is definitely there. Also, I laughed quite a bit. It's really funny. Once again, the voice acting is really good, and you've got good sound effects. And the backgrounds look great.
I think the main problem is the fire at the end, if you're going to animate it like that I think it would look better if the movement was consistent. It just seems kind of jumpy.
Anyway, great work, keep it up!

acentertoons4 responds:

Haha, thanks a lot for your help.

[How to Face Your Fears]

I love it :) Really funny, and the ending was awesome. Good style, good backgrounds, all around good good good. Well done.

ComicQuake responds:

thank you <:

[Samus RAGEQUITS Metroid]

Pretty funny stuff :) I especially like the ending.

LevelUPAnimations responds:

Thanks so much :)