Battosai810's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Awesome Chaotix]

Animation was solid, writing not so much

I've gotta say, your animation and character acting has gotten better and better. Your poses are really sweet, and the animation is fluid when it needs to be. Your expressions are also really nice and exaggerated, and more expressive than ever.

However, I had no idea what the hell was going on in this cartoon. Maybe it's because I'm not a fan of Sonic, Chaotix, or what have you, but I honestly had no idea what was going on. There's just a lot of noise, a lot of motion, and no real semblance of a story or narrative. The animation doesn't stop for long enough to even take a breath, and the whole thing is just tiresome and overwhelming. In your other Awesome cartoons, you can usually enjoy them just the same whether or not you played the games they're based on. I don't know if there were too many game jokes or what in this movie, but nothing really got more than a smirk out of me.

I know the Awesome series has always had a pretty solid pace, but sometimes things just get out of hand. I'm glad your animation has gotten so good, but a story, simple as it may be, and good humor are what always made your animations work the best.

[Herzl's: Hanukkah Hyjinks]

I like the cut of your Jeb

I'm just going to say I thought this was hilarious. You got the look and feel of those old notebook cartoons down pat, and made some damn funny jokes along the way. Also your Hethro voice is pretty great in this one.

The choice in music was great. It was fairly obnoxious and kind of lent this a surreal quality, constantly boring it's way into my head. It felt somewhere between a baseball bat and a dentist's drill.

Keep doing what you're doing, duder. Now let's eat our cotton swabs!

[SSM]

Outlandish and hilarious

Who's this SRM guy anyway?

After watching this, I'm not quite sure if I'd qualify it as fanart or as parody. It seemed to be too out there to be straight up fan work, but sarcastic enough to be parody. Whichever it was, I found this pretty hilarious. There's a lot of fairly obscure references in there that even I had to think about!

The animation wasn't that great - the thing I always did for the mouths was rotate them from the bottom of the jaw, rather than the middle. You can just move the anchor point when you have the movie clip selected with the free transform tool. I've moved on to frame by frame animation since then, but it does look a lot better.

The rough linework seemed more like a stylistic choice than anything. Ironically, I'm gravitating more towards rough linework these days. However, the real focus here was the humor for me. To be fair I made most of the stuff you're parodying, so it was probably more entertaining to me than it would be to most folks.

Anyway, I enjoyed this a lot. I'm not sure how much people who aren't so familiar with these cartoons will like it, but you've got my vote already. If anything it reminds me to get off my ass and make a new SRM cartoon, since I haven't made a longform one in like a year. Keep doing what you're doing.

[Gonna Be Friends]

Sweet and simple!

At first I thought the art was a bit too barren, but I saw it was a stylistic choice rather than something done out of laziness or lack of talent. I learned to like the minimalist style pretty quickly, and it really meshed well with the smooth animation.

I don't usually see that much life in symbol-based animation, but you definitely pulled it off well. There was some good secondary action on bits like the ball catching, and everything was really smooth. You also synced it with the music beautifully, and everything felt on beat. The only animation I didn't like very much was the bird's eye shot of Pi Clock walking, then that being reused a few seconds later.

Stylistically the one problem I saw was that some of the background elements were done with the brush tool, and some were done with the line tool. Those two elements didn't quite gel with each other, but it wasn't too detracting.

Your story was very sweet, and like everything else in this animation; simple. I was sincerely surprised to see a Clock Flash without some wacked out twist at the end, but that surprise was a pleasant one. You told the story succinctly without any unnecessary exposition, and nothing was lost on the audience.

Sorry for the wall of text, but I've spent most of today watching the animations my fellow students have been making so I'm a bit critical minded. Great work on this Flash, and congrats on the award and front page!

th1rt3en responds:

Thanks for the great review! I actually only used lines for the clocks, everything else is brush, just with holding shift down to keep the line straight (but change thickness).

[FYAT]

Pretty funny duder.

I like short, to the point animations like this. I also like that really obnoxious techno. There's not too much to it, but it's good stuff.

[Super Smash]

Sick animation broski.

I really dug the fbf extravaganza of animation here. There aren't many video game-related Flashes here that show much talent in their construction, and this is leaps and bounds better than any sprite-based swill.

Character designs were pretty cool - I think Mario could've been wearing a shirt or something, but I won't complain too much. I wish Peach got more animation - she was just a blur then a static symbol squishing up and down. Luigi's character design was probably my favorite.

My one qualm with the animation was that some parts have gorgeous frame by frame animation, while others are just a symbol getting stretched around a bit. This works in a very small quantity, but it was pretty noticeable here, and was a bit jarring.

Overall I'd say you deserve the awards you got for this one - there are parts of the animation where I was pretty floored, like some of the big turnarounds and perspective shots. Good job.

[Red Dead Retard]

Dreadful,

Right away I could tell this Flash was going to have some problems. The art was really sloppy, and when it didn't look terrible, it looked like it was hastily traced from the game. Even then, it still looked messy. The animation was incredibly choppy, and nothing flowed well at all.

The sound was also very poor. The gun sounds were really loud compared to the inaudible speech. The only voices I could hear were shrill and sounded like someone trying to sound kind of like Cartman from South Park. Then there were overused fart sounds. I don't even know why there were fart sounds, since half the time nothing was on screen to warrant them.

I found no humor in this Flash, aside from a chuckle as a bunch of poorly drawn bad guys were killed in really limited animation. Even then, I think I was laughing for a reason other than the one intended. The jokes were mostly fart and poop jokes, which are really the lowest form of comedy. Then there was a gatling gun with a dick for a barrel, and it really bothered me that you didn't use that for a better joke. If he was using it to shoot the fat guy instead of a standard gatling gun, that could be funny. Even then, the animation on the gatling gun was just you moving the symbol around.

To improve this, I would really step up your sense of humor, then work on getting animation to flow. There was no smoothness to the animation and it all looked so horribly choppy. Next, work on sound issues. Get a better microphone or record at a louder volume. If you do these things, you might be able to make a decent Flash. This, however, is garbage, and best forgotten.

hornfluffy responds:

you know what? AHFUCK U

[A Bad Rant]

Very poor.

The first thing I noticed in this Flash is that the art is really, really poor. It's sloppy and indicates little effort, if any. The background is just a vacant grey wall with a few black scribbles around it. The character looks better, like there's definitely some sort of art style at play, but is still flat and bland. I will say I like the flat edges on him though - reminds me a bit of Samurai Jack. It's a shame you didn't have him move at all though.

The camera angle never changed, and was just flat on the guy talking the entire time. This is incredibly boring to watch. There were no closeups, cutaways, or dynamic angles to break things up. When you're talking about how much you hate the show or how you'd kill Tim and Eric, SHOW your character doing it. Just talking about it is boring as hell. One of the principal rules of comics and animation is to show, don't tell.

Voice acting wasn't bad. Sound quality wasn't high, but you could understand what everyone was saying. You weren't saying anything interesting, but you weren't spiking the mic, which a lot of beginners do.

For your next animation, actually try animating something. Sitting around talking is as boring to watch as it is to listen to. Good luck on future animations.

[Microcosm]

A great idea trumps ability.

When this Flash started, I was skeptical to say the least. The art wasn't terribly neat, and it was in a fairly sterile black and white. I really didn't see what the big deal was. However, once he hit the wall, things started really shaping up, and I found myself completely entertained.

This was one of the more inventive and creative animations I've seen here in a while. You had a good choice of soundtrack, which really tied in with the inspiration you worked from. Although the Matrix-style "agents" idea is pretty played out by now, you worked it in well. They were very tongue-in-cheek, which works.

There were some things I did not like, however. The art and animation, although decent, really don't seem like anything special. They lack the detail and dynamic art that comics are great at portraying. There were a bit too many straight-on and flat camera angles, which isn't terribly interesting. Also, having audio for sound effects but not dialogue is a bit bothersome. It brings to mind the plethora of amateur sprite Flashes here on Newgrounds, which is something your work is far above.

Newgrounds needs more talent like yourself. I enjoyed this Flash, despite my criticisms, and look forward to more from you. Right now the biggest boundary I see for you is the art itself, as you have some quality storytelling abilities. Looking forward to more from you in the future, and congratulations on getting front page!

[WH40K Collab]

Sorry I missed out on this

I remember when this was still a thread in the forums and I really wanted to get on board, but I couldn't find the time or inspiration to get a good 40k Flash done. It would have been nice to be a part of this!

I'll be honest - some parts of this weren't very funny at all. I cringed at a few in-jokes or missed humor, but the good generally outweighed the bad. Flashbound - your visuals are fantastic. You really stepped up your game with this one. Nice attempt at a Johnny Utah-esque bit.

The sound went out of sync near the end, and trust me I've dealt with that glitch enough times. It also bothered me that when shots zoomed in, the navigation menu would go with them. Also, there's a lot of custom fonts from what I could tell, because Arial text overlapped all over the place. Break apart text done in special fonts - that way it'll show up as a graphic on everyone's computer, not just computers with the font installed. You lose a point for technical problems, but as you said you'll update it once you get some bugs fixed.

"I Kissed a Spawn" was pretty goddamn funny, I have to say. There were some really good parts and some definite stinkers here, but that's par for the course for a collab, isn't it? Here's hoping I'll be able to get on board when the Warhammer 40k Collab 2 comes out :)