Stupid-Owl's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[*We Didn't Start the Fire]

Nice Animation, Stupid Song

This is another one of those songs that you have to listen very closely to in order to properly interpret the lyrics, and this is not the first montage to it I have seen which completely ignores the song's refrain.

For those who've never figured it out, Billy Joel is making an excuse for his generation, (The Baby Boomers) an excuse which goes on and on and on. The message of the song is essentially "Things have always been bad, so it's not our fault if the world goes into the crapper on our watch."

It's not just a harmless song. This widely-held attitude is why we now have over ten percent unemployment, severely depressed wages among those who are employed, have skyrocketing costs in educational and health care systems which do as much harm as good, and are so mired in two foreign wars that we no longer have the capacity to defend our own shores.

This flash animation would have been much better, in my opinion, if it did something to address THAT aspect of the song.

[discgolf quicky]

Catchy music, nice animation, too short.

"...whether it get's blammed or not..."?!

Dude, this animation has absolutely no business getting blammed. It's not an epic or anything, but I am far, far, -far- from resenting you for wasting my time with it.

It really liked the visual style and the music was very appropriate. I believe a short movie with this same style and an actual story would do very well.

Failing a story, you could at least go for a series of consecutive events. Just animating this guy leaving his home, walking through the park for two minutes, with other people doing amusing things in the background, and then having him go back home, all to the same music, would be fun to see. Maybe he's walking his dog, or meeting his girlfriend or something. Make it very basic. Have you seen the Another Day movies, the The_Super_Flash_Brothers? Something like that.

Keep up the good work, man.

synsacrum responds:

well i'm glad you liked it, the reason i put that in the header, is because sometimes you just can't tell who's gonna get to an animation first, and it seems like a lot of people don't like 'em if they're not an epic, but i'm glad i'm getting the response i am :D

[white shadows]

Great but incomplete.

Dude, you should totally finish this. It would be an awful shame for you to get this far on a project and then just give up. This is a great video, it has a very distinct style. I love the use of shades of brown and grey, but maybe remove the one or two instances of bright colors.

Keep at it!

[Reiko - The Frog]

You are hurting me with your humor.

Ugh. I went to your site. Images...

This is a very, very good submission. I mean by that not that it is a brilliant epic or incredibly cool; but that it focuses on doing what flash does best and does it with POLISH. Many flash artists fail to grasp the importance of sound effects, smooth animation, or a good loading screen. Long animations are nice but well done animations are much better. There are only two things about this movie I don't consider perfect: the sound of the fly buzzing was a little too loud, and the title made the ending easier to guess.

I went to your site and read a few dozen of your panels, and I regret to inform you that I do not like your comic. You are clearly an accomplished artist with a distinct style and a good sense of humor, but I found Reiko's cruelty to other children too painful to stomach. I want to be very specific about this: the mere depiction of human entrails is viscerally repugnant, but not in and of itself damning. I am a big fan of Watterson's Calvin, so Reiko's anti-social character type isn't the problem either. It is that Reiko has nor desires any friends (at least not in the panels I looked at) (well, okay, there was the gator) and seeks not just to vex and thwart her human classmates but indeed to cause them intense pain. I am sorry, I enjoyed this animation, I even gave it a five, but I just cannot deal with your comic.

If someone has done something to you which has driven you to make that comic, you then you have from me whatever sympathy you would find meaningful. I apologize if I offend you by saying that, but I always keep in mind that H.R. Geiger has his reasons.

Despite all this I look forward to any future submissions you may make to newgrounds.

TaintedInk responds:

Thanks. I'm glad you like my cartoon. I really agree that the title of the cartoon was not a good choice. I think it's too much of a clue to the punchline. Unfortunately hindsight is always 20/20.

My sense of humor is very dark but it's meant for people with a dark sense of humor. Don't take it so seriously and you may find you enjoy my comics more.

[The Amazing Adam Android]

Close to phenomenal

This is an extremely impressive movie! Thank you so much for putting in the hours of effort necessary to produce this great animation! Your action, story telling, and character design are all top notch.

The art and sound are also very good, and in any lesser quality movie I would have nothing negative to say about them; but in a movie this good they stand out as being below the quality of the rest of the movie. I am typically a big fan of the minimalist flash style; however there were scenes where the visual detail was lacking. During the aerial fight, there should be something in the background to help show motion: stars, clouds, more buildings, I don't know what would be best; but in some of those shots the releative motion wasn't apparent enough. In the sound department, the music and the voice acting were great, but you fell short on ambient sounds like city noises (other than burning cars) and diners in the restaurant. I think the movie could have given the viewer a better sense of immersion with more sound effects. I'm guessing that the almost complete lack of sound effects during the battles was a design decision, and not accidental, (and I can't blame you for not wanting to interfere with a band like the pillows) but for me the lack of sound there also made the movie seem less 'alive'.

Again, in any movie that wasn't this exceptionally good I would have no complaint about the sound and animation, but I think you're holding yourself back unnecessarily on this one. Thank you again so much for making this excellent movie which I have enjoyed watching very much.

Oh, and Stacy and Adam are adorable together!

[Valhalla Knights]

All that build up! Now I want more, dammit!

Argh, this animation is really, really frustrating as a teaser. All that build up and no real story progress. Ah, well, expositions tend to be like that. Please continue it soon!

However, that opening battle was spectacular. The frame rate was a little low, but the art was still excellent- that flip near the end looked stunning. And the music! The song is beautifully syncronized with her transformation; and I cannot over emphasize how well you pulled off the transformation shot. If you continue doing this as a series, I expect the fight scenes will be "Matrix" dramatic.

I've looked at most of your stuff here, and you put a lot of emphasis on the 'damsel-in-distress and her protector' theme, and you do it very well. I want to congradulate you on being able to work an old theme that most have abandoned without making it seem trite or hackneyed; these days seeing anime-style girls with watery eyes and quivering lips often means you're looking at some kind of hentai.

Keep up the good work, man!

[Extreme: Episode One]

Mucho Potential

I am a big fan of the minimalist animation style in flash. This movie still needs a lot of work, but you have got a lot of potential.

The consistant art style gives the movie a very strong ambience, even if I can't tell what's going on most of the time. Work on making it more clear who is saying what. Some volume control would help; the background music (was it just a girl humming or something?) was too loud compared to the voices, and playing different voices at different volumes can help give your characters a sense of location in space. (i.e. one is near the camera, one is on the other side of the room.)

Having a pre-loader helps immensely in giving movies polish; I strongly suggest you learn to make one before submitting again. Keep at it! You've got talent.

[Rush 2 ++]

I now coin the term HISPANIMATION!

I don't actually know where you're from, other than a spanish speaking country. Wait a minute...

Yeah, I could have just checked your bloody profile and found out you're in mexico. Maybe it should be mexicanimation? Mexicanime? Hispanime? Whatever.

But here's why you need the term, or -a- term, anyway: I keep seeing people call your stuff Anime. True, you have a lot in common with anime: Your art style is iconic, relying on representational depiction of salient features rather than photorealism. Your characters tend to have have large eyes and, less often, small mouths. You do a lot of quirky humor. Your characters role-type themselves, like just about every other indie artist's characters do these days.

But you also have an outstanding ability to characterize... err... -characters- through subtle physical cues and body language, without relying on dialog or heavy-handed takes. Anime relies very heavily on takes. (Takes, for those who don't know, are formulated visible reactions that audiences can easily recognize. A 'spit-take' is when a character spits out what he is drinking in surprise. A 'double-take' is when a character looks at something once, looks away without realizing what it was, and looks back again when he does. A famous Anime take would be the 'giant sweat droplet take' for embarrasment at another's inappropriateness or stupidity.)

Furthermore, in Japanese art styles backgrounds and inanimate are generally resolved with far more photorealism than the actual characters. You don't do that; you keep the same iconic art style in the background as in the foreground.

When I was in highschool spanish they made us watch a series of teaching videos called 'Muzzy', featuring stories about a green sasquatch and an eloping princess. I know that what you draw can't be Anime because, in some subtle way, IT LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE MUZZY, like the way all fish tastes like fish, whether it's halibut or catfish. There is a spanish style of animation. I've seen it. You have it. There is nothing Japanese about it, and it makes me happy to see that other cultures besides America and Japan can still define themselves artistically in this day and age.

Please, please, keep making this great stuff.

[S.M.B.2 Bloopers]

Not really into fart jokes or hardcore humor...

This is well animated for a sprite movie, and starts out humorously enough, I suppose, but I just don't draw any amusement from watching Mario fart Peach's clothes off.

[A Breed of Their Own 001]

A lot of potential here!

I thought this was going to be much worse than it ended up being when I saw the art. You have some serious potential but PLEASE learn to draw. All the same I'm glad I gritted my teeth and watched to the end. But you'll probably get Blammed anyway.

Anyway, your sense of humor is good, but your comic timing is a little off. The rabid dog bit was funny, but considering how painful the art was to look at, it went on to long. So was the dancing to the Gwen "Ditched-my-band-to-become-a-media-whore" Stefani song scene. I'm not sure if the joke was supposed to be that he was dancing badly or just that he was so into it, but it was animated so badly I couldn't tell.

The weapons bit was amusing, especially since they were all jost zonked in the part, but again, what with the bad art, it was painful to look at. You did a good job choosing appropriate music and syncing it up.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE improve your art. You could make something really entertaining if you just learned to draw and animate. I look forward to your future stuff.

HDPro responds:

Ok I understand what you're saying about the animation and the drawing, but I sketched these characters on a notebook from something I thought was funny, and that was how they appeared originally, and I couldn't change them. The characters are beased on me and my firends and I couldn't change their faces. Also I tried as much as possible to compensate for the "bad" drawings with detailed backgrounds and semi-fluent movements. I will try and improve my graphic skills with upcoming episodes. If you want to see some of my other work search under the authro Hugh Dawg. Some of my other work is there.