SquizofrenicCat's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[STARBARIANS - Episode 3.9]

I'm aware this is supposed to be a quick one. The animation work speaks for itself, very fluent and expressive specially alongside the dialogue. I feel like !!THE ENVIRONMENT!! colors aren't contrasting well with the characters and the shading suffered from it - Hogstrong for instance feels pretty flat colored on the first scene, like the environment doesn't really affect him (maybe that's intentional?? conspiracy???).

Anyhow, the jokes also didn't land for me, or perhaps there is no joke: Killgar is just being deconstructed as a durable poser in every episode. Which might be cool if you put it all together, specially with the novel plug, but in isolation it's missing some charm of the other episodes.

[Rick and Vegeta's Mental Health]

It's understandable to write a sketch play and realize it with AI actors, but this website isn't the place for it. I cannot give you criticism in good faith specially when there are no credits, which is also bad match for the place which is focused on creators and collaboration.

You do seem to have experience with audio mixing so I can imagine this and your other clips on Youtube, specially if you make shorts there. There's definitely an audience for it, but I don't see it here.

[A Strand Type Animation]

I was hoping for the voidout to happen and it delivered, pogged just like the BB.
Thank you.

[MARGIT THE FELL OMEN]

I really, really enjoyed this. The backgrounds, the way you made the scenes cut, the choreography, the expressions through body language and toon exaggeration (such as the armor deforming to resemble eyes), clean lines and distinguishable color palettes, the accompanying effects to exacerbate the actions such as the smoke clouds, the sound design on literally everything, the playtime.

This is without mentioning the comedic timing, and the fact it's all to illustrate a real feeling that exists when playing these sort of games. You feel like a badass but in reality the bosses are in complete control, in theory they could just feint all day (on purpose or due to a condition) and you are powerless to stop it. It's stupid, but it's true and it also happens.

You captured it all really well and you used pretty much every tool in the book to do it. Have rewatched it a few times and how you dealt with the perspective on the hand axe is extremely nice to look at. Can't help but want to visualize your process because the results are fantastic.

BrokenMOJO responds:

Thanks mate. At some point, I'd like to take a slice of the animation and do a little video talking about my process.

[Cool Cool Mario]

I think this was a pretty faithful recreation. The pacing was real good and the background work was nice, a good animation quality is always a plus.

I think it lacked a chunk of context, where in the game the penguin mom gives Mario a reward she can't take away after he drops the baby next to her. And so, a lot of people simply took the baby penguin again, yeeted them off the cliff then left with the reward. If the viewer doesn't know this, the whole thing looks hard to understand specially with the baby turning around.

[reflection]

I don't think you ever expected to hit the front page with this (specially with the paul blart tag) so congratulations!

It definitely hits as more of a personal piece with your insights, just as you claimed it to be. Maybe it never truly intended to present the thoughts in an audience-accessible way because a lot of it feels a bit jumbled or not too meaningful without context. The start where there's a conflict over acknowledging the new year would look a bit strange to someone looking back at this without being aware it refers to 2020 restrictions until the masks come on.

The presentation and pacing were nice with the character and the text never fighting with each other for attention, and it ended on a hopeful note. The character designs are also cute. Good job with it overall.

idontknowcorp responds:

Thanks for the in depth review. I don’t know what I was expecting for this audience wise. It was definitely a piece I made for myself first so the Front Page did catch me off guard... Also I’d completely forgotten about the Paul Blart tag until you pointed it out >.<

[Mr. Ingredient]

This was surprising to me. I was not expecting such a bittersweet narrative, where a character recollects everything about someone else with such feelings of admiration, specially over someone as curious as Mr. Ingredient.

The art direction is top grade. The visual certainly feel nostalgic, but beyond that there's a lot of personality and life in it with the way the characters move and express themselves. The colors vary between warm and cold accordingly and I liked that because it tied with the writing.

I am a bit conflicted about the presentation when it comes to the narrator; on one hand, the narrator speaks very fast and seems to slur their speech in the process, making it a bit harder to understand, which is not very good for a short film. On the other, it legitimately sounds like they're about the cry, which nails the sentiment that the narrator truly misses this character, and also makes me kind of wanna cry too :).

Overall, very moving, very pleasant and great work. Subtitles could help quite a bit. I cannot stress how happy I am that it didn't end with Mr. Ingredient simply dying, but moving on to something that is hopefully better.

[Poetry Lovers]

I liked the animation a lot, very expressive. Designs are cute also.
Audio was alright. Maybe you went a bit too hard on some effects, but considering there are no voices, you kinda needed to do that.

I think the narrative was a bit strange, I was kind of hoping they'd read their weird poetry to the club. It seems that main point (them being in poetry club) was pretty much only used for an awkward pause, before the main characters retreated for coffee. It didn't really build up to anything, so that felt off to me.

[THE STICKMEN 2020 COLLECTION]

I'm not going to lie, I had never heard of this before and I was a bit taken aback when I saw this was over 30 minutes, but it went by surprisingly quick. Much like the other reviewer said, I'm pretty economic with my ratings, but I find this entry deserves a large one overall.

Some bits were funnier than others, but overall the short bite formula worked really, really well. Animation quality was super well made within the scope it aimed for (watching that fish one where one of them rebuilt their token stack amused me), and the audio was high quality except when it wasn't intended to be (obviously).

I was thoroughly amused with the voice acting and the jokes, even if it wasn't always the funniest thing in the world; the delivery in pretty much all of them was excellent. In the end, it's a very high quality finger puppet show with very witty writing that you've produced here.

The size of the cast is also very impressive and I congratulate you for being able to organize it and get all of this done and up on here. Bravo!

[Australian Diplomacy]

The one liners per minute on this short were off the charts, very witty. The designs and animation economy were very well employed, as well as nostalgic, so it fit the GI joe parody perfectly.

I was really hoping that genius boomerang bit would do its thing but it never did, so I got a little bit blue balled from that. "Foreign language consultant" made me crack up.