Haggard's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[W.S1 - Easter Party]

This is labled as a "short" and yet it was longer than the first episode, heh.

Anyway, I think the dancing scene was draged out for too long, so I nearly lost interest in this movie. I also didn't get why the Joystick wins the egg, I didn't even know the characters/webdings where supposed to look for the egg.

I liked the thermometer exploding at the end. I expected it to explode a bit earlier (when it first showed up), so I was happy when it finally did explode.

As I've said in my other review: I don't think anyone has ever animated Webdings before. So you have something new here. Now it's you job to use the "characters" (haha) wisely and create some interesting flashes.

{ Review Request Club }

TheRealNat23 responds:

Yes, this should've been an episode and the other one a short. The dancing scene is way too long, yes. It was also a hunt for an egg, and the first to catch it wins. Thanks for the comment about the thermometer!

[W.E1 - Soda Can]

Well, this is something new. We had letters, clocks, socoms and shapes in the portal, but I don't think anyone ever animated Webdings.

The story is a bit confusing at first, since I didn't realize that green thing was supposed to be a soda can, so I guess you should try to draw those kind of things a bit more detailed in the future.

The sound effects where a nice addition and you managed to time your animations and sound effects corretly, which is always a huge plus.

To be totally honest: This first episode didn't convice me that this might be the "next big thing" in the flash portal, but at least you got my attention now and I will try to follow how this series developes.

{ Review Request Club }

TheRealNat23 responds:

Thanks a lot!

[FunnySchoolThingsR Extras]

It's a nice addition to "Funny School Things". I like the story boards you included here. It shows how much work and planning can be put into a flash, especially if other people are writing the script.

The menu is very well done. I like the extra info you added at the borders of the menu, it's a very interesting read. And it also explains what the viewer can expect to see/hear.

Overall: A very nice addition to your "Funny School Things Redux" (as I've already statet) and I'm glad that you shared those little extra things with us.

{ Review Request Club }

Aqlex responds:

Thank you! I always like to compile all of these extras because there is so much stuff that's done that people never get to see in the finished product (such as storyboards and outtakes). I'm happy that you found it a nice addition to the original animation =). Again, thank you for the review!

[Yotam and Adam]

I'm not really sure what happened here, but at least I thought this was some funny stuff, heh.

The graphics are lacking some details. The characters look a bit clumsy, and the animations could be a bit more fluent. Maybe it would help if you'd increase the frame rate a bit?

I didn't like that the backgrounds where in grey and white only. This looked a bit lame to me. But hey, maybe that's just your personal style. I just like detailed backgrounds better.

Anyway, the voice acting was pretty good here. Good voice actors are always a good thing to have, since good voice acting can make any flash a lot better.

{ Review Request Club }

Adam-Beilgard responds:

Lifted from Yotam and Fantasia, I got my character style and bg (basically everything, since it's a parody) from LazyMuffin. Animation was me being lazy and wanting to get this done, since I'd been working on-and-off for a couple of months, and this should've taken a week or two.

On the plus side, someone complimented my VA work! Yay!

Thanks for the review!

[Funny School Things Redux]

The graphics are pretty good here. The backgrounds are very detailed (which I really like) and the characters look good as well. Animation is fluent most of the time, so that's another good thing.

The voice acting isn't that great most of the time. Some voices really lack some emotions and they don't sound very good at all.

The "story" (well, the "funny school things") sometims are funny. And I think some things are only funny if you witnessed them live (ie, you have some background information). My favortie one was the "I've seen Hobos do it, so why can't I?"

{ Review Request Club }

Aqlex responds:

I'm glad you enjoyed the graphics. I hear a lot of people compliment my backgrounds, which makes me happy, though I personally feel like I pour a little too much time into small background details. There were a couple skits where I really tried to tone down the background, or put a little less focus on it so I could focus more on the characters. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the voiceacting. I used a wide variety of my fiends in this animation, and none of us are professionals, so I understand that it might not come off as that great sometimes. I am glad that you liked some of the skits though, and I do understand the fact that some of them are probably a lot funnier to those that were actually there to witness it, but I knew that might happen with some of the project as I was beginning work on it. Thanks for the long and detailed review =)!

[Pip the Robot: Trapped]

A very good submission. I like the story telling here. No words are being used, but we still can follow the story with ease, since you chose to present the scenes in a very "calm" way (and by "calm" I mean that there aren't any unnecessary changes in camera angle, like Michael Bay loves to do it).

Also, Pip the Robot is a very charismatic main character. If you can say that about a robot anyway... but it's nice to follow Pip on his adventures.

The only thing I didn't like where the reflections on one of the robots in the "control room". Of course, the idea of adding a reflection was pretty nice. But it didn't change when the robot moved, so it looked more like a part of his painting than a reflection.

Anyway, overall this is a very good submission.

{ Review Request Club }

Zictor responds:

The reflections do move, it's all 3D with a reflective surface so whatever object moves also reflects the movement. Might be the perspective or something that confused you but I assure you the reflections move haha. Thanks for your review and look out for the next part!

[Pip the Robot: Button]

The beginning of the movie is not that exciting. Only a plain white room with a somewhat cute looking robot. But luckily, you decided to jump straight into the action. No long winded intro of how Pip examines the button, before he presses it the first time. I like that.

The random things happening where quite funny, even though they don't make too much sense to me. But the animations are very good. Everything looks very smooth and the movements of the robots are very good as well (wheels turning, when they move, the movement of the arms, head, etc.).

I also like the graphics a lot. Even though there isn't that much to see (a plain white room most of the time), the things we can see look very good.

The ending look promising as well. Pip is trapped in a building that M. C. Escher would like a lot... next movie should be very interesting. :)

{ Review Request Club }

Zictor responds:

Haha, I like the whole robot logic thing, he's not going to be hesitant about pressing a button, he wants to know what it does, best way to figure that out is to press it. He has no idea that it'll do random things, but he keeps pressing it to see what happens. The next part is coming along nicely and I actually based the room on one of Escher's Lithographs called Relativity. I'm using the button to drive the story across the next few episodes as it's quite nice to not have to come up with complicated explanations. The other episodes will also all be longer than this one and make more sense.

[No Elephants in Here]

The graphics are really nice here. I also like the various sound effects. They really add that special little "extra" to any flash.

The voice acting was okay, but the voices where too quiet. I could hardly understand a thing, but I couldn't turn the volume up, because the background music already was pretty loud. So that's something you might want to look into.

Other than that, it was a pretty unique idea. An elephant with a machine gun... now that's something I've never seen before!

{ Review Request Club }

hillrdavid responds:

Cool, thanks for pointing out the sounds levels. That's something I left until the last part, so by then I just wanted to get it finished and not mess around much. Maybe next time I should get that sorted out first.

[Parallel Memories: Ep 1-1]

Wow, 30 minutes long? One of the longest flashes I've seen so far.

The story is a bit weird at times, but it's interesting to watch this flash nevertheless. The introduction might have been a bit long winded, though. Maybe it would've been better to cut out all the driving scenes, walking scenes, etc. Just a short intro, showing an experiement that goes wrong would've been enough.

My biggest issue with this flash is, that the voices are so quiet, compared to the background music. Most of the time, the voices are even more quiet than the music. This is really annoying. Also, the voice of Marichu isn't that great. I liked the second scientist (the one with the blue subtitles) better than Marichu's voice.

{ Review Request Club }

Pienkaito responds:

Yep, it's one lengthy animation. The next part won't be that long though.
Thanks for the helpful review. I'll keep that in mind.

PS.: Every voice actor is better than Marichu. >_>

[DJ BJ - Jungle Job (SMD)]

So, a flash video that was made crappy on purpose, for a very crappy song. Hm. I have to say, for just 1 or 2 hours of work, this actually looks quite good. If I would spend 2 hours on a flash, all I would have would be a stick figure, doing nothing, haha.

Anyway, the song does have it's funny moments. For example "Dinosaurs! I don't know....".

Other than that, there really isn't that much appeal to me. But if that's what you where aiming for... you've done a good job.

I really don't know how to rate this. It was done crappy on purpose and it is crappy... so you've done a good job, but it's still a crappy flash movie. So I guess I will just rate this with 2.5 stars.
But it does remind me of some videos you could see on Newgrounds in it's early days... so I give you one star extra for nostalgia reasons. ;)

{ Review Request Club }

Psi43 responds:

Oh yeah definitely - that nostalgia thing was something else i was aiming for a little. I used to love those animations back in the day that mainly consisted of photos.

Also - yeah it was supposed to be crappy - but also fun to watch, so that'd be something you could also rate it for ;).

Thanks a lot for the review, very much appreciated!