Nanashi's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Last Fight: Final Ep]

Not bad.

I have to agree with some of the others, that something is missing. I by no means underestimate the difficulty of frame by frame animation, but what you have here seems like its missing a few high quality shots. Almost all action is implied. This works as long as you make up for it with demonstrated action here and there (see any reasonably budgeted anime)

I also feel that several shots hold for far too long, such as the explosion. Long hold shots are very hard to get right (I don't think I've ever nailed it). Too short, and it feels strange, too long and its distracting and irritating.

In the future, I hope you spend a little more time on a few high content scenes, instead of several comic book style action shots with minimized movement. I applaud your music choice though, and your style is on point.

[G.I.N.A part 2]

Good, but with some flaws

There are some really good things about this animation, and then other things that really get in its way.

The opening scenes seem to have a lot more effort in them then the rest. This is great, but I'm at a total loss as to what's going on. Yes, I'm sure seeing the first part would help significantly, but its not just 'who is who', its what the hell did she just do? What was the point of this or that? Voice acting helps. So does blatantly showing something that explains what's going on.

I noticed, for example, in the opening shots of the... uh.. Japanese Zombie Planet? Anyway, the fence. You decided to tween it to give it some depth. It looks like you decided it looked too 2D, so you added additional detail to the struts, and tried to get them to match the movement of the underlying 2D plane. The tween smoothing seems to have made this difficult, so the detailed layer falls off track, and the whole effect is lost.

The fight sequence at the end had the advantages of having well drawn characters. The Zombies seemed to move better than the humans though, and our heroin appears to have been flying the whole time. Even when the badguys watch her on the monitor inside, she's STILL in the air.

Sound effects where enough to get by, but the music was very irritating (to me). I think you could have done a LOT better, even digging in the Audio portal.

I hope you take these things into consideration, and continue to bless us with your hard work!

[Castle Repercussions - D2]

THIS is what I save my 10s for

I don't have a count of how many 10s I've given in my nearly 8 years here, but it can't be many.

I got over the 'stick thing' early on, as your camera work, sound mixing, presentation, animation and story telling prowess dwarfs any disappointment I might have in you choosing to use sticks.

This series is absolutely epic, and might just be the BEST work I have seen in FLASH. I can't wait to see what you come up with next.

[Don't Leave]

Very nice

So what if it was a test? I think the response it has received is a good indicator of the success of that test. And remember that the secret behind creativity is hiding your sources. It does not mater how you put together the art (as long as its legal), all that maters is that you are able to put together what you intended to.

I see animations like this and it reminds me of back in the day when I could animate. I remember that I tended to rush through things, and when I forced myself to take my time, my work was much better. You should consider it. With a little focus, you could make some amazing work.

I agree with the other reviews that say the NG logo was a mood killer, and the one top down scene was very out of place. Otherwise, everything was fine. The story was a great idea. Interesting enough that I could imagine writing a whole series around it. Girl dies, comes back and tries to make things work, they obviously don't because she is DEAD, story peaks when she gets him killed so they can be together, but ends in tragedy when he discovers she did it intentionally. Just a thought.

Anyway, keep it up.

Jestercap13 responds:

thank you what you say is true( and the NG logo thing yeah lol, that was a problem but i had never done something like that and i wanted to see what would happen lol, bad choice in some forms lol) and i hope that i can make even better flashes in the future.

[KR47: Club]

A few tips

The animation was great, as was the style. Not knee slapping funny, but that's ok, I like to go a day without bruised knees.

Anyway, once you have all of your lines ready for your animation, download goldwave (google) and load them up in that. Copy a section of silence onto the clipboard (not really silence, obvious fan's and shit in the background that we want to cut out). now select the whole sound, and go to effects > Filter > Noise reduction. Set it to use clipboard, and click ok. It should remove background noise based off of the sample you gave it. It might need a longer, or shorter sample, but try to get one as uneventful as possible so it only removes the fan noises and room tone. Once this is done with all your files, your voices will fit in flawlessly with your TOTAL SILENCE BACKGROUND SOUND!

Try looking for roomtones on free sound effect websites. A room tone, or background loop of SOME kind would be much better.

Good luck

Ghosty22 responds:

Thanks, man!

[Wacky Pod Races]

Exelent work

I always like to see dedication like this in an animation. You set a goal and reached it. I never was a fan of the original Waky Races cartoon, or a big Star Wars fanatic for that mater, but you have done a great job combining two things that don't seem to go together at all!

I see how much work you did to stay true to the sources, and I have great respect for that. The voices where as good as they could have been, music did its job, and animation was flawless. Thank you for your time and effort.

StuffAnimation responds:

Wow, you don't like either Wacky Races or Star Wars and you still give it a 10! Thank you.

[:Endless:Pilot:]

Almost

Your animation skills are better than your drawing, and that's not an attack on your drawing. You have a strong understanding of how to use the camera, and it shows, but you really need to cut that frame rate in half. Its obvious you didn't intend for it to run that fast, but you thought it looked cool when its running so quickly, and looks so smooth. Sure, keep a high frame rate, but that was WAY to fast to actually make out whats going on.

Spend more time on your artwork. I'm not saying make your characters more complex, and thus harder to draw, just, give the backgrounds some love, and when you are story boarding, don't forget to add some establishing shots to help the viewer understand where the combatants are, or where they are going. That will help to control your pacing.

Again, the animation is there, but the pacing is all wrong and the backgrounds need some attention.