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Nanashi

81 Movie Reviews

19 w/ Responses

Good energy in the wrong place

Maybe its my preference talking, but I don't think sprite based animations are any good. Even if your drawing skills are limited, its important to develop them, instead of relying on artwork from others to put something together.

You are right, Akira is one of the more popular anime movies, and oddly enough, a lot of people I know who don't like Anime LOVE it, I'm sure you won't have an issue with people recognizing it.

If you put this exact same effort into drawing a animation as a tribute to the movie, even if it was a quarter as long, it would do a lot better. It seems that around here most people only like the sprite stuff in comedy, and its hard to take seriously.

Great use of basics:

This is a fantastic animation, not for its visual complexity, but your skilled use of some of the most basic animation principles that seem to have been forgotten. All movements are fluid, intentional and smooth. Characters anticipate movement and abide by the basic physics of motion.
Once again, I see someone setting the standard high for new animators. Now even if someone wants to do a stick animation, they can see that its not an excuse to be lazy.

The only thing that brought it down a little was the audio. FX where enough to do the job, but often times maxed out, even on my Bose. Its probably half Flashes fault for the way it compresses. With a 3 MB file size, it might not be a bad idea to reduce the audio compression a bit and see if that does it.

All in all, totally worth watching. Good work.

dkuo responds:

Haha you're right, the size limit for stickpage was 4 MB so I could have unloaded the compression for newgrounds a little. Thanks!

Shweet

I bumped you up to a 4.02, but I don't know how long thats going to stay.

This is one of those times when effort overcomes artwork. The length and story, be it slightly unoriginal, give this animation life over the art, witch is a little under par to be mixed in with some of the greats. If anything, just optimize your lines so that they fit more with the other art, an apply a single color shade to them. That would be enough alone to bring them up to standard in my eyes. Its not about visual complexity, but visual style, and your not far off.

I agree with some others that the DBZ type stuff was a little out of place, and actually detract from the experience. One would expect Awesome Snake or one of the other formidable characters to put up a bit more of a fight, but because you where using other's animation, its harder for you to do that. Because of this, it makes your less popular (compared to the greats once again) character seem a little beefed up and high and mighty for the job of taking on one of these guys.

If you ever where to re-do this, and re-animate all the stuff from the other animations in your own style, it would be even better, and no one could say a thing. Even if you are not nearly as good as the original animators, you'll get serious credit for the effort.

I'm glad to see the good use of music. Your choices, though a bit popular for my tastes, worked, and you timed the animation with the music much better than I have in my animations.

I hope the positive response you get from this keeps you animating. BTW, 8 is a high score for me to give ^_^

Finally! Quality!

I'm so very glad to see a serious animation of good quality, and on top of that, it is in the anime style! I loved the way you did the backgrounds. I also love the strategic use of low compression stereo sound for the background sounds (although that was a MASSIVE, MASSIVE volume of fire, jeez!)

This length was just about right. I like longer things myself, but NG users have short attention spans, and 10 MB isn't shit when you hand animate characters and use quality music and sound effects.

Also, even though I didn't need it, the addition of a complex and functional play control system is a godsend. It was minimalistic and well designed. You well deserve one of my very rare 10s.

Great work!

A lot of potential

I think your headed in the right direction, you can draw (better than me, no question there) and you have a solid understanding of camera work and frame by frame animation. What you lack is the consistency and self control. It seems to me that you got exited, and submitted early. Thats the only way I can enplane your totally missing some of the frames. There are several parts where only your pre-animation sketch, or animatic is visible, and it would look better to skip the frame all together as opposed to showing it incomplete.

I also think you need to be more consistent with detail and style. I like the detail you put into the main characters weapon, but it was far simpler when moving. I understand its a pain in the ass to detail it during animation, but a good balance would be helpful. Simplify the still shots, add a little more detail on the moving ones.

Voices weren't bad at all, it got the job done. The VA for the main guy sounded quite serious, but the effect was lost by the omin effect of the audio. If the character is 30 feet away, on the right, his voice should be a little louder in my right speaker than my left, and quieter, to demonstrate the distance.

It will be very interesting to see what you come up with. I disagree with the last guy. If this is supposed to be something similar to Dot hack, go for it.

Nice!

I'm glad you said something about your movie in your review of mine so I could come see it. For being your first flash, this is nothing short of amazing. I don't know if you have seen my first, but its horrible! I Really like the use of painted backgrounds, and I think it gives it a very anime feel, especially because robotech was one of the last good anime with hand painted backgrounds. Now days its all crazy CG stuff. Even I am guilty of that. I can also say I am not nearly as true to the original as you are with this, and that's amendable within its own right.

I would suggest you trace moving elements into vector graphics in Flash though, that would probably look allot better, especially when the elements move. Flash doesn't Handel images very well.

Its so close

This is so close to being a real winner in my book. The dialog is well written, and the voices aren't too bad ether (could use a better mic). The cinematography is good too, the angles you chose, and such, but the thing that brings it down are the ultra simple backgrounds. Flash MX and Flash 8 support images, and they don't look half bad anymore. Try exporting your backdrops, photoshoping them, and bringing them back in as images, or something to this effect.
The other thing that kills it is the models. Not bad at all for being built out of primitives, but for how much work goes into this, you need an upgrade. Try milkshape 3D (add a dot com to that for the url). Its free for 30 days, plenty of time to re-build your models using extrusion, instead of primitives.

Loved the dragons, the movement was great!

LogFish responds:

My computer is too arse to run any newer programmes so, while i have a new 3d graphics program that doesn't bite arse, I can't use it yet! New PC in a few weeks though then it's all go - but I won't be re-doing the grahpics of this series, it's so close to completion and im ditching it in 1 or 2 episodes so I'm not doing an complete overhaul - new series should have awes-the-horse models though! (which move more accurately too!)

I'll give that a shot with the photoshopping and things - thanks for being accurate in your criticism and giving me a way to try and imprve the background rather than just saying 'it's arse' - that's a helpful review! I'm even going to helpful review it, wow.

Animation skill

This is VERY well made! I am impressed. Its too bad the page is messed up and I cant actually vote on it, but it would be a 5. I cant imagine how much work must have gone into this.

Not bad!

I know how hard frame by frame animation is, I avoid it like the pleg, let me tell ya, so the effort involved here is obvious. I liked the part at the end where the claw thing eats the guy. Sound effect was great :P

Take that skill of yours and point it in the right direction, and you may be on to something big. Thnx for uploading ^_^

LOL

I don't know what compelled you to make this, but there is something about it I liked. I actually never liked any of the RPGs of that style and yet it was entertaining to watch (and that cat in the background was hilarious!! OMG!!)

Must have been ALOT of work. Good job!

Film Maker, animator, musician, 3D Artist, writer and starving small business owner.

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Joined on 11/4/01

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