TESM's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Dot Dot Dot - Animated]

Well done

Good text animation and a funny concept.

D-Mac, from listening to you years and years ago you have a much better control of your voice and have really improved your craft. I think your voice not only makes the video better, it quite nearly makes the whole video. I feel like the animation may have been made after the voice work.

Good job to both of you.

[Katan]

Although it has flaws, this is well made.

Though I say flaws, they are quite minor.

This is a beautifully made flash animation with a lot of hard-work put behind it.
I like the character designs, albeit only one, really.
I like the backgrounds, use of colors, and music. There's some good creativity with the traps--nothing amazing, but still neat stuff.

The motivation for the 'bad-guy' isn't really established, not is the whole mythos, so it's a bit of a shame the work doesn't make the viewer care too much about the actual setting. "Ancient" South-American culture is an underused/rarely-used era, so kudos.

The animation, again, was fluid and the detail noticeable.
The length is long enough, but also a bit short, so you couldn't tell a whole story.

What I can say is this: this is the type of work that makes NG a great place to visit every once in a while. The story is a bit lacking, but it doesn't try to be falsely deep like Brakenwood (though not as pretty) or other big titles--this is just a fun little movie.

This deserves every reward it has received, and I rarely say that.

Congrats on graduating, as I recently did the same.

[Dailybee #019]

I wonder how...

...you snuck this by for a daily feature?

It had to be some mass voting before the 'submission' time.

Well, I had to laugh at this since movies just as shitty (for all different reasons) win awards here, mainly with lazy animation styles (stick figures) and/or 1-color characters.

You guys always cracked me up.

[Goemon's Christmas]

Good quality

Good sprite quality, that goofy song, and funny use of Santa makes this one kind of amusing.

Overall, I'm not always a huge fan of sprite movies, but this one had good direction, technique, and progression (the little it DID have).

I'm not really impressed, but it still isn't bad at all, and I think it's a nice little Christmas thing, so good work.

MasaAndMune responds:

Everybody has different tastes, but I am glad at least you enjoyed it.

Thanks for the review.

[Staircase]

Well...

You did more with 100KB than most do in 3-4 megabites, so that's alright. I'd of liked to see it be longer. Music was kinda funky and all in all, not a bad effort for a small thing.

[Remind Me]

A simple movie, but a good message.

Presentation is a bit bland, but there's some thought behind this.

The pacing, however, is pretty terrible, and it loops, kind of ruining any effect.

This is ok.

[Santa's Tree]

Enjoyable

It's not great in any field, but overall it tells a simple story with a simple ending.

It's definitely not great, by any means, but it's a nice little take on an old theme.

Could the art be better? Yea... it seemed a bit sloppy and lazy to me.

The music was nice, and it would've been nice to see more of the tree-growth animated... I dunno, to make it more magical and whimsical.

But, decent presentation and something that wasn't painful at all to watch.

Good work.

Sonucais responds:

Make me the favor of telling Tom about giving me a Wacom, it will make me improve the art :(

[The Love I'm Searching 4]

It's ok.

For one I'm not a huge fan of the song. So take that as you will.

I'm not very impressed with the whole project, regardless. I'll give you my Pros and Cons:

Pros:
+A slick presentation
+A nice blend of 'real' graphics with your animation
+A semi-cohesive story... not many NG movies can say that

Cons:
-The art style just doesn't jive with me. It's consistent... so that's a plus, but it's annoying. The stupid over-exagerated mouths, eyes, and expressions scream of both anime (which I like) and cutting corners (which I don't like). Here, however, I can cut you some slack because I know the presentation is supposed to be whimsical and light-hearted. Granted. However, these expressions are just to cliche and bogged down by being associated with all the other crap that looks the same.
-The animation, I think, is lazy. Those reused legs for running (outside the school)... I noticed that! Also, all the cheap anime-esque "flailing legs" and "waving arms" were just bland and overused. However, I can tell you some parts were very good, though the art style itself is oversimplified in my opinion. There IS still some good here.
-Though presented well, I'll always prefer well drawn, hand-drawn images... a cohesive art style throughout. You did an admirable job mixing the two, but I just don't think it's that effective. The pictures helped your background be more elaborate, but when you said you were working on backgrounds, I think you dropped the quality on the other things.

All in all, I think it was an average movie, thus the 5. 10's are for flawless movies, which this is not. This movie just sort of left me feeling "Ok. That was nice."
It's really just a very typical story with nothing really new or exciting or clever... save some Directional uses of the background with the character.
Looking at this a second time, it's a neat use of backgrounds with the quick transitions... but that, at best, is what is successful... which I don't think is saying too much.

Would NG be a worse place with movies like this? No... I think this is better than most. But it takes more than just this to be good (as I've commented on above). Her dancing to music or events is what people do when into music.. so that's cool, I guess.

Branch out more and come up with something more whimsical. Again, this was just average with a lot of cliche conventions and an uninspiring story.

Keep working hard, you have the raw materials to do good things.

[Bahamut's Favourite PMs]

This flash was annoying.

All in all, stupid people are funny. In the same way, I think this has the score it deserves. It's funny, I guess...but the animation is sloppy and the voice is grating...

It's hard to explain why...but I doubt that'd be in either of our interests.

1) The graphics were simple and probably took all of... 25 seconds. If I was objective on a NG scale, or even on a curve with Brakenwood, this is a 1/10, since you DID have graphics.

2) Again, the humor (or humour) was ok... I guess. It's just you yelling into a microphone about stuff I don't care much about.

Not much else to complain about... your intent was clear enough.

I can appreciate your responding to most reviews, however, and I believe (as an old member) it shows a consideration for the fans and the enjoyment you get from entertaining others (despite how successful or not that is).

In my mind that makes a good NG member, so I can praise you for that at least.

But this flash is just average. Sorry about that.

kinggila responds:

My animation and graphics has always been below average but it was more of the plot and humour I cared about when making these flashes. Of course, if whenever I get to making my next flash, I will want to make the graphics and animation much better than before. I felt the voices for this flash were rushed and if I were to remake it, I'd definitely make improvements.

Thanks for the well thought out review! :)

[The Facebook Problem]

Ok at best

Kinda of a common complaint. Simplistic animation, graphics, etc.

I guess the two kids tongue-kissing was for 'lulz'

All in all.. I gues it's nice to see something in a hyperbolic way show how affiliated people are to Facebook. But, in the end, this flash was just average.