Mogget128723's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Beyond Tuonela: Teaser]

That... is some slick style. The combination of CGI and hand-drawn visuals was unusual and could have easily been a flop, but I LOVED it, and that's certaily due at least in part to how well you handled the animation and camerawork. Very impressive; looking forward to more.

Mixed-Studios responds:

That's quite a compliment. Everything fitting together was a concern and one of the bigger challenges of this project. Nice to see that it seemed to work. Thanks!

[When they want you dead]

Well, that was certainly a sizeable piece. I've got a few things to say.

The 3D effect was an interesting concept in theory, but in practice, here, the number of errors caused by the use of the 3D environment (lack of elements in outer edges of the frame, miscalculated depth, misplacement of sprites, low resolution textures on models) overwhelmed the benefits. Coupled with that, there was just something... off about the choreography. The movements of everything, dudes, weapons, vehicles, projectiles, seemed just a little bit too... slow. Everything seemed to be taking its time getting where it was going, and that's not lag, I'm on a gaming rig here and the 3D sections were running at 60+ frames per second.

Again on the subject of the 3D sequences, their visual quality compared to the quality of the 2D frame-by-frame animation really cheapened the 2D animation, particularly given the 2D animation was of significantly lower quality to begin with. If you attempt a splice like this again, I suggest you make an effort to have your 2D segments run at a framerate similar to that of the 3D segments, either by capping the 3D framerate or increasing the 2D framerate with more... well, frames.

Lastly, saying there's 'no actual protagonist or antagonist' comes off as really quite pretentious, given that the flash clearly featured visor guy and rocket-pack guy as the protagonists, and glasses guy with his army of grey guys as the antagonists. The protagonists may have been anti-heroes, but that didn't make them not protagonists.

But, despite all that, I really enjoyed the animation. The 3D aspect, while flawed, was extremely interesting and lent itself to some brilliant camerawork. Some of the content was just plain awesome - the addition of the body-consumer, Mr. Faceless, and Flaming Dude With Sword added a wonderful fantastic element that kept the animation from succumbing to Madness tedium and becoming just another bloodbath with lots of grey. Also, the music was fitting and well-placed.

Overall, flawed, but in the end, quite good and certainly memorable. If I were you, I'd keep working with that 3D engine of yours; see if you can iron out the quirks and give it that extra spunk. I'd certainly like to see more done with it.

Coft responds:

I guess you're right about everything you've said.
Lots of the sprites are misplaced, because when animating I control the z-position by setting some numbers, and this 'compile and check if it's right' technique made me ignore some inacurracies really fast. Bad technique, my fault obviously.
A lot of people complain about the animation being slow - that's right, my fight scenes are bad and slow, BUT - when watching the animation at 60 fps, fullscreen, on a huge screen, making it any faster just made it confusing. I've also used some super-smooth-camera tricks, so for the scenes where nothing cool's happening, I expected it would make them interesting. But you said you had 60fps and that it's slow, so I guess it didn't work.
The 'anti-hero' thing - thanks, I didn't know that.
Most of the wrong stuff is caused by the engine being a Flash / 3D hybrid and its ineffective animating, so no, I hope I'll never have to use it again. But I'll make a better one :)
Thanks for the review.

[MBR: Derek vs Nivlac]

That was FUCKING EPIC.
My favorite bit was when your character got back up after taking some hits from the other guy, releasing shockwaves that blasted away his surroundings.

spritefan responds:

Thank you man :D! Yeah, that was my favorite part as well. :P.

[Yotam's Dream]

For the most part, worked fine. Ran smoothly.
But there were a couple of spots in the first half, one right at the beginning and one a little further in, where my browser just flatlined. The animation froze in place, and I wasn't able to interact with the browser itself.

I think it's more than an issue of the quality of the jpegs; I'm running a very powerful gaming machine and it always handles even badly optimized flashes without breaking a sweat.

Croire responds:

Thanks for the input!

I wish I wasn't such a technological dolt. I wonder what could possibly be making this happen

[Contemplate Life]

I was absolutely hooked until...

...I realized it was religious propaganda. The movie was solid; good animation, great writing, great music, but its message is completely off. If your life is fucked up, don't sit and cry and pray for god to save you; get off your ass and change it yourself. This is the problem I have with most religious folk; they put the weight of their problems and their salvation on something that, if it exists, has no interest in helping them. The only person that can save you from your own personal hell is yourself, and that is the message this movie should leave people with, rather than telling them to put all their problems on something that may or may be even paying attention.

nahtanojmal responds:

I'm glad you liked the part you did and told me the part you didn't like

You may be the only one who can save yourself from your hell, but
only God can save you from the real Hell.

Thanks for reviewing ;)

[He stole my Lollipop!]

Awesome.

Not quite as thought provoking as Apples, but still pretty damn funny XD
Sure, it wasn't intelligent comedy, but sometimes, it's great to get a laugh just from things that shouldn't happen, in this case... overreaction, and a significant dose of random.

@Scroler:
Before you bitch about other peoples' work, how about you try to make some yourself?

Merol responds:

Hah, glad you liked it man!
THANKS A LOT!!!

["EXTINCT"]

Wonderful.

Amazing work through the entire thing; the sudden jump from blissful and peaceful to 'panic!' worked very, very nicely. Bravo; I hope to see more from you in the future.

manuelberja responds:

yes,i will produce more!
thanks!