JackBz's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Turing Test]

A decent concept doomed to fail

So yeah, it's a pretty good concept for a cartoon; a chat bot so advanced that it is self aware. But everything about the execution was in the spectrum of bad. The start, with the pointless tweens and over sized mouse pointer remind me of flash from 2004 or whatever.

But what makes this even more of a joke is that it's just cut to the dude sitting at his chair typing, possibly while doing some tweened facial expression at the same constant angle, and then cut to the black screen with text. Nothing new is ever tried. No different angle, no view of both him and the computer screen in the same shot while he types, or just something to make this feel like the creation wasn't just a week-long copy/paste marathon.

But yes, I understand that you can't exactly be blamed for that because of what you're working with. Which is why I'm not even sure why you the thought the short story would translate well into a visual medium. I almost feel that what you've done here is the equivalent of turning a cubism painting into a book.

But I'd be willing to forgive the lackluster drawings/awful cinematography if the concept of the chatbot with self awareness actually went somewhere at all, rather than just "You're a chat bot" "I'm not a chat bot", until one of them leaves in ambiguous but all together uninteresting circumstances.

In short, the concept is good, but it's not really yours, so I can't even credit you for the originality factor. Which leaves the animation/dialogue/direction which only ranged from decent to dreadful.

Jimtopia responds:

I actually appreciate this review. Real criticism, but you aren't being a total asshole.

First, I'll agree that the camera angles from the kid back to the monitor do get repetitive and boring. Believe it or not, I was aware of this when I was making the flash. Was there a whole lot I could do about it? Not really. Time was the main factor in that, progress on the flash was slow, and as Robot Day creeped up I had less and less time to draw new scenes and camera angles. if I had had a lot longer to make this, then yes I would have put in different shots.

Second, obviously you're not a fan of tweens, which I can understand. But to be perfectly honest I believe that tweens, if used properly can look good, which is something I'm trying to learn how to do, because, let's face it, I'm not the best artist in the world, and I have trouble drawing things consistently (which is very necessary in FBF animation). So I'm left with carefully drawing characters, scenes and different elements of the animation and tweening them to the best of my abilities. It can work if done properly, obviously you don't like it, which is cool. Just figured I'd throw a little defense in for tweens.

Third, I don't think using a concept thought of by another guy should detract from originality. This wasn't a video game parody, there were no pop culture references, I used some ideas from a story that very few people have read and shaped it into my own little tale in order to expose more people too it, how that's unoriginal I don't get, but whatever.

As said above, I appreciate the review, and although I don't agree with some of your points it's cool that you at least took the time to let me know where to improve.

[Enjoy Your Heaven]

Really great and original

When the angry police interviewer guy pounds the intercom and says "WHAT!?", that was great. The voice acting in particular I can't actually recall any cartoon on this site that's done it better. The main character's pretty hilarious. I also love how the title of the thing is just a stray comment said by him. Did you decide the name before you started or did you decide the name after that line?

The animation and style was also really great. The lighting near the end when the main dude's walking through the corridor was really well done. There's probably a lot more I could say, and better organised, but I just really enjoyed it and yeah! Well done.

[Magical Trevor]

6 years on

This is still definitely amazing. I associate this with some pretty great earlyish school memories.

[a trippy animation?]

Audio will come later?

What the hell? Why not do it NOW before you submit it? Seriously, I want you to explain to me why you think it's a good idea to submit what is essentially an unfinished cartoon. This isn't a site to show progress on something (unless it's a trailer). Seriously.

As for the animation - boring unoriginal concept with some not bad frame by frame in parts, but it just screams "my first flash movie", which it is, but people's first experiments with the program do not belong here.

[Hoodoos]

I gotta say

I forgot how insanely enjoyable everything you ever make is. The sheer originality and creativity of not only the premise but the animation too is just something I'm envious of. The mini fight that occurs between the blue and orange guys...their morphing into various things. Watching your stuff just makes me feel lazy because I can't begin to have the motivation to approaching things like that. I love how you hardly ever use tweening, it's all frame by frame deliciousness with an awesome trippy vibe. It makes me feel like I'm observing something, and the way you come up with all these ideas is just really great.

The only thing I would maybe suggest, is to have the cartoon loop permanently, as in just emit the credits (maybe have a credits button on the title screen) and the movie only stops when you browse away. But that's hardly a real criticism. Excellent job, as usual (hell, better then usual. Without exception more like).

VillainousTurtleSLC responds:

Thanks JackBZ this was a very nice review!

[WHOOKOS Beta: Epis 1]

Sigh

I don't know what this is trying to be. I kinda feel like your target audience is either 1. just your friends, or 2. people who are already pretty familiar with this series and the concept. I'm neither of these people so I just felt alienated, not understanding who any of these characters are (they really aren't distinguished well except for Rat seeing as he's the focus). Pretty much none of the jokes worked for me either; this whole cartoon seems like a way to publicise the injokes you have with your friends or something, and it doesn't work. In fact, a high school comedy setting where the author inserts himself into the cartoon with his friends just seems like the most unoriginal thing ever, man.

But it could've been saved if it had good character designs, drawings or animation. The only differences between the characters are their hair and clothes, they're otherwise all the exact same template. Size, head shape, facial features (especially since you've emitted most of them). I mean god damn, even the shots outside the school where you just copy and paste the same grey character walking past the scene 3 times. It's just lazy.

But the biggest problem throughout all of this was the sound design. The voices were all bad quality and quiet as hell, or would suddenly turn really loud. And it's pretty frustrating that I had to mute this computer to stop the music on the menu screen while I write this review. I guess that's not something I should mark you down for, but you should consider stuff like this in future.

The ending made me kinda almost smirk, I'll give you that. But you need to either make this a lot funnier or a lot better animated and drawn (preferably both, though).

[Waiting for the Bus 2]

Hahahaha

I was thinking in my head "this really doesn't need a sequel", and then I got this. Was pretty much the best that could've been done with the concept. I especially liked "The Beatles" in the credits.

[the Last of the Dashkin]

Didn't love it

I know you've been wanting to fully explain the origins of Bitey for a long time, but it almost seemed like you rushed into this. Something about having a narrator just felt like lazy story telling. Maybe not so much in explaining his origins, but explaining how he feels about his situation, emotions and all that. You always managed to convey how all the characters are feeling so, so well through actions alone, and I dunno. Bitey looking at other animals being with their kin, I think him wanting for more of his kind was conveyed well enough without someone explaining it for us.

I felt like you'd been too influenced by the people who complain that there's no story, and instead have relied on less original methods of telling a story as a result. I feel it's negatively affected this short. I also don't see why you waited to gave yourself such a short deadline for the cartoon where you actually start to go deeper into the story. It's impressive as hell that you actually made something of this calibur, but it does show in parts. I realise I might be making myself look stupid, because I genuinely have no clue how long it took for you to make Waterlollies or Littlefoot, but I assume they take months (I remember there being a massive wait for Water Lollies).

Even the graphics at parts were distractingly "flash" looking sometimes, e.g putting really obvious inner shadows, colouring entire creatures with gradients, young Bitey's head's colouring etc. It didn't look as good as Waterlollies or The Yu Yu in terms of colouring, but the animation was still just as incredible.

Lot totally in love with Lemonee Wee's design. Not so much the design itself, cos it's pretty damn cool, but it seems so drastically new that I feel you should just make it a different character, e.g, she definitely no longer suits the name "Lemonee Wee" in my opinion. She seems too serious for such a comedic name, unless this is intended.

Things I loved: the shot of the planet from space, the gorgeous globe tree setting and a lot of the scenery in general, the fact that we've seen that Brackenwood can experience other seasons, those gorgeously animated scenes of Bitey running across landscapes. Young Bitey is also pretty adorable, and I felt sad when it showed the new little foot. Nicely explained Bitey's possible contempt for Big Foots (Big Feet?).

It's also made me extremely excited for the feature film, because it DID make it feel like there's a lot more that we haven't really thought about yet. The feeling of depth this short gave with the combined elements of subtle story telling with your previous shorts would be the best thing ever.

All in all, still better than almost everything else here, which is why it gets a 9, but I think it's a step down from previous efforts. But a step down from "almost absolutely perfect" isn't anything to be annoyed about.

[Kevski - Challenge One]

meh

If you're going to make little challenges like this, at least put them all in one swf so that it isn't practically on the verge of being a spam submission.

[Waiting for the Bus!]

Probably the single funniest thing I've seen

on this website, that is. The "cries like a little bitch" on the newspaper, the whole set up for the thing (I was thinking myself how he managed to keep up with this bus at the start), and basically everything. Perfection.

And then the bus blows up at the end and I had to favourite it. I just couldn't not after that.