JackBz's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Teaser: The Last of the Dashkin 2]

Your old flash cartoons are probably my favourite online shorts I've ever seen, and as a once huge fan who joined your forum and everything, this has me extremely excited all over again. Best of luck!

chluaid responds:

Hey dude I remember your username from the forums! Because in my head I always pronounced it JackBEEZ. Anyway thanks man!

[Donut Quest]

Completely brilliantly animated, consistently entertaining and hilarious. I love how the touches of the animation made the guy walking into the donut shop with glee so funny in itself. This was both super excellent as both an animation showcase and a comedy.

Sexual-Lobster responds:

thanks!

[Africa Dudes]

Christ, this was embarrassing

Just absolutely dreadful in every account, and so utterly pointless. I can't tell whether it was part of the collab rules to make every single person's entry unfunny, boring, poorly voiced, and unoriginal. Christ, how many iterations of a variation of a "hey...what if...what if african people talked about things we talk about in the western world?" Same constant angles, everyone wears masks to hide any trace of animation besides slight body movements, insanely repetetive jokes (probably because no one saw each other's entries, so didn't realise most of them were doing jokes on the same theme over and over again). It's got a pretty great pre loader though.

I can't really decide whether this is meant to be a "so bad it's good" kind of flash, because it borders on a pointless spam cartoon in everything but the artwork (which is very good most of the time). I'm leaning towards yes because of the quality + "DO NOT WATCH THIS COLLAB", and also the fact that you get a medal from even sitting through the thing, seems to point that it's all a big joke. But if so, it really means...nothing. Self awareness doesn't redeem anything/isn't an automatic "get out of jail free" card for making something terrible. If it was a serious effort at comedy, then well, god help us all.

I feel kind of bad about the 0, because I usually try and withhold from voting things 0 (I think I've given 4 in the 4 years I've had an account). But this. I actually think this might be the worst work of every single person involved. I wish having a list of superstar tag team flash authors would actually have made something halfway good.

Stamper responds:

good luck with 'alien potato', we're all waiting for it and can't wait to watch it

[U: First Thing Game]

So bad it almost becomes funny

As in it just makes me amused that anyone actually considers this to be funny in any sense. And just the fact that like...did you guys honestly not notice that there's extremely noticeable background noise for each of the sound clips? I questioned if it was meant to be coming from the tv before realising that it stops and stars with every new voice clip.

Usually when reviewing things, I generally have to compare and contrast what I think the intentions of the cartoon were with how well it pulls things off, though obviously it varies from cartoon to cartoon (I wouldn't highly rate with a pointless spam cartoon because it succeeds in being pointless), but here I don't even know where to start. What was the intention? Was seeing someone play a game meant to be comedic in any way? Was some of the things being visualised by the other guy (the simpsons/halo/shitload) meant to be the crux of the humour? Why don't you just make your next cartoon these guys playing I spy and call it a comedy, since I guess that's all your stuff needs.

I mean just...holy shit. The punch line of the whole thing is that someone likes Justin Bieber. How did you need a writer and editor for that? It straight up baffles me. And I haven't even touched on the graphics/animation/execution at all. The premise alone is just so...NOTHING.

Blakant responds:

wow, u must be a big fan of jb to write this long & pointless essay to me xD
thx for ur time anyway man :D

[Ransom!]

Hahahaah crap

This was...god damn, I actually laughed a lot. The joke itself is really good, and the voice acting just makes it so much better, and is a quality above a lot of other flashes. "Aw crap, he wants proof" was delivered so well. I think this did pretty much exactly what it wanted/needed to do, with great timing, but there were some minor things that hurt the quality slightly, the biggest being the almost identical looking characters. I also felt like I really wanted this to be part of something bigger, like a would be scene in a longer cartoon. I think it was because no explanation was given for anything, so it made me feel like I'd just kind of started watching in the middle.

Uhhh in short: very funny, minor faults that don't hurt the intentions of the cartoon, will watch more of your stuff now.

zigilante responds:

You make a very valid point about the identical characters, so just a little back story on that (not shooting down your critique):
When I started drawing the "Pib" comics, it was a little doodly-side project that had simplified art . . . essentially a take on stick figure comics. They were just a bunch of identical bald guys, (or bald guys with a wig and lipstick for women). When Pib became my main project, I cleaned up my drawings a bit, and made the backgrounds a bit more complex, but I retained that base, "stick figure" look.

As for the sense that is was something bigger, we actually create comics with the intended feel that they are a page out of a much larger story. This animation was based almost word-for-word on a comic we drew, so that would probably explain that feel. I can say that animations in the future will definitely be longer (as length has been a popular complaint). I can't state exactly what they will be like because I honestly have no idea.

Thank you so much for your helpful review! It gave me a lot to think about and reflect upon!

[Charmander and Squirtle]

Unimpressed overall

You said it was made in 7-8 hours, and it's really apparent. It's sketchily drawn, with a noticeably low frame rate, but it looks more "rushed" than a stylistically driven choice (and I don't understand why the brush smoothing seems to have been lowered a lot). I guess a lot of that doesn't really matter given the context of what this cartoon is: a silly little Pokémon parody/comedy. But the humour was not very effective (ho ho ho), at least for me. It seems to be poking fun at the logistics of the franchise at a very base level, the example being how the bubble attack really wouldn't do shit against just about anything, but yet it does.

I think the only saving grace of this cartoon was the expressions/voices of Charmander and Squirtle. Particularly when they're just gazing in aw at the bubbles. I smirked. But that itself isn't noteable enough to carry the whole cartoon.

I feel this review's a little pointless seeing as this was obviously just a quick cartoon to make for fun or whatever, but it's just how I feel I guess.

vlaktemaat responds:

:(

.....

[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.

[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!

[Custodial Catastrophe]

Awesome

You're one of my favourite authors. It was hilarious how everything went wrong, with the funniest part probably being when the alien landed on the lever by his belt. Genius. I seriously love your style, it's so obscure and great and you use nice frame by frame animation.

Also gotta point out my love for the mutation at the end.

VillainousTurtleSLC responds:

Thanks man!

[Final Fantasy:FoH ep1 pt2]

Same strengths and faults as the last one

Good dialogue (liked the scene when they were trying to free the guy from the rubble) and animation, but the cinematography was poor, though better than last time (such as the camera rotation). There's more to being visually interesting than good drawings, or even good animation. I definitely like this though.

Take this with a grain of salt, but I'm not a fan of the numbers thing, such as when they're losing health. I know it happens in the games, but in this cartoon, I dunno...just not a fan. It doesn't hurt the score, but I doubt it would actually make anyone enjoy it more. Yeah. I say take it with a grain of salt because it's just my opinion and others might disagree, and also because it doesn't hurt the movie. Just thought I'd say.

Also, I don't see the point in splitting episodes up like this, you're well under the 10mb limit.

The-almighty-EK responds:

I had to split them because my shitty computer can't handle editing all the peices and the libraries got messed up when I tried to merge them.