Galneda's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[I NEED HER IN MY LIFE!]

The framerate didn't take me out of it at all- as a stylistic choice, it fit with the environment and the animation style.

What did take me out of it was the muffled and echoey audio quality. At times it was difficult to understand what they were saying, especially when it was low-energy mumbling. The acoustics of your recording environment played against you in this one. It sounded claustrophobic, which was in stark contrast with the characters being outdoors, in the open, surrounded by swamp and Ogre house.

Obviously a better quality mic is over the horizon, eventual when money can justify the purchase. In the meantime, there's a lot of steps you can do to mitigate the audio quality issues.

If you have a walk-in closet, with both ends flanked with hung clothes, that acts as a budget-friendly sound booth for when you're recording lines. Lots of folks do it. In addition, to avoid reverb from the ceiling, they'll hang a thick blanket overhead (not touching the actor or microphone) to absorb further reverb. I've also seen people thumbtack egg-cartons to their walls, tiled out, as a super-cheap soundproofing measure. But, you can buy the real deal sound-proofing foam for cheap, and then you can affix it with multiple 3M double-sided adhesive strips, or (what I recommend) liquid nails from the hardware store. The tubes that look like toothpaste are easier to apply than the caulk gun, but the caulk gun liquid nails are much more long term. While they're drying, you'll still want to affix them into position with thumbtacks so they don't try to peel off while it's still wet and setting.

Audacity is also a fine recording software, as is Reaper (trial version, you never have to pay for it), however, audio-processing isn't the issue. It was the mic-quality in tandem with environmental noise.

Other than that, the short was funny. I'm not really a feet guy, but that's just what makes it more ridiculous to me. Keep up the good work, and lemme know if you need a voice actor for one of your skits, I'd be down to help.

CRAZZCLUB responds:

Finally someone brought it up 😭
But yeah you're 100% right (obviously) Normally I believe I can edit audio pretty well, but this time around I think my mic broke (or is breaking [bad]) and the quality I got from the recording kinda discouraged me from trying to edit it any further. But thanks alot for the feedback tho! It's good to hear that from someone who knows their stuff.
Also I'm surprised how many ppl don't realize the foot things part of the joke 😂

[DOOMGUY can't figure out the puzzle]

Oh dang this is like... E1M2 or E1M3 or something, right?

Great turnarounds, great Doomguy!

Lord-EYE responds:

It's e1m3 and thank you so much

[I love u so much babe! [DANDADAN]]

The animation's fine, there's great post production quality to the whole thing, where things have a soft analog glow and feel, gradients applied to backgrounds that would've otherwise looked flat.

Didn't like the AI voice. It detracts from the whole thing.

plagedark responds:

im sorry :c

[ITN 1: Stabbed]

"Did I scare ya"

YEAH.

Poor Five, I can't wait to see how this show develops.

BaconAwakenComix responds:

uhh thanks

[may i have more criticism]

Aw dude, look at you with the watermark!

Good wind up and swing with the pipe. I think what would help give it more weight and power is if the stance was more dramatically changed in the wind-up with the swing. The angle of the body, the spread of the feet, made more dramatic like he's about to knock the SHIT out of the guy on the right.

Still needs sounds, still needs music. A free audio editing software that could suit your needs is Audacity. I've been using it for years. You can record things you hear in the playback of your speaker, so it's a very useful tool for lifting sound effects wherever you can find them. (the trick is finding clean samples, but there's avenues for that too. Say, you played the hell out of Deus Ex. You can find websites that have every sound effect ever heard in Deus Ex, download that zip file, and arrange that ambience as you see fit on the timeline. Not just Deus Ex, but anything from Valve, shows, even over-used stock sound-effects on YouTube and other sources.)

The camera shakes make *more* sense as an effect made in tandem with gunshots. It's not a terrible idea to add that camera thump with melee strikes, but if this were a longer scene with a lot of dynamic action going on, it could seem a bit much. Everything is shaking the camera, punches, kicks, night-sticks, pistols, shotguns, rifles, grenades, a door open, a coffee mug fell off a table, somebody slapped the water cooler. Use with discretion- it's like a spice to add to the soup. You don't want the whole soup to taste like thyme.

I like the subtlety in the rotation on the night-stick as it repeatedly pounds into Left's face. But it lacks the full-bodied windup on the plunge down. Like I said in the last review, if you practiced with your artistry, you'd be able to redraw the nightstick at a different angle, enabling for more dynamic movement. As he wildly swings the nightstick overhead, there could be a custom angle of the prop where it's pointing away from the camera on the swing up, and toward the camera on the down-swing. And that would enable your rig to absolutely wail on this guy on the ground- because you have a really good sense of timing when it comes to kinetic motion- that G18 kicking around in the last video was smooth.

But you are clearly restricted by the rigidity of the props you're using. If you had more props at more angles, more character assets at more angles, I think you'd be able to pull off some crazy gunkata bullshit.

Thus, my re-emphasized need to remind you to experiment with the brush tool. If you can figure out how to replicate Krinkle's line-quality, and get to fabricating custom assets, you'd REALLY be cooking. You'd experience freedom. And that's what animation truly is all about.

smooth-Pb responds:

Now you're speaking my language. Thanks for the ideas and tips!

[Give me criticism pls]

The title of this animation is "Give me criticism pls"

-There's no environment.
-It's too short.
-The agent hesitated. He was already pointing at our guy, and he's dead because he didn't shoot.
-The very first frame is shown with our guy at the ready, and the agent leaned back, in a full shot, with two sets of identical floating hands above them. It seems like an unintentionally visible staging area.
-There's no sound
-There's no music
-There's no signature or credits to prove that you made this and you, smooth-Pb, didn't just lift this test from somebody else. And because it strictly adheres to the on-model style and presentation of Madness, something made by Krinkles, there's no real personal ownership to anything that's happening here.

Were these assembled using assets that were created by somebody else years ago, or did you draw custom graphics for this animation? We'll never know, because that's an inherent limiting factor by doing fanmade Madness animations.

Though there is something endearing about seeing the same kind of styled animations, more than a decade after it debuted- one has to consider how long is that going to last?

It excels as a testing platform, because you have the opportunity to cut your teeth as an animator, but I hope that you're taking the time to also practice on your artistry, enabling you the acuity to generate custom environments, props, and character designs as you see fit for whatever it is you're making in the future.

The only way to do that is to put in the time. An animator can only get to a certain point by repositioning and tweening assets here and there. At some point, you're gonna have to start dabbling in other tools. I encourage you to challenge yourself by stepping outside of your comfort zone, and really swinging for the fences in your future tests.

smooth-Pb responds:

Jeez, well that's all i needed.

[Oakley Propaganda]

Oakleys used to be a lot cooler back when they weren't afraid to do designs that were really different. Now, they just look like everybody else's sunglasses, with a price tag that's hard to justify.

Anyet responds:

Yes that’s valid, I agree.
I just chose them as my propaganda object for school project. Because I feel like it’s a good representation of people just looking at the name and spending insane money for something not even that good/cool and/or special just because it’s been promoted enough.
But yea this world need more unique glasses hh!

[Ellie's lip sync test]

At the two second mark, where she lifts her head to the highest point. "You know what they always *SAY*"

"Say" is making an o mouth shape. You've already been using this open-mouth smiley face, and that was the time to make the biggest open-mouth smiley face. Not an "o" for "ooh's" "oh's" and "you's"

E-Nat responds:

I'm still practicing to make it better, thanks for your feedback 💖

[Animator for hire let:s work]

It's an ambitious camera movement, but it's a little too jerky. It moves at such a speed that it's difficult to track, and it's over before your brain registers what it's looking at and what it just did.

The profile cropping doesn't lend it any favors either since the creature is moving from side to side. If it were in landscape composition, it would have more room to move from screen-right to screen-left which would help the movement read better.

There's no wind-up. Not even for the wave. It's very abrupt "HELLO-HERE-I-GO-SIKYUHHH-LANDED-IT!!!!!" and it's over.

It's just long enough to hint at the talent within you, but it doesn't showcase it very well. If you're putting your hat in the ring, take a note from the demo reels of others. It ain't just one sequence, it's a broad range of samples to their capabilities. I would focus your energy on exploring your range, and after you've done that, tidy up this shot, and throw it all together in a demo reel that's no longer than 60 seconds.

You got this!

belzehbub responds:

Thanks, I'll study vigorously and especially work on pacing my sequences.