The-One-Banana's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Nintendo DSi "Promo"]

Minimal. lazy animation, but pretty good voices.

Personally, as a fan of the DS, I never really found the DSi to be worth my time.

But putting that aside... I'll start with the animation.

There's nothing really noteworthy in this category. In fact, the only real movement in here was of the mouth and maybe the occasional arm movement or blinking of the eyes. On top of that, the movements were choppier than desired. I'll give you points for the rotation of the opening character, but it was kind of rough nonetheless.

Artwork wasn't phenomenal, either. There was merely a white background, and a person standing (or sitting with a table for extra scenery... whoo). Though the characters look ok, I felt that a ton more detailing and shading would make the flash much more attractive; the current artwork is far too basic.

So we move on to the humor. While I found it moderately funny, it never really pulled more than a chuckle from me.

Now, there was an area where you excelled, and that was your choice in voice actor. Beautifully acted parts brimming with personality and high audio quality made the humorous "invisible parts" much more effective.

The music was also not bad. Calm ambient music; an excellent piece to accompany the flash. The climatic, louder part that started at the "Henry" scene kind of threw it off, though.

There are many ways you can improve this:

1) Animate the "invisible parts". The opening one that involved the violent PSP fan killing was appropriate, but once you used it for the other two parts, the flash felt really, really lazy. In fact, those parts take up a bit less then half the flash itself.

2) Put a bit more dedication in detailing. Some of the shading work is a bit rough and shoddy, the drawings of the people were a bit too basic to be a standalone object to watch. and the plain white background is uninteresting. Maybe put them in a room of some sort. Is the discussion taking place at a public area? Inside of their home? Add a bit more dedication to the flash's appearance!

3) The people are so... dead. Make body movements to accompany the emotions they express as they're bombarded with the oppressive narrator (ie, arm movement, eye movement, shrugging of shoulders). When the narrator at the beginning says "F*** you" at the beginning, the guy just stands there. Don't we normally react with a bit of anger or frustration, instead of just standing there with the same exact facial expression?

This flash really could have gone somewhere. If you had animated some of the invisible parts, the flash could have been more exciting and fun to watch. Take a bit of time to polish things up, and your flash will be more fun to watch.

TechFinch responds:

Thanks for your review. Your critiques are noted, and hopefully I can win you over with my next submission. =)

[I Found A Dollar!]

Some positive aspects, needs improving.

Let's start from the beginning, shall we?

In the foreground, we have a stick figure walking. Now, normally, I don't have a problem with stick figures, but it is very roughly animated, as if the frame rate was really low. Not to mention that he's drawn a bit sloppily. You should definitely consider transitioning to usage of the line tool with stick figures, it's much neater. The grass looked nice, though.

However, the background was rather... extraordinary. The starry sky was beautifully drawn, and the city panning from right to left was also very well drawn. Some excellent detailing on your part. I also noticed how you had different components of the background to foreground pan at different speeds! That was a nice touch.

Then we come to the dance scene. I found it kind of cute, and entertaining, but it is incredibly poor animation-wise. His "dance" composed of three simple frames. One facing right, left and center/down. Extremely basic, poorly drawn, and choppy. A fully animated dance would have been so much nicer. Then, when the new stick figure came in (again, roughly animated), he did the exact same dance, with the exact same three frames. It seems like you just took the same movie clip, but filled it in with a blue color. A bit lazy on your part. The background for the dance was attractive, but basic, too.

There is definitely room for improvement:

1) You should definitely refine the graphics a bit more. I was astonished by the background, but the stick figure should look a bit tidier.

2) Make the animation more FLUID. The movements of the stick figure are extremely lacking in detail, just a few basic frames that looped together. Perhaps you could add a few more frames to make the animation quality a bit better.

3) A bit more length would be nice, but that's just my personal opinion. If it's just a random funny thing, hey, I can't complain. :D

Overall, this was a quirky and fun little animation that was good for a little bit of entertainment, but there are definitely many things that you can improve here.

Good Luck!

NibzAU responds:

Thanks man

1.) the background is from a game i am making i just copied and pasted it in to this animation
2.) i hate animating i like just drawing backgrounds and Actionscript
3.) this was never forseen getting through the portal :)

[SBC's Cookie Clockmas!]

Wow.

This short was virtually flawless. The way you capture all the emotions and talking through just a simple clock amazed me. This flash was also extremely funny, I actually believed at one point that SBC knew what he was doing, until I saw that he put the WHOLE egg into the mix. Your art was amazing too, especially the inside of the mall, with the tropical plants and whatnot.

Another incredible job by Rupee clock!

RupeeClock responds:

Wow, you actually paid attention to the contents of the bowl. :D