R1665's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[SU: The Mugen tournment]

Hmmmm...

Not bad, but you could use some improvements.

The thing that kept pulling me out of the movie was the sub-par sound and music compression. A lot of your sfx had that "crackly" quality that comes from too much compression and/or peaking.

This movie weighs in at under 1 MB. Standard upload limit is 10 MB. You had PLENTY of room for decent-quality sounds and music. Next time, don't be afraid to upgrade the quality. This is especially true if you're nowhere near hitting your limit. A few extra seconds of load time is worth it.

R1665

marti031 responds:

I know, i didn't do the quality right in the flash video... it was suppose to be down more but whatevas

[Psylocke vs Arcueid]

I love these enexpected match-ups

Excellent work.

The only blemish that kind of stood out for me was the sound quality. I don't know whether it was the compression or the source sounds themselves, but they did have that "tinny" quality that comes from having the bit rate set too low.

I do believe that is the only real bit of constructive advice I can offer at this time. Well done, sir.

R1665

TechLeSSWaYz responds:

Why thsnk you.

[FutureForce Installment 1]

Good times...

...but it could be much, much more. You're one of the most clever sprite choreographers I know but I feel that you've hit a plateau on the technical end. I've said this a dozen times and I'll say it once again - get Photoshop and learn how to use it.

You're probably sick of hearing that, so let's get to the stylistic stuff.

While the action was well-done and the story was pleasingly in-depth, I found it a bit tiring to have so much detail thrown at me all at once story-wise. The biographies were more confusing than helpful considering the amount of information displayed for characters that weren't really involved. It might prove more illuminating to get into that information later on when their involvement becomes more prominent. Generally speaking, stuff like that should provide a few (but not too many) answers and not create additional questions.

While I was glad to see Reiko take part in the action, his presence struck me as being pretty much random. The series tie-in potential is interesting, but I would have liked to have seen him make a bigger impact rather than be a wildcard for Bishop/Cyke/Sabes.

Also, directional tails for speech bubbles don't have to go all the way to the mouth. A simple short point will do the job and look less distracting.

Well, those are my thoughts. I hope you find at least some of it useful and constructive.

5/5 9/10

R1665

smoothuser responds:

As always very good info from you. I know how to use photoshop. I used to have photoshop. My computer shat and I no longer have photoshop. I'm not sure what you want me to do with photoshop unless you are still referring to my stages. I suppose once I get photoshop, I'll ask you that question again. If you tell me where I can get photoshop, I'll get it and start photoshoping all kinds of shit. REALLY!
Dialogue: You say it's too much info. My characters needed to say something about something. They are supposed to tell the story are they not? As far as the bios go, they were ment to answer some questions and piece things together. Like I said, the Multivers is in use. I didn't really want to copy you in any sort of way. I'll figure a way to rectify that. I do understand what you mean about too much info on the supporting characters. That's a good idea. Reiko was random haha, but I really wanted to use his sprites.
Speech bubbles were a last minute thing. I couldn't find a good text bar to use, so I went with the classic thought bubbles. I'll take your advice on those. Thanks a lot for the info and the rating. Helpful as always. I'll pick your brain about photoshop once I attain it.

[Street fighter Epic Ep.5]

Some issues

As it stands, you've got some lag issues and that "Swift Optimizer" banner (which wasn't there when I watched it this morning) was extremely intrusive and took me out of the film every time I saw it.

For future reference, you can upload your flash to your file dump and preview it in an internet environment before you submit to the portal. Watching it from multiple computers with varying capacities will allow you to identify most of these bugs before mass release.

Stylistically speaking, my only complaint is that the video changes gears too often between action and dialogue. By the time you get in the groove of one, it switches to the other. Sometimes actions can tell your story far more effectively than words.

Just my two cents.

R1665

TechLeSSWaYz responds:

the optimizer is only there because I was testing compressors. thats the last one I used, sorry I kept it.
--
actually i did, I upoaded it on several sites before touching newgrounds. and it was perfectly fine! I wake up and BAM lag problem like crazy. Compressing it didnt help so im out of ideas.
--
oh well I guess Im deleting this anyway.

[Scorpion vs. Sabrewulf]

Not bad given the restrictions you had.

I did notice a few things that needed improvement, though. First of all, the FPS was set much too high. When a fight relies heavily on hand-to-hand action, you don't need that action going by so fast that people cannot tell what's happening.

Secondly, a few of the choreographic aspects seemed poorly executed. The first mauling with Scorpion on the ground is a good example of this along with Sabrewulf's excessive attack looping and Scorpion's looping high punch hit animation during the ultra combo.

While I understand that there were conditions imposed upon you for this challenge, tell me something: Did you win anything for satisfying the conditions of having extremely limited sounds and effects? If so, was it more than the satisfaction and better recognition you would have gotten by submitting a fully-produced work?

Just wondering... 3/5 7/10

R1665

diochi responds:

well the other competitors seemed to like it.
I don't know if I won anything yet because the others havn't finnished thiers yet.
as for the loops within the ultra combo I was attemting to keep it true to sabrewulfs actual ultra(though I might have made it loop more than the original)
I'll work on making it better the next time someone does an ultra.

so yea thanks for da critiqe and I'll try to do better on my nest vid.

[MKU 3: Ressurection]

Not bad at all

I do have a couple of thoughts, though.

To be perfectly honest, I much preferred the fight music of the preview over the final cut. It just seemed a lot more intense. It also skipped frames a few times during some of the more strenuous camera work, and I'm on a good connection. It might behoove you to go with a smaller window size on future installments to help ease that up.

I must say, though, that the "I don't have any running sprites" bit was GOLD.

10/10 5/5

R1665

smoothuser responds:

Thanks. I'll look into what you said and attempt to correct it. I kinda thought the Gargos theme from the preview was kinda old, but it did have a bit of a flare to it. I tried to size the camera as close as possible without the sprites looking all pixilated. Me and the vcam went through hell producing this. Haha, I'm glad you liked the line. I try to add a little bit of humor where I can. I appreciate the help, advice, and feedback, and the 10! It still doesn't live up to your recent works, but i'm working on it. Thanks for watching.

[32-Bit Tournament-3]

Time well spent

Structurally speaking, this movie deserves every bit of the 10/5 that I am giving it. Although I do have a few critiques/concerns, none of them are grounds enough to warrant a reduction in score. It's all a matter of personal opinion, so feel free to disregard.

Now, anyone familiar with your style will know that they are in for a mingling of action with humor. It works well for you. However, it seems that this movie has a bit of an imbalance. In previous installments, most of the sight gags were short and sweet, especially during the action. That made it enjoyable without serving as a distraction. The issue that I had with this one is that it changed gears too often. I couldn't really get into the flow of the Epic Battle scene due to the constant jumps between "funny" and "serious". The prolonged presentation of the funny parts was much more distracting than the usual fare of the tournament.

I must also admit to having a bit of cognitive dissonance during the more violent parts. The relationship between humor and murderous, dismemberment violence is tricky. For example, I have watched this movie a few times and the Ryu part gets the same LOL reaction out of me every time. It was set up perfectly and the unexpected outcome was just priceless. However, the same thing applied to the Rikuo and Dan seemed out of place.

Anyway, those are the main points I wanted to make and I've rambled quite enough. The time and hard work you've put into this definitely shows through and I eagerly await future installments!

R1665

Trixiaoyu responds:

Thanks man. Your review always means a lot. I tried to improve the fight scenes as much as I could in this episode. However I think that I should have improved the story element of it as well. The relationship between violence and humour did class. I was trying to make the violent parts funny, but I guess that I FAILED! :-(

I will keep on working hard to improve my skills. In the mean time, I shall await your next VG instalment. Thanks for the review.

[Hibiki vs Senna]

Excellent

Your characters were original, your choreography was superb, and you kept me glued to the screen the whole time. I don't believe I've seen a strict sword fight in sprite form before!

The only piece of advice I can give you is to watch your background blurs. If possible, you should blur them in photoshop and import rather than use flash's own blur feature. The reason for this is because it makes older computers skip frames like hell. The first time I watched this, I did so on a less-than-adequate computer and missed everything between the falling scene and about twenty seconds after they landed. It's always a good idea to take crappy computers into consideration because there is always some jackass who might decide to penalize you for it. Oddly enough, the older computers I've done tests on can handle all kinds of glows and blends. It's only the blurs that seem to be a serious problem.

----------------------

Anyway, this is the kind of sprite flash that we desperately need to see more of. I do hope that you continue to give us these original, unpredictable fights. In my opinion, your previous shoto fights were choreographically impressive, but suffered a bit from having featured overexposed characters. NOW you're cooking with gas!

5/5, 10/10, and faves all around!

R1665

TechLeSSWaYz responds:

thank you sir! i actually did the photoshop blur in my last one. i forgot to do it. thanks for the reminder ill that when i get the time!

[[CD10] Colin on Clock Day]

You know what?

I found this to be highly enjoyable! Many props to you!

Happy Clock Day!

R1665

Punisher responds:

Thank ya.

[Emerald Clash final_part]

Surprisingly good!

Yeah, that 11 mb is entirely too much for such a short presentation. Luckily for you, that short burst of potential made up for it. Your choreographic style is actually quite innovative compared to the norm for Sonic sprite flashes. I heard a few DBZ sounds in there, but you by no means relied on DBZ choreographic cliches. I give you many props for that.

R1665

KeiKuzco responds:

Thanks