Step's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Adventurer]

Man, it's amazing to see my music used in high-quality animations like these. I'll leave a review for this because it's a highly creative and well-made animation with a few flaws here and there!

First of all, the creativity factor is pretty high. I mean, you've got some generic stuff that's kind of expected given the music you were working with (fighting large fire-breathing animals when the music becomes dangerous, for example) but then there are very creative elements including certain timings with the music (like when the quest notice is promptly shown to the adventurer) and a wonderfully-executed ending (which, by the way, is *PRECISELY* how I envisioned the an animated ending for that song to be) followed by some modest and fitting credits.

What I also love here is the art style, especially those backgrounds! You don't blow up the backgrounds with a tonne of detail and definition but you have great blends of different colours which surprisingly fit beautifully with the more defined and cartoon-like character designs! The backgrounds give a very artistic flair to the animation which I love.

The only issue to me lies within the animation work itself. You've got some cool animation like the pixie things sprinting at 0:55, the animation at 1:01 and the cape at the end. Then, as others have said, there are some agonisingly slow parts such as the chase between the animal and the adventurer, which didn't feel nearly as tense and fast-paced as it should've been. Some animation is also a bit sketchy and seemingly rushed. I'm sure this is all because of time constraints since given more time I expect someone with your animation skills to have much smoother animation, but it is a bit of a downfall in this.

Anyway, honestly I'm honoured to have my track used in this animation. Thanks for using it, and best of luck in the competition!

[-The Explorer-]

Beautiful work, man. It's so refreshing to see this kind of quality on Newgrounds and I'm absolutely elated that it uses my music too. There are a few flashes out there that are kinda low-quality that use my music but occasionally a fantastic one like this uses it and it makes me feel incredibly warm and fuzzy inside. I'm truly honoured!

What I'm most impressed with would be your character design. Even in The Guardian, it's impossible not to appreciate the fluid character gestures and excellent character design. Everything's nailed; the hair, the clothes, the facial features, all of it. The character looked exactly like what I'd imagine if I thought of a curious young cartoon explorer.

The animation in general is very solid, and the art works quite well. I do have a few issues here though; while your characters are fantastic, your backgrounds create as much of an atmosphere. You nail the shading but the backgrounds seem to be there just to give insight on where the character is, without offering that much detail and intricacy. It'd be a great idea to get a dedicated artist to work on some backgrounds for your work so that you can focus more on delivering your smooth animation and awesome character design.

The story isn't that direct and leaves a lot of questions to be answered. This is significantly less eventful than The Guardian, making the sequel a lot more anticipated. While you've done a great job of delivering a subtle story that leaves the viewer wanting more, I would've liked some more stuff happening!

But honestly, your story is very well delivered. So far I'm gathering that young people passing by are chosen to turn into some entity with a distinguishable colour and extraordinary powers, each one with his/her own little sub-story. I love how subtly you imply that there are more of them, by making those beacons light the skies. It's all well-thought out and with more plot-building you could end up with a very solid story.

And man, you synced it so well with the music! I might be biased over here of course but you were extremely creative at making a whole interpretive animation out of some music. Certain parts in this, and even in The Guardian, go so well with the music that they end up giving you goosebumps, which is one of the best things about this series.

Overall, I absolutely love what you've done here. My advice? Keep it up; keep building the plot and either focus more on giving detail to the backgrounds or get someone else to help you with it. Again, I'm ecstatic and grateful that you used my music and I am TOTALLY interested in providing more music for your future animations like scoring an animation so you won't have to time it with the music yourself, if you're up for it. Up to you!

9/10
5/5

[Kapanet Clock Crew]

Catchy!

While the graphics and animation in this are an obvious let down, I was really impressed with this submission, probably because of its high-quality and surprisingly catchy audio. Maybe it's just because I'm an audio person myself, I don't know, but I for one enjoyed the flash quite a bit. Nice job!

The graphics weren't too good. Sure, it's the style of the clock crew, but considering a high level of humour and great audio, I think that all this needs is better graphics. It's why I gave you a 9 and not a 10, to be honest. Animation was also a bit rough or bland at times, which is another bummer. Still, what the heck, I suppose they weren't horrible, and everything else in the submission was great.

I usually dedicate this paragraph to a storyline (or gameplay if it's a game), but since this has virtually no storyline, I suppose I'll comment on the humour, and I must say that I was impressed. The flash in general was really random, but had some stuff that made me laugh out loud, such as the 0 being added at the end of some prices, some ridiculously high prices here and there, etc... Humour's definitely a highlight of the submission.

The audio was also superb. It was good quality, and even though the whole thing was in Japanese (it is Japanese... right? Man I fail at languages) I still enjoyed the audio. It was catchy and fit extremely well with the submission. Voice acting was good too (or at least the tones in the voice *sounded* good anyway, I can't be too sure since it's in another language). Thank goodness you had subtitles :D.

Anyway, all in all, this is very good. I enjoyed the flash from beginning to end, and if you could work on the graphics and/or animation, this would be perfect in my eyes. Keep up the great work! :).
9/10
5/5

-Review Request Club-

[The Beast Snacks 1]

Lol...

...Thanks for using Minutes to Midnight. Quite a coincidence that I worked on that song as well and that you requested this in the club I'm in, but whatever xD.
The movie itself is very well done, and I don't really have much to say about it. Usually I have a lot to say about a submission, but this one just seems to leave me speechless :P. Nice job on it!
On an unrelated note, man, I just took a look at the low ratings of this, and you're definitely right. I really don't understand why'd they'd give this as low as a 0, 1 or 2. Some people are just asses.

The graphics were a very slight bit low quality at times, although I suppose it's a very small price to pay for keeping the filesize of this submission at a minimum. On the whole the graphics were extremely good, and I really don't understand why people would call this 'the worst thing they've ever seen'. As you said, the graphics in this are absolutely amazing, and it shows you've worked really hard on it. Nice job with the graphics. Animation was good, with a clear anime-style to it. Sometimes the animation was a bit rough, but overall good animation.

The storyline was a bit weird, to be honest. Some parts seemed really awkward, mostly in the fight with the village weakling, and to be honest, at times I lost track of the storyline. I don't think this does does its job as a first episode that well; I would've loved to see more about how they grew up, and why there was a tournament, etc... Still, some jokes were good and made me lol, and while some were cheesy/bland/childish, overall the humour was good and the storyline wasn't too bad either. Good job. Concept is a bit generic, though :P.

I'm in two minds about the audio. A lot of the voice acting seemed either too loud or too quiet, and I think that the songs could be louder at times, mostly in the more epic or climatic parts. On the other hand, the voice acting was very good, even if its volume levels could use work, and the vast amount of music was impressive.

All in all, it shows that you worked really hard on this animation. The length, the graphics, the animation, the large amount of voice acting, the amount of songs you added, etc... they all indicate that this is made by someone who knows their way around Flash and has potential to be a great artist. Just work a bit on the storyline, the volume levels of the audio and maybe smoothening up a bit of the animation, but in general, awesome job!
9/10
5/5

-Review Request Club-

tacobuttfish responds:

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it, and that you noticed the hard work that went into it. Episode 2 is in full production now, and we're going to be super careful with the audio and try to make sure it's adjusted properly, and the animation already looks much smoother! And thanks to you for your work on Minutes to Midnight, it's a great song, and I listen to it a lot while animating. It will be a recurring track in this series! Thanks again for the insightful review and for checking it out, hope to see you back for Episode 2!

-Taco Buttfish.

[The Love I'm Searching 4]

Amazing!

After watching this I was left speechless. I actually watched it four times just to absorb the story (that and because it's a really epic flash :3). I mean, there's just so much to see in this animation. It skips crazily from scene to scene, full with detail and some hidden references. This is definitely the best music video I've seen on Newgrounds so far, good job! :D

The animation is just superb. It's not very smooth at times, but heck, you've worked a year and a half on this. I'll have to cut you some slack. Besides, a lot of the animation was very detailed and it shows that you put a lot of hard work in it. Still, some things could've been better, such as when they were running inside the school at the beginning. The leg animations were all the same :P. I should stop nitpicking xD.

The art style was superb. Sure, there were a few cliché things such as the mouths occasionally growing twice as big as they're supposed to be, but heck, that comes with every Animé so I won't complain. What I can complain about, though, would be the fact that the characters looked so similar. I mean, does everyone have to have white hair? Lol, I think if you vary the hair colour, the different characters will be more distinguishable, since right now some of the characters look similar to each other. That, and I don't think that everyone having white hair is a huge coincedence xP. Yeah, I understand it could be an art style, but having the same hair colour makes it harder to understand who's who...

However, what was quite impressive was how you blended real life pictures with animations. Usually, they look really out of place with each other, but I quickly forgot that the backgrounds were actually real-life images, and not drawn backgrounds because they were blended in so well. Good job with that =D.

The concept, unfortunately, is generic, but that hardly matters much. What I don't really like about the story was that it was pretty hard to grasp. It might be because of the fact that the characters look similar to each other, or because of the fact that the approach to the story is very subtle (how were we to know that the protagonist waving her hands constantly meant that she wanted to be a conductor, or how do we know that she failed in achieving this goal?), but somehow this Flash *almost* felt random. I mean, if I didn't read the story in the Author's comments, I would have not got head or tail of what was going on. There were a few things that I still don't understand, such as why the protagonist was angry when she saw her friend play the violin...

Having said that, the fact that the story was hard to follow didn't ruin the Flash at all. The first time I watched this, I had no clue what was happening, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it. There were some funny parts, some emotional parts, and some interesting parts throughout the submission which really kept the viewer captivated and interested in what would happen next. The fact that the scenes switch so quickly also make this really fun to watch, especially more than once, because the more you watch it, the more you manage to build up a story and see how one scene is related to another.

The audio was extremely good. There was some voice acting which was great, and the song was very high quality, which is a rare find in Flash submissions here on NG. Not only was it high quality, but it was damn catchy too xD. So yeah, superb audio. Subtitles would obviously help here, but then again they might distract the viewer from the Flash itself (since it's so action-packed and all...) and cause him/her to miss a scene or two, so if you do add subtitles, then if I were you I'd definitely make them optional or something.

To summarize, I pointed out a few flaws here and there in this submission, but they definitely aren't enough to reduce a point from my review. This deserves the 10 I gave it for sure, and it surely deserves more than just 40k views and one award. I hope you keep up the amazing work, and great job once again on this submission!
10/10
5/5

-Review Request Club-

Skaijo responds:

Thanks again for this supportive, thought-filled review. This is probably the longest I've ever seen to be honest but it touches a lot of points I'll certainly use to improve on. Sorry you had to watch it so many times to understand what was going on. I'll make sure my next major project is less abstract. I was just in a a certain mood when I though this project up. :3

I learned a lot during this animation--but most importantly DUPLICATE SYMBOLS!!! So that's why a lot of stuff looks the same, copy and pasted over again. Lazy yes, but it sure cut down on the production time.

All the characters also have white hair as this animation is actually the trequel of my past two works Don't trip and This is UNMEI. The characters with white hair represented a separate cast that live in an environment that's effected by the real world. In the last two animations, that distinction was made pretty clear--but I really wanted to do something different this time and just take my time expanding this parallel universe a bit peacefully without any eminent doom or fighting scenes. None of those animations were seen by many people, but that shouldn't and can't stop a well-deserving project from getting published on my part. Meh, it's complicated but this series is more or less complete. :3

I really appreciate the review!

[The Sketch Collab 2010]

Great job!

I enjoyed this submission quite a lot. As RogerBK said, well-done collabs are really awesome, and this is no exception. There really isn't much wrong with this, good job!

The animation on the whole was smooth. The animation of some artists such as Icandraw's or JPB's could do with some work, but overall the animation was very cool and smooth. The same can be said for the graphics of the submission: I really liked the notepad style of the submission, and the graphics on the whole were great, even for sketches, although there were a few artists who could've done some better sketches. I think my favourite from all of the artists would either be MarkSW or Airfaerie95.

The concept is a very good and original one as far as I know, and the flash itself was really well done. I liked that it was so random yet never really was too weird, and the amazing animation transitions from one thing to another was really fun to watch. This collab was really fast-paced and never got boring, which is one of the reason's why it's so enjoyable. Preloader was also awesome. The only defect I can find other than the few artists who could've worked a little more would be the links to the artists' pages not working. These are the links which either took you to a wrong page or do nothing when clicked:
ThePeanutShark
Airfaerie95
Dante224
lgnhxll

The audio was perfect and really added to the submission. The sound effects were also good, but man, the song that you chose fit flawlessly with this submission, so excellent job over there. Loved the audio :D.

In general, this is a great collab. Other than the defects of artist links not working and the fact that some of the artists' works could be a bit better, this is a perfect submission which I enjoyed watching from beginning to end. Keep up the outstanding work.
9/10
5/5

-Review Request Club-

[Zinoid]

It's alright.

I never saw any 50x50 flashes before, so I suppose this is quite a unique submission. Slightly random, hard to understand, but an overall decent music video. Not a bad job on this.

Animation wasn't that smooth, but the fact that it was so slow and 8-bittish gave the submission a unique style to it. Even the graphics seemed pretty 8-bittish, but as I said, these gave the submission a nice style to it. Not really much to comment about the graphics/animation, since these were all fit into a size of 50x50. Still, you used your limited space pretty well :).

The concept, as I said, is original. I have not yet seen a flash which is so small in size without being utter crap, so good job there ^^. The storyline was hard to grasp, unfortunately. I didn't really understand what was going on, because of the lack of background that this story has. A box-shaped character transverses a few landscapes, dying randomly in each one, except at the end where he finds a pink box which he fancies. Sure, stories with a subtle meaning to them where it's up to you to create a background story are cool, but unfortunately this wasn't one of them, and it was pretty random. I think this could do with a little background story to it, maybe some stuff which makes more sense, since without a story this got a bit boring.

The audio was great and fit with the flash really well. I don't think there's anything you can do to improve the audio, so good job in it :).

Overall, this is an OK submission. Unique, original, has good audio, and a good style of animation/graphics. I think my biggest gripe with it would be its lack of background and the fact that the story was hard to grasp. Other then that, keep it up ;).
7/10
4/5

-Review Request Club-

Abracadabra123 responds:

Zinoid is indeed a unique movie. I'm sorry if I answered this review three years later.

[MonKKey Chapter 2]

Well done!

I really don't know why this doesn't have a score of 4.00+. It's extremely well done, and only has a few small defects here and there. It shows you worked a long time on it, so excellent job!

The graphics overall are fantastic. Characters were drawn well, and the plants and surroundings were great. Unfortunately, there are some parts which seem a little sloppy or sketchy, such as some of the backgrounds. Animation was excellent though. I'm not really that experienced at animation, but I think the animation was well done and looked smooth and great. I especially like the camera in this.

Unfortunately, like Fro, I didn't watch Chapter 1 and I have no time at all to go and see it too, so maybe I'm missing out on some of the story here, but I really couldn't get a grasp of what was going on. Maybe it was the lack of voices narrating the story, maybe it was just because I didn't watch Chapter 1. Maybe you could add a main menu where you can choose some stuff such as 'The Story So Far' where it shows you importants parts of Chapter 1 so you can easily know what's going on in this chapter. Given the length of the submission, a scene-selection won't hurt either.

The sound effects and music were fantastic. The background music sounded great yet didn't interfere with the story, and the sound effects were extremely good. Still, the voices, on the other hand, aren't so good. The voices were really quiet, and I had to turn the volume up pretty high to hear them, and the problem with that is that the sound effects and music were just the right volume, so not only did I hear the voices properly with very high volume, but the sound effects were really loud too. Long story short, I think the voices need to be much louder. I would compliment your use of stereo, but unfortunately I'm deaf from one ear and can only hear mono, so yeah, I can't say anything about the stereo :P.

Overall the submission was fantastic, and I'm really surprised as to why it's only 3.99. Really good job, the only problems would be the sloppy graphics here and there, the quiet voices and the fact that this story is so hard to grasp.
9/10
5/5

-Review Request Club-

AM-Frasier responds:

Thanks I'm glad you like it. I will indeed be increasing the volume on the voices sooner than later. I'm glad you recognize the amount of time and skill that was put into the project.