Chris-Aldin's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Air Skirmish]

One word: Cool

That was a very cool flash for sure. I liked everything in it, and i think everything exceeded the average for movies/games on this site. From what i saw, watching it through once, i didnt notice any huge problems that reacted negatively on the outcome of the movie. The most important thing in this case is how this movie remained very entertaining all the time, even if the quality of the sound was down or anything like that. In your future works just keep doing what youre doing and you will be successful! Here is my review.

The graphics were excellent and definitely different. I liked your mix of 3D animation and regular animation, there was almost a perfect blend of the two. I wished there would have been some colour added to it, but then again the black and white did turn out kind of cool. The regular drawings and animation were good, but not quite as good as id like. The detail wasnt quite as complex as id like and the drawings seemed a little rough and i guess "unfinished". The 3D animation, however, was simply excellent. The fighters looked great and had a pretty good amount of detail. The animation never appeared awkward or anything and the actual dog fight was very well done. The style was great, but i wouldnt say it is any better than that. Like the other aspects this was better than id expect from the average flash. The idea was pretty cool along with the action packed presentation. But truthfully it really wasnt all that original. There wasnt anything in particular you would remember from this other that the good 3D animation, and the high paced action. But the length was definitely sufficient and i must say the ending was pretty cool. The sound was great for the most part as well. I didnt particularily enjoy the voice acting or the dialogue, but just having them in this movie made it even better. The sound effects were cool, they gave the action a more realistic feel.

Overall this was a great, well animated, action packed movie that really was entertaining. There are some things you can improve on honestly, but when you do your flash will become much better than they already are. So i say just keep working on everything, with the same effort you are putting in now. Way to go on a great movie!!
-Two Thumbs up! 4/5

LogFish responds:

Hey thanks a heap for this extremely generous review! What a great reviewer! Polishing my flash, from all my previous efforts, is the most consistent pointer I receive - and I for whatever reason never take it on board. I'd like to say I'll manage this time, and maybe I will, but yea. I just can't help starting something else or doing something else once it's done, rather than giving doorhandles shadows and the like - and those things really are what separates brilliant flash from mediocre. Luckily with this film I couldn't really do halfassed things with 3D models so you guys are seeing my direction and styling without my pretty crap graphics, heh. Next time I'll try and exhert some self control and not submit my movie as soon as it's completed, but give myself some time to iron out the wrinkles. Thanks again for your great review, it's really apprechiated - I've definately taken what you've mentioned on board.

[Kirby's Dreamland I]

Ha! Awesome job!

That was actually really good, the score doesnt fully reflect it. This definitely wasnt like any other sort of sprite parody i have seen. The sense of humour was way different, and unlike many parodies it wasnt a series of bloopers. So this definitely showed some originality and even a little bit of risk taking, using an old Kirby game rather than any mario game. This certainly wasnt limited in the different types of jokes either. Some jokes on this were really simple, like BoogaBooga in the very first scene after you click play. Anyways here is my review.

The graphics were great, this basically has to with how this was a very old kirby game and yet you still seemed to use a variety of sprites and stil managed to make the animation funny where it needed to be. There is no one big problem with the visuals what so ever, rather there were things that can be slightly improved on or refined. The characters were good, but i guess you could have used a wider of variety of characters. The environments looked just like a kirby world should and the animation did its job for sure. The style was the strongest element here because the humour also contributes here and vice versa. The style of humour was way different than in other parodies, though its hard to explain exactly why. The voices were even creative in this movie, i havent heard anything similar to them before. And i rather like the black and white colour scheme you used too. It didnt necessarily add to the humour or anything but it did make the movie seem even more original. It was also a great idea to use some regular animation, and actually that animation was excellent. It sort of broke up the movie nicely for someone who isnt a huge fan of sprites. The sound was great too. The voice were funny, a little high picthed but certainly not annoying.You had some great use of sound effects too. The sound track was well varied and each song you used at an appropriate time.

Overall this was a hilarious parody with all the other aspects backing up the humour. I strongly recommend making this into a series as you have everything a successful series needs, good characters, creativity, originality, and in some cases humour. Im definitely looking forward to another one of your submissions, whether they have anything to do with this movie or not!
-Two Thumbs Way Up! 4/5

Bigfoot3290 responds:

Haha I always love your reviews (or essays, rather) Chris. Very insightful and indepth critique. About the variety of characters - Green Greens in Kirby's Dreamland only contained about five or six different types of enemies, plus Kirby. That's alright though, I understand. Anyway, it's reviews like these that keep me going. Thanks again Chris. PS - I'm workin' on a Goldeneye007 parody next, so I'm expecting a 10 from you on that :]

[Sounds of CS]

Great job, the song was well used.

I must say i did enjoy this, especially the first time i had listened and watched it. I was impressed by the very catchy beat that had been used in this movie too. Sadly when i read the updates in the author's comments when i went to watch it again, it said you werent the audio artist. Despite that, i could still enjoy the movie, and enjoy the audio. Each aspect was fairly good overall, although they all also had their ups and downs. I mean just the fact that you made a cool music video to this song, is good enough for me. Here is my review.

The graphics were good for sure, i wouldnt say they could be considered much more than that. You seem to have all the basics down very well, but you didnt have much in terms of special effects or bursts of really great animation. Stick figure movies have to be animated extremely smoothly because the characters are so simple, and i can say the animation was good hear, but wouldnt reach "great". In a CS movie, i would just love to see fully developped characters. The detail in the characters was not all that good, but the guns definitely made up for it, as they had a lot of little details on them. The one cool thing for the visuals is the scroll effect you used, i guess you could call it. For example where the grenades were thrown, and then the view went around the corner to see them explode. For most of this, the animation clips were repeated too often. The style of this movie was great, there wasnt all that much in terms of animating style. The idea was obviously really cool, here im commending both the audio artist and you for actually putting animation with this. It is clearly pretty original, a compilation of CS sounds turned into a song, with some good animation to back it up. The sound was evidently awesome, congrats to the audio artist on this one. The song was very catchy,the beat was creative, not to mention it was all done with CS sounds. I guess it did grow repetitive by the end, however. But the other intense or just flat out cool parts partially made up for the middle of the song. There was even some humour in this, a lot of this has to do with the loading screen and the funny quotes.

To summarize my review, this was a great movie, and a cool idea. Its a bit of a shame you werent the one who created the audio, i probably would have been able to enjoy it even more if it was all totally your work. So congrats to you and the audio artist on making something really worth watching. Great work guys!
-Two Thumbs Up! 4/5

StealthBeast responds:

What a... verbose review lol

At any rate, what you say is true, and i suppose I don't have to tell you that motion smoothness and character design sit sort of on a seesaw, that is, one can create a counter-strike animation with sticks and have it be smooth, or one can create a counter-strike animation with full characters but have it be choppy, and it's difficult to create both.

Thanks for acknowledging the audio artist for what he is. In all seriousness, he is more rightfully the main artist than I. Animation takes longer to make than audio, but of course, I spammed the heck out of loops to make ends meet lol. Then again, his song would never have been such a huge hit if it weren't for this submission.

At any rate, I'm glad you liked it. 4/5 is a perfectly fair score.

[The 5 Shades Of Purple]

Good collab, not certainly not the best.

Great job to everyone who participated in this collab. I have really liked this 5 Shades series since the very first one. They havent so much improved from the beginning, but there have been i think 2 really good ones inbetween. My favourite so far was certainly the 5 Shades of Brown, it was just extremely impressive especially with its visuals and the theme. Sadly for this one i didnt quite feel the same way throughout the whole thing. Some clips seemed to be lacking a little effort, im thinking this because of the short length of some of them. Anyways here is my review.

The graphics were great overall, obviously some clips had noticably better visuals than others. In general the drawings were well done, pretty well detailed and some of them looked quite interesting. The character design was often fairly intruging as well, some characters such as in mynamewontfitin's clip made me think. The animation was smooth throughout, i cant really complain about anything here. I rather like the selection for colour here, and each shade of colour was used pretty well, especially in the main menu. The best and worst clips for visuals in this collaboration were -orb- and Jarvid respectively. The style is usually the strongest aspect of each collab in this series and in this case there arent any exceptions. I just enjoyed the colour selection, but the theme that went along with it would not have been my first choice. Purple usually means mystery or crime to me and that would have just been a cool theme, even though future was still a solid choice. The effort in this collab didnt seem quite as strong or noticable as in the other ones, i dont know if there actually was less effort here but thats what the final product made me think. One thing done extremely well in this collab is the fact that you guys all followed the theme just about perfectly, some we more direct in the way they showed it while others had a bit of a message to them. The best clip for style was MephistonX's while the worst in my opinion was Greedom's for lack of length and general idea. Another little thing, the end of Jarvid's clip played over and over. The sound was great throughout too, nothing really amazed me all that much. But the host of sound effects and music came out pretty well. And the voice acting was good, i dont have any complaints here really. The best clip for this aspect was DNR and the worst would probably have to be Jarvid's.

Overall this was a great collaboration, and a great continuation of this 5 Shades series. Although this wasnt necessarily the best one to date it was still definitely in the top half of collabs on the site. Everyone did their job nicely and everyone should be satisfied with their work overall. Way to go guys, cant wait for the next one!
-Two Thumbs up! 4/5

orb responds:

I commend you for the most amazing review I have ever seen.

[WoW-ShadowsOfAzeroth pt1]

Nice, pretty amusing.

I liked this, i could leave it at that but i think the effort you noticably put into this deserves a long review. Obviously there was more to this than just the large amount of effort you put into this movie. Every aspect was much more than what id call satisfactory. There werent many things wrong with this, i can only recall a few things id either change completely or fix up. It was also pretty cool to see a well done World of Warcraft movie, those really arent common in the portal. Here's my review.

The graphics were great overall, a simple on occasion. Still, the final look to them is pretty solid, even with a few flaws here and there. The character design was good for more reasons than just because of their personalities. Each character was distinguished because of their looks as well. The detail in them was also well done overall, it was all pretty much sufficient, other than a few cases in the backgrounds where there wasnt much other than the colour itself. Other times, the backgrounds were silouhetted, and the animation with them was rather smooth. The style was great too, as i said the characters were all really well developped. The length was very good too, it was long as far as flash go, and it never or rarely seemed drawn out. The idea was original, though there were a few ways to present your movie that are done quite often, which is necessarily a bad thing, one example of this is the side scrolling. The animating style was good, but i probably wouldnt be able to tell it apart from a few other styles that i recall if they were side by side. Work on trying to make it a little more distinguishable for your future movies. World of warcraft is something that generally doesnt interest me, but when done well in flash its something that actually can be interesting. The sound was great too, the voice acting was good overall, some voices had just ok expressions and i was a bit dissapointed that they didnt really improve much. The sound effects were great too, numerous enough to be satisfying. Good music selection as well.

Overall this was a good movie, with a hefty playing time, that i rather like in any flash animation. I personally hope you can get a good series going, because this is a solid start. Just keep up the effort in your future movies and it is certain that youll do well. Keep it up!
-Two Thumbs up! 4/5

Xiphon responds:

Well thank you for the review. I'd say the biggest issue I had making this was the character design, although it looks ok on stage, i used some older things that I touched up and it ended up being rather difficult. They were fairly unorganized, and hard to work with. My future models should look a lot better, especially in the emotional department. I've also taken time to start drawing front and back views as well.

I'd say it's a good geuss that I'll redraw a lot of stuff for Part2, but that should be ok, there'll be a lot of new characters to see, so it won't be a huge shock.

[Hunter Zero Ep.3]

Sprites like these are the ones i love.

This was really awesome in every way a sprite can be, except humour obviously. But in this case humour was probably the last thing you actually needed in order for this to be successful. All the action, the awesome storyline, the characters and their development and certainly the visuals all combined and made for one of the better sprites i have seen in 2006, i would say top 3. This was one of those sprites with a really well developped storyline, and that are also very long allowing for a lot to happen. And the way you ended this and told the story the whole way through got me interested in the series right away. Here is my review.

The graphics were awesome, the new sprite animators should follow great examples of good sprite animation like this. The characters were really well used, you developped their personalites extremely well throughout and i rather liked how each side, good vs bad, sort of had a different look overall. The background work was pretty good, for the most part it was simle but they worked very well with the movie. It may have been how they sort of moved with the characters. The animation was great too, in the battle scenes it was some of the best on the site, but here is where id improve in your graphics: the running animations werent always perfect, a little bit of sliding in their legs if you know what i mean. The style was awesome too, as i mentioned early the development of not only the characters but the storyline as well made for an immersive and exciting sprite movie. The presentation was awesome for the most part, however there were some instances where there wasnt much going on other than one of the characters just running somewhere or driving in one case for too long at once. But i also found this fun because you used quite a few sprites i have never seen before, such as the good soldiers all those trucks, and even some of the characters are totally new to me. There werent any big flaws at all for the style either. The sound was great too, but nothing really other than some of the voice acting really impressed me. Also some of the things i didnt quite like had to do with the voice acting too. The voices of Sigma and Dr. Wily had off expressions too often i found, or maybe i just didnt particularily like them very much. But Sigma's would have been very difficult to understand without the subtitles. Other than that id have to say the sound was rather good, cool choices of music that suit the movie, and some great and numerous sound effects.

Overall this was an awesome sprite movie thanks to the things i mentioned and some i didnt such as the noticable effort you put into this. Naturally after this episode i have really high hopes for the future ones, so try not to dissapoint though i doubt you will. Just keep coming with the effort and this series will definitely be a hit!
-Two Thumbs way up! 5/5

CheveLoco responds:

really nice review..what else can i say, thank you so much and i am glad u liked it(i'll check the running animations next time)

[Triple Helix Ep. 2-2]

Good overall but it has its negatives.

I remember the first episode, and i know this 2nd episode was better, even if not by much. To me it doesnt really matter that they were submitted in two parts, because all i do is review it once like i would for the full episde, so im reviewing the first part and this one right here. Everything was above the average, and there isnt just one particular aspect i would improve, but id probably fine tune a little bit in each one. I can only see the series improving, i have fairly high hopes for it. Here is my review.

The graphics were good, not quite what i would say great for a few reasons. The drawings seemed a little awkward sometimes when you tried to make an effect of some sort, for example when the car exploded in the first part and Rik was standing near it. The environment looked alright, you made it seem like a downtown city seemingly without much trouble. And the animation just wasnt fluent enough for movement to movement to be amusing all the time, and i couldnt help but notice the steering wheel, there wasnt anything within the circle of it, and it seemed to move an awful lot. But i actually really liked the character design of the mutants, they were well detailed and just looked cool. The style was great, the effort throughout was pretty noticable. You attempted to do some cool effects and you must be commended for that, but others were forgotten that are pretty good extras, such as adding bullets for the firing machine gun. The animating style was good, its getting to the point where i can really tell it apart from another similar animating style now. The story, while not 100% original from what ive seen is pretty good and does seem creative, i still like it nonetheless. The whole "zombie/mutant infestation" thing has certainly been done before, and done well but unlike most authors you tried to make something different about yours, and succeeded. But overall the flow of the action could have been better, the presentation was a little choppy in this way, good in the storyline way however. The sound was great too other than one music choice which didnt really fit in. The other music choice i can recall was very good, and the sound effects that went along with it were solid. The voice acting was nicely done as well, maybe on the kids voice you could improve the expressions a little bit though.

Overall this was a great second episode, yes it did have its flaws here and there but the final product was a solid action packed movie that any resident evil fan could enjoy, or any fan of just a good action flash. I think the series will only keep getting better, i hope it does too. Great job.
-A single thumb up! 3.5/5 (4 now 3 tomorrow)

Half-Sanity responds:

Thanks for the in-depth review. I'll adress a few of the things you mentioned, as well as some of the reviews left by others prior to you.

The thing some people seem to lose sight of is, we are very new to this whole process. I'm new as a writer, and a voice actor. Luffy is new to animating with Flash. Both of us are just at the bottom of the ladder of experience. So forgive us if what we produce isn't a perfected block-buster, we're working on it. =)

The small things that were noticed, the steering wheel, the lack of ANYTHING coming from the turret gun, as well as a few other things were definitely noticed by me. They could have been changed, but I guess they weren't. The sound of the gun warming up was very cheesy, but since we found it pretty amusing, we left it in there. We'll try to keep a more open eye to our own attention to detail from now on. I still stand by my opinion that compared to some of the....art that is posted here by Flash Newbies, we aren't doing too badly, and hopefully we will only get better.

Thank you very much for watching, and reviewing so honestly,
-Riketz

[Aqua Life Episode #4]

LoL, who thought fish could be so funny!?

Haha, this was really good. I dont remember the other episodes from the series so much, but i know they werent as funny as this. Come to think of it i may not have even watched the previous movies, though i didnt need to in order to really enjoy this one. I must say i wasnt expecting this to be funny at all, just because i havent seen many humourous things lately and the beginning was just a little bit slow for my liking. But it did really pick up so of course i almost forgot about the start as it picked up. Anyways here is my review.

The graphics were awesome in this, the effort really shows here, like with the funny little preloader, the sweet introduction to newgrounds itself, and also the opening scene to your movie. All showed a lot of effort in the visuals as well as some pretty impressive effects. Well the drawings themselves were pretty good, i rather liked the breakdown for the design of one fish, it may help me later on. The detail in not only the drawings, but the backgrounds as well was good. The animation was really good too, usually pretty smooth especially when there was lip sync going on. The facial expressions on the fish were often very nicely done, truly got the emotions or the state they were in across. The style was awesome too, im starting to like your animating style but there was much more here as well. The biggest thing id say is the overall effort, or at least what appeared to be a lot of effort. You said its been about a year since you submitted the previous episode, so naturally you would have spent a lot of time on it over a year's time. The extras showed lots of effort, like as i said before your own preloader and especially the intro for NG, of course there were the other extra things like the commentary that added some humour to it. The presentation of the series thus far has been great so just keep that up. Id probably just like to see maybe a bit more of a story line and a bit more length in the future. The sound was awesome too though, great voice acting was truly one of the keys to the 10 in humour, the voices were all awesome in each character. The sound effects while simple gave the movie a more complete feel to it.

Overall this was an awesome movie, with absolutely nothing id actually call "flaws". Im sure you know what you could work on, even if there isnt much. So for the next episode just refine all your skills and im sure the next one can be even better than this was. Id really like to see an even funnier one too! Great work!
-Two Thumbs way Up! 5/5

shampawnya responds:

Thank you for the indepth review (they are truely far in between)... the length is a bit of a sore spot with me as well, as I had a WHOLE bunch more stuff to add but I hit 5megs WAY to fast for some strange reason. Hence the "To be continued..." into the 5th episode, hopefully to be longer. Again thanks!

[Clivo's ordeal of funnies]

A solid 3D animation with very few flaws.

Really nice job on this movie, it didnt have very much wrong with it at all. But it did have one big "negative", and that of course is the length. While it was long enough to show off your talents and a good bit of your idea, it didnt show off as much as it could have without a doubt. I surely would have liked it more if there was more to it, if it was longer you would have been able to demonstrate more of your skills. Everything was done noticably well in that time so congrats anyways, here is my review.

The graphics were probably the best thing about that flash, and im sure many people would agree with me. The character model was pretty cool, nothing like ive seen before. The detail in him was sufficient, but i suppose it could have been a tad better. The smoothness of the animation was very good, and along with that, this could possible be the best 3D animation i have seen for a while and one of the best on the entire site. It would be have been cool to see even some simple backgrounds, as well as the body of the voice telling Clivo to do something funny. The style was great, but suffered because of some simplicity of the animation (no backgrounds and minimal other characters) and also it suffered because of the length. It was hard to judge if you really had an distinguishable animating style, because there were minimal objects in this and again the length. Even if it was short, you remained doing the project for 2 months. It was 34 seconds long, but this shows that you did care about it for having spent such a long time on it, and i must commend you for that. The sound was also pretty well done, for what ever there was. The little bit of voice acting was pretty good, and i found Clivo's voice kind of funny!

Overall this was a great movie, however very short, and with a rather abrupt ending. In your next submission make sure to make it longer and the whole idea with more depth to basically everything. If it takes really long to make great visuals like you did, then maybe sacrifice some quality in the visuals to allow for other things. Anyways great work!
~Two Thumbs Up! 4/5

mrsimon responds:

The university brief stated that the short should actually be about 15 seconds long, so I was pritty much pushing it.

Theres a whole bunch about this I dont like, he was going to have hair and teeth but I could'nt find out how to do this properly. I was also going to UV map him, with a fairly detailed skin made in photoshop, but I ran out of time for it.

Most of the two months were spent on the single model rather than the animation. This was incredibly difficult, since I hav'nt been using Maya for long, but I feel its come out so-so. Better than I expected anyway.

If you're wondering about my animation style, have a look at "The Lunargirl" and "Bananabeard II" by me. I'm known on Sheezyart and Clock Crew for making very smooth flash animations. My aim is to try to apply this to my 3d work too, so I spent a good while on Clivo and the cameras movement.

Anyways, my next piece of 3d work on Newgrounds will definatly be longer and better =)

[StarCrafter - 002]

Probably better than the last one!

Way to go again Logo, all your movies really entertain me! Obviously this one was in no way different. Your movies are generally pretty unique, and 2 perfect examples of this would be this series so far. Although in this series not all elements are quite capable of being considered "awesome" but still, they do what they are supposed to time and time again and thats basically all i can ask for. Anyways here is my review.

The graphics were pretty much the same as last time, but slightly better. The screen wasnt quite perfectly clear, but i still found the character pictures well done, simple, but comical all the same. The character movement on the screen was a bit better, pretty much because there was more of it. Well this style of animation is doing quite alright so far so keep doing it like this! The style was probably the high point of this movie, with a clean sense of humour an animating style that resembles the game, and the presentation all really helped out here. The sense of humour was good, i mean you cant really describe in it one word. It was still amusing which is the most important thing for humour. The animating style can be described with the one word i could use to describe the graphics, sufficient. And the presentation was good because everything that had to do with it came out together very well. The sound was great, even if you were sick, because i could notice! So you still did a good job with the voice acting and other sound effects as well, no complaints!

Overall this was a great movie, with cool sense of humour and just a funny idea in general. Its good to see a story coming along as well, however well done it turns out to be. I will keep a eye out for the next episode or for any of your future submissions!
-Two Thumbs Up! 4/5

MACception responds:

This is a very well thought out, and awesome review. You point out everything in a very positive way, so I never feel backed into a corner. Great job man, it's very motivating to hear all this, and I do hope I can make a nice and kick-ass storyline for you guys to follow...we'll see what happens.

-LP
www.LogoPresents.com