cableshaft's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Matrix Still Has You]

Mostly rubbish.

Joanime's Mobil Ave was the only watchable animation out of the lot. The rest were dull and very very unfunny. I rolled my eyes at the "broke the bone" "joke" and reset the movie immediately after - in fact, the only animation I watched more than a minute of was Mobil Ave, which was great. I'm surprised I didn't like Gerkinman's animation actually, as I usually do, but I think it's because LF helped write it.

LF, you're not as funny of a script writer as you seem to think you are, and you haven't been getting any better with practice either. Watch some more British comedy and you might be able to break away from lame Simpson joke rewrites.

[Becoming A Game Animator]

Do some more research.

I find it funny that you used the terms game designers, animators, and developers interchangeably. They are all very different jobs.

Designers have to do a ton of reading and have a general knowledge of just about everything, and when designing, they have to write (in a document) down every aspect of the game so people down the line don't have to make the decisions. They rarely touch any program outside of a word processor unless they're decent at art and draw some storyboards/concept art. They NEVER code if they're in a decent sized company (although it doesn't hurt if they've coded games before, in fact, it's practically a requirement). Once they've done the design for the game they usually have to answer any design questions that arise that were overlooked in the design process, or start designing the next game. An excellent book to read up on what you need to be a GOOD game designer is "Chris Crawford on Game Design".

Animators are the ones who work with Maya, Photoshop, and 3D Studio Max.

Level Designers work with level editors/middleware to build levels.

Developers do the dirty work. Usually the main structure already designed or determined, and they just have to build all the classes/logic/etc and put it all together. Nevertheless, you're right about this being a stressful job, and do to poor management, most industry games usually do go into 70+ hour overtime 6 months before release.

Other sites to read with information on how the industry works are Indie Gamer, Game Matters, and IGDA (all .coms). A good book with detail on the process is "Game Architecture and Design."

As for the animation itself, you really needed faster transitions. Doubling the frame rate would probably solve that for you.

Chosenofnature responds:

uh...thanks?

[Tier]

Very cool.

You did a really good job with this movie. The style was great, and it was fun watching the robots get assembled.

poxpower responds:

weeeeeeeeeeee
this is all about style. Industrial metal,industrial style type. I don't care about the story or whatever, its just an excuse to make it 3 colors :p thanks for reviewing dOOd

[Alive]

Thank you.

I'll be thinking about this one for awhile.

[Across The Universe]

Well, it started off pretty good....

* I couldn't decide whether the movie had a message or not, and when I finally decided it didn't, at the end you threw in that stupid slit wrist scene, which doesn't make any sense considering he started drunk in a couch.

* There was too many filler shots here. You could have made his travels much more interesting, but you spent too long in each place, and several of the shots look unneeded, unexciting, and bland. On the plus side, there were several awesome looking shots, you just had to sit and wait through a bunch of crappy ones.

* Excellent song, most of the art was good. Looks like you took a video of yourself doing the actions and then traced over it sloppily for most of the character animation though.

You really shouldn't have used the tub scene as an ending. It's way too cliche and out of place. I was kinda liking the movie, although in a detached, somewhat bored way, until I saw that scene, which ruined the movie for me.

[Checkpoint... Done]

Eh, kinda cool.

But the guy who played the game in your movie must have been 5 years old. You have to really, really, suck to play the game like that. I couldn't really relate to it, because even though the Library level was long and difficult, you exagerrated the experience to the point where I couldn't suspend my disbelief.

I'd be more enjoyable if you had 8 enemies on the screen at once, pouncing at you from all sides, you moving almost constantly backwards while shooting as fast as you can, stressing out because you can't possibly have enough ammo to last the next couple minutes, etc.

I also rather like that level, personally. It gives you a sense of dread that no game has been able to give me before.

[Manga-Gaga 100 Omake]

Yes!

Pretty fun to watch, in a completely-random-but-in-tempo-with-the-song type of way.

[Blam Master 5 Tutorial]

Thanks.

Thanks for the idea of using a sheet of paper over the microphone. Those P's have always been a pain to fix in audio programs.

Otherwise, this movie was a chore to sit through. Barely any animation, and it took almost three minutes before it got to the point, namely, a couple tips for avoiding blamnation. You could have clipped that beginning section by about 2:30 and added a couple more tips, and have funnier lines, and you would have had a much better movie overall.

[what]

One Word...

Classic. All that needs said.

[Mythology]

Well...

I consider animation to be an important part of the Graphics score, that explains what I rated it (you had some, but what you had was jerky and low quality -- good attempt, but you need some practice).

By the way, once I realized this was taking longer than 30 seconds to set up the fight (and the long pans it had of people preparing for battle), I called that you would end it just before the two fronts collided... I hoped I was wrong, but sadly, I wasn't. That's a pretty cliche way to make your movie, man. It's like a comedian who spends two minutes setting up a joke, and then walking off the set before delivering the punchline. It'd be passable if it were an intro to a video game, but no, this is a homage to a game instead. All it really shows is that you have no skill in doing fight scenes (and after seeing your frame by frame, I don't blame you for not trying, but that's tje only way you can get experience in it).

Don't let the review get you down. I know it's negative, what you've got is a really good start, and worthy of uploading onto NG. Just keep hacking away at it, keep improving your skills, and you'll make something that makes people's jaws drop before too long.