Menachem's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Fan Drawn Episode of DBZ]

Very good! Some small complaints: First, some of the lines were fluffed. Most of them were fine, and would have been right at home in a real DBZ episode, but I'm thinking of little things, like when Vegeta is asked if he is referring to himself as a true warrior and he answers with a simple "Yes." Some lines just need better emotionality as well, but that's just something that sometimes can't be helped.
My other complaint has to do with the action scenes. I know how much time these sorts of animations can take, but a lot of action scenes were very anticlimactic. What specifically comes to mind are when Vegeta first powers up, and when the villain is punched through a wall. There's very little to convey action besides the movements of the characters. A good example of conveying action through things like camera movement and lighting is Oney's "Chris & Harry," dated and retarded as it is.
Very nice though. Just some room for improvement.

DangerousBob responds:

Thanks for the review. If you saw the first cut of this video you'd notice the action was much slower, I went back and tighten up the video. For example if you look at the fight scene at the 4:00 mark I tried to get that nonstop intensity your talking about, that sequence was originally not in it. If I do another project like this I'll try to keep things moving more like that the whole video. I also feel the ending works well. I really wanted the end fight to be big and have a snowballing effect. Each attack leading to the next. I differ from a lot of people in this, but I like wide shot action. What I mean is if you take say a Bruch Lee movie from the 70s, where the camera is steady and pulled back where you can see clearly whats happening vs say the Bourne films where the camera shakes like crazy and has a 20x zoom on.

[jesus party]

Heh, great fun.

Nice job. Animation was good, liked the jokes! The music could have been better and some parts of the animation were a bit rough, but a great flash in the end!

Also, I have to say this to those voting low for religious reasons: come on now. Seriously. I may be a Jew (Menachem is my hebrew name), and therefore, not offended by this, but still. Judaism joked about a LOT more than Christianity does, but who really cares? It's all for fun! To that person who said that the author would go to hell... don't you think God would just probably have a sense of humor?

peixeaquatico responds:

yeah

thanks man !

[Potato Man Ep. 1 - 1]

Sound effects would be a good idea

It was very short, and the into took too long. The animation was good overall. The music was good, but it should have been background. Sound effects would have really improved the flash, like a sort of electric sound while the man spliced his genes. It wasn't the best, but it was okay.

Hi5er responds:

Im not too convinced myself... purposely synced the animation with the sound to give it a better feel. By maing it background music the scene changes wouldnt have been as effective.

Perhaps throwing in the odd sound effect now and again would have been a better option. And very short? Its 58 seconds long and it takes a surprizing amount of time to animate something that long on 24 FPS... My animations wont be much longer than that in the future...

Thanks for the review tho.

[Pivot Compilation 2]

woah...pivot?

Wait... this was pivot? Wow, most of those would have awed a flash artist. It's hard to give a review on the movie itself because they seemed to have several different styles, but in general: one or two of the animations were choppy and a bit hard to follow, and others were smooth but the camera panned side to side too much. You need to work a bit on your text. It is boxy and hard to read, and when it does appear, its appearance is too short to have time to read. The rest was amazing, good work.

ghostflames responds:

1. Im sorry for the camera thing, but not all the animations are made on the same dimensions...
2. They are not choppy, they are in the double framed style, but u probably dont know that... also maybe the animation had too colorfull graphycs and ur computer couldnt handle it and it looked choppy...
3. Ummm, no offence, but the boxy text is the easiest to read i could find ? Its also the same one used in madness...

[stickmen 2# haloween]

This shouldn't have been submitted

I'm very annoyed that some people submit things like this, saying: "well it's only an experiment I'm a beginner I did well for a beginner!" No one cares if you're a beginner or not. The majority of the animation was horrible, actually the only reason you got a 1/10 is because the arm movement was slightly smooth. When the character walked out of the house, the house actually disappeared. I don't want to be unkind, but don't submit things unless you think it might be worth it for viewers.

dannydoomno1 responds:

if only people like you would shut up there would be alot more animators around