JazLyte's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Best School Day Ever]

Got me all excited for nothing

This cartoon looks great. The style is nice and simplistic and it has a fun little story to it. Some of the animation wasn't particularly convincing, the sleeping looked a little awkward, and the people bouncing when the monster was first approaching, but it was no huge deal, I really like the character designs and thought it was a great idea.

Unfortunately, the setup and the simplicity set an expectation for me that was never fulfilled. Somehow, I expected an action scene full of frame-by-frame and crazy action, not 20 seconds of still-frames with a tween here and there, hell even if the fight was 10 seconds long, if it were actually animated, it would have added a HUGE amount of impact to this cartoon. But it seemed like you got a little lazy toward the end, I had a boner before the fight started and it just completely shrived up when I saw the first tween.

Impkid responds:

hahahaha! i feel honored, a comment of the great JazLyte! I agree with most of your critics, because i made this proyect to know how far would i go, to make the best animation i could make, but while i was advancing i realized i wasn't being ambicious enough, this it´s the first animation in which i really use the frame by frame technique, and i learned A LOT doing this, mostly that i could make things waaaay better.

Next time, you will reach the climax, i promise! Thanks for putting your hopes on me! i´ll try not to dissapoint you with my next animation.

[Pico vs Convict #210]

Got the right idea, but alot's not yours.

It seems like you understand what makes a decent fight scene, unfortunately all the good parts were ripped from random anime cartoons. I never forget shots when I see them, if you're going to copy shots from Sword of the Stranger and Naruto you need to at least give credit to people who came up with the real compositions. The parts you didn't copy were pretty stiff, I really think a better investment of your time would be learning to compose shots that are dynamic and fluid like the ones you referenced rather than just remaking them. But if I can recognize them, they were at least copied decently, keep practicing though. It's better that it look bad and be yours than look half decent and be copied.

[Sasuke kill a Samurai]

Hey faggot.

The official animated version of this chapter was put out this month, and your version is way fucking better.

Hulalaoo responds:

the 203 with the reikage was a horrible fight, but the 204 was a peice of art

[Spend It Wisely]

Flavorless, not all that original.

It always warms my heart to see somebody put lots of time and effort into making a long, fully-developed flash toon. The graphics were solid enough and everything was nice and clean. Also, I enjoyed the music. To it's credit, I wouldn't be surprised to see it on TV. But....not everything on TV is interesting. This cartoon was completely over-saturated with super-indie cartoon hipsterism, which ironically is just lazier, re-hashed versions of cartoon conventions from the late 80's and early 90's. For it to be so random, it somehow still managed to be incredibly bland.

So... the premise, a couple of fruit people decide to find money for their little sister's birthday present. Along the way, they eat a pony, meet an exploding fairy and deliver a time machine. I could see that being hilarious at a party of drunk suburban 8th graders, but I kind of realized that I didn't crack a smile even once throughout the whole flick, and I have a pretty wide threshold for immature comedy. It could have been made funny I suppose, but the art was so conservative, it didn't really enhance the humor at all.

It's never really all that creative when one of the main characters is so annoyingly dumb that he keeps screwing up the smarter characters' exploits, it just seems... lazy... (Like an excuse to keep the cartoon going longer) and it's not all that funny. We've seen it a million times. When Ren & Stimpy did it, it was hilarious. When Rocko and Heffer did it, it was still hilarious. When Spongebob and Patrick did it, it was amusing. When Mung Dahl and Chowder did it, it was getting kind of old. By the time your generic fruit brothers did it, it was a pain in the ass. Contrary to popular belief, badly done foreign accents are not exactly the peak of fresh, clever humor. Also, Ren & Stimpy style uber-detailed paintings accompanied by silly noises is incredibly overdone.

But... People are loving it, and you went the (fairly) original route by not making it about Mario or Halo, so it isn't [bad] by any stretch of the imagination. I imagine some of my complaints are due to my own taste, but what I can't be objective about is the fact that it's chock full of unoriginal gags that have been done to death in the cartoon realm. Still, good effort as far as production.

[The Northern Incident]

I don't know what people are complaining about.

I liked the ending, and I hate how everybody's spoiling it in their reviews. To be completely honest, something like this if done "the correct way" could have only ended in one of two ways. There are a million horror flashes on here that are just...sooo revolutionary... by having the main character die at the end or something, and yet we've seen it a million times.

This one surprised me, it's a leap above Jerry and WGJ4K visually, but you still have that good sense of pace in your work. I hate that there aren't more indie toons out there that are actually long enough to leave you satisfied after watching them, the length didn't stop me from watching it a second and third time. The character's voice was crusty, mature and perfect for his design, and I say once again, great ending. Nice work, very polished and clean.

[Samurai Vs Ninja]

A SAMURAI KILLED A NINJA O FUK IMAD

Why do you people give a fuck? It's a cartoon, damn. I guarantee you samurais and ninjas were not nearly as badass as anime cartoons make them look, their fights were probably very awkward and uneventful with no DnB playing in the background just like most real life human fights. Anyway...

As always, I FUCKING LOVE YOUR FIGHT SCENES. I never know where one animation shot starts and the other one begins, which I also love. The fighting is very clever and intricate. It's shorter than short, but for as long as it was that was damn good. Still gotta work on keeping those bodies consistent, but I LOVE YOU for still making action cartoons [WITHOUT] sticks. God, it's like a dead art here.

[TOFUZILLA1]

DAMN! Almost got a new action flash here.

I'm deeply saddened that you won't be finishing this, because my eyes were pretty glued to the screen. It was very animated and had interesting execution. The shading and the line art were a little shaky and inconsistent at times, but the timing made up for it, good music as well. Eh, school comes first though I guess. (stink eye)

danomano65 responds:

I will be finishing it, just not very soon. I have to focus on school.

[Snowarfare]

Badass, the length doesn't bother me at all.

Yes, you're going back to fights, badass, sick of all these "comedies" and games coming through the portal, there's damn near NOTHING else. I thought it was great, I love the way you animate and the nasty little expressions you hide in the key frames, always a good sense of impact in your fights. Turned me onto a great song too. The anatomy and poses are just kinda disjointed and sloppy sometimes, but I still love the cartoon as a whole. I wish more people would make action shorts like this, there would probably be way more action in the portal. Then again, look at that score, 3.64 that's just uncalled for.

[Across the Universe Ep.2]

Good, but not quite satisfying

Don't get me wrong, you have no idea how glad I am to see this. Action series on NG are damn near extinct, and I thank you for picking this up again. Unfortunately, this Flash has alot of what turns people off from this genre of Flash in the first place. I remember the first episode from 3 years ago, and I went back and watched it again, and actually liked the approach more.

As far as graphics, I'm not partial to the new psuedo-3D style, the animations are very slow and awkward, especially the action parts; I really liked the 2D characters with more organic 3D backgrounds like the last one, I don't understand the change. The sound quality was decent, but the acting could use more realism; I felt constantly reminded that I was watching a cartoon by the characters' Saturday morning anime dialogue. Lastly, and most significant is the storytelling, this cartoon feels like you got impatient and dropped it halfway through. It is NEVER a good idea to leave the audience hanging in the middle of an action scene. That doesn't make me eager to see the next episode, it just kind of pisses me off.

It just isn't satisfying. I get the fact that it's a series, but with the best series, EVERY episode is watchable and re-watchable. This episode doesn't accomplish anything storywise or content-wise. The only thing I know more now than 3 years ago is that there's shadowers, and some alternate universe... Mmkay. If it's an action series with a story, something significant in the story should happen, not just... something... Please don't take the "I promise future episodes will be badass!" method, I can promise you that nobody sees your vision the way you do unless you put every ounce of your being into every chapter of this tale. Make every episode count, if it's not helping the story, give it a badass fight, if it doesn't have a badass fight, mindfuck us with intriguing revelations. Okay, I'm done. I'll be watching the rest of the series still, keep working at finding that balance.

crystalpencil responds:

Thanks for your honest opinion. The approach I took on this episode is largely due to my own personal interest level. 3d animation has been my latest fascination, so I sought ways to implement it into my workflow. I know, I know, generally a series should be somewhat uniform from episode to episode but what I'd like to do with this series is grow and expand in whatever direction Im lead, in the end I'd like this series to reflect where Ive been and where Im going, I dont want it to appear static. Though I have to admit the cliffhanger ending is a bit cheap on my behalf lol, but bare with me, its only just the beginning. There are many things I still do not understand about flash so I try to make solutions for the problems I face, for example optimization and file size limitations. The next episode might be even more of a new direction than this one, Im lead wherever the wind blows.

[~Play~]

Well, you've certainly proved your point

That was awesome, and hilarious when he fell on the bird. After Effect is definitely a step up from Flash in some respects, I'll have to try it out sometime. Only thing is that some of the faux 3-D looks kinda....faux.... sometimes; the trees are made out of cardboard lol.

RiverJordan responds:

Yeah, i didn't use any 3D animation, just flat drawings in photoshop that i separated into 3D space