JazLyte's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[SPUD - Part 2]

A very intelligent story.

I really enjoyed this, the graphics and style were nice and clean, the voice acting was realistic enough, and it was very well-written. Most of all what I loved though is the epic metaphor of Western civilizations and the ghosts we chase, and the frilly morals we collect. This whole thing with the manufactured heroes and villains could apply to anything from the Red Scare to war propaganda to Terrorism in the past decade to Christianity's "moral" influence on anything in over here in America.

Where it could use some work is the pacing, it's very slow-moving for a web cartoon and doesn't accomplish much for the length. I found myself a bit surprised by how little happened in the 7 minutes of each episode. While the art style is nice, the animation and scene setups leave a lot to be desired. There isn't a lot of frame-by-frame or in-betweens for how minimalistic the style is, I feel like you could have done more in 6 months but I guess everyone has their work pace. It was more than enough to get the story across.

That was the good and the bad, now for the ugly. I get the feeling that this heading toward being slathered in Christian overtones due to some of the phrases I heard in the last few minutes such as "true morals", "your god" and "true life". Eh, it was fun while it lasted lol. To me, personally, Abrahamic religions like Christianity, Judaism and Islam are just as much that manufactured hero/villain company as anything else you may be speaking to. If I'm wrong, about the oncoming Biblery I sense (as an ex Christian propaganda cartoonist myself), do correct me. Great toonage so far though, damn good story :3

nahtanojmal responds:

Hey Thanks.
Yeah I am slow but I'm going to try and speed up and do two more films before the year is up.

Yeah there will be oncoming Biblery, though not slathered in Christian overtones. If there's one thing that makes me want to throw up, its most Christian films.

Christian overtones are being saved the film after Spud - part 3

And thanks again

[Sean and Such Ep. 8]

Thoroughly amusing.

This is chatty web cartoons done right, a feat many have failed at. It had it's ups and downs, but I did find the character and his douchery quite entertaining. Graphics could be used to enhance the comedy more, and the black guy impression was terrible, but other than that I enjoyed it.

[Swingers Episode 1]

This... excites me...

Graphic-wise you are definitely on the right track. I LOVE the drawing style and LOVE the character designs even more, and damn do the colors work beautifully. They kinda missed during the opening scene, but they were fantastic for the rest of it. I think you have an interesting little cast, I'm genuinely intrigued to learn more about all of them. A bar owned by random freaks... love it. Perfect for a web series, there's lots of room for you to experiment with this series.

The sound however needs serious work. There were times where I could barely understand what the characters were saying, and the quality of the samples almost sound like a cell phone earpiece. While the drawings were fantastic, they weren't particularly clean all the time. A lot of times there were gaps in the color fills and straight objects that looked like they were drawn freehand, which doesn't work too well with vector. While I thought the concept was great, the delivery of the comedy is a little flat, and the ending was a bit abrupt and anime-ish.

Still, really looking forward to more of this series. I feel like I'm saying this all the time, but this type of thing is damn near extinct on Newgrounds nowadays, I miss quirky original series like this. Everybody was starting them, but very few people finish. PLEASE make more lol.

[The New Suited (pilot)]

Television-worthy. That's not saying much though.

I'll start off with the good points, because there's plenty. For one, I commend you on the huge effort put in here. This is LONG for a Flash movie, and I know coordinating multiple animators from across the net must take some real patience and skill. The graphics were very clean, and to be honest, I would damn well not be surprised to see it on TV. It had everything it needs to be on TV, I'm not sure if that was 22 minutes or not but it felt like it. Overall it's a very professional-looking project and well presented.

Yet I feel compelled to ask WHY you made this... It's kind of a dumb question, because cartoons don't need a reason to exist other than to entertain people. But this... This cartoon could explain to the untrained eye in 22 minutes exactly why the animation industry is so fucked up right now... This has to be the most soulless cartoon I have ever seen on NG... I see stuff all the time that's not nearly as well presented as this, sometimes with terrible graphics and horrible sound quality that I shocks me with how funny, intriguing or outlandish it is, and yet you had this team and chose to use all its power and time to create something with no personality or originality whatsoever.

It's just not funny. The jokes aren't clever enough for me to nod in agreement or dumb enough for me to actually be forced to laugh, they're just there, and their delivery is slow and predictable. I'm not exactly NG's top comedian, but to my knowledge comedy is supposed to catch you by surprise. The characters are just what's taught in the bible of generic internet comedy, one character who's competent, one character who's not competent, and the Jar Jar Binks (the watch). I'm not going to be as harsh on the hidden internet memes, those don't bother me, it's the fact that they were so sluggishly delivered that does.

I don't feel like mentioning the graphics does much, because aside from the lack of fill gaps and clean lines, the art just looks like you didn't give a fuck. We're all aware of South Park's victory in the argument that art can be bare minimum if the content is juicy enough, but this is severely lacking in the care and thought that would have made these graphics acceptable, so now I have to judge them like everything else. I imagine your argument for having such minimal effort with the graphics is the length, but the length didn't do shit for the comedy and the graphics didn't either, in any capacity. There was NO frame-by-frame and everything was tweened very, VERY slowly. The drawing style is straight out of the bible of generic internet cartoons as well, the whole lineless blocks of colors so it's easier to hide cheap shortcuts in the animation. Well played, never seen that before.

I recognize that most things have target audiences, but even with a lot of mainstream stuff I can look at it and imagine something about the person who wrote it. I'm not saying it had to be a blackened art house portrait of your soul's torment, but even a person's strange ass comedy can tell you a lot about them. This cartoon seems like it was written by some automatic screenplay writing program where you just type in a few words like "spies" and "Warcraft" and it creates a script made up of hollow, derivative concepts stored up in a cache file for last-minute emergencies. This same cartoon came through the portal a month or so ago, same characters and everything, it was called "Wonders of the Universe" (portal/view/572764).

I congratulate you on the film fest award, I really am happy for you as the artist, I'm happy to hear about any artistic victories, but this cartoon kinda...upset me... and not in the way that the Boondocks or South Park would upset me deliberately with it's content, it upset me because it assumed a lot: That it didn't have to work hard or be even mildly unique to entertain me. This type of thing is why animation is regarded as "just cartoons", there's no art to this; strictly commercial purposes. Good luck to YOU, artist, in your goals with this film but that was excruciating for me personally.

aniforce responds:

Thank you very much for reviewing The New Suited Pilot in such detail.

There is indeed a lot of room for improvement and I'm glad you took the time to point out where you find that is.

Right now we are working on these improvements by writing scripts for new episodes. We have producers that are interested in the series, but for the series to become a succes, it needs work.

We had fun creating this film, but one of the purposes of this film was to learn from it.

The biggest mistake we made, was that we wrote it in a style that we thought was funny to others, not directly ourselves. That will definatly change for the upcoming episodes. We hope we can surprise you and maybe make you laugh in the future.

Again, many thanks for reviewing. We will definatly keep in mind what you said when developing the series.

Kind regards,

Niels Beekes
Http://www.aniforce.net/
Http://www.thenewsuited.com/

[knife training]

Badhhaaaazzzz

I really enjoyed staring at this for 49 minutes, it really makes me want for her to have an epic story where she whups ass :3. To be a nitpicky animation nazi, her left leg does some strange things during the jump and the hair moves a little strangely, but I hate animating hair myself (which is why I only animate nappy-headed characters) so I can't complain. There's some real intricate volume to this, and while it is a little over-animated, it works, I love the style and I can feel the weight. Looks like ones, you're a soldier, I'd never fucking touch ones lol good shit.

[Power Rangers! Black]

Incredible.

I had no idea people on this website still liked action. This shit was amazing, great sense of weight and synthetic camera movements, and the art style is just perfect, loved it.

[C.L.A.P. 1 : Tones]

The future of human understanding.

This is how everything should be taught. That was fucking hilarious, and for once I don't regret learning something D: I really hope you're doing more of these so I can look cool in front of my friend Xiaowaang.

[Echo Force Zero: Prologue]

Wouldnt know it was you if it didn't say your name

Ugh, I feel so bad for leaving this review, I love your work so much, but I gotta be honest, this just wasn't you at all. There is a gaping hole in this flash where your touch should be. The art is solid and clean-drawn and there's some great acting here, especially the blind guy. That laugh was awesome, it's perfect for the character. It's well-presented, and it's sleek enough to be professional. But there are a lot of things that are kind of bothering me.

Half of the problem here is the lack of style and color that you put to full use in ALL your other stuff. It's missing completely; I know you said in one of your responses you said that the setting is meant to be bland intentionally so that future settings will look better in comparison, but something didn't sit right with me. I remember the first thing I ever saw from you, Closing In, it was so fucking cool, colorful and stylish for such a simplistic concept, I still creep back and watch it even 2 years later. There was none of that fun, quirky style here. That blast of energy and color your collab pieces have, it was nowhere near this cartoon at all...

The other half is in the plot and dialogue, there's a lot of cliche, and not particularly in a satirical manner. Some things in this cartoon ("JEERO? MORE LIKE ZERO") had me face-palming the same way I do when I watch Ben 10's horrible depiction of...well...human interaction in general. I can't tell if you were doing it on purpose or not... If the cliches were a joke, it wasn't communicated too clearly to the rest of us. Some action and sick fBf may have saved it, but there wasn't any. You say there'll be more action in future episodes, but that doesn't do much for us, the viewers, right now.

I think the discrepancy here is the same as with many plot-heavy original series on NG that fizzle out before they can make an impact, and that's too heavy of a lean on future episodes. In future episodes, the settings won't be so bland. In future episodes, the story will get better, in future episodes, there will be more action. In future episodes, the characters will be really interesting. The thing you have to consider is that if future episodes are where all the meat of the series is, then what's the point of this current episode? If it's just to show me the characters faces or expose a single plot point or two, then this whole cartoon was a waste, because people probably aren't going to watch it again. Things like"exposing characters" or "getting people amped for the next episode" are disposable, people won't look back. The audience will pick up on the story if it's told well enough, we don't need shmoozing into the series unless the "shmoozing" is just as entertaining as the rest of the series is supposed to be.

Even if it's just a prologue, satisfy us. Make finding the good in this series easy for the viewer and make each episode as entertaining and satisfying as possible. Have as much intrigue as possible, as much character as possible, and if it's an "Action series", it helps to have action in every episode. Even a one-sided frame-by-frame ass kicking between the old man and the bullies would have added a lot to this episode's rematch value. When you're writing to ask yourself if each episode is entertaining enough to remember, or to warrant multiple watches regardless of what point the story is at. Could I show this one episode to somebody and have them be satisfied even if I could never show them the other episodes? Make each iteration like it's the series finale, put super-stank on it, so these 3-5 minutes will be incredible. It's not even like you can't, I've seen you do it before. When you're working on the next one, please don't paste "future episodes will be better" all over it, if you keep doing that, those "better" future episodes will never come, and there won't be any reason to watch any of the episodes.

Umm... >.> Love you?

<.<

LewToons responds:

yo man!

Thanks for taking the time to watch the toon and to go so in depth with the review - that being said i have a few thoughts in return

I'm bummed you didnt dig the colors - i was actually really proud of myself for how good the coloring looked on my part haha - o well

one thing that struck me that you mentioned was that "it had you face palming like when you watch Ben 10" and i think thats where the large Rift is coming from as far as viewers of this toon -
because i actually LOVE Ben 10! i am well aware of the fact that is superly cheesed up and over the top with dialogue. - but i think theres a lot of people out there that really like that kind of thing, including me.

you are definitely right - i dont really think i would call this an ACTION toon - i just didnt really think any of the other options suited it haha - - perhaps i will re lable it -

i think the main thing you are mistaken about is this- im not saying/ leaning on "the next episode will be BETTER" - - just that it will be different - yes there will be more action(but this series isnt ultimately about crazy fbf action) but it will just be more of the plot continuing - and im not ashamed of this episode at all and i dont believe that i told anyone the next would be "better" only that more characters appear and more action will take place - which is just the nature of the scripts and story

When it all boils down - I knew when i began that this wouldnt be for everybody - but i think it WILL be for a lot of people so i just hope they can take enjoyment from this the way i have from creating it- -im really happy with it the way this turned out and i think i will TURN YOU - thanks for not just giving it a 3, and actually giving me some credit for putting some time and effort into this ; )

for someone as well versed and critically honest with the toon/anime world as you - a 7 aint bad!
LOVE YOU TOO BATCH

[TGN vs. Ry Bot]

Wow. Dumb n****rs.

Who the hell dropped a copy of Toon Boom into the middle of the goddamned Congo? N****rs should not be fucking animating, just stop. Nobody likes fucking black-ass Boondocks-wannabe cartoons. Take your stinky coon ass back to Aunt Jemima's house because nobody fucking wants you here.

TheGreeNate responds:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA!!!!!! Awesome review! People like you crack me up!

[Wonders of the Universe 1]

Professional, but bland.

This is a very well-presented flash. Has a team of good names, clean graphics and great voice acting. Problem is, with how tame and predictable it is I wouldn't be surprised to see it among the other super-tweened Flash cartoons on the Disney channel. I knew from the moment he was on the elevator pretty much everything that was going to happen afterward, he's gonna meet a girl, there's going to be an annoying Jar-Jar Binks-style "comic relief" character (the robot), there will probably be a fat, obnoxious boss with a cigar who yells at Quentin for his antics, etc...

I won't complain about the graphics because I get the feeling that the focus is supposed to be the writing, but if you put all the emphasis on the writing and the writing misses, it can mess up the whole cartoon. In this case, it missed for me, there wasn't one point in this flash where I laughed. The comedy here reminds me of the Sunday "Funny papers", it's not quite clever or stupid enough to catch me off guard, it's just kind of there. Better art and more visual comedy could have saved it. Still, it's just a pilot, good luck with the rest of it, could use a bit more spice though with all that sugar.

Toonwerks responds:

In a sense I (Xiphon) completely agree. From the get go we knew we were diving into a pretty deep universe of stuff to write about there what with the entire crew and number of things that can go wrong on a space cruise liner. It's likely that we have over 10 ideas for solid episodes already, the problem is that we couldn't just jump into it however. We really felt that we needed to introduce the characters in some way, and about halfway through someone on board said something along the lines of "man, this is really going to suffer since we still have to introduce a lot of these people and can't really start doing what we want this series to be about".

It's a problem, but with a series it's nearly unavoidable given the episode time length constraints. But we hear you! I'm hoping to personally see much more depth in the series as it moves along.