SS4FlameAlchemist's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[VGE3 Easter Egg short]

Nice.

But why is it so big... It's barely a minute long. Did you really put that much content into it? If so, then episode 3 is going to be freakin awesome. Can't wait.

R1665 responds:

Most of the largeness comes from the music. Although it only plays for a few seconds, Akuma's theme song exists in the .swf in its entirety. I didn't cut it down.

Besides, the larger file size aids in the misdirection...

R1665

[32-Bit Tournament-3]

nice.

Seeing this give me new motivation for sprite animation. You did an awesome job, and the effect were super. Keep up the good work.

Trixiaoyu responds:

Make sure that your new animation kicks ass. Thanks for the review.

[ElfenLied Caramelldansen]

It's definitely good

Something like this is usually more meant for youtube, but whatever... I liked it, so I don't care. Is it bad if I can't stop watching it?

mikuru15 responds:

umm maybe bad for your eyesite, might get radiation poisioning if you watch it for to long lolz, i hate youtube its all blury and then i couldnt have buttons and stuff, thanx

[Sonic Shorts: Volume 6]

huh...

First one was good. The rest were well developed, but the jokes were stale. It was also a lot shorter than the others. For 2 years in the making, this just didn't seem worth it. It left a lot to be desired. Sorry.

[DBZ: Ep 3]

pretty good.

Had to take a point for the no sound. Sorry, but it just took away from the video. It seemed like all the villains are just recolors of other sprites. Seeing an evil Yusuke bothered me. Maybe it's just me. Anyway, sorry things didn't work out. Despite having no sound, it was pretty good.

[Sonic: ReturnOfChaos 3!]

This is gonna be a long review...

So please read this whole thing. There is a lot of helpful advice. And, I apologize in advance if anything in here offends you or your flash, because it is not my intention. I don't usually vote this low sprite movies. it hardly looks like you put any effort into it. I know you did try and it is your only second animation, but I will go ahead and tell you how to improve. Animation isn't easy, so I fought myself from giving you a 2 or a 3 like I was going to.

First: the animations are very shaky. What I mean is that they shake when they aren't supposed to. The fighting stances are great examples of this. The feet should not be moving at all when they are standing idle. The background when it moved was doing something similar. You have to find the right points that shouldn't be moving around. Nothing was flowing the way it was supposed to. You kind of have to experiment. With fighting stances, it is usually the feet. For running, I use the head so it looks like they are running in place when place the running sprites in, then motion tween to move the character as they are running. Try to zoom in as much as possible and get that fixed up. Shaking animation is one of my biggest pet peeves in sprite animation. I do understand though that you are still learning. Heck, even I haven't learned all there is to know about sprite animation.

Second: Try to use better talking bubbles. You want to experiment with what works, but you always at the very least want to have a colored box or bubble for the text. Using the small fighting stances to tell you who's talking is a little on the lazy side. No offense. Sonic advance and Sonic Battle had mugshots. Use those instead. If you use a text bar and put a sonic battle mugshot in it with the text, it will look a lot better than what you have now. If you need help and further explanation, I'll help with sending you a picture that kind of goes with what I'm talking about. Also, if you don't use voice actors, it is a good idea to put in buttons or using actionscript to proceed text using space to let people read the text at their own pace. Some of the text took a long time to change. The first text blob took about a minute and I was trying to figure out if i missed hitting the space bar or something. I can help with either one you may want to do.

Third: PRELOADER. You never want to start a flash animation without one. With this site, the video loops and the song that was playing at the end is suddenly playing with the one at the beginning, and it gets annoying quick. You can learn how to make a preloader, but it is much easier to download one from the downloads section if you can't quite understand how to make one. It also helps to put a replay button at the end so that people know the video is over. Some videos loop once or twice before I realize that they are looping. One thing people may not be found of.

Fourth and final: It was way too short. A video that short is never a good idea because it never really helps the story much. This flash was just a little running and a heap of talking. I would suggest looking at your file size, because a video that short should not be over .75 MB. I honestly thought it was going to be longer based on the file size. There are ways to compress the file when you save it, and I can help with that as well. As for the length, you have to add more content to the flash movie. I'd say a good place to be is about 5-10 minutes long depending on content. Also, you want to put in sound effects so it's not basically a music video. You can find sonic series and other sounds effects in various places. I have fairly large library of sounds if you need them.

That's all I have right now. If you would like more help, you can always PM me and I will be glad to help you. I hope this will help you improve in future animations. I am sorry I had to pick the animation apart, but if you can take my advice, your animations will improve very much. I do see some potential. I really hope that this will help you.

Kala-Kun responds:

It doesnt offend me :)
It helpsh me!
Ill fix the sprites!
and get the talking better.
And the next one will be WAY longer.
and ill try and fix the loop now :D

[Shao Kahn Gets PWN'D]

Not bad

The thing with Shang was a little disturbing, but it's your flash. One thing to watch out for is the way the stances are animated. The feet in the fighting stances shouldn't be moving around. Other than that, I think the animation was pretty good. I can say that if you are going to do the talking with text bubbles, you either want to put in a button to continue the text, or you want to have it advance using the space bar. I could tell you how to do it with buttons, because that's how I do it. Other than that, the flash was good. Keep up the good work.

BLT333 responds:

The thing with Shang Tsung was intended to be comic relief but whatever. I'm still new to using the program so it was kind of tricky keeping the animations aligned properly (especially the one where Conductor jumps across the screen). I did notice the problem with the text moving too quickly, since I had to constantly adjust the amount of frames so the text could be read for a longer amount of time. If I ever make any more sprite movies with text like this, I'll go with your advice and use buttons. Thanks for the feedback.

[CX Wars #1: The Beginning]

Nice.

My only concern is that the characters look a little too small. Try increasing the size by about 125% at least. You do want to keep the size of the background consistent with the size of the characters. Other than that, this is really good. I see a lot of potential for this series. If you aren't going to put in voice actors, try to but in buttons so that people can proceed the text when they want to. I am usually here if you need some help.

On another note, is this basically the story of Megaman Zero or something different? Just curious, because it seems like you skipped the elf wars completely, but then again, capcom did a piss poor job with that story.

ToapointX responds:

SHHHHH!!! lol, I'm glad I'm not the only one that knows of the awesome Elf wars :D WE SHOULD REANIMATE IT!!! I have the remastered Drama tracks... ^^

[Until The Day You Die TVC]

nice.

The only problem was that the text with sigma not only was difficult to read, but it changed and disappeared too fast. There was not enough time to read it. Other than that, just watch your grammar. Make sure you sentence make sense. there were a few there that took me a few tries to understand. Other than that, it was good.

[Megaman Black]

Nice.

I gotta admit. Those were some great effects. Considering how many custom sprites I saw, and the amount of special effects... you must have been planning this a long time. I liked how everything began, and I don't usually like when all the action starts at the beginning with no story developement, but you made it work. just out of curiosity, why did everyone forget about Bass? Is he that hated? Joking. I do look forward to your future works.

jutopa responds:

bass choose his own way, nobody cares about him.