OxSox's Reviews

[You're welcome!]

No, your welcome!

I liked this little short, although this movie isn't great in itself, you show a lot of potential:
Art/Animation: Your art isn't bad, it's just very simplistic. I think if you just spent more time on the artwork and made it more detailed, which I know you can do you'll have a very good looking animation. Your animations are seamless, but you never animated anything to complex. Still, excellent job on the animations.

Story/humor: Ehhh... it wasn't a bad storyline, but it wasn't great either. Basically the entire story was trying to get to a single punchline. Thtat's okay, but even the punchline was a bit hackneyed. I could basically the joke coming ahead of time. If you want to make a great animation you need a more complex storyline and more pay off at the end. I think that is were your movie really suffered. But it's also an area that's not impossible to fix!

Sound: I thought the sound was very appropriate, well done there.

Overall it's got to be one of the best movies I've seen under 200k, put sometime into a longer one, and I think you could have front page.

MarsYam responds:

You do speak wisely! ;)
But it wasn't my intention to create anything complex, just wanted something that was fun to make.

Btw, I really appreciate the constructive advice you just gave me!

[The Catch of the Day]

Great Animation!

I just connected the dots that you were the same person who reviewed my animation, ti's funny I saw yours when it was in the portal, was about to write a review, and then got distracted by some sort of shiny object.

Anyhow your animation was very well done your artwork was professional, the pacing I thought was superb, and your animations were all so clean and lively (with the possible exception of the spiders walk, don't get me wrong I realize making a four legged creature walk is no easy feet, but still he seemed to slide just a bit too much too me). You have a boat load of talent. I really liked the music's constant riffing on the itsey-bitsey spider. My one complaint was the punchline fell just a bit flat to me. It just seemed slightly, I guess, obvious to me. If the spider had done something just a bit more, funny and unexpected I think you'd have a 4.3 + right now. But really I'm just digging for constructive criticism to be helpful. You have here something to be really proud off. Congrats! I guess you didn't make that bad of a choice getting an animation degree at UMBC ;)

[~The Elephant's Lullaby~]

It was very well done but...

First off, the background art was absolutely fantastic, it must of taken ages and shows a lot of artistic talent. The character animations were a lot more simple but still good. The animations were the biggest weakness I saw I couldn't quite place it, but I had the nagging feeling that they were just a bit to slow. Perhaps that was the effect you were going for, but to my eye they seemed just a bit choppy, and pulled me out of the video. Perhaps if you chose a slightly higher frame rate or animated on ones rather than twos (if that's what you were doing) would help in the future. Still fantastic flash, perhaps I'm being a bit harsh with 8 out of 10 but I figured you'll get a lot of 10 out of 10's. I really enjoyed the music, and you captured the style you were going for masterly. It looked like something that could be on afternoon kids TV. Good luck on future projects, and congrats on completing this.

[Creating a Hand]

Well done!

You've taken one of the most notoriously complex parts of animating, and made it very nearly simple. Incredible! I'll definitely review this tutorial next time I encounter hand problems. Thanks!

[Best Friends Forever 2]

No Lost Vikings but...

Pleas tell me you've played the Lost Vikings games? Well if not your games are amazingly similar in idea and execution. However, the lost vikings had funnier dialog at the start of levels, special abilities for each character, more monsters and harder challenges. I know this isn't quite fair but I can't help but seeing your game as a far inferior version of lost vikings. Still I think what you have hear is a very good start, but if you could somehow make it deeper, with more abilities for the characters and stuff, this game would be further improved. As it is, I felt like the puzzle solving challenge was minimal since there were a very limited amount of "tools" to try solve the puzzle with. Also I felt like the character animations could have used some improvement (why DO they have no arms?) And the voice acting was a bit lack luster. Keep at it, and good luck with future games!

Skeik responds:

I've actually never played the lost vikings games, and I never heard of them until I finished Best Friends Forever 1 :P When Decade came to me with the idea of multiple person platformer, I just kind of shaped it into this, and then someone told me about lost vikings, lol.

Thanks for the review.

[DS Art Inspiration Tut.]

Good tutorial, room for improvement

So, overall I liked this tutorial, if everyone read it almost no submissions would get blamed. However, since you are planning on resubmitting it I'm going to focus on how I think it could be improved.

1) I felt like it moved a bit slow overall, maybe it was just the fact that most of the information wasn't new to me, but I felt like the text and the narrator went very slowly. I would re-narrate it, a little bit faster and a little bit more passionately. Also, as someone already suggested you should have arrows to allow people to skip ahead if they've already finsihed reading the text.

2) Although the information provided was good I felt like their somehow just wasn't quite enough. I know this is supposed to be a very basic tutorial, but I think if you included a few more advanced ideas, like shading or 3-D drawing perhaps that would also help get it a better score.

3) I think you should spend a bit more time on the car scene, it would have been nice to see you go further in making it better, maybe making the car shrink as it goes closer to the horizon, add reflections to the cars wind shield, or add spinning wheels. I donno I'm just throwing ideas out there take it or leave it.

4) Perhaps you should create a main menu and then break the tutorial into several different sections it would allow authors who were only looking for a particular part of the tutorial to access it.

These are just a few of my ideas, I hope that some of them where helpful :)
-Ox Sox

IceDragon64 responds:

Thank you very much for the thought that obviously went into this.
1. This is perhaps the most important thing to reconsider. The pace is a very important part of the overall impression, but if I change it, other people may like it less- although the score was a dissappointment two people have fav'ed it (no-on I know!) and the review score shows that for those who are interested in help at this level it is what they wanted it to be.
2. More advanced things will go into AI2. I have been offered help from Versucha and Skaijo on that, but I can't do advanced stuff anyway!
3. I don't quite get this cos the car shrinks to around 10% of its starting size. Maybe I will try these other things- I have never done!
4. Since you can go straight to the main menu at the end and scene select from there I don't think I will change this one, but in AI 2 I may put the main menu at the beginning, as you say.

You have clearly grasped the main thing I was aiming for- to get crappy noobs to do the basics so they could pass judgement. Not everyone seemed to get that!
Thanks,
Ice

[Chaotic Struggle]

So good...

Your song continues to be the favorite part of my movie :)

mrpibbs1 responds:

Awesome yeah it was an epic sock battle