OxSox's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[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.

[The Last Hour: Chapter 5]

Yeah for effort!

It's good! Not great but good! I'd like to note though that this movie scored better than any of mine and got a daily award which I've never done so maybe you should start giving me advice.

Animation: As others have noted you used mostly simple tweens animation would be improved by increased fbf. For example the scene where the priest is walking towards all the other priests wouldn't have been nice if his arms had been moving rather than just his head bobbing up and down? And wouldn't it have been nicer still if we could see his whole body including his legs. The lip syncing and mouth movement was fine though. Just keep working on increased movement of characters, as others have already mentioned there quite static.

Sound: VA was a bit hard to understand in this one, but MUCH better than any of the previous ones. Hope you find a voice actor on NG I think that'll help you much.

Art: I think you've done real good here. Although in the scene with a ton of characters it would have been nice if there were a few more variations in the character artwork.

Directing: I still think your animations are too short this one barely stands on its own none of your others do at all. IMO there should be a plot and story arc independent which stands on its own for every movie you release, all though these can be building towards a greater plot.

Overall: You took my advice and look where it got you. Keep spending more time adding more detail and making character less static and the skies the limit!

Jaiba responds:

you are absolutely right. i should teach you a thing or two about flash. i've only had flash for 1 week and i've become an award wining producer. who produced such hits such as the last hour chapter 1 the search, the last hour chapter 2 , chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 5 etc etc.

i had enough of you people insulting my voice acting. it's not bad voice acting i am an irish immigrant.

art? i think my artwork is better than yours so don't even talk about my art work.

do you know who you are speaking to? i am an award winning producer, Jaiba! they will all remember my name. you will remember my legendary name jaiba, award winner!

few days ago i was nothing more than a low class artist, few days later i became something like a world champion. i am an award winning producer, hear me! fear me! i am jaiba!

No one tells me how short my films are. what i decide to give these people i give. if i wanna give them this length then they shall be pleased and honored to receive it. do you know i am an award winning producer?

you on the other hand have a lot to learn before you are my equal. you are not even in my league. when you are on my level then you can criticize me. you said my movie was good but not great. how dare you! i think you are jealous. that's what. you are jealous of jaiba.

-jaiba the legend.

[Rotten Antenna]

I can only aspire to have the talent you do!

Your animations continue to stun me. Your ability to do those 3D animations without the aid of a program is stunning. Of your movies this one wasn't my favorite, but it was still better than 99.9% of what's on this site. Please keep animating on Newgrounds, your an inspiration to me! I know this isn't really your style but have you considered doing a more plot based animation? With your talent it could be stupendous. Well I'm sure I'll see this on the front page tomorrow. Although you were already on my favorite animators list, this one is moving you to the top.

[The Last Hour: Chapter 4]

Chapter 5 needs to be VASTLY different.

Directing: I swear your intros are getting longer and longer! First off, please stop hyping up Jaiba studios and your past animations at the beginning. Others respect takes time and quality and can be won by you proclaiming you already have it. Frankly at this point, as you can see from your other reviews, your past actions and animations have earned you, if anything a negative reputation on Newgrounds. Also PLEASE make the text reminding you of what happened in the past optional. The only reason I made my text in "A Dragon's Revenge" mandatory is because I was refrencing a story that wasn't previously animated. So how 'bout in the next movie you have the movie go to a screen which allows you to either play the movie or play the movie with optional text reminder of past episodes. Everybody wins! Finally , you had 2 freaking scenes, one with no animation whatsoever! That doesn't cut it! Not even sort of.

Animation: The sparse animation that was there was better, but still needs vast improvement. The change in facial expressions was a start, but since nothing else was moving anywhere it made things look very startling. People should be shifting their bodies and arms etc. as well. And not just the person talking should be moving, the people not talking should be responding. And the long shot of person they were talking about was unnatural, and seemed to be a cheap way of getting out of actually animating things. Say it with me no more long shots of static pictures. In normal movies they don't hold a shot more than 5 seconds without reason, it may be a bit to much to ask in animation but variation in shots should be regular.

Drawings: Your ability to do artwork remains, in my opinion quite acceptable for Newgrounds standards. More facial detail and other detail would be nice though.

Sound: Argh, your voice acting has gotten worse! Those noises while you were talking, ugh! Don't let those noises be in your next movie. Make sure everything sounds the way you want it to sound.

Overall: All let this one go, but your next one should be VASTLY improved. It should take you weeks to make animations not days. Take the time to make your next one good. People would not be so angry about your movies if you were trying to do animations and failed. But just not trying smacks of no effort, which bothers people because it seems like your waisting their time. Take the time to make your movies worth our time.

Jaiba responds:

i read your full review, and i have taken your advice.
intro is cut shorter.
added a skip button option.
nicer drawings
better voice acting.
longer movie.
anyways check out chapter 5.

[The Last Hour: Chapter 3]

Strackenz is right WAY more time is needed

A couple plot hole notes: Is the pilot dude named MadFalconX13 (what unfortunate parents he must have had) or is his ship named that? Because you say in this movie MadFalconX13 is dead, which indicates its the pilot.

What rebellion are you talking about? I see no rebellion? If it Jaibidians rebellion, that seems fairly well exposed, if it's the humans rebellion, then I think your miss using rebellion. Unless I'm missing something.

Animation: Your characters are just statically standing there, no arm gestures, nothing aside from the lip movement. Do you do this in real life? No, there needs to be reactions, arm gestures, facial changes, blinking, etc. This all must be done through (you guessed it) time consuming fbf animation. The lip syncing needs work too, try checking out the lip syncing tutorial on this fine website for help there. The second half of the movie is just on fixed picture? Never hold a static picture for any longer than absolutely necessary. Never, for 1/4 as long as you did here. Do you think you can have an animation without animating?

Artwork: I liked the increased detail in the artwork in this movie. It's a definite start. The facial features needed more detail though. I did like the better drawn asteroids in the opening though.

Sound: Yeah... not so hot in this one. Wayyyy to loud and high pitched. Turning down the sound of the voice acting would be a great start. Maybe consider soliciting a Newgrounds voice actor, or just try to sound more natural and... uh... act better with the voices you got.

Story: Again you try to let text and voice acting tell the story, when, in fact your animation should be doing most of the story telling. I think with all my animations you could at least get a vague idea of the story with the sound off. I think this a good thing. Still, I think you have a good story in your head you just need to give it the right foil in your animation.

OVERALL SUMMARY OF YOUR WORK SO FAR:
I hope if my and other reviews have planted any idea its this: Good animation takes time. Most shortcuts you take will be blatantly obvious to the viewer and will not be smiled upon by him or her. Your movies are too short and lack fbf animation, If you really want to make this series get noticed on Newgrounds you need to take several steps these are just some of them. Make the individual movies much longer. Fbf animation DON'T tween most everything. Work on voice acting. Get away from telling your story almost entirely through text and voice acting. Better voice acting. Accept the fact that animation is a lot of work. It takes time, time, and more time.

I hate to keep referencing myself, but I'm the only real example I have to go by. My animations take a minimum of 30-40 hours for me to do. Some have taken much longer. I don't think this unusual, in fact, I'm willing to be the elite animator spend 10 times as long. So what's the rush with your series? Nobody is demanding you produce a quota of 20 feet of film a week. Take time, and in the end you will be rewarded. If nothing else, than with personal satisfaction at a job well done. Good luck!

Jaiba responds:

just wait till you see chapter 5, currently in production

[The Last Hour: Chapter 2]

More Ideas for improvement:

Animation: Never ever ever skew a character to try to show he's walking. NEVER! What your going to have to do is a frame by frame (fbf). You need to draw a walk cycle for your character, where at each frame his arms and legs change at each frame. There are some great tutorials on Newgrounds to help you with this admittedly time consuming and difficult process. If you want I can send you some of my fbf walk and run cycles to give you a better idea. On a positive note when your spaceman gets attacked the animation is decent. I think you did this through shape tweening, to really make the attack look good your going to have to fbf the rapidly explanding drops of goo too. I know this all sounds like a lot of work, but excellent, even okay animation is an insane amount of work. But it's rewarding in the end, at least sometimes it is...

Artwork: Not bad, the background of the planet would benefit from a lot more detail. Also I would have felt so much better about the spaceship if you had given a landing gear or something.

Sound: The voice acting in the beginning was so annoyingly slow! I'll get to how I feel about your long text in a minute but if your going to make us sit through it, please don't make it so slow. I was dying listening him say Con...tin...uuuueeeeeessssss... Also the sound effects aside from the voice acting were clearly you making the noises of the sound effects. There's other websites which you should look into with copyright free sound effects I can send them to you too if you'd like. The music is pretty good for the mood though.

Plot: Wait... the ship didn't actually land in the last episode, but now your narrating that it did? I know a landing sequence would be hard to draw but you can't forever narrate the harder to draw scenes, start taking risks! Try to draw things your not totally uncomfortable with. You can only improve! But, yeah, as other reviewers stated, making us sit through the long refreshers is not so cool, and seems like a way to spread out a short movie. I would make this optional, or simply say in your author comments to please watch the other movies before watching this one. Do not use this text as a way of extending the length of your movie and covering for your harder to draw scenes.

Overall: Again wayyyy to short. On the plus side, your artwork is improving an the story continues to be intresting.

Jaiba responds:

thanks friend. well noted, and i will improve along the way. thanks for the review, i also reviewed some of your movies

[The Last Hour: Chapter 1]

It's a start...

Forgive me if I focus on the negative in my reviews, there are good parts which by in large I'm not talking about. However I've never found reviews which overly focus on what is good to be very helpful. What I'm trying to say is don't be offended or discouraged by this or my following reviews, I'm honestly trying to help you to improve:
Animation: Everything you've done in this movie is no more than a basic tween, there is way more to animation than just linearly moving an object from one point to another (or applying a transparency linearly). For starters, when the craft moves to avoid the asteroids it would be nice if you rotated it when moves up or down. The flame on the back of the ship, albiet your best animation in this movie needs alot of work. What if instead of a circle you made it a flame? Just some startering ideas...

Artwork: Your artwork is up to Newgrounds standards, I don't think this area needs anything more than the natural improvement that will happen as you draw more. Already your latest movie shows this upward movement in artwork.

Story: The actual plot your setting up sounds good to me, but I dislike how much you explain in text, and how little you actually show in your animations. I realize how much of the ideas in the text are hard to animate "big picture" ideas. But this is an animation web site, not a story website with animation to back up.

Overall: Wayyy to short, in my opinion if you combined all three of your movies you might have an okay sized story, but this movie lacks the sustenance to stand alone. However, you have set up a story with the promise of being somewhat interesting, and that's something!

Jaiba responds:

i appreciate your very good review. you even give me ideas of what to do to improve and i appreciate that very much. thank you thank you for your reviews.
-jaiba

[Button Ragz Treasure Hunt]

I have to admit, you earned your front page!

I sometimes find that things get popular and put on the front page of Newgrounds which I don't think deserve it. So when your were talking about the front page in the BBS, I had to see what you had done for yourself. And I have to say I'm impressed, smooth animation, simple yet good artwork, funny beyond the song you were using overall excellent job. However, I'd like to be helpful, and helpful means giving criticism, so if I had to suggest an area for improvement I'd say your artwork is a bit too simple. I know this is the style you were going for in the movie, but I still think your characters and background could benefit from more detail. Anyways, excellent job on this and good luck on your future projects.
-Ox Sox

Jochio responds:

thanks!
i apreciate the compliments. and im also pleased with critisism..(unlike alot of other animators :P)
the artwork is simple. i admit. im acualy trying to make it look better.. but in most cases.. i dont like the detailed version.. untill i get a perfect detailed version im gonna stick with this style:)
thanks for the review!
GC~