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 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.

[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~

[Lil Hop: Forbes 1-2-3 BDC]

Nice one...

Pretty well animated flash, not exactly my style of humor, but this flash is definitely worthy, if you know what I mean. And hey don't feel bad about your scores, daily 5th place, 3.54; these are pretty darn good. I've been animating for longer than you have and I'd be pleased as punch if my next one did as good as your toon has done. I know we all want are next flash to be the one that gets front page and stuff, but for most of us that can only happen with time and practice. Good luck in the future :), hope you have the success you expect yourself to get.

StupidDream responds:

I appreciate the review. You say you've been animating longer than me, well I started in March of 2000. This isn't my first account on newgrounds.

I started making movies about a year ago.. but I've been animating for a long time. Those first few years though really didn't do me any good though, I had no idea what I was doing.

I've had the front page before, and it ain't about that. I love it like everybody else does, but it was more just going from 116,000 to 300 views. To me this animation is above the others I've done. It has voice acting which everyone said I needed to do, has good art, animation, and is pretty short. You figure if everything is better then it should do better... but actually it did way worst than I thought it would do. That first animation I did I think is pretty bad to me now, it was only a year ago, but even then it got like 15,000 views and front page and all that other stuff.

Appreciate it though.

[The All-Powerful Spork]

Pretty funny

But you should note that you do have explicit text, right now you have it as "suitable for all audiences". Beyond that it lacks in length and complexity in animation to be truly great, but its fine for a quick short. Good luck on your future projects.

Spork-Lock responds:

Whoops, I completely forgot about that. Thanks for pointing it out, I've fixed it now.

As for the length, I had intended to make it longer but the scenes in mind were just not funny enough to take the time to do them.

Also thanks =)

[DS Birth of an Island]

A Commendable educational message... but...

I thought this flash might have benefited from some more entertaining visuals. Although I understand you trying to make the flash as factually accurate as possible (which it was) I think any flash on Newgrounds must be made with the understanding that viewers are expecting to be entertained. I see no reason that your flash couldn't of contained the exact same information, but have much more entertaining visuals (like lava pushing it's way up through the earths crust). Even the island forming, although entertainingly shown could have been done even more entertainingly.

Say are you still planning on doing part 2? I doubt it with how busy you are. You were planning on showing ecological succession on an island, right? I don't think I told you this but I'm a forestry major and I might have fun doing a flash showing that... maybe that could be another project for us down the line?
-Ox Sox

IceDragon64 responds:

1. We can discuss the details of entertaining visuals. Although I intend it to be a serious flash, if we can come up with more entertaining images I will consider it. I was working at the limit of my ability at the time. Although it is very short and simple, the main scene involves FBF lava flows, FBF waves away from the island, three different layers of smoke and steam... it took hours!
2. Yes I am nominally still planning it, tho I don't do much flash at present. Yes, I would consider working with you on pt 2. I confess I don't know much about ecological succesion, I am expecting to do quite a bit if research, when the time comes.
Thanks for your detailed review.