Kalaloo-NB's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Friendship.]

I promise my criticism is meant to be constructive

Things like the boy sleeping outside do not constitute as plot holes. However certain things with the consideration of the time passed in the story can. For instance, why is the bird injured even after all these years? One could expect the bird to be healed. Plus, you stated the boy's friends died in that fire, but why are they still in the forest after those years?

This brings me to another point- how are we supposed to know the boy's friends are still in the forest? Yes I know boy scouts do certain exercises in the forest, but their presence after those many years is not communicated in your short film. Several things aren't, such as why the boy is so compelled to stay in the forest. Yes the bird is hurt but ask yourself would you stay in the forest for years or get an adult? I read your statement and I guess it makes sense after knowing the bird is a demon (the boy was enchanted I'm surmising), but once again that isn't communicated very well to the audience. You don't want your audience to think, "Oh...um...so it... was a demon...?" at the end, when I'm guessing you wanted more of a shocked response.

In addition, we don't know the intentions of the demon so it's very confusing at the end.

Now making a short film is tough, and it's great you guys were able to pull it off in the time allotted. However, work around your limitations. In your situation, time was the biggest limitation, so you had to leave out a lot of detail that would have helped us piece things together and enjoy this piece of work. If you need us to read the script to understand it, that's a bad sign.

I wouldn't suggest you try to pull off a film that requires a lot more development in the story in 48hrs. Or better yet, I wouldn't suggest you choose a story that requires a lot of development for a 48hr competition. With time limitations like these its best to go with very short, but well written plots. Trust me on that.

I'm sure if you had a lot more time this could have become something great.

5/10 for effort. Like I said you still pulled it off, unlike some people I'm sure.

funkycaveman responds:

Thanks for the review, we did not much have choice with the story and the story was one of the longer ones, they were randomly assigned to make it fair. I can agree with a lot of the plot points you brought up but in the end we concentrated on the animation and art and the music, a lot of the other movie jam submissions do not feature more than 1 song, let alone 6 songs in which one of them was specially composed specifically for this submission (out here in the forest). We also made a polished menu and extras section that provides you with some evidence of the giant amount of work that we put into this flash. I'm not sure how long other teams spent on their animations but we collectively spent at least 60 hours on this. The ending scenes were made in 40 minutes due to the fast approaching deadline.
So if you give a 5 for effort I can't quite see where you are coming from.

[Fireflies - The Fruit]

I really enjoyed this

I think its great you were able to create an understandable story through use of just simple animation and the music. Keep up the great work.

MLeth responds:

Thank you!

[Vete a la Versh 12]

Wow simple silly and to the point

That was just ridiculous, but I seriously love this short.

*sigh* Blackfrost17 get over it already would you? It's the internet and pretty global. This isn't the first non-english flash.

Darkar responds:

Agree!

[Bound on Earth]

Oh wow thank you for this

What I love the most is that I have never played Earthbound, and yet this flash is very amusing. I'm glad to see that there are still many quality flashes out there and your submission is without a doubt one of them. The effort you put forth drawing the backgrounds and characters was well worth it.

I have to agree with the Boogley. The walk in the beginning is a little bit light. Walks always seem to be one of the hardest things to animate though. I'm sure with a little more practice you'll have the standard down. One more thing that irked me was the twitchy motion of the smoke that arose from the cup, but aside from those two things this is a great flash.

Please keep up the great work.

^_^

MichaFrario responds:

that is really constructive and helpful, thanks sir!<3

That was my main goal, trying to make an inside joke of the game look funny in general. But I still think it's hard to do that :( you can see that

[Zimmi EP 1]

Wonderfully Innocent Plot

And I enjoyed the style. It reminds me of marshmallows wrapped in cotton candy with a kitten ready to paw at it.

Anyways it is a lovely flash and you should be very proud of your labors.

Rutger responds:

Meow!

[Chanter Tales 1.2]

That was great!

The animation was so well done! The art was nicely drawn. I liked the river especially the monster/man was standing over. It looked simple and yet more real than any other rivers people have made on flash before. You did and very good job with this and I look forward to see the continuation of the story.

You get a high 5 out of 5

And I did appreciate that there was no "boob" as the last reviewer put it. You wanted the flash to be appropriate for everyone and I respect that ^_^.

Ghosty22 responds:

Thank you... It took me a long time to get that river to look like that too. I originally wanted to make more shots of the river, because I do a lot of walking in the woods, and small streams and creeks are really nice to walk along. I really wanted wilderness and solitude to be a big part of Chanter Tales. There are a couple of other shots where you can just see a small part of the river, but I was agonizing over the look of it, and I could rarely get it to look right, so I didn't show as much as I would've liked.

I think that one of the reasons that a lot of people don't make good-looking rivers is that people have preconceived notions about how rivers look. I think most people think, "It's water, so I'll make it blue..." But in the woods, usually trees are blocking the sky, and the water doesn't reflect the blue, so it appears brown with white highlights... Maybe some other dull transparent colors... Anyway, that's my take on it.

The same sort of thing happens with fire. People hear expressions like "red hot," and the color their fires red. Fire isn't actually red...

[Fury - Preview]

You get a 2 for originality

Because of the story, but the style of art and animation was completely DBZ. However, even with the lack of creative style, the flash was good. The animation was well done and I can't blame you for not putting much detail into your characters. I'm guessing you did frame by frame for the movement of your characters.

(People it does suck to draw the same thing over and over again for animation especially when it has so many muscles X_x)

Pretty good. 3/5

AkiraToriyamaJR responds:

Well the story i admit doesnt sound all that good. But at that age my mind was everywhere but where it was suppose to be. I wont lie, i work on and off againg because even though ive been able to put my idea into a better plot, the animation does kill me sometimes. Body wise, i was mixing stick figures with fully drawn characters. In 2003 DBZ and stcik figures where big, so i wanted to combine them both but using an idea of my own. I feel energy beams, flight, power, destruction, arent just from DBZ, but from people who wish they aquire these ablilties. I speak from my head and draw from my both my heart and head combined. I draw on emotion. Depending on my mood, thats how the animation will come. So thanks for enjoying this and with my movie Maximum Chakra 2 coming, hopefully youll see a style im using for this new movie. Animation as well as story wise.

[Sunday Comics & Toons 004]

Nice at first

but it got more boring as I went further down the list.

*shrugs* sorry

perhaps if some of you worked on your material-animating, humor and/or timing-you'd get higher scores.

Nice idea though.

RSQViper responds:

It continues to improve each week. There are a lot of new animators in this and they especially are improving.

It can certainly get better and will.

[Some Random Thing]

It had its moments

Although it ripped off of a flash series that ripped off some of its ideas from Robot Chicken. As said befor it did have its momnets, however, it kind of predictable with the violence.

64 responds:

True dat.

[Giant Enemy Crab Battle]

I loved it mostly b/c of the style

The sounds and music you put in there was place in nicely as well. You're flash was pretty original, which I respect. And yes the person who made Dad's Home is awesome! Hehe, keep up the good work!

Steven-M responds:

Ah... Dad's Home. Sheer genius, especially the faces and actions. Thanks for commenting!