CrimsonKero's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Go Kitty Go! - Animated Music Video]

== Not fully compatible via Ruffle ==
Score: 9 | Critic Review

Nice to see a brand new Flash movie hit the charts today, in roughly a similar style as 12 years ago. However, it does use various filters not compatible with Ruffle. This affects the text's drop shadows, the kitty's left arm+fist when it rises up and down and when it claps at the end) and also the scrolling background when it's blue (the default colour is pink).

Other than that, animation is very clean, although with very minimal frame redraws. Various effects are done via motion tweens, which isn't uncommon during Flash's heyday.

On another note, I tend to use the desktop Newgrounds Player to run Flash content nowadays, so that's always an option.

Graphics: 9 | Sound: 8 | Recycling: 9 | Ruffle Compatibility: 7 | Style: 10 | Entertainment: 9

[Monkey Wrench - The Ghost Egg]

== Where's my pizza? ==
Score: 10 | Critic Review

If I were to give this a review, it would be better to put this into comparison with actual animated TV shows like Adult Swim's Rick and Morty or Smiling Friends, to name a few, rather than any individual animators on the web who can only dream of having the budget and talent to create full episodes with professional quality animation, writing, storytelling, voice acting, music, etc. over the course of many many months.
The closest comparison I could find on the internet for free in terms of scope and professionalism would have to be Helluva Boss, Satina, Ollie and Scoops (which Zeurel also helped animate), Harry Partridge's Starbarians, or the later Spooky Month installments from Sr Pelo (which progressively get bigger and pushed beyond Halloween every year)

The only problems I found with this, problems that can affect both independent and professional creations like this one, are a few audio issues, notably the music being too quiet in the big fight scene in the end, and also Shrike (the one who looks like Earthworm Jim) being too generic of a Spanish stereotype. (sort by score and jump to the last pages)
Hopefully these will be ironed out in future installments. if or when they come out.

I'm also going to note that the two main protagonists bear a great resemblance to the characters in the 2012 short 'Lard Ass', also created by Zeurel.
https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/597197

Graphics: 10 | Sound: 8 | Overall Premise: 10 | Effort: 10 Style: 10 | Entertainment: 9

[2 girls 1 tank]

== It's barely even August! ==
Score: 8 | Critic Review by Anonymous-Frog

It's not even Halloween yet. I guess Sr. Pelo's not the only one posting Halloween movies too late (or too early). I'm also surprised this wasn't a 2 Girls 1 Cup parody, despite the title.

This movie has fairly good visuals, although various assets are digitally altered rather than redrawn, ie. modifying its width, height, rotation, etc. This is a very decent way to avoid drawing too many frames, a trick I myself often use. Here, it's used alongside cel-shaded, realistically proportioned characters, but in some areas, they only use one frame for certain actions, for example, in 0:37 when the two girls run away from 'scary armor guy' (I'm not familiar with LoL enough to know this guy's name, and thus I can't comment on how accurate this is to the source material)

Only thing bugging me is that the girls keep moaning all the goddamn time, which may be annoying.

Graphics: 9 | Sound: 5 | Recycling: 7 | Boobs: 4 | Style: 10 | Entertainment: 8

teemovsall responds:

boobs 4?? I'm sad now :(
The title is "2 girls 1 tank"! Because tthe armored guy is a Tank type, this is the joke :P
Thanks for your review

[How Battle Royales would really go down]

UPDATE: This review is out of date.

I think you forgot to give it a title.

[Sally and the Cup]

== Good, but still within Horny Jail territory ==
Score: 6 | Certified Critic Review

TW: This is a piece of criticism which points out the goods and bads of this submission.
Don't let the negative reactions fool you into thinking I'm some braindead gatekeeping hater. I've suffered through worse!

Here, a Betty Boop-esque woman drinks out of a cup, but it's Cuphead, so she's predictably shocked and throws him away, but not before taking another sip after the fact. The drink was fine before you threw it away. Also riddle me this.

As usual, the animation is clean, fluid, if not a little risqué. Animators would NEVER get away with making something like this in the good ol' 1930s. It might be too close to pandering. Newgrounds prefers if you make stuff a little more original and a little less fetishizing (at least not in the A rated section). Ever wondered why this isn't on the front page? This is probably why.

Also, this is only 24 seconds long, which is still pretty low for NG standards, but it's the longest cartoon you submitted here this year, so you're getting there.
Friendly reminder that it is not expected for one guy to be able to put out the same amount of effort in an animation as an entire TV studio with dozens of workers. It's physically impossible. On the web, it's OK to sacrifice a little bit of quality in order to quicken the process if it means a longer animation (ie. 30 seconds is bare minimum, 1-2 minutes or more is generally preferred, and bonus points for 3 minutes or higher.)

Graphics: 10 | Sound: 8 | Writing: 6 | Length: 5 | Style: 10 | Pandering: 8

[The Sergio Show Episode #258]

== This is garbage ==
Overall Score: 4

OK, it appears this "successful and Long-Running Animated Cartoon Series", after 14 years, you only managed to get 320 subscribers on YouTube and 80 here, and I think I figured out why.
It is a crap series. No seriously! In this episode Sergio (or specifically an evil version of him) is literally surrounded with a pile of garbage for 3 minutes and builds a portal. This could've been cut down to just 30 seconds, or at the very least each scene could be half the length and it wouldn't be compromised in any way

That 'Wastiest LAND!' sign appears for 7 seconds? Try 2-3 seconds
0:53, the garbage structure is built and falls apart is 18 seconds. Can be conveyed in only 5 seconds.
1:11. Evil Sergio takes 4 seconds scratching his head before biting into the biscuit and chews for more than 4 seconds.

As for the visuals, also shit. The garbage pieces use very crude outlines and overuse an ugly gradient, Sergio's skin outlines are thinner than his clothes, and it's still a motion tween, just like you did in 2008, and utilising basic shapes. It doesn't feel like it's been hand-drawn, it feels very artificial and it just doesn't look good. Even LegendaryFrog, for as infamous as he was, was able to make better tweening animations in 2002.

His elbows also bend backwards in 0:43.

TIPS:
Try learning some actual drawing and animation techniques. It shouldn't be hard to find courses or resources on this subject. It's OK to take a little break in order to learn something new.

Oh and also try to fix up your pacing and not pad out episodes for time.

The series itself also feels very choppy. Try using a higher framerate. 24 frames per second is a good benchmark, although 30 is better suited for most video displays. As for the rigging, try some faster movements and ease in and out when needed (that is slow down during the start or end of a movement. For Flash, they're called motion tweens, but it might be called something different if you're using a different software)

~frog~
Graphics: 4 | Sound: 6 | Pacing: 2 | Style: 3 | Entertainment: 5

[When you skip NPC dialogue]

== Same! ==
Overall Score: 6

It appears that EBSynth was used to make this animation, much like animator Joel Haver on YouTube. It's pretty much an experimental AI-driven form of rotoscoping where you draw one (or eight) keyframes and let the software generate new outlines and fills for the rest of the frames. You get smooth and realistic motions every frame, but it does get really messy the more you move. Thankfully not much movement is used here, so there's not much corruption here.

It also appears that this video is based on the same type of subject matter Joel covers or has covered, ie. video game NPCs. But then again, Joel himself acknowledges that this will happen:
" It's okay to steal my style outright, imitation is flattery and the greatest jumping off point for finding your own style."

Also, while writing this review I discovered that Goat-on-a-stick has a YouTube channel with 170k subscribers. And no it hasn't dwindled, videos still get 200k-1M views each, which is close to Joel's own videos with this method.
https://www.youtube.com/c/GoatonaSticksAnimations
Keep that in consideration before watching or voting, as his heart is in YouTube and not in Newgrounds. He also hadn't linked his Newgrounds page anywhere where I could easily find it, so nobody has noticed that he's on here.

~frog~

Graphics: 6 | Sound: 7 | Originality: 4 | Style: 8 | Humor: 7