Sikes's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Legend of Korra]

What Aliyah and Blessing said.

I suppose it's cause you don't have free time like you said so we won't hold it against you though. Keep at it and you'll get better.

[Echo Force Zero: Vol1]

Awesome.

Don't get me wrong, I like a good parody or non-sensical comedy, but I love those brave fools willing to make a (for lack of a better term) "serious" flash. Something that could appear on TV as an action toon rather than just slapstick comedy. I truly hope you'll continue with this. Consider me a fan.

[The Devil's Bones 1]

Pretty good!

I'm not really into comics in a swf. If the images are going to be static I'd rather just see them laid out on a webpage. This wasn't too bad though. It was good for what it is. The dialogue was a little cheesy here and there, but the art was pretty nice. My only real question is what's up with the boobie chick? She wears straps that seem to have no purpose but to cover her (clothing) but she only covers one boob. Why is that? I could see if she was going all natural and then I'd reason that's just her way or the way of her people or something.

I could see if she dressed in all straps, she'd be wearing clothing like normal but just expressing a unique fashion sense. But I can't for the life of me figure out why someone would fall in the middle and choose to cover part of it but randomly walk around with an exposed breast. Please explain the character to me.

Hyptosis responds:

Well there is no way to see it right now but all of her people dress with those straps, men and women alike. Similar to how you see some greek or roman clothings have an exposed breast. I originally made them completely nude but thought it looked kinda silly. They're also highly religious although you don't see that yet, easy answer is "They just dress that way." But it is a racial thing, not a personal thing.

[The Last Fight]

Some cool stuff.

I like your art style, and this was indeed cool looking. No doubt it took you some time, and you should damn sure be proud.

On the other hand, there are also some setbacks to this. For one thing, I didn't really feel this song fit for this fight scene. I suppose I didn't pay much attention to the lyrics but it sounded more like he was singing about a woman or something and that doesn't really tie in. The music itself seemed a little too slow and not intense enough to be fight music. Voices, and this is a lesson I learned myself, voices will improve your score. Use voices. Another thing, you did seem to take some "animation shortcuts". I got to see a lot of them running or jumping at each other, but as far as blocking or trading blows there wasn't as much as there should have been. Flashes of white light and stuff don't really do a fight scene justice. Take the time to animate even just 5 seconds of close quarters combat here and there and it will come out looking cooler, I promise.

Lastly, the thing that turned me off of this flash the most was your authors comments. I'm willing to believe that you did this all on paper at one point, yes, but the end result showed no sign of pencil drawing. You traced over all of it with flash, so essentially it was done in flash. It's cool that you drew it on paper first, and you can mention that as a cool side note, but don't make it sound like we OWE you a higher score just cause you drew it on paper. To be honest I think you could have done the same thing (and probably in less time) if you had just skipped the paper part and done it all in flash to begin with. When you tell us about how you had to scan all the pages and such, it makes it sound like you're trying to get people to vote higher than you deserve because they feel sorry for you because you had to go through all that work. You chose to do it the long way, for better or worse, so you don't really deserve sympathy. And to color it you ended up tracing everything anyway.

But like I said, this is a good piece and you did take a good bit of time on it. Keep at it and you'll keep improving. I enjoyed it and hope to see more from you in the future.

[Minushi - Chapter 4]

Here's the good and the bad...

Your backgrounds were beautiful, I really loved them. Your credits and menu and such were very professionally done and such. Your animation showed a lot of potential. If it weren't for such a horrible framerate (is this like 12 or 14 fps?) the animation would be amazing, but instead it was only decent. Your audio was pretty low quality and I can't stand your character design XD but overall this was pretty good. Good luck with future stuff.

[Akira The Don - CLONES]

Disappointing.

Between being on the front page and having such a high filesize I was expecting this to be totally amazing, but what I found instead was disappointing. The song is rather repetitive with lyrics that seem thrown together and the flash is an even worse mishmosh of randomness. It's not funny and it's not cool, that only leaves boring and stupid, which about sums up this flash. Your art was decent but not that great. Your animation was a little better than your art, but none of this justified the filesize. You need to learn to optimize things a little better.

[Black Mages 5]

Um... Right then...

Hmm... Congratulations on the awards and such. That being said however, I don't share the enthusiasm that the rest of Newgrounds does for this flash. Aside from the fact that it's yet another "We'll randomly fight each other without the aid of a plot" flash, yet another "Who needs animation, I'll motion tween the shit out of this thing" flash, and yet another "Final Fantasy characters = easy points" flash, these characters seem to be confused on the concept of emotion. Many were smiling at unusual times, or frowning when it was equally as out of place.

The length was good, the sound effects were okay, and the art was decent (Though I can't say the same of the animation), but the most important aspects of entertainment, such as plot, were completely absent from this flash. How it has such a high score is beyond me, but congrats, regardless.

matt-likes-swords responds:

Thanks for the review, but I geuss this is my style now, besides, a short cartoon doesn't really need a plot...
I made the characters react with almost random emotions on purpose, although I can see it is not in your taste.

[JTHM - FO]

Z?

As a fan of JTHM and... Well... All the other Jhonen works too, I really enjoyed this. The song... Meh... I don't think it was QUITE Nny, but the art was fun enough to watch that I'll excuse that. Watching this though, I don't think people who aren't JTHM fans will enjoy it to the full potential. It seemed kind of random. I don't think you showed Nny getting shot, just him going to heaven (where heads can explode with a thought, hahaha). Ultimately though, there was only one thing that truly kept me from giving you a 10...

SQUEE'S ROLE WAS TOO SMALL!!!! A modest little cameo at the end?!?!? COME ON MAN, SQUEE = PWNAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Farewell Illwillpress]

I agree with Aliyen.

I was never really a big fan of Illwillpress, but I respected his abilities. Even though I didn't like his stuff I was well aware that many many people did. In spite of my feelings toward his work, I am deeply saddened by his death. Death is never a happy event, but I hope you realize what a disgusting thing you're doing here. Everything said in this flash could have been said in a post on a message board, or in your thoughts and prayers.

By posting this pitiful piece of work you're cheapening his memory. This is no different than leaving a big steaming pile of shit on his tombstone. As I said, this was merely a message. A message that could have been put on a message board, but by making it into a flash it has become obvious that you're looking for pity votes. Think I'm wrong? Ask yourself this: if no one was dead, would this flash have even survived?

Hell no, it would have been blammed to hell because it's just a montage with some music, and not even a very long one at that. This probably took you 10 minutes or less, sitting there thinking "Oh boy, easy daily feature, I just have to be sure I'm the first one to make a tribute". I'm horrified by this, it says a lot about your character (or lack thereof). Plain and simple, you're trying to cash in on a death, and to me that is one of the most disgusting things anyone can do.

I hope you rot in hell.

tcygvbjh responds:

You spent longer typing out this angst-ridden review than I did making this movie :D

[Ocean Man]

Nice flash, BAAAAD song...

I liked the art style, it was simple but beautiful. The animation was smooth and nicely done as well. Like the one guy said though, it doesn't totally make sense, it was kind of all over the place. Sadly, I couldn't stand that song. The voice singing it didn't sound good, and then there was some kind of distortion effect that made it sound much worse. The lyrics were pointless and some of the keys and pitches didn't seem to fit, they felt a lot like nails on a chalkboard. I hope you make more flashes with this art style, I'll be looking forward to them. Unless, of course, you make another music video with a tune like this... Then I'll probably pass.