The-Swain's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[BlownOutOfProportion:Ep2]

If I can clear a few things up for you...

I'm no real authority on humor, so instead I want to take a constructive approach to understanding why you've gotten mixed reviews.

Ok, to get the more painful part of the review out of the way: the reason you are getting the negative reviews is because of the production value of this piece. It's not that it blows or anything, it's that you're clearly a person who prizes concept over delivery. People will complain if they have their lobster served to them on a dirty plate; people will complain if your comedy is overshadowed by lesser artwork. The complaints you're getting target your audio and visual quality, and because it stunts their appreciation for the jokes themselves, they gripe about the cartoon being unfunny. It's unfortunate that visual appearance has everything to do with delivery of comedy, but it's true.

On the other hand, people like Tom can see through to the meat of a person's creativity because they've seen it all before: good, bad, whatever. Graphics and production are much easier to improve than a sense of humor, so you're on the righ track. None of us started in Flash knowing what we were doing.

I'd say you should build on it. Don't change your style, but work on those backgrounds, walkcycles, human forms, etc. Or don't...you'll still be funny. This is more a suggestion of what to do to avoid those negative reviews than it is on what you should do with your own work. That's not for me to say.

-Swain

JunkYardAnimations responds:

yeah i need a better sound recording program, and i sometimes rush the graphics because the cartoon is so long and i wanna get it done within a certain period of time. by the way, i love your blockhead cartoons.

[You Love This Movie]

APOLOGY ACCEPTED

Haha, "ten dollars to make the monkey dance" and the whole of the illwillpress scene got the best reaction out of me :D

What I liked most was that this cartoon was freaking EPIC. You covered everything from the big to the small, right down to Akbar for crying out loud. Even so, the action midway was more funny than exciting, and it was wrapped in an overarching story that made it purposeful, not senseless. Bravo for attacking the beast of irrelevance without unleashing it yourself.

Improvements? Well, there has to be something if I gave it a 9 out of 10. I felt it deserved a higher score because, while the animation was a bit stiff at times, and while the character proportions were usually stuck on forward-facing without being very dynamic, the sheer length of the movie kinda redeemed you guys in the field of effort. It's hard to accuse you of cutting corners when the toon itself is so long. Fact is, it seemed like it was what it was inteded to be.

Oh and Jason, this makes what, two front pages in a row for you? I'd give you the secret to frontpage but you seem to have already figured it out, so let's not pretend like this cartoon applies to me any more than it does to you ;)

Nice work guys. Five'd.

-Swain

RSQViper responds:

Well, THANK GOD you accepted the apology! We were hoping the story would make it obvious we weren't artist-bashing as it was an NG Parody more than anything.

When we sat down at our little IM machines and came up with the whole subplot we were damned determined to make it a good story, not just something with pretty colors and stuff we know people like.

It's an honor to hear that you actually feel like it deserves a higher score. Personally for me, I am very happy for the FP and the daily feature (my first 1st place ever). I am also REALLY happy for boinky since he's never gotten an award or FP and I've always loved his stuff as off-the-wall as it is.

It's funny you mention the forward-facingness (is that a word) of this Flash as we noticed it, too. Know when we noticed it most? Doing the action scenes. We were like "this is friggin' HARD! I can't wait to lip sync again!" And it's good to see that you don't think we cut corners because we really didn't. We just animated as it was written and tried to keep it interesting while doing it.

--"Oh and Jason, this makes what, two front pages in a row for you? I'd give you the secret to front page but you seem to have already figured it out, so let's not pretend like this cartoon applies to me any more than it does to you ;)"--

Oh, boy is my face red... But it's luck with me! Luck, I say! haha! I'm just really lucky and I know it, but I do put a lot of work into what I do and I know with this boinky put an absolute ton in as well. It's totally awesome to be featured and certainly not something I ever expected, but of course, I did hope for it. I'm human after all.

Thanks for the great and insightful review, Michael. You keep Flashing and I will, too!

[IMP halloween special pt1]

Yes

Wow that was hilarious, I don't mean to condescend when I say I wasn't expecting that. I'm a pessimist by nature :)

I think the beginning was my favorite part, and honestly you could have released this as its own section without the other part to compliment it.

Keep up the rad work, broham.

-Swain

RogerregoRRoger responds:

On it's own section?
You mean without the "part 1" part? Then the movie has a weird ending no? ^^;

[Edible Castle #3]

Huzzah!

Thank you for this, Will! You are a gentleman, a scholar, a space pirate, but definitely not a Nazi.

Needs more eyebrows ;)

-Swain

EdibleCastle responds:

i'll work on those eyebrows sometime soon

[Nursery Grimes]

Good design.

I liked this; I think my only complaint is the length (but you were ready for that, I'm sure). The mood seemed to be right where you intended it. I liked the design for the hooded gentleman with the knives. I also thought it was laid out very well.

And why did the farmer's daughter, once down the well, turn into the girl from The Ring :D

-Swain

PapaQ responds:

It's an pleasure to receive a response from The Swain, a big fan of your work and the brilliant Blockhead. Thanks man.

[Cuboy Ep.2]

Hurray!

Your score keeps going up, you two cannot be stopped!!!11

You know, I was reading someone's review and I think I agreed about what they said regarding the snake intro sequence. I thought it was a nice, silly addition, but I can see how it would be difficult to snag someone with that segment if they think the rest of the cartoon is going to be a dialogue-free chase. The segment itself was ace because I knew what it was leading up to. I'm just afraid maybe some poor little newbies out there might not have :(

That's actually more like critical thinking than my opinion. I loved it :D I constantly go back to study the both of your writing, and I'm still amazed at how you can get a complicated faux-3d world to have such clean animation. TOP DRAW </busker>

-Swain

EdibleCastle responds:

yeah good point, didnt seem to throw most people though.

If it looks complicated... it really isnt. All credit goes to flashes snap and tween functions.

[TANKMEN 2]

YES

1) "Make like a tree"
2) 88 mph
3) The broken-arrow pattern during the credits
4) Power of Love credits riff.

These are the BTTF references I noticed off-hand, and I STILL don't think there were enough. Though I suppose I can see how it was hard to fit in more with all that PLOT taking up so much space, haha.

Clean and well recorded as usual Jeff, and I noticed a big improvement in the backgrounds as well. OMG WHEN WILL PART3 BE OUT!! ...nah, I wouldn't do that to you.

-Swain

JohnnyUtah responds:

i had MANY MORE.

like when they were art the bar i was gonna have one make a comment like.."hey nice life preserver" and point at their white vest

[Gher]

SONG

Haha, energetic. Seems like there's nothing he'd rather be doing. Catchy song, too!

-Swain

aap responds:

Would you like to do anything else but dance if you were going to teach communication law in Croatia on a Fulbright Fellowship?

[Mindchamber </3]

AWWWW

You guys are so cute together xoxo

-Swain

Tomorrows-Nobody responds:

I'm knitting him a sweater for his birthday, don't tell.

["Ashkinscrip 3.0"]

Yes.

Haha it's a shame I didn't cross paths with Eggford, but I was warned ahead of time when I showed up on Saturday. Also, I think I was the only one who understood every word out of Luksy's mouth (I don't usually have a problem with accents, and his wasn't as bad as everyone says anyway).

Nevetheless, it was like reliving the experience except for the sheer quantity of geeks who were in the background of the actual event. Nice work.

-Swain

Kart-Man responds:

Why thank you. :)