Nangbaby's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[How 2 Succeed on NG]

Not as good as the sum of its parts...

This Flash is very well drawn, well-written, has a good sound composition, yet somewhere in putting this together, the funny is missing.

My biggest problem with this is the pacing. It is entirely too slow, especially with the pauses in between nearly every single line. The poor timing detracted from what I consider an excellent Flash movie.

I see your point (although I don't entirely agree), and this is better than most of the Flash movies on this site, but if you're going to take the time to make the potshots, you have to time it to make it count.

[-Tomamoto's The Kingdom-]

Wonderful!

I'm a sucker for "Fractured" fairy tales such as this, and I love the humor in this piece. It's silly enough and unexpected enough for a laugh, but at the same time it takes the appropriate potshots at the genre without being stale. It's well constructed and the perfect length, and the wonderful voice acting brings makes this piece shine! Thumbs up!

FrozenFire responds:

Fantastic Review :) And Yes, The Voice acting was superb. Tomamoto is a Genious.

[Trick Shark]

Well-polished, but not funny.

This Flash is as about as well made as it can get. the graphics are great, the sound is great, and the timing is great. But the actual meat of this Flash, the writing, just isn't entertaining.

The problem is you can't effectively make the idea of a tricky shark funny with two gags with extended setups when the piece is entitled Trick Shark. Instead of having the scenarios end the way they did, there had to be another twist to catch the audience off guard. As it stands now, this reminds me of Jabberjaw.

[The Eitherworld's Banshee]

Nice!

This is very, very good. The graphics and animation are well done, and the story is simple, but well told It's part horror and yet heartwarming, which is a very hard vibe to pull off but you did it.

Aside from raising the sound quality, my only suggestion is to change the title, given that it gives the impression that this is a Brackenwood ripoff. It's not. This is something unique.

[Street Fighter VSFV Ep 1]

Decent menu...but horribly flawed.

I like the layout of the menu, and the whole design and extras of your movie is nice, but the "meat" of this movie could use a lot of work.

There are no sound effects or backgrounds, and the sprites you have used are horribly mismatched, clearly coming from two different games. With the number of Street Fighter games out there, that's inexcusable, especially for the two characters that you used. Worst of all, the soundtrack, which is really nice, only contains one song which does not change.

Please fix the bug in the next episode, use a more dynamic score, and add some sound to the movie. With some polish, this could be excellent, but right now, it's not even average.

[Fighting stick]

Well-executed fluff

This is a better than average stick fight with good animation and direction. I also like the sound effects. However, in the future, I hope there's a little more prologue to the actual fighting. Two super-powered figures beating each other up for no reason isn't exactly treading new ground.

[Waterlollies]

Well worth the wait...

I cannot say enough wonderful things about this piece. From the deceptively "simple" preloader to the menu buttons, everything about this piece isn't just "great" or even "professional," but just one of a kind.

First of all, the scoring takes your already great work to a level beyond the reach of even the elite Flash artists. Although "the YuYu" was absolutely fantastic example of your art and a score working together, your vision was bound by the constraints of the music. The composition of music here doesn't simply enhance your vision, but it acts as a narrator.

Yet the scoring, as wonderful as it is, is not the best part of the piece. It's the sound balance that makes Waterlollies real instead of fantasy. The sounds themselves act as a Greek chorus. In the hands of a lesser storyteller, score would overwhelm sound or vice versa. But as a director, you weave together both the silences and the sounds in a fashion that flows neatly with the story but never predictable, even when the tale itself has echoes of familiarity. You let the atmosphere and the characters through their actions and voices, turn the animation into a visceral, living thing. This Flash doesn't even seem like a virtual portal into a thriving, fictional world; no, the sound tells us that we *are* there, and that there is no disbelief to suspend.

The direction in this piece isn't just done well, It's done uniquely. Of course, your own style has always shown through in your animation, but you've done well to avoid the easy, predictable "shots." The pacing is simply amazing. Unlike Littlefoot, which spent too much time on setup with too little payoff, this piece engages the audience at every turn, subltly easing the audience into being a participant of this world. It reflects a confidence that was not as strong as in your earlier works. Every detail, from the ripples of the water, to the glistening of the drops, is important.

Of course, it goes without saying that the animation itself is superb, but what I like is not simply the fluidity, but the absolute consistency of the physics. Despite the exaggeration inherent of an animated format, every motion looks real. As a result, the flow of frames carries the weight of the story on its shoulder without overwhelming it.

And that's what I love most about this story. It's a seemingly simple tale that refers to previous chapters of the Brackenwoord series. Yet while its core is deceptively simple, the characters are never simple tropes. The depth is in the details that prevent this from being a by-the-numbers piece.

The composition of the visuals is simply astounding, to the point where I cannot even fashion how it was done in Flash. Yet the menu is simple and unobtrusive. Instead of attempting to be too interactive, it instead lets the movie stand on its own, but is functional and a perfect addition to a well crafted movie such as this.

What else can I say, but this is simply awesome and should be a requirement for any student or hobbyist who would like to create anything in Flash.

chluaid responds:

wow. Thank you :)

[Life of a Dog]

Absolutely wonderful...

This piece is simply a wonderfully visualized take on such a heartbreaking story. Paced well, told well, animated well, and compressed well, my only complaint is that the sound quality could have been better. Still, the style in this Flash movie really shines.

Virgilcomic responds:

Thanks. Sorry for the poor audio.

[No More Abusive Reveiws]

Good point, terrible presentation

I agree with your point. There are too many abusive reviews left for Flash movies and games. Unfortunately, there are also people who associate criticism with being abusive and get perfectly reasonable reviews deleted. It's the reason why certain Flash movies have low scores but high review scores.

Writing a flash is bad or flawed is not abusive. Sometimes, there is very little redeemable about a Flash movie, not due to a dislike of the author, but the piece itself is without merit because it consists of merely a static image or a three second loop.

About this Flash, it's okay. I like the interactivity that you provide by making the movie advance through butons. However, the screenshots are a bit cramped. While we can zoom in, because you have authored this Flash, it's incumbent upon you to make the piece aestehtically pleasing to the audience.

Also, please put a background behind your text that makes it readable. Green text against a screenshot is illegible and it turns people off from the position you are trying to argue.

[Luigi: Two Lights' Hero]

Wonderful!

A well-done sprite movie that stars Luigi and doesn't make him look like a complete fool? I didn't believe these existed! Thank you for proving me wrong.

I have to say that I like a lot about this piece. The direction, the scripting, and the design of this movie is wonderful. There's a great use of sound effects and a wonderful soundtrack that doesn't use the same old songs that everyone else uses.

My only suggestion is to make the character portraits less blurry in the dialogue, and to make sure that the sprites are resized only at multiples of whole numbers (2X or 200%) rather than a decimals (1.5X or 150%). For the most part you did the latter, but there were a few instances where the sprites were not as pixel perfect as they should have been. Still, this is good work.