Score: 2

"Not a Flash, just a Still Image"

submission: Comic-Con 2008 Poster

date: July 18, 2008

I'm sure I don't need to review this for you, of all people, Tom. It is 'your' newgrounds, but since you gave me a review button, I must insist. :^p

[+] The art is supurb and it's a great poster. Opening up a page to the character's flash was about the only redeeming "flash" quality.

[-] The "flash" part is practically non-existant. There's no music/sound and a mere name pops up when you scroll over a character. The collision area for the character's button could have been illuminated when moused over to show where one character begins and ends under another character. The name could have opened up a menu to detail more than just a name, including the character's creator, date of creation, maybe some history or author notes.

While I appreciate JohnnyUtah's efforts and art, there just doesn't seem to be much demonstrated effort to make this worth being a flash rather than a photoshop with some hyperlinks.

Score: 8

"Funny! But, Counter Points..."

submission: How 2 Succeed on NG pt.2

date: July 3, 2008

The drawings were very well done. Some of the animation was lacking... like your main character never blinked during that long segment. Some of the comedy was kind of miss... like the pronunciation of deux.

But, overall, I found it immensely enjoyable. "You can take that shit to the bank!"

===

Parodies are a good source for inspiration and come with an audience who knows what it is you're talking about, especially for the casual animator who isn't making a dime off of their past time in the first place. Originality is something that even Hollywood struggles with, and yet we're complaining to unprofessional, semi-casual animators here.

Both my brothers and my sister can't say a line with any emotion at all. Using "the same 5 voice actors" is far more welcome than having someone who can't voice act lose their intended character because they sound goofy. Most people on Newgrounds don't have a budget, writing staff and office building for their flash production.

Scary Movie and crew are really bad parodies, but there are also good parody movies as well. I'd cite Austin Powers as an example. It's simply what you do with the source material and how you make a joke.

===

I'm not taking the flash "seriously", but those were the things that I was thinking about inbetween chuckles. Hope to see more!

Score: 8

"Nice wittle flash."

submission: Button Ragz Treasure Hunt

date: June 13, 2008

As much as I hate the word in all it's context, it was "cute". Good animation, fun rhyme.

But it leaves me with something to be desired. I'd certainly have liked something a that wrapped up with a bit more finality.

Score: 7

"Blatently Mario Kart"

submission: Raccoon Racing

date: April 25, 2008

Positives:
The game looks like it was a lot of work. The interface is functional, some of the special effects (flying in the air) are pretty cool, and it is pretty easy to learn. The graphics are great across the board, and the sounds/music are superbly fitting.

Negatives:
It is obvious that this is inspired from Mario Kart. Making a clone isn't a bad thing, so long as you can find a way to set your game apart and improve on the concept. But that's just not the case here. There isn't anything you've really expanded, beyond cosmetic differences, from MK. In fact, it lacks certain features such as power sliding, coins, random items favoring last place, etc or a fresh mechanic that screams original.

Getting hit with a missile turns your cart around half of the time, which is a very cumbersome process of trying to get back in the right direction without bumping into stuff. I landed on two "bee's", ending up being stunned for a good long while.

===

Still, it is a lot of effort and its very cool that you made something like this. But to make it great, I think you need to find some of your own creativity in game design and challenge yourself to put in some features that help separate your game from the staples we all already know about. Keep it up!

Score: 1

"Awful"

submission: A One Level Game

date: April 22, 2008

Irritating to the extreme. I can't seem to find a motivation to want to endure restarting a game over and over and simply trying to memorize events and hope my twitch isn't off by a micro amount. There's no fun in that - it is just memorization and reflexes without a purpose or entertaining element.

I can't really critique anything else about the game, as I didn't manage to get to it.

I'd give you advice on how to improve, but i'm confident you intended the game to be that way and understood the consequences before hand.

Score: 4

"Well..."

submission: Warp (Game)

date: April 11, 2008

Points to work on, as i'm sure you're aware...

- Hitting a wall and having to instantly start over... couldn't we have more than one "life"? Checkpoints?
- Cosmetic stuff. Black, white and red are functional enough but the lack of texture or appearance gets boring fast.
- Gameplay gets boring fast, as you don't really bring anything new to the table. Simplicity isn't bad, but too little to do loses my attention. Dragging a ball to a point, no matter how many moving objects you have, just doesn't thrill me.

As a first game or just learning the ropes of scripting, it ain't too bad. But it's just going to take a lot more to be a respectable flash game. G'luck!

Score: 3

"So what DID you do?"

submission: The MAC & PC show

date: April 8, 2008

So, the idea was taken from a ytmnd (that i'm familiar with) that you cited. You didn't make any of the audio, nor did you rearrange it in any way. You didn't expand on the concept in any way.

So what DID you do?

You drew a mac and pc guy, lip synced, and did some small movements. Plus, a half drawing of a space suit.

The score you are getting is from people who haven't seen or heard of the ytmnd. Considering the only thing you did is draw two semi-animated characters for a few seconds while riding entirely on the back of the creativity and efforts of another, you're getting a bad score. Citing a source doesn't mean you didn't copy someone elses idea- you need to do something big with it, expand on it or take it in a different direction.

The points you do earn are from graphical style, since that is the only nice thing about this.

Score: 5

"Hmm... lacks punch!"

submission: The Perfect Latin Lover

date: March 29, 2008

First off... huge fan of the organ merchant series! The whole premise, characters - it's great.

Secondly, I found this flash lackluster. The point of view never changes or shifts, and my eyes get bored watching it (though, props to the eyes changing and stuff). It's kind of a mediocre joke that doesn't really get much more than a smirk from me. Plus, it is short.

Also, there was a frame (or few) while Fernando is "singing" and his arm is raised - it looks choppy and could use another frame in there to help transition the arm with a raising motion. If you're as big a slacker as I am (and you typically aren't), I usually skew the image rather then redraw stuff. The image flicks by so quickly that the viewer just sees the rough shape of a moving arm and is none the wiser, if you do it correctly. Extremely cheap, but effective!

Score: 4

"Really Funny, Really Short"

submission: Chase&Arnold - Easter Egg

date: March 23, 2008

The style ain't bad, but there isn't much animation going on (when your character's head tilted upward, it exposed an empty area between the neck and shoulder).

It's just too short and took too little effort to be honestly weighed on the portal, imo. It's funny - the idea is good, it just doesn't have enough substance. It's like eating a mint when you'd rather have had a snack or, heck, a full meal in terms of content.

Score: 3

"Needs a lot of work."

submission: Chain message

date: March 23, 2008

The drawings were pretty lacking, and the animation was rather basic. The atmosphere and background elements served you well, but the entire flash felt kind of slow to the point. You need more things to be going on and your purpose needs to be a little more intriguing than "an AIM message turned out to be real". Yeah, those things are stupid, but you need to do some kind of satire or interesting/funny turn of events that someone wouldn't expect. Throw in some interesting dialogue or something. Make sure you can't describe what happened in your flash in a short sentence.