Galneda's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Malcolms school 2]

It's really hard to follow, because there's no consistent scene composition. In the beginning, its clear that he's in the nurse's office, and we can tell where everything is in relation to itself. But once he leaves that office, everything starts becoming scrambled because of the lack of animation, lack of contextual background assets, and lack of direction.

It's not animated, and it's not even a flip-book, it is a slideshow of shots in this state.

Here's an example, at 1:06 he's entering the men's room. It's a close-up of the door that says MEN'S, and we're looking at it through a POV of Malcolm entering from the bottom right.

-Next frame-
Malcolm is standing against a grey background, presumably the interior of the bathroom, in a medium shot, looking to stage left. In this sequence, the flow of motion is established from stage bottom right to stage left. Things are moving to the left. What could help clarify that we're in the interior of a bathroom is if the background had sinks & mirrors, towel dispensers, the other side of the same door, a trash bucket overflowing with crumpled paper towels, stalls, or anything other than just a flat color. Hell, tilework. Graffitti. It's a blank canvas for you to decorate.

-Next frame-
In an abstract art piece, we have a background that's 2/3rds gray and 1/3rd blue, separated by a black line. This reads, contextually, that a guy is talking from behind a closed stall because he asks "Does anyone have toilet paper?!" His speech bubble is moving to the left of the dividing line, but it isn't clear where this stall is in relation to Malcolm. The audience has to guess and it's a 50/50 chance that we think things are still moving to the left, or we notice that "Oh this video game level's background is grey, so the stall must be blue, therefore to the right of him"

-Next frame-
Our hero calls out "NO" over his shoulder to the screen right. If people guessed correctly that the stall was to the right, we're still in the scene. But if they guessed it was to the left of Malcolm, this breaks the 180 rule, and it disorients them. What could've helped it become clearer is if the stall walls were articulated, like you drawn the top of them at the very least so that we can say "Oh, it's a stall, and it's over there."

Eventually there's shenanigan's involving an air vent, and the direction gets decidedly muddled in the sequence.

If the audience was being led to believe that things are moving in a consistent direction, we have an idea of where everything is in relation to our character. Suddenly that's proven to be wrong, or we're blindsided by a weird compositional choice, and without motion to help convey the flow of direction, we're going to get lost. Without recognizable landmarks, we're also going to get lost. If that keeps happening over and over again, your audience loses interest and they're just like "whatever, I guess this thing wasn't made well or something" and this gets forgotten.

Look into the 180 rule, add motion to characters and camera alike, and detail to your environments to help the audience understand where they are in relation to your character and their journey.

kaithomasisthegoat responds:

My brain is having trouble process your comment and I don’t even know how to animate

[Peppino's 'bouta Sauce You]

Boy that stuff IS pretty good, holy shit.

[Aisle 99]

This is amazing! Exceptionally well-done; I'm familiar with ToonBoom Harmony, and you've pulled off some really impressive stuff with the programs at your disposal. Extremely recognizable talent, and I'm invested to see where this is gonna go.

If you ever need a male voice actor, throw my hat into the pool; I just ask for my name to be spelled right. Been working professionally with Cyanide & Happiness more than half a decade.

Aisle99 responds:

An ΩΜ representative will be in contact with the next appropriate opening.

[Animation Practice]

Richard William's Animator's Survival Guide talks about the distribution of weight in a character's walk cycle at length, and through his observations, it sticks out whenever a part of a character remains uncannily stable when the whole of the body is hustling.

That three-quarters angle at the start, is a really ambitious full bodied shot- and it's done really well here in mannequin form- everything reads. But what isn't translating as well as it could is the twisting happening as the shoulders rotate opposite of the hips. You can get by with making the shoulder circles be wherever, but it's going to be a completely different feat on a full-bodied character, with specifics to anatomy and clothes. You already know this, but the twist is going to be a difficult facet of animation to master.

My eyes are also drawn to the positional relativity to the head. You look at an actual runner/a person running in real life, and the head bobs and weaves, swaying side to side as weight transfers between the feet. The point between the eyes, if looking from the front, should draw a "U" or a curved bowl shape. Sometimes even a mobius strip depending on what's going on at the hips and shoulders.

What I'm seeing here in these tests are a lot of steadycam heads- they're all horizontally stable for the most part. And take that critique with a grain of salt; lots of animations do it, and stylistically that works to comedic effect, or budget-conserving measures in cartoons.

IF you're striving for a more realistic stride, use live models for reference. Even if it means looking at yourself in a mirror, recording a friend, or having a friend record you. Even the top-budget animation studios will film live models performing the desired action- not even to rotoscope them, but to have live reference. If they're doing it, to great success, you can do it too. If there's a voice of doubt or anxiety decrying that as cheating, you can rest assured that it'll still be a tremendous creative effort on your end replicating your reference onto paper or vector.

Use references so that you're practicing and informing yourself on what you need to do to make it look correct.

That's what'll advance your talents.

[The Kiss [Untold Love]]

Why Minecraft? Why ANY of this? Like, what are we doing here? What the fuck is going on?

[Jadsi's Scratch Sendoff]

Yeesh.

-Who kneels like that? Look at an image of someone kneeling dramatically, and is their weight balanced like that?

-Audio balancing. Your lines are coming in super quiet and her lines are coming in disproportionately louder. Make 'em match. If people need to be turning up their speakers to hear your dialogue, you're going to annoy your audience when she comes in super loud right after. Speak clearly and at a good projections, and you can make adjustments to gains and volume as you're editing audio.

The navigator bar at the top is a great touch.

You'll get there man, just keep practicing!

jadasse responds:

I'm not the best at animating or drawing, so don't expect the best content from me. Also, I updated the zip with the fixed volume mixing. Thanks for the feedback!

[Tael Escapes]

This looks dynamic as hell! I'm a professional animatic guy, and I'm surprised to see how thoroughly colored this is. It's extremely polished for something in the pre-production phase, but everything reads. Nothing is unclear, this thing is practically ready for an inbetweener.

Shoot, if you ever need a male voice actor, I am more than down to throw my hat into the ring. Lemme know if I can help!

Nominous responds:

Hey thanks Galneda. Keep in touch I might need more voice actors if I can ever get the ball rolling fast enough. Right now I'm moving like Molasses, with work and all the extra burdens of life. But yeah, thank you. I have a tendency to draw to many keyframes cuz im more of an animator.

[Samus's Surprise]

Yo, that was atmospheric af- great job! If you ever need a male voice actor for one of these things, I will always be down to clown. I'd do it for the collab credit.

My favorite shot was the frame-by-frame trailblazing shot. At first I thought that was a POV shot of her in the ball form, but it was a POV shot of Ridley. Great work on the environments and lighting.

I think the sound effects could've been bigger and broader, (they seemed kinda light) and the music was atmospheric and tension-building for the first half, but it could've pivoted the tone into horror or action for Ridley's reveal.

I can't wait to see what you do next! Keep running with this momentum, and make something that's *more* than this test.

I would chalk this one up to a success for what you were trying to accomplish.

[Project Beetle Tower: Mega Buster]

That's pretty badass. Big fan of the Gundam sound effects, and I love the reflectivity on the Buster. The shading on the gloved hand.

I wanna see how you stylize a full-bodied X. Let's see him in action!

And if this is during Dr. Light's lifetime, are we gonna see OG Mega Man? What about Proto Man and Bass? Lots to work with, I'm excited to see where this is gonna go.

drluigi3760 responds:

I'm happy to be hear that. More teasers will come along the way.

[Issah's Adventure Intro (Ep3+) (Old)]

It's an unintuitive layout to have the whole of the stage available to introduce these characters...and their bodies and their names, the only two relevant details in this entire intro, are completely opposite corners from each other. They are as far apart as its possible to make them.

So even though you don't have them animated in anything other than a wobble, the audience's eyes would have to dart back and forth just to check "Oh this character? Their name is this. This name? Oh it's that character" and it's made all the more exhausting, because there's a fucking shit-ton of them. There's like thirty of them. Forty? There's a lot of 'em. I don't even remember their names, I think one of them was called Saturn.

You don't give us a break, the Pokerap role call isn't even disrupted with a few of these characters interacting. I know nothing about these guys, and this told me nothing, other than there's a platoon of them.