Ahh, the nostalgia!
This kinda of brings me back to what was especially popular around the time I signed up to NG. Since it's early years, interactive stick deaths were regularly uploaded through the Flash Portal, and with the popularity of Xiao Xiao, making the simple suckers move in extraordinary and brutal ways proved to be a very quick and fun way to satiate entertaining bloodshed.
It's good to see that the genre has come a long way since then. :)
Psycho was so detailed, and contained such REFRESHING dramatic camera angles that I began to wonder out loud why even bother keeping the characters as stick figures. The animator involved did a spectacular job. With stick flashes, it's all too common for the camera angle to either remain stationary or treat the movie like a 2D side-scroller; a terminal stage perspective with no diversity or environment to roll around...admittedly, that's simpler to maintain, but this flash threw that rule out the window! With over-the-shoulders, dramatic angles both from above and below both characters, it heightened the immersion intensely. Furthermore, the bloodsplats that remianed in air seemed very artistic, and the transition into the black figure's insanity ended the short with a fantastically brutal maneuver. Bravo!
Beard Ninja contained some stunningly powerful anime-inspired sword movements, with even more surprisingly brutal executions, like stabbing the torso from ABOVE the handle while the sword is already impaled in the victim's leg. The most interesting detail about this artist is how...CONVINCING the blood splatters off of the victim and falls to the ground. It just looks right somehow. Though the ending did get increasingly ridiculous with Beard Punches and Beard Sticky Bombs...it felt like an awesomely violent tale of what would happen if Milla Rage from Guilty Gear had a kid with Chuck Norris and that son became a grand master and kicked ass with a katana and manly man-beard. Still, as silly as it was, it was entertaining and I liked it.
Multiplication ended with Troll Physics in action. I laughed out loud :D, but what I especially liked about it is I always enjoy it when the victims put up a fight. It's just not honorable to see someone just take a beating and not even try to resist, in my perspective. The camera angles tried to tilt around to be immersive, but when it rotated the screen so wildly in the middle of when that guy's...balls(?) were getting ripped off, it seemed out of place.
Mining had your typical beat-down with an item, in this case a pick-axe, and it was decent. No details really stood out for me, except I liked how he kinda reacted to the torso hitting the deck after that climactic hit. It was more gratuitous and goofy than it was hardcore and brutal.
But the overblown gratuity and goofiness was multiplied from Mining as we got into Yoyo. The toy was doing impossible things...it looked good, but it made no sense how the round, stringed object could maintain grip, roll and bounch a fully grown man back, and Shoop Da Woop the poor guy into oblivion. The guy stood there and took all of this DBZing, and somehow the whole sequence just wasn't engaging like some of the others.
Lightning excelled with some very human reactions to the circumstances the befell him. Along with his overall body language I was impressed with the realistic hop and shakes as he realizes his ankle caught on fire. The wrath of God left a great taste in my mouth with his demise. Great job!
Exploders was hilarious! Where it lacked in perspective angles it made up for in body language. Though I thought it was odd the stub from his wounds were pinkish and floppy, I suppose it makes sense.
Beat Down though was more of a let down. Nothing extraordinary, and a pretty standard, less engaging brawl. It was my least fav because we've seen all of this before hundreds of times, some of which with much more impressive choreography without suspending disbelief. Granted, this one is probably the more realistic of all the shorts, but it didn't try anything new. No boundaries were pushed.
Overall, great job! 5'd