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sirjeffofshort

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Recent Movie Reviews

15 Movie Reviews

I know that feel bro. Haha, I actually was led here by your little blip at the bottom of the FP. I think a lot of us lately have gone from seeing our work get tens to hundreds of thousands of views to just a few hundred (although in my case it's probably just a matter in a decline in quality haha).

Anyways onto the actual review. This cartoon has a great style and aesthetic, and it is very well visualized and timed to the music. You tell a very visceral story and you are able to do so entirely with visuals, which as a director is very commendable. Your art style is very good as well, it feels loose and sketchy at times, but you play that to your advantage.

If I have one piece or constructive criticism it would be that you could take some steps to make the animation look a little less 'flash-ey". I'm not sure if you do already, but some surefire ways to make that happen is to bump your framerate up to 24FPS and animate on twos. That is to say that while the timeline runs at 24FPS each separate drawing will occupy 2 frames, this is pretty much how traditional animation has run since the inception of Disney (although anime has a slightly slower framerate as a result of poor budgets, but I don't know the numbers off the top of my head.) It doesn't seem like you do too much tweening except for camera movements and whatnot, but when you do always be sure to break the tween up into keyframes when done and then remove every other one (putting that animation on twos as well). Please forgive if I am quoting you common knowledge, as by looking at your stuff I can clearly see that you are a more naturally gifted animator than I, just figured I'd pass it along anyways.

As for why I gave you five stars while I still had "criticism," it's because I like to judge the cartoons I review on their on an individual basis based on their merit, potential and entertainment factor, so while there is always room to improve (in all instances) this one accomplished everything it set out to do admirably and was a very fun piece of work.

Noisy responds:

yup, the animation is on 24 fps for giving it smoothing, also i'm really happy that you taked the time for writing me all those words.

I'm glad that you liked it and i'll take that points on count.

thanks man ^^ and sorry if my english is a little bit crappy...

Fantastic work dude.

Of course the whole reason to watch this is for the incredible impressions, but with super clean artwork and animation on top of that it's a real treat of a video. Really great job.

smirkstudios responds:

Thanks, man! This is me running with what you've given me. The amazing Jeff Short of the Sketched series (and soon much more!!!) Big step for me.

**EDIT**
LOL thanks for the 10, even though I only used to give out nines when we met LOL Let it be known that I still always gave you 5's...

Envy...

I have it. I seriously wish I had the time and talent to make my work look this good. Fantastic job guys, especially in the department of making it look as un-flashey as possible. The animation couldn't be smoother and the story and voice acting are on the same level. All around great work.

Recent Game Reviews

14 Game Reviews

Fianlly Beat It

Took forever but I was finally able to beat the game. Really loved what you ended up doing with everything, and hearing the list at the end gave me a few extra good laughs and I'm really glad that you were able to add the last few cut scenes on Newgrounds, it really does make the game.

I ran into a bug here and there, but nothing that restarting the level didn't fix. It actually seems like a lot of people aren't quite differentiating in their mind between a bug and the fact that the game is actually just kind of difficult, but any which way there is no question that this game is an amazing feat for any one person to take up on their own. Well done.

Caught another glitch. Fun game though.

This is a really fun concept that is easy to grasp and easy to play. Now I just think you need tweak a few things to make it a little more playable.

A major problem I had, (and I realize that I can't blame you for this) is that I kept intuitively wanting to use 'shift' to switch guys rather than 'space' and I kept on restarting the level instead. I do think you should make the level reset button a little less accessable (like the R key for instance) that way it is less likely for someone to accidentally restart the level and in their frustration just quit the game.

My penchant for accidental level restarting however did cause me to find a few glitches in the game. For instance whenever I accidentally restarted a leveI I noticed that all of the coins re-appear AND I keep the coins I had already collected, meaning I could get an infinite ammount of them in almost any level.

A major problem though was found in the tutorial level when I got one of my men up to the flag and went to switch to the other to bring him up. Of course I had actually hit the restart button (being the haphazard player of games that I am) and found a glitch of major proportions. It seems my characters were floating in the air above their start point cycling through every character animation. Aparently this proved too much for my work computer (which admittedly isn't the greatest) and crashed my browser.

Glitches alone however, do not necessarially kill a game. This is a very fun game and is worth playing, however I do think you should work on improving the fluidity of the game. I am by no means a programmer and may not be able to put this in the proper terms, however I will use for an example the 'boost' used throughout the game. The only way the boost works is if you are stopped, facing the ledge you wish to ascend, and then you jump while holding forward. This is perfectly fine, however it does begin to feel a bit stiff. You are not able to run and jump into the boost, and if you are accidentally facing the wrong way you cannot turn and grab the ledge. Having to go through the rigid action of stopping, boosting, and climbing every time (even though it only takes seconds) does break up the flow. Take a look at the early videogame successes (mario, sonic, etc.) and you realize they are based on fluidity and speed whereas the failures (elevator action, E.T. ) were blocky and slow.

As I said before, it IS a good game, and I did have fun playing, I just think a bit of improvement could make it a classic.

Loads of fun, but it needs some tweaking.

I found this game to be extremely entertaining in nature. It definitely utilizes the concepts that keep gamers satisfied, constant changing in weapons, satisfying carnage, a good sense of urgency and theme.

There were a number of glitches, the only one that I ran into repeatedly enough to give an acurate description was in the last level. For some reason whenever I went to reload the assult rifle instead of giving me waiting "reload" bar it simply took away from my stamina for a second or two.

The other complaint I have is that the baracade system seems flawed in the sense it feels like there is no point to them other than to force you to jetison your inventory. There is nothing wrong with that in theory as a constant change in weaponry does keep things interesting, but if this is the case then the process of searching for items to trade seems futile and probably should not be included. Of course this may not be the case in reality, but it certainly does feel that way (I played through twice and both times was unable to make it past a single barracade without getting rid of every item in my inventory) I tried giving away my guns first, I tried reasoning what items might be most valuable to the survivors, but each time it just came down to getting rid of everything.

In all this is a fun game however in its current form it is hard to consider it anything more than an entertaining time waster. I don't mean that in a bad way in the least, but in order for it to become a game that will truly stick with its players I think you need to add a bit of strategy to the overall gameplay. To me the most obvious place for it would be in the baracade system, but there are many ways you could take this beyond a simple "bash and shoot" game.

Recent Audio Reviews

3 Audio Reviews

Nice use of Silent Hill

One of my favorite Silent Hill 2 tracks. I'm impressed that you were able to add to it so well without taking anything away. Well done.

LoveKavi responds:

Thanks a bunch!

Haha

Dead orphans followed up by anthropomorphic rats is always comedy gold.

Maverick32183 responds:

Why Thank you!

Sick!

I have no idea who this is. I'll play it for my friends and see if anyone can figure out what it is. Great job on the cover though. The guitars sound really great, as do the drums. I can tell you put A LOT of effort into this.

"Who died and made you king of the zombies?"

Age 40, Male

Writer/Producer

Los Angeles CA

Joined on 3/10/08

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