McBean's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Dia & Tofu : Episode One]

ehhh

If you're going to start something new you can at least come up with a new loop for people talking. At no point does the tongue stick all the way out of the mouth when talking, and especially doesn't happen every 4 seconds

[The Tail's Ghost]

a cliche goldmine

Sonic the Hedgehog? Check!
Random J-Pop? Check!
Emo Tears? Check!
If I didn't know any better I would say this is a brilliant parody of what fourteen year-old boys think is powerful, emotional, and dramatic.

[cupcake?]

very nice!

I like this very much. You made the pixelation look too easy. I was wondering what your secret was, but after reading some responses, I'm guessing you just did some old fashioned and time consuming importing and exporting?

TheBoogley responds:

yep, the imports and outports of pixellation were a trial. It took about 6 hours to do, it was an idea which came to me and I had to do it. I might do it again sometime, but only if it's integral to the movie.

[Castle Repercussions - B]

executed nicely, but a tad dull

It's easy to see why this will have thousands of people blindly jizzing their praise all over this. It has guns, blood, zombies, and stick figures. The latter being the most horrifying and offensive of them all, it's a shame that such talent is being squandered staying within the confines of the stick figure design. Although technically the characters aren't stick figures in the literal sense. They have weight and mass like any other person...well maybe like an anorexic person. The whole point of stick people is that they require no skill to draw and they're disposable. So I guess there's something kind of post modern about the way you're using them. But other than that I find stick figures to be incredibly dull.

It's clear that you have a keen eye for design and solid command of flash. I think that if you're going to put so much effort into these then you might as well develop unique character designs which people can recognize as your own, but that's just my opinion.

Get-lost responds:

I've always had plans to develop my skill with characters that aren't stick figures. Not in the Castle series however.

[Purgatory Pizza!]

Really people? The best thing you've ever seen?

After reading through some of the reviews for Purgatory Pizza I became very confused as to whether or not I had watched the same movie as everyone else. After a second viewing I'm even more confused as to why so many people are gushing over this. It's not a terrible animation, but I don't think it's deserving of such lavish praise.

One of the things that I noticed is that the artist is probably a bit of a novice with flash. There were some parts where white space was showing or symbols overlapped. The animation was aslo very limited and awkward, such as when the angry hectopus crashes in on his bike. Same goes for the lip-syncing and voice acting. It was really lacking polish presumably from experience, which is fine. Something can be kind of raw and still entertain people. There were a few things I did like, such as the video game style transitions. In general I think inserting radom pop-culture references is well worn territory by shows like family guy. If you're going to do references then you should shy away from stuff like obvious Star Wars and embrace more forgotten Andre the Giant.

So don't get me wrong, this isn't a bad cartoon. I just think it needs some work.

[Racism!]

Racism?

It just seemed like that nerd with the backpack was making everyone else upset because he was upset, not because he was discriminating them based on their color. Why would all those different people assume he was being racist just because he was a grumpy-puss? If someone looked with a sour face I'd think that they were having a bad day maybe because someone told them their backpack was stupid, or because I they're walking animation was sloppy. If everyone is getting upset over these assumptions of racism do we deserve to progress as a society? And will simply telling someone to stop being racist really reverse the deep seeded hatreds that have been so ingrained upon them? If you created characters that people could relate to, rather than people on a power rangers zeo planet, then it would compel someone to take the message more seriously.

Slay-Meek responds:

hah, you've already put more thought into this than I ever did. If it clears things up a bit, I originally planned to have the blue guy be a bit more disruptive at the end, like bumping into more people and stuff (we werent given quite enough time for me to get to that though). The whole anti-discrimination thing was more aimed at the greenies being assholes, not at the blue guy becoming racist at everyone else, just rude. I do agree with you though, the whole message behind the animation is kinda tacked-on, but it was more of a requirement than anything else, I'm not devoting my life to ending racism through the medium of flash or anything like that. thanks for the input

power rangers zeo was awesome.

[: Bastardized Musicals :]

circular logic

I like how the frustration at bastardized musicals is rationalized by simply stating the name of the musical. Bob Dylan, i mean come on, BOB DYLAN! Well shoot, I'm sold!

[Frontier Psychiatrist...]

Animation or Karaoke?

One of my biggest peeves in animated music videos is when the artist cops out and just has the lyrics to the song drawn up there. So I wouldn't exactly advertise this as an animation. Yes, there were pictures that moved, but it was more like fancy karaoke. Expectations are also very high for a song such as Frontier Psychiatry because it already has such an awesome video to accompany it.

[An Excuse]

what's my secret pleasure?

Voting five on this movie, that's what.
hot hot hot.

[DANSE PARTY!!1111]

This is pretty bad

The menu is visually disgusting. The blurred black on the gray is way unattractive. Also, where's the content? I think your flash file is broken because it only played each piece for a few seconds and then stopped. Oh wait, that's because there was no real substance to this.

AlbinoClock responds:

Good thing I make flash for personal amusement, huh?