Ferstofus's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Hockey, Love, & GUTS!]

Wow, so much personality on the animation, colors and visual effects, the expressiveness and uniqueness of all of it, also on the story and music, which fit so well with everything being so upbeat and energetic, I just love it all completely. All elements of it AND the whole are so genuine and singular and I find that astoundingly beautiful.

I'd like to mention shoots like on 0:52 and others where I see some presence of straighter lines and edgier shapes and I'd suggest a sporadic use of that, for IMHO curvy and smooth lines and shapes seem to be your strength and thus something to focus on, if you'd agree.

Also I'd suggest a display of more expressive and also contrasting emotions from Mercedes around 0:14 and also some of that for Pearl moments earlier, I feel like that could say more about them. And I find some excess of variety in the colors of the visual effect on the credits (an effect that's repeated on many parts of the movie), I felt that makes it distracting and chaotic.

Those are the points I wanted to raise. Again, I really love a work so full of personality like this one, I sincerely hope you achieve success in whatever you pursue with those skills. I wish I could find a venue for donation/patronage so I could support you in a meaningful way. That's it, have a truly wonderful day/night/eating time/visit to the doctor/anything and everything.

StudioCatch responds:

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I agree with most everything. If this goes anywhere, I'll take these notes to heart. And, yeah, maybe I should set up a patreon at some point....

["Grapeful Balloons"]

Loved the atmosphere created by the calm yet unsettling music, use of bland but strong colors, thick lines, predominance of shadow and pacing of the animation; also liked the voice acting with clear diction, a strong presence and a consistent tone throughout. I would have enjoyed some more intricate shadows and some penumbras, that's what would've taken for a 5/5 from me.

jnpmediaart responds:

I appreciate the critique.

[El Dorado Redialed Collab Scenes 106 & 107]

I liked the elegance of the animation, discreet movements yet conveying honest feelings, also well timed (not too fast or slow), smooth and with a balanced pacing (again, not too fast or slow). Also enjoyed the amount of details on the backgrounds, enough to be a pleasant view while not calling too much attention to themselves. In addition I commend the use of lighting, producing clarity on the visuals and some well-measured shading as well. I laughed at the meta animation program joke near the end. What would take for a 5/5 from me would be a better lip sync to the VAs lines on the first half of the short, as I considered those and the mouth motions dissonant.

NovayaCM responds:

I just want to say I really appreciate your in depth review, its a huge help.

[PUNCH PUNCH FOREVER!]

I smiled through the whole thing and laughed at the part with the bomb. In general this is awesome, nice humor, attention to detail, personality and charm in the animation and characters, great use of sound and music, expressive voice acting, an engaging story and ass! Great job!!! On specific aspects, I think you nailed the mix of old school anime with internet humor while still maintaining your style, and the amount of quality on the arena posters is just wonderful, you guys really didn't have to; for that matter I also loved the product placement jokes. You guys are awesome. My only consideration is about the animation of Nono's snoring bubble around 1:22, which felt with an incohesive fluidity in comparison to the rest of the animation to me. Was it motion tweened? Anyway, would have prefered it fully frame-by-frame as the rest, if that's how it was all done. But I still love you.

Speedo responds:

thanks! yeah the snore bubble was tweened, honestly not sure why i did in hindsight since yea it coulda just been FBF. i'll probably change that as i'm tweaking a few things for the OP for the next episode anyways!

[EOFS - Genesis (Promo)]

Ok. You constructed well the setting, the story and the characters' personalities. There's also some care for details, textures and effects of light and shadow, so good job on that. I would have appreciated some more visual differentiation between the characters and their designs, I felt they were a bit too similar to each other, even though their way of thinking and speaking differs so much; I realize they all appear to be poor orphans but notable diferences in their physique, physiognomy and some trinkets and accesories, for example, could go a long way in making each one look and feel unique. Also, the content of their speech varies a lot but some voices sounded pretty similar too, so I would also suggest some work on that. I liked some animations in key moments, like when Zig shows her tongue or when she smoothers the boy and also the ilustration of God when he confronts Adam and Eve for eating the forbidden fruit, if you can add more of those moments, make them more frequent even if with some less detail, I think would be nice. And finally, I see there was a lot of care in translation work and brief written explanations, that can be good but in some of them I felt there was a lot to read with little time available and I don't know how much those added infos can weight in the moment. Oh and also it was quite long for a promo IMO, I would have expected something lasting 5 minutes tops. I think that's it, good work and thank you for making this.

TheMiamiDeSantos responds:

Thanks! Great review, interesting points indeed. Well i try to keep some anime standards by which many of the characters are similar like Sailor Moon, Eiken, Maken Ki, Lucky Star, etc, etc, etc. The biggest weakness on my cartoon seens to be the long duration, i will surely be making shorter and more animated eps on the future, thanks for your help!

[Realistic Spacecraft Impact with an Asteroid Simulator]

I find this so heavily reliant on context (knowing the NASA video). I see it as a cute satire if you know the reference, but if not it may look as a minimum effort job. I'd advise some music to alude more to the original reference and perhaps some noises of people talking or reacting (you could make that humorous, also). Perhaps some sort of purposely exaggerated celebration in the end, anything to make it clear the core of the movie is intentional. That's what I think.

TheMiamiDeSantos responds:

yo thanks for the suggestions

[The Big Kahuna- Short Film]

Charismatic animation, had a cool story and cool characters. I personally think rounder shapes would fit more into the mood of it and some work on textures on the characters could be done, also maybe tone down the volume/intensity they speak on some key dramatic moments and amp it up on some others I couldn't hear that well (like around 2:34). But the movie had a distinct, nice humor, charisma, good music and some effort made on the line work, so props to that. 4/5, thank you for making this.

NIKOYOART responds:

Thanks so much for your review yo! Definitely some things to keep in mind for the next thing I make! Tho my style is not “round shapes” so imma exclude that! But sound editing is something imma be working on like crazy :3

[The Lord Of Dilly-Dallying - (Lord Of The Rings Parody) - Zaaztoons]

Oh damn. Fucking good voice-acting, great expressiveness. And perfect silly short, just loved it. "A bit behind in his work", heheh

ZaazNG responds:

Thank you so much, Fersto! That line was improvised by Greg, glad you liked it man! :)

[Chemical X-Mas]

Fun, awesome. I love their reactions.

KOLANI responds:

I hope you like the new special, even if it is coming out later :)

[WILLY THE WHIZ-KID]

Genius. The pacing and visuals and everything, it was all so well thought. I mean, well tinkered! Oh that Willy. Anyway, very nicely done dude.

MaxJohnsonINK responds:

That's so nice, thanks Fersto!