NekoMika's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[MUSS in progress]

The camera movement seems a bit choppy at times instantly clipping to a few frames forward. Hopefully will not be that way in the final product yes?

The graphics really take me back to when I enjoyed playing the PSX system, those were fun times.

One thing I would suggest in regards to the speakers is providing subtitles for the English speakers on this site. Another thing for the voices is noise filtering and then recording in a quiet room in the house to remove as much static in the background as possible. Same thing goes for the music since at times it makes a slight popping sound from the drum track and the bass.

Aside from those issues, everything else seems to look fine.

Review Request Club

Ciullo-Corporation responds:

Hopefully it won't...

The subtitles were one of our main concern... actually we're working to make them available in at least 4 languages, both on trailers and final release. We will certainly try to clean the records, or buy a new microphone, as much as possible.

Thanks for the feedback.

[AV: The Plague Saga pt 1]

I'm sure a lot will go wrong with the magic lessons and cause hilarity to ensue.

This episode seemed a bit short in my opinion. I'm hoping parts two and three will not be quite as short. I can make an exception with this one since they are pretty much getting ready to embark on their quest to find a cure to the plague that could spread to their kingdom.

The graphics are the same. The backgrounds for the intro were pretty nice and reminded me of SNES era graphics for when a game started.

I did find it humorous how you lampshaded that females in adventures tend to be wearing skimpier outfits which does not do a good job of protecting them to begin with. Good sense of humor in that spot. Also funny how King William did not care until he was told dead people can't pay taxes.

The music used was pretty good and the sound effects made it all better too. The getting ready portion with the square made me think of Pac-Man for some reason.

Overall, good start to a new segment of the AV series.

Review Request Club

MistyE responds:

Thanks for the review!

[Robotnik Way]

I found the atmosphere to be rather nice. Rather surprisingly it kind of reminds me of the Hush's Riddler arc where he shows the Riddler he can be a real threat. It showed well here since either someone showed Robotnik there was a better way of executing his plans or he simply kept quiet and waited until the right time to strike which is a rare occasion for him to successfully pull off.

The graphics are all from G-Mod, not too sure if you did anything original here. The Robotnik ships looked different from the ones I'm used to seeing though. The use of showing that even the smallest of Eggman baddies had their day and killed off the entire Sonic cast (except Amy, Rogue, Charmy, and Cream who all seem to be absent here) was different. In the comics only one other character manages to pull that off and even goes as far to kill all the villains to show their dominance.

I did wonder though near the end if he was going to take the female with him onto the Death Egg but it appears they were all taken out as well. Do have to wonder how Robotnik planned to rebuild the world's population if he killed them all off. Although I guess it is possible he planned to repopulate elsewhere. Rather heartbreaking to see at the end that he did it all for Maria and his insane father. If that's the case, kind of a pity to see that Shadow and Metal Sonic were not on the ship with him to celebrate since they all shared similar goals.

The song used is entirely fitting for this piece. It gets even sadder at the end when you see why Robotnik did everything his way and what the cause for it was.

Overall, very sad and interesting take on why Robotnik ends up wiping out part of a planet's population. Looking forward to more in the future.

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TheWittyUsername responds:

In the story, Robotnik decided to just stop playing around. In the games, one can find a lot of times where Robotnik could have easily just finished the Heroes off, but never actually did. You don't notice it on surface, but when someone does and points it out, it makes you look at the character differently.

Well, the graphics are all ripped from Sonic Generations -- for Sonic anyway. Yes, it's all Valve. I did mention this: "To me, this is sorta like 3D sprites, so I feel that it's acceptable. And BELIEVE ME, this stuff takes a LOT of work."

I'm no modeler by any means. Just a guy who likes to animate. 3D animation, believe me, even without the process of making models, it's an exhausting task.

The overall theme was, his idea for world domination stemmed from the actions of GUN, the world military in the game. He has a similar reasoning as Shadow, but he's different from Shadow. He had years to deal with it. Rather than angst and rash actions that Shadow took, he decided to translate his problems into a hopeful solution. This drives the doctor.

Sonic having stopped his plans and growing a constant team of others powerful like him had left the madman a bit... insane. Letting Sonic live or not going all out, the result is stagnation. When he finally decided to lay out all the cards, when he finally met his goal, he's left to do nothing but go back to his sorrow, the origin of why.

And what's left for him? Thousands have died, the very little company he kept by war, they're all gone. Sometimes, the journey beats the destination. Truth is, there's nothing left.

As for Amy, Rouge, Charmy and Cream, they were actually all there. You will see Rouge and Amy around 2:05. Rouge is laying on the ground, Amy gets shot in the back of the head. Charmy and Cream are harder to find. Charmy is sitting near the crashed plane site and Cream is standing near the mountain (which is close to Charmy) by Metal Sonic and Shadow. You'd have to be pretty observant to see those two. They are hard to spot.

Side note, I put in that review request a rather long time ago. lol

[End of Summer; End of All]

This seemed to be pretty decent.

The animation was the same as the rest of the Frogman series which is good since a change in animation at any point in a series can always make things seem pretty off.

The story was entertaining since Frogman and friends were just complaining a bit and thinking about Summer coming to an end. Then a meteor strikes and the plot twist ends up it was all the dream of a drunk cat.

The audio was pleasant and made me think of 90s cartoons like Hey Arnold, neat.

Overall, not much to improve here aside from maybe make it longer.

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artistunknown responds:

Pretty decent is okay for me :) People seemed to have mixed feelings about this, and I never really liked the writing of it in the beginning, but I grew to like it and I think I did a pretty good job with it, albeit I did take a few shortcuts.
While I do like the animation quality where it is, I still try to get a bit better with each animation I do, though I don't think I'll be making any drastic changes in a while.
I'm never sure what to think of the story with this one, but you found it entertaining so I guess I did something right. I always liked the ending best though.
I'm glad you liked the audio. Audio management is something I've been working on and trying to perfect. It's interesting how this gave you a 90's cartoon feel. I've been hearing some stuff about my animations feeling like 90's cartoons. Might be a bit of influence in there, but I'm fine with that 'cause 90's cartoons were sweet (;
This was actually my longest animation this year, though I do like making longer, more story driven animations. I'm working on a couple right now and they'll definitely be finished next year. I don't know when I'll get around to another full episode of FrogMan though, but it's coming.
Thank you for the review. Feedback gives me the drive to keep going and keep improving.

[Zelda- Mole Mitts]

This was a fun short to watch.

The animation was subpar, I feel as though you could have been a tad bit cleaner with how Link walked and all at the beginning. Then him getting smacked in the face at the end along with his hat when he digs through a wall and sees a woman showering was pretty funny. This has potential to be longer and have more humorous misadventures that Link can get into.

The backgrounds were nicely done, cool to see some of them were provided by MistyEntertainment. The "Ganon Wuz Here" on the wall was funny to see. The shower was equally humorous and the shower curtain covering her as a shadow when she hid behind it was a good detail.

The audio was simple. Background music from Legend of Zelda and some voices from Legend of Zelda too. Not bad.

Overall, could have been longer but was humorous nonetheless. Good work.

Review Request Club

artistunknown responds:

Yeah, I suppose I did get a bit lazy with some of the animation on this one. I'll try to keep things at a consistent quality in the future.
I do think it could have been longer, though I wanted to keep it short as I was only going on one gag, though I do have a few more ideas that I can do with some Zelda parodies, so hopefully those suffice.
I, as well as Misty, did put a lot of time into the backgrounds, so I'm glad they turned out nicely. I wanted the environments to have a cartoony yet detailed feel as the Minish Cap is a game that has that kind of feel. I also try to put as many little details like the shadow behind the shower curtain. I feel those little details make the scene at times.
I'm glad you found this humorous. I'm more used to doing dialog driven animations and with these "silent" animations I can really only rely on my animation and the visual gags to keep people interested, so I'm glad I did well with that. Thank you for the review!

[Adrellia Village #46: SE]

I am pleased to see that William has returned to being the king of Adrellia. I am also happy to see this series is still going strong and the cast helping make everything possible continues to grow!

The animation is very nice. I like the background for the castle and that the characters are looking much better now. As far as animation errors or tips to give, aside from asking you to keep on improving, I can't see much else needing to be done.

The story continues to improve. I'm glad to see that King William is back home to take back his rightful place as king. Also seeing Drake and friends must go out and save another town from another epidemic shall be very interesting. I wonder what the disaster is this time that is much worse than King William discovering McDonald's.

The voice acting has improved so much over time and the voice cast has grown and I'm so happy to see how far things have gone here. From starting out with voices with static in the background to clean voices with little to no background sounds in wonderful.

Overall, incredibly nice episode and so happy to see how far things have come. Have fun making future episodes! :D

Review Request Club

MistyE responds:

Pro review right here.

I'm glad you see all of the improvements here, I worked extra hard to make it the best episode. Thanks.

[MUSS Cause]

This was interesting to say the least. Really reminded me of a quirky demo for a Playstation game. At least the sound and everything makes me think of that anyways.

The graphics were nice I think. They were in 3D which makes this neat. However, I noticed at one point, it seemed the lady falling was in a default 3D model position and had only had their arms moved up slightly to give the illusion of falling down.

Another thing is after the intro logos, the small dungeon maze part reminded me of the Windows 98 maze screensaver that would appear after the computer was inactive for so long. I noticed the patterns on the floor repeated theirselves often too. I think you could make the pattern tiles bigger so it looks less cut and pasted, would also make the floors look neater too.

The music itself seemed very simple. It made me think of demos for Playstation or Dreamcast games back when I used to enjoy playing those things when I was young. It went along with the graphics quite well. However, instead of the music used, I think a softer and more mellow song would have fit here instead.

I say this since the music playing seems like if would be more fitting if there was more action in this advertisement clip. Instead a softer sound, and no drums could have given a good atmosphere for this. It would have made me feel like I was interested in exploring what is being advertised when the movie comes out.

The voices at the end kind of ruined it for me. If the music had kept playing and the guy woke up gasping, it would have made it interesting, not the voices spoil what might happen in the movie... makes it seem interesting at least.

Overall, from what was shown here, not bad for a start with a 3D movie, but there is room for potential if you decide to go back and try to be even better with the graphics. Best of luck in getting the movie finished!

Review Request Club

Ciullo-Corporation responds:

Thank you... actually she was almost at T-position, you know, we had just finished the models and animation was still poor. And this also explains the "lack of action"... you could come on my homesite and check the second trailer (this is the fourth).

That dungeon exists since the very first MUSS Cause trailer back on january 2012, we worked hard since then (also trying to coordinate different things like work, university, etc.) and we procastinated the shipping date of the movie to when we had something really cool...

We though to end the trailer with a bit of humor, with MUSS Marine saying "Get out of my head" and the mind-reader answering "What's the problem, it's empty", but we didn't really acted as for a final version.

Hope you'll come to check when we will submit the Launch Trailer.

[Pikmin Tree]

I thought this was funny.

The animation has most certainly improved over time as this piece proves. The way things just seem more animated in the background and as Olimar is going about his day on the Pikmin's planet was good. Although I feel adding shadows under the ships would have been nice, same goes for the Tree Pikmin (do you encounter those in the game?).

The plot was good. I thought it was funny how they planted a tree and turned out to be a giant Pikmin. Long story short, it decides to follow Olimar as the red Pikmin are doing and ends up crushing (possibly killing) Olimar by accident. Could have been funny if you added in what the Tree Pikmin's response was in my opinion.

The audio was nice, nothing too original as everything but the credit music came from the Pikmin games. The credit music was pretty and sounded nice.

Overall, improving and looking good.

Review Request Club

artistunknown responds:

I'm still a bit hesitant with adding shading in my animations, since the process takes a bit of time, but looking back, shadows under the ships and pikmin would have greatly improved this and it wouldn't have taken much more time. And no, you don't encounter any Tree Pikmin, that was just my own little idea to have a punny title.
I'm glad the plot was good. This was my first non-dialog-driven animation, and it was really experimental. I know it could have been a bit funnier, but I wasn't really trying to make it funny to begin with :3.
And the credits music wasn't original either, though an original arrangement of a song from another game, heh.
Thank you for the review, I'll keep on improving with each new animation!

[FrogMan the Series Episode 5]

I think this is slowly improving.

The animation looked nice. The style is slowly getting better with time as I see it. I also liked how there was a background event at the store, very small, but noticeable. That car parking in the distance with the person walking in. Would say it was the old psycho lady but her car is white and already parked.

Also, as time goes along, getting the coloring for your characters worked out would be good. As in shading in where the light would not be during the scenes will be good practice for improving your animation skills.

The story was entertaining in my opinion. Having to make money for eggs then getting held hostage by a psycho before remembering he had superpowers was funny. Then having to work to make three dollars to pay for eggs was humorous, seems he can't catch a break eh? Then Wise Frog and Tony chilling out at the hotel was also good. The clerk's reaction at the end remember who was in 22B was nice.

The credits however could be fixed a bit. Having the titles for each person playing a role centered then the person's name to the left seems a bit messy.

The audio will also improve with time I hope. I can accept the radio having background noise. However, the rest could get some noise filtering, as in making a noise profile in Audacity when recording or simply trying to find a quieter and more closed space to record voices and sounds.

Overall, improving but I think you can do better.

Review Request Club

artistunknown responds:

I can definitely do better nowadays, and this really makes me want to continue with episode 6 now :3.
I like putting in little details like the car parking and other stuff, just to see if people notice them, throwing in little eastereggs like that is always fun. I honestly can't remember if I had in mind who was driving the car though.
I'll try to work on my coloring and shading for the next episode and future animations. From what I have of the next episode, I think I did a better job coloring.
I'm glad the story was entertaining, this is part 1 of a 3 part story-arc, so the story continues in episode 6. Maybe I'll actually have the time and motivation to get it out next year.
I see what you mean with the credits. They actually look a lot better on the video version (which is on youtube :/) and the credits here was my poor attempt at replicating that flash, and clearly it didn't turn out well, flash even decided to not show a lot of text I had written in them. I have managed to fix this problem since though, so my credits look a lot nicer now.
The quality of the voice acting, recording, and my sound management, has greatly improved over time. We even have a good, sound proof place to record lines now, so hopefully that will be an improvement. Typically there isn't a problem with noise in the recordings, but I'll keep the noise profile thing in mind. And the noise for the radio was actually intentional, to make it sound more like it was coming from a cheap radio ;).
Thank you for the review, it really helps, and I hope that when episode six is finally complete, it does not disappoint.

[FrogMan the Series Episode 4]

This was funny.

I found the animation to be decent. I feel you can improve in time with more practice. I noticed one part that stood out was when the cop was arresting the old frog after the race. It stood out because of the lines that kept appearing above the wall for no reason. Was this an animation error you were unable to fix? Or did you just do that on accident?

I also noticed that most of the story line was well written and humorous, at least to me anyways. The fact that the characters kept breaking the fourth wall and episode three played a part in this episode was good. I found it funny how the race was just a revenge plot for Cerebral (spelled it correctly?) on Frogman for not being in the previous episode.

The audio was good. However, I feel the voice actor and yourself (if you did do voices) could have been better. Finding a quiet place to record would have helped. Making a Noise Profile in Audacity when recording helps a lot in that it filters out almost any background sound that could be picked up on mic and gives a cleaner sounding voice.

Overall, aside from the slight voice issues and the lines when the old frog and cop were on scene, the rest of this turned out to be pretty good.

Review Request Club

artistunknown responds:

I think I've improved quite a bit since this, it is almost 3 years old after all, heh. I felt there was always a gradual improvement between episodes of FMTS, and there is quite a bit of improvement between this episode and the next, and then there's even more improvement between episode 5 and 6, but alas, episode 6 hasn't been worked on for almost a year now :/ I might continue the series some day, but I always seem to run into technical things that completely halt production. Episode 5 was in production for almost a year because of my computer dying.
Anways, I never noticed those lines, though now I do. That's probably an error that happened because I converted a video to a flash, and that's never a good thing to do, but it was the only way I could get this up on newgrounds at the time.
I always try to make the storylines as humorous and engaging as they can be before I consider the script finished. And I like fourth wall jokes; there will be a lot more of them throughout the series. And since it's a series, I find it necessary that episodes need to have a flowing structure. There is always the bigger storyarch, even if the plot in one episode is completely irrelevant, I'll still try to make reference to the previous episode or past episodes. I'm glad you found the race just being a revenge plot funny. I always tried to make the villains' schemes be really lame, but overly complicated. And his name is (the) Terrible Toad, though it does kinda sound like Cerebral, lol. Their names are kinda lame because I'm using characters I made when I was 9. Lots of fun to be had with them though.
Yeah, I do the majority of the voices (usually). I think we got a little better this episode, and if I remember correctly we actually tried with the voice acting in episode 5. We weren't really the best back then, but we've gotten pretty good now. We actually did turn a room in my house into a sound studio, just for this episode. I don't know why the audio ended up how it did, probably a mix of bad export settings from flash and then the video to flash conversion. Audio quality is a lot better in episode 5 though.
Thank you for the review, I really appreciate it. It kinda makes me want to continue the series when I have time. I always hated this episode for some reason, but I'm starting to like it more and more when people talk about it or I rewatch it.
Again, thanks for the review, and I hope you'll be reviewing episode 5 as well. It's definitely a lot better than this one, in all aspects of the animation.