Celshaded's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[NWAR #2: High Stakes]

This was brilliant!

danmarkowitz responds:

Thanks!

[Shards of Fate]

You have a lot of potential, and I think people are too distracted by the DBZ influence to realize how much effort you put into this. I don't think there's anything wrong with paying homage to a series that inspires you. I just think your execution is a little off.

I'd say your overall storytelling and pacing need some work. For example, that opening monologue is way too long and maybe even unnecessary. I think you would have benefited from just jumping straight to the scene where the main character confronts the bad guy. The backstory and exposition would have made more sense if this were a longer movie/series, but for something as short as this, the audience really only needs the bare minimum of information. And a lot of that exposition could have been alluded to visually, as opposed to having a long winded talking head.

I hope you don't let everybody on NG discourage you from doing what you want to do, they're a tough crowd. Just keep trying and applying what you've learn from your previous work to your new stuff.

Kofdizz responds:

I agree with your points. Thank you for the feedback!

[Shattered Heaven Ep. 2]

I can see the improvement since the previous episode. Personally, the obvious gundam influence is appealing to me, but I do get tired of the stock gundam sounds. You might want to try altering them a bit to make them more unique sounding. Also, the stronger voice actors really shined in this episode, but as a result it makes the weaker ones stick out more. I feel like this will only get better over time though. One thing that bothers me a little are the mech designs. They are a little bland color wise and they don't feel different enough from each other except for minor color details, like if more than 2 characters where battling on screen, I wouldn't be able to really tell them apart.

All and all, I can tell you put a lot of effort into this episode and it shows. This has the potential to be a great series. I look forward to seeing what happens next!

AdamTilford responds:

Actually, gundam wasn't an influence on this story, at all. I didn't get introduced to Gundam until well after my third book for this series was done. Which was when I wanted to try animating. Then Gundam became an influence/way to learn how to animate/draw mecha. Not spoiling anything, but these "Standard" mecha are just early on stuff. Going to be honest, I didn't have concepts for the "VR" ones. I have all concept art for the mechs used in the main plot of the story so that should become more apparent. The first 2 episodes were basically just an experiment for me to get used to my limited time schedule and animation. Ep 3 and up starts the main plot. Not an excuse for 1 and 2 to be more slice of life, unimportant, but there was a reason for that in the overall structure of the story. It's just hard to see now when there's like a 3-4 month wait time between each episode.

A lot of the bland colors, I admit are a corner cutting thing for me. I don't have a lot of time to work on this, it's a passion project that I do after a 40 hour work week and while trying to balance editing and revising my professional status as a published author. So I choose what things are easy for me to reproduce as I get things going early on. My goal is as it expands I can get other people I trust to help out and relieve the burden, thus increasing the quality. Since right now the quality is dependent on what I can do comfortably in a short time period while remaining on a somewhat consistent release schedule. I could animate much better and have more detail, but I chose to not want a single episode to take about a year just to look higher end. If I can get a staff, then I'll shoot for that. But for now, as a passion side project, I have to do what I can with the time I have it :)

And I agree on the sound effects. I'm already trying to work something out with some people I know that are better at sound design than I am.

I'm glad you can see the improvements, but there's still a lot more to improve on. Hopefully more progress will be made with each installment.

[MvC3: Dante]

ahahha!

That is totally how I play with Morrigan!
Shadow blade, shadow blade, shadow blade, shadow blade.........soul fist.....shadow blade!

redminus responds:

haha, yeah total spamming. You should post more stuff man srs!