DieterTheuns's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[How to be a youtube animator]

Listen,

Whenever these types of "How to be a popular animator on Youtube / Newgrounds" videos are made (which are so stale, they might as well be a genre at this point), I expect some sort of harsh criticism of the animation scene as a whole.

None of your cynicism was valid, however, since you do the exact things you consider talentless. The video itself was practically a stick figure slideshow with memes, so you don't really come across remotely credible. Not only that, but the most popular animations on Youtube are in fact original content with a lot of talent behind them, nothing like you described.

I understand this animation is to be considered a simple joke and not actual guidelines, but I suggest in the future to not parrot cynical viewpoints until you actually understand where they come from.

KablooshProductions responds:

First of all, Jello did the exact same thing you described with your comment. BUT WHO GIVES A FUCK ABOUT THE ART OR HOW IT LOOKS LIKE A "SLIDESHOW"! All of Jello's characters were basically stick figures, all of it was ALSO a slide show, and some of his jokes were not that funny. So why would you complain about this video? There's a MILLION videos out there that did the exact same thing, and no one complains about anything, even the art. A guy named "Tamago2474" copied of Jello and everyone loved his video.

So where's YOUR sense of humor? I bet you can draw or make a SINGLE good joke.

[Alzheimer's Cop]

The joke is that he has Alzheimers and he's a cop.

There, now you don't need to watch the animation.

ToonHole responds:

I wish you would've written this before I started so I wouldn't have had to animate it.

[Starburt]

The sound design was brilliant and the graphics VERY appealing. The punchline was perhaps a bit weak, but overall, a very enjoyable and promising animation! :)

FrankBooth responds:

Thanks! I think as mentioned before the timing needed a little more work. I'm very happy with the sound, it's pretty much the first time I've done sound design properly.

[Bomb Threat]

What I take away from this:
"Oh my GOD, there was this bomb threat in school when I was 9 and it was so lame, I had to wait in school all day! The kids in my class were so DUMB! Thanks MOM!"
Comedy.

These "comedy routines" remain to be incredibly poor. The writing has this terribly arrogant, childish tone whilst the jokes are practically non-existant. I'm sure it appeals to children who look up to everyone who complain about how 'totally lame' life is, but to a common audience, this is outright obnoxious.

For all the whining you do, you take remarkably little work in these "animations", if you can call them that. Most of the assets are stolen from Google images and the few very poorly drawn ones are recycled again and again in a two frame montage. You don't take any effort in creating/finding a fitting score and instead settle for the effortless route of a free, harmless Kevin McCleod, whilst there are tons of musicians on the Portal who'd be MORE than glad to help out. There's no sense of color pallet, there's no interest in compositions or style what-so-ever.

It just looks (and especially sounds) to me that you don't even care about animation or comedy at all. This is just a platform for you to point massive arrows towards how 'dumb' your boring suburban life is, yelling for (frankly) unwarranted attention.

brewstew responds:

Thanks man! I don't live in the suburbs though. I appreciate all the time you've taken to review this!

[The Dark Awesome Knight]

Eh, I'll be fair with you. This didn't have a lot of personality. It all felt like I've seen it before and better; Egoraptor, Oney, SpeedoSausage... and I'm fairly sure you see them as inspiration, but I don't see anything in this animation that really puts this apart. The jokes kinda fell flat, the expressions weren't particularly wicked etc.

That being said, I can see you had fun making this and hope you have some form of interest to continue animating. What you need to try is finding your own style. What I suggest is not making a parody or pop culture reference and try writing/animating something you can call your own. That way, you can play with characters and art style as much as you want.

Kabuki46 responds:

I agree with you about the style! I just haven't found a particular style for myself yet so I'm still messing around and yes, this was made just for fun.

I'll keep note about that next time. :D

[Game Grumps Animated]

It's an animatic because you don't want to do effort to finish it, is that what you're saying?

Because, really, every single one of these Game Grumps animations is the same goddamn thing. Why was this an animation? What made this "animation" stand out from the rest? You're using the yellowish colour scheme for what reason other than "others do it too"? You're not putting the audio in a new context nor doing anything remotely different with it. You're just drawing 2 guys on a couch reacting to playing a game. That's not the limitations of animation, you can do so much more.

Listen, I'm sure you can make some great stuff, you can clearly draw reasonably well and the very fact you started animating is great, but please, please, please let's see some original creations.

Mavuriku responds:

For the moment, I'm comfortable working just as so. I don't have the means to obtain a full animation program, at least not the one I'd lke to experiment with. My reasons for keeping to a similar style over all was intentional, as the GG fanbase seems to revolve around the same look. For now, I see it as iconic, and a view a lot of fans identify with concerning these little tributes. When I have more extra time and a decent program, perhaps I will have a go at a full blown animation. But for now, you'll have to be content with my carbon copy, mellow yellow, amateur animatic. Thank you for the conviction.

[SS - EnLIGHTenment]

This series keeps astounding me how it can keep saying nothing new for 15 minutes long, especially considering there is no lipsynch... which I'd reckon is the most important thing to get right for an animation based on a long monologue.

Why is the main character a cliché deviantartsy patched up doll? Does it have something to do with the topic? If so, what? Why did you include so many clips from other movies/documentaries/games or even animations? They only serve to highlight the fact that the animation and drawings themselves aren't particularly good. There WAS more animation in this vid than usual, I'll admit, but it's still very wonky. You really should learn to inbetween for your own sake.

Now, my final question to you: Why is this an animation. What advantages of the medium animation did you use that couldn't be done with a camera or just 1 whole collage of clips? Enlighten me.

RiverJordan responds:

Patchman never had a mouth, the character is telepathic so he doesn't need one. He's been around since lesson 1, so it makes sense that he's still here.

I like Animation, ever have since i was a wee lad. I'm doing my best to learn how to make great videos in the process, and having lots of fun with mixing animation and video editing ^_^

[Spiderdub: Sarcophagus]

How do I go about this. This is how I imagined this came to be;

You got sick of your repetitive movieclip galorefest named Tacoman so you tried to do something different. Not only were your last 2 cartoons so called 'ironically made' (as opposed to just shamefully lazy cop-outs), when you figured out people weren't buying that, you now try to skip that pesky 'animation' part and somehow managed to get a daily feature for it, even though the voices weren't particularly good and any joke was random and fell flat on its face.

People are trying hard to make their animations the best they can. I am an animator myself, I follow college courses, I put my sweat in them. Yet you clearly hate having to do it, so why are you on this site devoted to it? I know this is hardly a review anymore, it's a plea. It's a way of saying how saddening this entire situation is.

You're not 'indie'. You're not clever or original. You're a fraud and I sincerely hope you stop these acts, since they're killing your own selfrespect as a creating human being.

["The Worst"]

I'm completely flabbergasted. Not by the subject, hell, the subject is probably the least shocking in this thing. I'm just wondering how in the flying fuck you made this thing. Just Flash, you said? A-fucking-stounding. Style is completely right with some great colouring and monstrous design decisions. I actually somehow liked the faces from the audience more than the actual monsters.

If I had any criticism, it's mainly in the sound territory. This would have been so much more intruiging if you used sound effects instead of metal. It seems a bit of an obvious cop-out choice to have a song playing instead of doing the effort with good sound design.

Overall, kick-ass and sick animation. For the love of everything sacred, give us more.

Sherbalex responds:

sound effects would have added another dimension for the mind to digest and i didnt want that

[FYI I'M A SPY]

This was a rather boring animation. I feel obliged to compare this with your other animation; 'Revengineering' seeing as it's nearly a sequel. What made Revengineering more powerful was the simplicity. Although you lingered a bit too long on some of the sequences, it was a simple synch of a fun upbeat song. That was all you needed.

Here, you try to convey a more 'complex' story and make it the main focus. This really doesn't work in conjunction with the style. All the text clutters the entire thing and makes one lose, interest fairly easily. You can tell stories using images only, which is why animation is such a powerful tool. It will also be far more effective. For example, instead of "what did you think of that?", just make the spy emote it. Instead of writing the word "Rejected", kick him out the building or show the critic thumbs down. Instead, one sits through a list of instructions on how the spy has to use his weapons. Show, don't tell.

An enjoyable part was the one where white silhouettes of a chicken and a dragon walk around. It's basic, shows us what he is doing and is quite interesting to look at, all at the same time.

Keep on animating and getting a better sense of rhythm, so those small hiccups like the pendulum get ironed out. That's where your movies need to be the focus. Go for it! :)

daigonite responds:

Wow, thank you so much for the detailed review!

I totally agree. I think I felt discouraged from telling a simpler story because of comments from Revengineering and I tried to push too far out my boundaries with this one. The idea was good but I don't think my style illustrates it well. I wanted to stray from the simple story and I took away what was most important about this - the animation.

For my next one beat will be the focus. I think a big problem is that the story outdid the song in this one, that the song took a backseat when in reality, that's what works the most with it.

Thank you for the criticism and encouragement, I greatly appreciate it!