BrerSteve's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Bee and the lost Axis]

Very nice animation and well done on your project. Although I doubt it'd make a difference at this point since it sounds like a past project that is long over, but I wanted to make a few suggestions that may help for future endeavours. Mostly, consider a little more carefully how you relate the animation to reality, so that things don't seem out of place. Even though your bee and other elements were kinda cartoony, I found things like the empty rocking chair to be a little off-putting. I am supposing we were supposed to get the sense that someone was recently in that chair, and so it was still rocking. But through the whole thing it was rocking and resting in the extended forward and backward positions as though someone were in the chair. It gave the impression at first that there was a ghost in there. But seeing the rest of the animation, I'd say that's not what you were going for. A rocking chair left unattended would have a few short, quick rocks left in it before settling, and become shorter and shorter until stopping. I know it's a small thing, but it felt so very out of place. Not to mention the sound of the rocking chair was the kind made when there is a large weight on it, to cause the creaking in the boards. I immediately was fixated on the chair and wondering what it's deal was. This brings me to another point. When working with sound effects, consider the context to make it seem more real. Like the creaking of the chair which made no sense with nobody in the chair, the bee's steps to me made no sense in terms of the surface he was on. Even if he was the size of a person, nobody's steps sound like that. The bee kept varying the pressure and intensity of his steps, but the sound effect was exactly the same, no matter what. That's what I mean by the context of a sound effect. Think about how something WOULD sound in a certain context, and maybe even replicate it by actually doing it. It actually would not have seemed odd at all to completely omit the bee's stepping sounds, since he's so little. But changing the pressure, loudness, and duration of sound effects can make a big difference in making a person feel submersed in the animation.
One last thing: I felt the beginning of the animation was drawn on for far too long. We were just looking forever at scenery, and then FINALLY when we get introduced to the bee, he ends up flying around that very same scenery for a while. What would have been far smarter, in my opinion, would be to use bee flying around as your way to begin the credits. Start with him flying around and showing off all your CG furniture, taking a look around, and then we're already becoming invested in your story even during the opening credits. That way, when the credits finish, we get to be introduced to the bee, which we've already been wondering about since we've journeyed with him up to this point. See what I mean? More interesting than staring at furniture forever and then doing it all again with the bee when the show "starts". Anyway, those are my thoughts. Good work though.

NG-Rough responds:

hi! :)

first of all thanks for your comments, this is what i'm searching for! :)

second, i totaly agree with all you have said. the rocking chair would be move by wind like the other things outside but like you say it seem a ghost (probably an elephant ghost) is sitting there. i really hate that point...i think there are two thing that mainly and drasticaly have reduced the quality of the final movie, the first thing is the 'connections' by shot and by people, poor comunication became a problem and the shot does't fit each other perfectly (very visible in the firstbee view where every fly around start in a different location...i really don't like that).

second the time we spent on the production was unbalanced so we spend long time on the individual stuff and when the various shot was rendered, in a couple of day we bring on all the scene, add sound, add effect, add adjusment and correction... as you see even the sound in not even good, taken by a small library...

in the end it's an old project, when i see now i see a lot of mistake...but i learned a lot from this! and more important it was very very fun :) i hope to upload some better and new stuff soon!

again, thx for the comment :)

[Regular News Debate]

hm.. so I see you pretty much copied the same video that FilmCow posted 10 days prior on YouTube..

ah well... still amusing. Totally unoriginal, but amusing.

Jonnyethco responds:

My youtube video was first if you go look at the dates. :p

[2 Guys & a Jigsaw Puzzle]

Of course there was no hidden meaning...

What hidden meaning could there be? It's just two guys workin' on a puzzle, and one Californian surfer wannabe clearly doesn't understand that a lowercase "t" is not a puzzle piece. What does religion have to do with it?

p.s. - well animated.

TmsT responds:

It's refreshing to see a few intelligent people such as yourself actually enjoying the movie without having to inject their own ideas into it and then thank/lambast me for supposedly tailoring the story to that concern of theirs. Did Halloween turn Newgrounds into a "religious discussion" community or something? I don't even know...
Thanks, Brer.

[Wacky Pod Races]

Hmmm

When I started watching I thought, "wow, that's a really neat crossover idea, I like it!" and the animation was pretty good too... but I have to say, it just absolutely bored me to tears. I forced myself to watch the whole thing to see if something really good was coming up, but it just didn't do it for me.

Granted, the original Wacky Races cartoons never excited me all that much, but I still enjoyed them to some degree. I really wish I knew what to tell you in suggestions for how to make this better, but all I can think of is that the whole thing just seemed to drag. I think the voices really pulled it down, there was not enough expression and enthusiasm. It sounded like whoever did the voices was pretty bored about it all too... I dunno... you've got a good thing going for concepts and animation though, so keep it up!

StuffAnimation responds:

The animation fits in with the original Wacky Races cartoon. We could have made it a lot more modern, but then it wouldn't have felt like a Wacky Races cartoon. We sort of locked ourselves into that.

It's fair enough that you didn't like it, obviously not everyone will. But hopefully you'll like our next effort. It'll be completely different.

[Utopia 2: the prequel]

Don't you mean "sequel"?

Hey, enjoyed the movie.. lots of plot stuff, I like it.

But, considering this movie takes place AFTER the Utopia movie you made before where he's running through the forest, then this is a sequel, not a prequel. Prequel means it takes place BEFORE, while a sequel means it takes place after. So you may want to change that.

anyhow, good work overall... the last guy I think summarized well the problems with plot and graphics that you might want to look at.

Vuny responds:

Well you see, the whole movie takes place afterwards, but the story that is being shown (his flashback) is the main focus of this movie, wich is the prequel of it.

[Doll Ville -The Nice Guy]

heh heh heh heh

After defeating the robot with the power of the amulet, our hero cries emotionlessly: "what the hell just happen?"

..someone set up us the bomb! Haha, you can tell you translated... Maybe that's why you used the robot voices. At least they're better than Microsoft Sam. Very cool storyline and interesting stuff... Work on the graphics and maybe see if some newgroundsers would like to do the voices for you...

otherwise pretty good stuff!

reojionline responds:

Don’t worry I’m working on it, Currently think of making the second part since this got most of people attention, if this surpasses dual swords like 1000 views you’ll see the second part but if not you’ll see it to but much later when I got some really got improvement in skill and animation. (currently think of doll Ville part 2 and dual swords part 2 <-there people waiting so I’ll be making it just need time)

[Sounds of CS]

Beautifully done, but redundant

The music is great, the animation is very very well done, and all and all it's pretty cool and catchy.

However... it very quickly get's boring to watch. When there were actually changeups between scenes, and the transitions of moving down corridors and the interaction between stickmen was great, but so much of it was the same thing over and over and over....

I would suggest having a variety of stickmen running on scene firing their guns to the beat, instead of it being the same guys repeating the same movements and killing the same guy over and over and over again.

Otherwise, really great. You got some skills!!!

StealthBeast responds:

Thanks for all the compliments!

Your the third person to use "redundant" rather then "repetative" XD

thanks for the review

[Baby's diary]

Not worth ANYONE'S time.

The content alone is severely demented. Absolutely sickening.
The fact that you completely demonstrate and recognize that a child in the womb is a human life, and then not only abort the child, but add insult to injury by having the kid crapped out... not cool.

I know newgrouds is filled with senseless murder videos, but usually if you hand someone a gun and say "shoot someone" they won't be indifferent about it... but mocking a serious matter like abortion with such indifference? How can you recognize the termination of a human life and be indifferent to it? I'm really scared for you. In all honesty you should maybe step back for a moment and consider what is taking place. If I knew your personally I would become rather nervous of what you may do to others casually with indifference. It's dangerous, man...

I hope that you remove this video from the site. I am not saying this with anger but concern. Learn about abortion, develop an opinion either for or against it, but do not sit in indifference.. it is a far more dangerous vice.

JubeiSaotome responds:

What about the baby floating around with the turds? Now that was classy.

[TooF 8 (fake)]

You have potential, but you just aren't using it!!

I can easily see that you can draw and put together some good graphics... all you need to learn to do is animate.

You need to have a bit of action going on. Things moving around. Even with the clocks and stuff, although it isn't challenging animation, at least most people have them hopping around and looking at each other and interacting in some way. To see an alien thing sitting in front of a group with a little arrow flicking back and forth very quickly puts a person to sleep.

Also, the topic wasn't really interesting. At least, I didn't pay attention much because he just started rhyming off a long long list of the number of kinds of bugs or whatever. If you want to present informative material, you need to make it MUCH more engaging.

But try your hand at animating. Since you can draw, you can probably animate.. it's not a big step. You're much further ahead than all those who are terrible at drawing but can do all the cool animation techniques, because nothing they produce can ever be any good since one still needs drawing skill.

Hope that helps!

rexCo responds:

"I can't stand self-promotion !" --Br'er Steve (don't make me explain the joke behind that!! ... come on man, quit raising your hand, I want to hear from someone else in the class!)

[Grunt Shorts!]

No no.. he's right.

I agree with the previous guy. It really isn't funny.
it's not a lack of a sense of humour... it's just the video contains the kind of thing that maybe 12 year olds find funny, but only because they find it amusing to just go on and on about... well... precisely what's in your video. It's like inside jokes. Only you and your friends get them... everyone else is cluless and finds it boring.

The-Cushion responds:

Ummm the previous guy said it was funny. And a lot of other people are finding it funny. So there.