Makayu's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Skitzo-The Buddy System]

Really great as always. As far as the style and tone are concerned, I think you nail it. Skitzo is; dark, funny, well animated, and even imaginative in it's own twisted way. The shorts always feel too short though! And yes i realize the irony. I would really like to see a longer skit play out, something with lots of detail and gore. I always enjoy the reasons why Skitzo "snaps," its aways very entertaining. The music is also great, it brings things together nicely. The biggest criticism i have is, again, i want to see more! Flesh it out, more complex situations, more detail in the environment. It's more of a complement than anything else. Anyways, great work and i'm looking forward to you're future shorts!

Comick responds:

Ah thanks man! I appreciate the kind words :) and yeah haha his shorts are meant to be only scraps of his "lost cartoons" so its a fine line on how long or short the scrap will be each time (some are longer then others actually). If you want to see more Skitzo, his comic book "Skitzo Bakes a Cake" on the kickstarter project is a much longer, seriously twisted, and detailed adventure of horror...I had to put a "parental advisory, extremely graphic" label on the front cover just to make sure people knew what they were getting into lol. And Thanks for watching!! More (possibly longer) scraps are on the way! :D

[Nites Episode 3]

This was really cute. I've watched all of the episodes so far and the optimism and imagination of your world really stick with me. I think you're two (now three maybe!) main characters are both fun to watch and i think the lack of dialogue works well. It allows people to fill in the gaps and use their imagination, which is cool. I also like how all the characters faces are obscured, it just add to the mystery of the world you're building. The main criticism I can offer is the sound design, some of the sound effects are lo-fi and its distracting. Anyways, great job and I'm looking forward to future episodes! Peace.

Extellus responds:

Thank you, really means a lot ^^ =)

[Confusion Through Sand]

This piece was very well done. Solid in its exectution and very emersive, I felt connected to the piece the whole way through. The animation was top notch and impressive to watch, I especially enjoyed the sand storm scenes. The lack of dialogue was a good fit and I feel it not only helped to connect me to the character more, but also left things open to interpretation. This treatment only helped the piece, especially considering the subject matter. The sparse voice work also served to further the immersion and highlight the detailed animation and action. Overall I thought this piece was fantastic and I hope to see more of your work in the future yo.

[Trusts & Estates]

This was fucking fantastic. From the writing to the voice acting, this was completely topnotch. I'm gonna stress the voice acting again, it was fantastic. I thought you were animating a scene from a movie at first it was so well done, it sounded completely natural. The writing was hilarious and the conversation was very believable though obviously exaggerated considering. i really like the design of your characters too, i think your style is kind of sleek and that worked really well for this. the actual animation was a little bit one note though, focusing mainly on facial expressions. This didn't detract from the actual content at all, but still something to note. i do wish the back ground was more fleshed out more. It would help to give a better sense of the environment and help to establish the scene a little more. That's probably my biggest criticism overall. Aside form that though i thought this was fucking wicked, i hope you keep posting stuff here and can't wait to see what you do in the future yo.

elementalbadger responds:

Hi Makayu,

Thanks for your comments. Having the voices be natural was the most important part for me. I had recorded with a group of professional actors once, with each actor reading line by line in their own sound booth and it just didn't work. So I recast the group, grabbed my neighbor, two close friends, and kept one of the actors and had them sit in a room for 6 hours reading the script and improvising off it a bit to assure it felt natural. Sometimes they took the improvising a little too far which at some point I'll have to share the strange back stories they created. Either way, thanks for your compliments!

And you know I have to say, I completely agree with your criticism. I had originally intended to have establishing shots, the table, other people in the restaurant, chefs, the works. It was my CalArts thesis and it was the first animation I'd done in about 6 years, I think. Before that I was doing nothing but installations. I had finished my installation thesis quite early and decided I wanted to leave the school having made one hand drawn animated film. I only had about 4.5 months to make the film and considering I hadn't used my animation or drawing 'sea legs' in a while I had to work within my limitations and time constraints. Of course the decision to do that on paper and hand ink everything tapped into my time as well. The decision to keep it tight was purely out of necessity but to this day I wish I could have had the time to flesh it out the way I had originally envisioned it. But hey, there's always next time :) Thanks again for your comments and encouragement!

Cheers,
JB

[Dead Of The Night]

I generally dont care to use comparisons in these things, but this very much evoked ren and stimpy for me, not wholey but it did leave me with that impression. i really liked the creatures designs, i thought they were varied and interesting. The color shifts were nice too. The biggest thing for me was the music, i thought the animation flowed really well with it and it was pretty entertaining. The biggest criticism i have is that it didn't really feel like its own thing. Their wasn't much setting it apart. Thats mostly an opinion thing still though it was very referential i thought.technically it was well done but some of the actual content felt lacking to me. Still overall though I thought this was really cool and i'm excited to see more of your stuff in the future hopefully yo

TravelBySheep responds:

Yes, I still have a long way to go. I'll try to get better at both animating and writing. Thanks for your review. :)

[Theres a Man in the Woods]

That was awesome, evrything about this was extrodinary. the writing, the voice work, the animation, the pacing, and the story were all as good as they possibly could be. I can't, and don't care to think of something to critisize, it would just be splitting hairs. This was completely captivating and I want to see more.

[Square Heads]

This was pretty cool. I really enjoyed the character design, the way they looked and moved was unsettling but in a good way. it gave the peice an odd tone that I wasnt expecting going in, which I really enjoyed. The sound design was good too, despite it's sparse nature, along with the charater design I felt that it added to the tone present throughout the piece. The action towards the latter half felt a bit out of place or maybe it was just the way it flowed, it felt rushed and it seemed like an odd jump with how things were going in the beginning. It wasn't bad but I think that it could've been done a bit more interestingly. Anyways i'm looking forward to checking out more of your stuff, good luck with the rest of the competition yo.

MrChambers responds:

thanks for the review, your right, the action sequence was unfortunately pulled off last minute (I had never done one before and I had a hard time with it).

[Door to Door]

This was pretty cool. The opening sequence was really well done and the concept is pretty funny In the context of the competition, though I felt as the short progressed it lost some of its momentum. Both the story and to a certain degree the production felt lacking to me towards the end. I didn't find the ending very funny and put in the context of the rest of the short it felt a bit abrupt for no real reason other than for absurdity. During the ending sequence the backgrounds and characters just looked a little rougher too, the guns inpartiocular stood out to me. That might be overly critical especially considering the time constraints but still. Anyways this was still pretty cool, I'm looking forward to seeing more of your stuff later in the competition yo

Brewster responds:

Thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks