Emrox's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[SLUDGE BROTHERS: PILOT]

I am impressed with your ability to wrangle a bunch of people together and put together an indie animation series (really!) And it looks about as good, and is written about as well as most stuff on Netflix, or any cable/network TV place. That said... we're on the internet! There are no rules here! So why is it that, aesthetically, this show seems to be aping TV? Is the intention to use this show as a stepping stone to some kind of television/streaming service deal? If so, I will be blunt - that's the equivalent of being in the year 1950, having this amazing new communications technology called television, and trying to use that platform to become a big star on the radio!

I guess I shouldn't assume that that is your plan with this show, but I've seen it happen so forgive me for projecting, or something. I will say again that what you've created is very impressive in terms of rallying a zillion people together to make a well-produced, visually consistent and coherent cartoon. But let's see some more experimentation, huh? I want to see the idiosyncracies of the creator on display! Not the easy stuff, like the affinity for dry humor and gross-out jokes, but stuff that's difficult to pull off! Let's see some stuff that could get you in trouble, or get you called "pretentious," or that makes people say "this is weird and I don't like it!" Or at least some wackier visuals, idk.

Best of luck with your future endeavors!

[I LOVE YOU]

Hey this is very aesthetically cool! Love the visual intensity, the nice little touches here and there, and that part where it's silhouettes on the flashy color BG.

If I may go on a tangent, that will make sense in a second:

Something that happens with a lot of people who are really serious about art stuff, and has happened to me personally, is in an attempt to get better they start obsessing about finer and finer details - getting every line perfect and redoing drawings fifty times, etc. Which is sometimes good because you reach for higher standards, but sometimes you can get so bogged down in the little details that you lose some of your ability to paint in "broad strokes," so to speak. For example, if I just spent hours and hours rendering one bit of animation, I might hesitate to put wacky video-effects on it, even if that makes it look cool, because I'm afraid of negating all that hard work. When this kind of thinking is applied over a whole project, the finished thing can come out kind of diluted - less punchy and less interesting than it would have been if I had just cared a little less.

I'm bringing all this up because I love the "broad strokes" in this - the flashing colors, the effects, the way the images are composed on the frame. It has this intense immediacy to it - a sort of rawness that sometimes people will lose over time, as they get too focused on the finer details of their work. So I just wanted to take a second now to say *please preserve that thing!* Obviously I don't know what your life's plans are or whatever, but if you're going to keep doing art, I want to give some encouragement to keep doing this kind of thing, and to not get in the habit of getting too attached to the work to fuck it up a little - to not get into the habit of pulling punches. Because you've got something good here, and it would be cool to see you keep pushing in this direction

snotrat responds:

dude thank you for this comment. i am honored that you have written somethign so insightful, and yes, it was what i was going for. i made this whole thing to rid myself of that perfectionism. with animation specifically it is difficult not to get so bogged down in detail simply due to how mindless and grindy it is. but with this one i made most of the scenes in one short sitting without much refinement and it looks so muhc more emotional to me because of that.
i sort of hated this amv to be honest because i made it partly to express ceraint feelings i was having and i dislike watching it myself now because of it. but maybe i'll try to look past that and appreciate it.
drawing like this is so pure and fun. again, thank you for appreciating and your comment

[Rook the Crook]

Hey I really like the texture of the lines on this (the square-brush low-smoothing thing is something I get a lot of mileage out of myself) and so I wanted to ask, are you able to shit that kind of thing out really quick or do you spend a lot of time undoing or sculpting with the eraser or whatever? For me, every once in a while I can get into the right mindset where I can produce a lot of good rough-looking stuff fairly quickly, but most of the time I just get bogged down in fine details, even though the rough lineart thing is supposed to make the process go a little faster.

Forgive me if this is a weirdly presumptuous review! Any thoughts on this would be interesting to hear.

foneycone responds:

This was the first full-length cartoon I made with this kind of linework, and I made the whole thing in chronological order, so you can see I got a better handle on it by the end. I started out mostly by sculpting with the eraser, but by the end I was able to do it by my own brush strokes pretty quick. I've never been good with pen pressure so it was a learning curve for sure, I found that regularly adjusting the size with certain details and shots also helped. Always preferred low smoothing, both in speed and look

[-Sugar sugar-]

When I watched this a zillion times 15 years ago I always thought it was kind of a mistake that he just had the one set of smiling mouths to lip-sync with, and would just switch to the frowning closed mouth after he finishes speaking, but watching it again now, even though I still believe it was laziness on edd's part, I kinda like how the smiles flavor his facial expressions as he gets progressively beat up. Adds another layer, sorta

(still looks fuckin stupid when he looks side to side though, that part makes no sense with the smiling mouth!)

[creepy crawlies]

I like what you're doing here!

[Yusuf's Demo Reel 2018]

Reviewing this bc you told me to on twitter and now I feel obligated!

You've got a lot of good stuff here but I feel like there's also a lot of filler, like at 0:17, 1:56, 2:03 and that part where it's just a blue ass stick figure walking. In the other responses you said you were trying to show off some of the unreleased stuff you did too so I guess you're aware of this already. But I concur - if you're showing this to studios you're gonna want to make sure it's all killer all the way through!

A lot of the clips use a very similar stylization where the dudes are just one color w/ no clothes. That stuff is fine but you want to make sure people don't think you're just doing that as a crutch. I know ur probably not doing it as a cheat but employers won't know that, so get some more guys with clothes in there!

^ that's all to do with the presentation though, and I'm assuming you wanted me to review the content. Well idk it all looks decent to me. I think your animation ability is stronger than your art ability, so if you really want to focus your efforts toward getting a job I'd say work on that. That was actually a pretty big problem with me for a while, but then I started doing more pencil and paper stuff and it rekindled my interest in that side of things. Find some comic artists you like and try to steal their style. As long as no one's done it in motion it's fair game! Also, if you can pull off really detail-heavy stuff in motion it looks really impressive for some reason.

Hope that helps. Keep it up!

Yusuf responds:

I'm definitely gonna be making a 1 minute studio reel when the time comes, cutting out all that practice stuff.

Yeah, the one color guy thing is a problem at this point (that I realized long before editing this reel), just because on that day I can't be bothered to put in detail and just want to focus on the animation - and then I end up animating entire sequences like that. I have no problem with drawing clothes and stuff, it's just the way a lot of my animating has gone.

My animation is absolutely my strong suit, and I know I have to put in some serious time to develop my art ability and general style. I just need to draw more, I've really fallen out of it in recent years - I guess I have the same problem you once had. Pencil and paper is a great suggestion because I find myself putting in a lot more effort and care when I have to use a physical medium, especially when doing life drawing, which has helped train me somewhat in drawing faster with more confidence and energy - I just need to get more used to it and start doing it all the time.

I always hated having to do the detailed stuff at school, cos something that would take someone else a couple hours would take me 10. It would come out looking good, but I'd end up hating my life and everything about it! Hopefully animating detailed stuff will be different, what with all the digital crutches.

Thanks a lot for your time man! I'll be keeping all your words in mind.

[That video when the burglar break in]

hahaha "on point"

[Eaters of Dog Food]

I love it

AntonM responds:

Thanks Emrox!!!

[Crash Zoom: Fingered]

This show sucks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!