jthrash's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[MY GREATEST CREATION]

That ending hit like a truck as a fellow independent 3D artist who destroys his eyeballs and spine just to make a (hopefully) high-quality shitpost.

[Are you into fitness?]

I like how the other two co-workers are just weird, simple blob guys while the guy with the one hair strand sticking out is much more detailed and rendered.

[John's Glasses]

Great caricatures of Paul, John, and Conan O'Brien!

[Metroid... i think]

Ridley's shit-eating grin during the majority of this animation is the best part.

[First Date]

Just once I want to you to draw your female characters as grotesque as you drew the guy here.

Also, the punchline here had me in stitches, but if I had one small critique, it was sort of unclear that the guy was in excruciating pain because he somehow transferred the girl's menstrual pains to himself. Watching him suffer was funny regardless, and of course the ending was twice as funny once I finally realized he was in menstrual pain about 10-15 seconds into his agony, but still, perhaps the punchline could have been a mite clearer for us dunderheads.

[Reaching for the officer's service weapon]

Unfortunately for him, the entire city police force was homophobic.

[Hagniss Shorts - Void]

First, to get the constructive feedback out of the way--hope I don't hurt your feelings TOO much:
It was clear you were perhaps way in over your head with this animation. There were snippets of genuine animation, particularly near the beginning, that got my hopes up that you would somehow do the impossible and make a full, polished animation that was almost 4 minutes long, all by your lonesome. Of course, that didn't happen and it became more and more of a storyboard animatic as the animation went on. Personally, in my experience, that's the only way to learn to avoid "scope-creep" in personal animation projects, the hard way of making an overwhelming project, first. It seems in the description that you learned your lesson for a future Hagniss animation. but perhaps if you still feel to limited by making tiny <1-minute animations like I still tend to do, other options that may make 3+-minute animations more feasible may include doing cut-out animation with automatic tweens (I love old-fashioned frame-by-frame animation, but in my experience that is only feasible if I work full-time on the animation without a "day job" or other adult responsibilities getting in the way); or simplifying the character designs and shading for animation--the less lines you have to draw each frame, the better!

With that out of the way, despite my feedback, it is quite easy to see why this won daily 4th Place--your Rayman/Neverhood-esque character designs and facial expressions, as usual, are the best in the business and ensure each scene is very lively-looking, even if they are not technically "animated." You picked some great voice actors for each of the three characters, particularly Zyra Bisquera as Hagniss herself! Overall, this seems like a good way to introduce new fans into giving the "Hagniss the Barbarian" comic a chance!

[Trudy Loves Photoshop]

If this is how she reacts to Photoshop's poor optimization, imagine how much worse she would react to using GIMP.

[Wacky Lesbian Hour: Ep 3]

Although I did watch the Hazbin Hotel pilot back before we had all sorts of other indie animations to enjoy, I REALLY don't get the appeal of the show nowadays. In fact, if indie animation is developing any sort of cliched plots that are becoming overdone in the space, it's "quirky Hell comedies." This episode did a better-than-expected job poking fun at how rote Hazbin Hotel's general premise has become when every other adult animation, indie or otherwise, exists solely to offend easily-offended Evangelicals, especially with that shop owner clearly tired of getting "Hazbin Hotel"-inspired requests, Leslie not being as enthusiastic about the show as Brianne and most hilariously to me, the actual demon asking for Kickstarter money for yet ANOTHER "quirky Hell comedy."

The animation style is fantastic to me, like Rick and Morty 2D puppet animation combined with unapologetically-gross '90's Nickelodeon cartoons like Rocko's Modern Life. The writing reminds me so much of my beloved Penny Arcade webcomics back in the day, particularly with jokes specifically engineered to make anyone over the age of 35 feel as old and out-of-touch as possible (e.g. Leslie's idea of relaxing after work being reading her tiny phone screen instead of watching TV or reading a magazine).

Finally, was it intentional for the entire animation to end at 4:20? Intentional or not, it's hilarious that it ended on the "funny weed number."

[Bowser Brings Back Toad]

I'm just surprised how much this animation messed with my expectations. First, I was caught off-guard that the initial conversation was about Toad getting rehab instead of getting captured by Bowser or something you would expect from the family-friendly universe of Super Mario. Then I was shocked to see it turn into an impromptu parody of one of my favorite moments of the recent Smiling Friends season, complete with a perfect recreation of the scene's odd animation movement style in 3D. I wasn't expecting the tragic ending for these characters, and the surprisingly genuine and heartfelt message of peace in the New Year (You OK, bro? Seasonal depression getting to you right now?).

I guess imitating Smiling Friend's animation style exposed the limits of your Bowser 3D rig in particular, but otherwise, 12/10 animation to start the New Year! Kept me guessing and made me laugh every single time the writing messed with my expectations!