EmperorCharlemagne's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[I Dream In Retro]

Pretty clever

The sheer number of fine touches and little details thrown in as homages to the games presented in here are well worth the price of admission. The fact that your sprite continued to change is also a nice touch, and the ways that your little dream dude dealt with the various enemies in the games were both fun and cool with all the crossovers taking effect.

This is a pretty solid and enjoyable effort, and I really liked it.
4/5

[Lionel & Janet Trailer]

Not sold

I read the description only after I watched the flash, but watching the flash, I could barely assemble anything that approached a coherent plot.

After knowing that it was supposed to be Romeo and Juliet, the images made a LITTLE bit more sense, but not much. Because the images by themselves rarely are capable of setting up the narrative (even as one as well-known as R+J) as you present it. I thought the main dude got married at least twice in the flash; it was all very confusing.

Hell, in the very beginning, you make it look like the two are the last survivors of a nuclear holocaust for goodness' sake. I didn't know WHAT the fuck was going on, and the whole "new generation, a new story" doesn't really jive with the fact that this is a REMAKE of Romeo and Juliet, you know?

Hope you got a nice grad on the project, and if I were a teacher, I'm sure I'd give you a solid B+ for the effort, but as a viewer on NG, this really needs a good dab of coherence and some better sequential staging in order for me to actually decipher what the hell was going on the whole time.

[Neenja 3]

Fantastic in nearly every way

What makes this so fun to watch is threefold and instantly puts you above the rest of the usual unfun stuff to watch around here:

1) You have a style that is both at once fun to look at and not derivative

2) You guys actually know how to stage a scene so that it is funny, enjoyable to watch, and easy to read (this takes a lot of skill!)

but the most important is this:

3) You have figured out, unlike nearly EVERYONE who tries their hand at making flash movies, that ANIMATION IS SUPPOSED TO IMPLY MOVEMENT. This is not just a bunch of talking heads set to melodramatic music. It's characters moving and interacting with the environment, which should be the first priority for ANY aspiring animator. That you have this down pat shows your high degree of competence. Another degree of competence from you is that even when the characters are moving very little, you still make it interesting to look at them; this is the mark of a real true-blue cartoonist.

The fat Asian guy made me laugh especially; that was some good writing, lol.

Anyhoo, this is really great, and I'm glad to see a real cartoonist showcasing some great stuff for NG. Best of luck and keep up the fantastic work!

[License Plate Denial]

How 'bout I vote 0 for a shitty flash?

Oh no, your shitty vanity plate was denied. Better make a crude non-animated slideshow about it and try to appeal emotionally to the audience!

[Many_Kirbies_Collab]

I have seen way better flash videos

tim sorry but the flash wasn't that good and it was too short

[Operation: Graveyard]

You know what would have been really funny?

If the demon they were trying to summon actually turned out to be piconj00.

But is that perhaps too old-fashioned for the younger crowd?
It probably is; even though I wasn't a member back in those days, I fondly remember them...

Anyhoo, this is probably worthy of most if not all the praise it gets. Actual, honest-to-God ANIMATION for a change; now there's a shock! And it's actually not all that bad, wow! The only real complaints on that are the little bits of stiffness here and there (the running animation during the graveyard scene being one of them), but they are probably pretty minor (and afterall, trying to animate something of this caliber will take serious work; it shows and I respect that.).

"Story" was a serviceable vehicle to drive the "Nene kicks the shit out of goths" tagline, and for the most part, the fights themselves were pretty enjoyable (though just how many blades does that girl have on her?).

As well, the ending newspaper is probably a classic NG humor moment, that of subversion and a black humor which I could sure stand to see a lot more of 'round these parts.

Overall, this is really good, and you should all pat yourselves on the back for the bang-up job.

[--Nightmare--]

That guy sure holds the book close to his face

I can only imagine that the short-short story was better, though when I look at what ya did, I can't imagine it being all that good in the first place.

My complaints:

Why do we even have to know who the guy is, or what his age is, when neither has any bearing on the story itself? It's just useless padding, because it offers no insight as to what his character is. You could have said his name was Ludwig von DickLicker and the effect would have been the same. Or rather, it would have been better, since it would have been funny.

The buildup and resolution makes no sense. For one, you didn't really touch on the fact that this paranoid asshole has a sawed-off shotgun next to his bed at all times, especially considering the fact YOU PORTRAYED HIM LIVING IN A QUIET PEACEFUL SUBRUBIA. Yeah, a shitload of stuff goes down out in the Western Estates, man. Nothing like that cheap shit down on 35th Street, right dawg? Perhaps if you showed him living in a shitty neighborhood, I could see the shotgun being necessary, but you didn't show why he would even need a shotgun in the first place, even if that reason was mentally unsound (which would have fleshed the story out a whole lot more).

The evil Pacman-Tattoo guy was not all that fleshed-out, and the fact that he killed himself over his supposed arrival a second time makes no sense, considering how he actually went to shoot at it the first time. And considering the fact that he could've just ran away instead of, you know, taking the pussy way out (lolpun), it just leaves the viewer frustrated (and no doubt the reader frustrated too).

As for the animation itself, it wasn't all that great (though you said this was like your second or fourth... What is this, Final Fantasy?), and the close-up shots were kinda cheap. The shotgun falling to the floor as well as the Pac-Tat dude's mouth opening were nice touches, animation-wise. But on the whole it was a little bit of a let-down and not entirely fun to watch, since it was basically a slide-show set to music (which wasn't ALL that great, lololmusicsnob).

So yeah, this was kinda run-of-the-mill, but I hope it's a stepping-stone to greater competence for ya. Best of luck.

[Sonic Vs Dr.Eggman]

Actually, and surprisingly, not all that bad

Well actually in the Genesis days he was fighting Dr. Robotnik... Sorry, but I don't think I'll ever get to calling him Eggman, ever. Lol, but moving on

For the most part, the sprite work was very well done (though I think it got sloppier as the flash went on; this is most noticeable in the part where Sonic stormed the rocket facility). It displays a certain level of competence and confidence working with sprites, and I was very much pleasantly surprised that this did not suck.

Another point of praise was the Robotnik battle at the end. I don't know if you ripped off some design from another Sonic game, but in any event, I thought it very creative and actually pretty fun to watch. So, kudos on that.

Some criticisms, though:

-You could've spent some more time making the Flash stuff blend in better with the sprite work. It all looks REALLY out of place, the most egregious examples being Robotnik's fortress and the rocket facility. I think you could have taken the time to actually shade things and make it look more organic and believable, but they stick out like a sore thumb and draw me out of watching the flash.

-a TINY bit more time working on them hands. Lol, I know they're tough to draw, but they still aren't quite there. Keep practicing!

This is not REALLY a criticism, but:

Yeah, this is pretty J-Poppy, even with Amy doing the whole "Shrine Maiden" whatever the hell. It ain't really quite my thing (at least not any more after seeing it a lot), but I am sure it'll work for plenty of people. However, I did lol at the picture Sonic was carrying of Amy being kidnapped. I wonder: Who took the picture, and why didn't he do anything about it? Ha ha

So I give you a 7 (which if you look through my flash reviews, is pretty high up there) for the overall effort put into this (which is commendable), and take 3 points off for the rough spots that detract from the viewing: the out-of-place flash, the kinda questionable tween session towards the middle (???), and the overall flavor, which isn't totally my thing.

Still, a very good job, and I expect a generally positive reaction.

[Polare expres spoof 4]

no comment

Actually, if this was actually animated, this might've been funny.

But it's not, so why even bother uploading it?

generalNazor responds:

"why even bother uploading it?"
Because I used a flash program to create this?
thats more then can be said of OTHER videos I put on here!

[Mario vs Sonic (Sprite)]

What is DBZ based "fightong"?

In any event, this is the same exact fight-sprite-flash that i've been seeing on NG since the late 90s, so yeah, been there done that. It hits all the same notes we're all used to; ie the DBZ method of replacing fighting with "Big Giant Circles", the whole ridiculously fast pace of it all, and ridiculously overpowered soundtrack.

I also gotta love when sprite movies attempt closeups, because the closeups in question always just look like an undefinable mess of pixels. Black cutaway bars are much better because they don't make you look at a messy pixel screen. Because honestly, the emotional tension in this flash is not high enough to warrant closeups. It's as good as a mediocre DBZ fight (which is most of them; as well as all of them after Cell Saga), which isn't saying much. Sure, you know how to move sprites around; now try doing something more entertaining with them.