tydaze's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[azumanga cool]

Even though it's kinda shitposty, it fits the humor style of the source material, so I liked it

[Marcus the Teenager's Never-Ending Quest for Popularity]

I like the retro art style. The setting seems to look like 80s/90s, but along with the typewriter, VHS tapes, and CRT TVs, there are also smartphones, I guess the anachronism is on purpose?

The character designs are good, with nice diverse silhouettes.

All of the voices suit the characters very well.

I like the humor, and it has good pacing, which is really hard to get right. I like that it is not trying too hard to get a laugh by being "so random and wacky!" But also doesn't take too long to get to the punch line.

The animation is spectacular for an independent production and I'm impressed that it's a full length episode.
Lots of great exaggerated facial expressions and body language.

There were two important things that seem to be overlooked. The primary motivation of the main character is to be popular... Why does Marcus care about being popular in the first place? And secondly, why should we as the audience care about whether he succeeds or fails at that goal?

Hillasir responds:

Yes! It's a real genuine compliment you feel we dodged the "so random and wacky!" train. Thank you!

And we feel exactly the same way with your last two points! To be honest, we were always on the hunt to make those ingredients work. You squint and you see it, but admittedly it isn't quite there. Maybe if we did a second episode we could really dig into those elements, you know?

[Victory Dance ✌🕺]

Very charmingly cartoony

[The Trust Exercise]

I'm impressed by how accurate you got the characters to look to their original 2D designs! Their facial expressions look great and so does their movement.

The only thing I think I don't like here is the white rim highlight, it kind of visually contradicts the black outline, in my opinion.

[A Very Peachy Christmas 🎄🪓]

So funny and cute AND sweet!

[Harley And Baby In: Mine For The Taking]

Good buildup and comedic pacing! With such a simple and obvious joke it could have been very easy for it to fall flat, but the execution was just right.

[A Mouse of Many Colors]

Very fluid animation! That spring in his step is so well done. I know from experience it's not easy to draw Mickey on-model, so I'm impressed. Also nice homage to his different looks over the years.

[The Adventuresome Six - Part 1 - The Interview]

The character models and facial animations are incredible! And I'm impressed by how expressive the body language is. The voice acting is good too and I like the character design.

I think it could be more exciting if there were some more action scenes and not just the characters standing around talking so much.

The backgrounds don't look that great compared to the characters. The lighting seems unnatural and the mix of realistic textures and basic gradients doesn't really match. Also, the drop shadow from the characters makes it feel like they are not really present and just floating in front of the background. I assume you were going for the look of animation cels, but it looks weird with the 3D characters in motion. Maybe the effect would work better if it was done more subtly.

The gratuitous toe wiggling is a little bit weird.

I see a lot of potential here so that's why I'm being critical. Even though I think there are some parts of it that could be a little better, this is really great so far overall, an amazing feat to put together as an indie creator, and I look forward to seeing more!

[howl]

Beautiful tender scene, cool action, great attention to subtle movement. This alone is spectacular in itself!

[Hugo's Mind Palace (PILOT)]

Starts out a little slow, but keep watching, it gets REALLY good!