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Zazzy

62 Movie Reviews

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4 reviews are hidden due to your filters.

Not an original animation. Consider uploading it to youtube instead of here.

Pretty funny, well animated. The only problem is that them being airpods or headphones really doesn't play in to the story or comedy in any way.

Obligatory Brian Griffin joke.

Before I start this rather long review, let me just say: TheMAM is right, and as an audio person myself, I can vouch for this. However! I will say this as well: scathing reviews are not something to be feared here on Newgrounds. While of course I can't speak for everyone, and some people are just assholes to be assholes, one of the reasons why I keep coming back to Newgrounds is that we're (for the most part) in the interest of helping each other out, and giving each other advice to help other improve on their creations. So, as a professional audio guy, let me give you mine.

Audio is THE most important part of a video or video game, especially for animation, and I'm not just saying that to toot my own horn. Even if your drawing or animation is sub-par at best, you can still pull through by having effective audio. The things you notice about an animation production that makes them not only seem professional, but done to their highest potential, is all done in audio.

The right or wrong music can make or break the mood of a scene, whether or not it's serious. The right sound effects at the right time, volume and timbre can either make things like people or objects being hit feel real and natural, or it can make it feel out of place.

The timing was just straight up off, sometimes by as much as half a second, which is a bazillion years when you're counting frames. You usually want your sounds to match up on the frame that it occurs, and depending on what the action is, you may want to have completely different sounds leading into or out of main sound effects. For example, if a character is winding up for a punch, as they throw the punch at their target, a very faint but crescendo-ing woosh might play as the punch is traveling through the air. The woosh wouldn't be explicitly noticeable by the viewer, but it helps the following punch have much more impact since the viewer can HEAR the punch coming towards the object just from it's force.

I really do recommend compiling your videos in more advanced software so that you have more control over your audio and video. While WMM is free of course, there are far better free editors out there that can be used. I'm not sure if WMM can even measure things in frames, or if they just do fractions of seconds. Your effects NEED to be in time with your visuals, or else it instantly breaks the viewers attention, since they're now thinking about how weird it was that a sound showed up early or late. Your goal as a creator of a video is to not have viewer's concentration broken by anything; you don't want your viewer to think about your animation critically while they're watching it, because it distracts them from your video. The best thing you can achieve as a creator of a video is to have your viewers engaged in it from start to finish.

Especially when it comes to sound effects, the animation and the sound work hand in hand to make a scene effective. When the two soldier-like people attack the ogre monster, it feels incredibly wonky and out of place, not only because everything is very quiet, but because the sound effects you use have no snap or "zing" to them, they feel lifeless. With a fighting scene you not only want your animation to be dynamic and indicative of action, but your audio as well. Weak slicing sounds, weird sparkly effects, and that crappy overused stock punch sound effect: these touch on almost every category of how audio can be use wrong, which I'll see if I can't touch on below with everything.

The slice is too quiet, and has no feedback from the creature when it happens. Something to remember is important actions require important volume: The sound effect of a sword slashing a beast when the sole perspective of the viewer is placed on it needs to be loud since the viewer's attention is held on it, even if the sound effect in real life wouldn't be very audible. It's a cartoon, exaggeration is what you do! I can see why you did this though, since it seems natural to try to get the sound effects to match up with the camera's perspective imagining it in your own head. However, even things that wouldn't have any audible sound effects in real life from the camera's perspective, like something gushing liquid when slashed with a sword, need sound effects to accentuate the visuals because it helps the viewer immediately understand what is happening, and it lets them focus back on the visuals you can stun them with instead of them wondering what they just saw. That split second really does make a difference, and the split seconds add up quickly if they're all over your animation of a few minutes. Also, usually when a traumatic injury happens to a creature, they also give some auditory feedback, like a grunt or a scream, neither of which were present.

As for the weird sparkling, tinkling effects during the fighting scene, while sparkling sounds tend to be a more artistic choice, choosing strange sound effects is an easy way to disconnect a viewer from your story you're telling. Sparkling tends to be used to accentuate something cuteness, or to indicate something magical is happening. While you did use it for the correct purpose, I feel the visual you used it for didn't match.

The punch however, the punch. It's bad. As said previously you want to make sure your audio levels are done correctly because it can help the viewer keep engaged on what you want them to be engaged on. However, none of that matters if the sound effect you use is bad. Never, ever use stock sounds, unless they're explicitly for a gag, but even then that's only for some of the stock sounds. Things like the generic punch you used you never use for anything ever, because people can tell where the sound came from as they've heard it before, usually on novice projects. If you're trying to build your own world, you want to try to not use sound effects that would take your viewers mind to think about something else, or sounds that wouldn't fit in your world. Other stock sounds, like the Wilhelm Scream, can be used for comedic effect, but usually comedies that use that kind of humor don't try to do that world building thing I was talking about with any real effort.

There are tons and TONS of free resources at your fingertips on the internet. Places like Freesound, Audioblocks, SoundBible and more have tons of free to use sound effects that are even tailored to specific situations.

I can't really speak for voice actors because, well I'm not one. But for Pete's sake, get people with half decent microphones to voice act for your parts! The sound of the voices is just bad, not considering the voice actors volume or delivery. Even if your voice actor was the best voice actor in the entire universe, they still sound like trash if they're speaking through a laptop microphone. There's a saying that I've always heard from my mentors that especially applies to audio: "You can polish a turd until it's sleek and shiny, but it's still a piece of shit." If you work with bad sounding audio from the get go, you can only get bad things in return. And that's one of the unfortunate parts of using Newgrounds as a resource, is that there's no real baseline for quality, especially in audio. Not everyone has the same equipment or ability, so sometimes you just get stuck. But trust me, if you invest in high quality audio, you will get more than your money's worth for it.

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If you took the time to read all of that, thanks! It took a hot minute for me to formulate and write up. It's all tough love. I love that you're doing things that are inspired and clearly had a lot of work put into them. I'm looking forward to seeing more on this series!

No music? Seems kind of essential to something like this...

nicefieldSFM responds:

Yeah I know, but it's basically a gif. I post it in movie format for better graphic quality.

A lot of people will skip this one over because it's MLP, and I am not exactly a fan myself, but this really is some great stuff. I don't get it, but I can see that it's very well made and there's tons of time and effort put into this.

Funny as hell for all the wrong reasons.

bornracer responds:

i guess thats okay

You know something is well made when you look at the software used and say "They made this with THAT?"

Please only upload finished work here. This is Newgrounds, not mediafire.

KittyCloudKartoons responds:

its for the voice actors , if you don wan to see it , dont see it , i put in on the tittle

Not really funny. Like at all.

I can see why it failed.

Uhh.

Discord: Zazzy#0001 @Zazzy

Age 28, Other

Being Snazzy

Indiana University

Mishawaka, Indiana, US

Joined on 1/21/14

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