PritchardStudios's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Broken News (BRAWL 2014)]

An oldie, but a goodie!

As I wrote those many years ago, I love the intro logo. It looks clean and professional, yet still maintains a nice Lego feel. How did you pull that off? It doesn't look like LDD, and Stud.io wasn't a thing back then.

Sadly, after that strength, the opening few seconds are a bit underwhelming. The first few seconds need some sort of audio, some sort of ambiance or at least footsteps/chair creaking. It feels rather strange, and made me (once again) think something was wrong with the audio.

A simple short like this doesn't need a dozen layers of perfectly balanced sound, but I feel that the short would have benefited from a slightly more complete sound design. Then again, BRAWL doesn't exactly give you much time to perfect that.

Otherwise, the sets and animation are great. I like how each location seen is very different in terms of set design and even lighting, though the final set is by far the most impressive.

It's a nice short, and tying everything together at the end was a good idea, not only with the two armed individuals, but even the dude at the very beginning. It was a great idea to add some cohesion to an otherwise scattered and disjointed film.

I'm really glad you've popped over here to NG. It gives me a chance to revist your films and expand/rewrite old reviews.

ENDfilms responds:

The logo was built in LDD, then I used a program that converts LDD files to pov-ray format, then rendered them out in pov-ray. It is pretty bare bones as it only renders the camera angle the LDD file was last saved at and pov-ray is so old it doesn't really utilize gpu power to speed up rendering.

[Built by Hand: AKA a Minifigure's Existential Crisis]

I think the experiment with replacement animation was a success!

Integrating a human hand with stop-motion is rough; movements were not super-smooth, and the lighting was fairly inconsistent. However, this test seems more about the replacement animation that did look nice, even if the replacement on the head could have used an extra frame or two. (maybe the stud, the cone, the head, then a brown stud on top, then the full hair)

Still, tests certainly don't have to be perfect, and it looks like you learned a lot.

OneDouglas responds:

Thanks for the feedback!

[Jeremiah Jedidiah Joe (A Lego Western Comedy Short)]

Haha!
Is this a new film, or did I just miss it when you posted it before on BiM?

Either way, it's an enjoyable affair. The recurring joke is used just enough to squeeze every laugh possible out of it while avoiding overusing it and letting it grow annoying. The plot itself is fun, lighthearted, and creative, channeling the western cliches to its advantage.

The western atmosphere is established well and maintained well through the sets and plot developments and the opening premise concerning cactuses (cacti?) and the ending with the new job keep things fresh and creative. ''

The comedic timing is great, as is the voice acting.

I guess I'm far too unfamiliar with your films to quite understand the very ending. It felt like the group of people, at least some, were recurring characters from a series, but not familiar ones. As such, the "Noah" joke fell a bit flat for me. The "credibility" joke was good, but that whole ending segment just felt strange. The most confusing part was 3:21, as I thought previously the purple cape dude was JJJ in the far past, not a modern character telling the story in the modern setting. It was only after reviewing that portion several times that I noticed the red couch edge in that shot and put the pieces together.

Still, it's a delightful and fun film overall.

GoldBrickProductions responds:

Thanks for the kind words, Pritchard!

To answer your last question, I made this film reusing characters from some shorts I did for a BIONICLE channel way back when; those characters are Bob and Randy and would get a more proper introduction in a later film. Noah Sprague Studios voiced JJJ, so I added him as a last-minute cameo to say thanks. Captain Existential showed up in an earlier film that I may post here when I get the time.

Thankfully now, I've gotten a bit more organized with my characters so if I ever made another JJJ-style story (maybe with one of Randy's ancestors!) then I can keep the storyline cleaner. Hope that helps!