JohnLeprechaun's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Len - ep. 1 - part 2/2]

Talent

You have it. Quality however, not so much. I realize that many conversions made it really fuzzy but even beyond that, the sounds of the wind got really annoying after a while. Also, are we ever gonna get any background about this? Is it some sort of cowboy apocalypse?

RonaldRaven responds:

thank you for the kind words and honest criticism. indeed, looking back at this work, there are a lot of things that seem almost laughable to me now. of course, we were proud at the time since it was our first serious flash movie, and in some ways it actually exceeded our admittedly low expectations.

the quality issue, though, was something that chafed me ever since I first uploaded it. actually, the current file size limits on Newgrounds would have been more than adequate to put the whole episode in one flash and at decent quality. but at the time the size limit was lower, and this was the best I could do without dropping some of the effects I added in post. also, I agree with you about the wind sound effects. when we put this together we had some rather limited resources and experience. we tried to layer the sound in such a way that it was not too repetetive, but a better recording would have helped immensely.

we actually had a very long and detailed backstory for the movie, including the histories of several characters and world events that led to what you see in this movie. I think part of the reason for the rigor was that it was being done for an open-ended school project in which we could design our own assignment and set timelines that were approved before the project began. thus we had to check in with people at different stages in the pipeline, since the people grading it weren't really familiar with the animation process, and we ourselves were just learning.

it may have been even a little too ambitious, since the actual animation never made it past the intro (the ending that is there now was just a last ditch effort to finish it at a point that made sense). it was a lot more time-consuming to do the actual music and animation than we had initially planned. looking back on the story now, even though it has some elements from the well-established "post-apocalyptic" genre, I think we had a slightly different take on it that never got to be fully expressed. we even had scripts for maybe two or more additional episodes, including staging for complicated action sequences, as well as an overall idea for where the story would go. this material was meant to be the real beginning of the character development in the main story arc. what you see so far is just an introduction that was meant to raise questions and get people interested in and acquainted with the alternate universe in the story.

so I guess the short answer is that there was *supposed* to be more background in this story. it's interesting to see that people are still occassionally watching this and wondering about it even now. we had thought about picking this series up again and continuing it the way it was originally planned. maybe we will one day. I guess it would be a shame to let all that work go to waste.

anyway, thanks again for the review. peace.