Reviews for Turing Test

[JackBz]

A decent concept doomed to fail

So yeah, it's a pretty good concept for a cartoon; a chat bot so advanced that it is self aware. But everything about the execution was in the spectrum of bad. The start, with the pointless tweens and over sized mouse pointer remind me of flash from 2004 or whatever.

But what makes this even more of a joke is that it's just cut to the dude sitting at his chair typing, possibly while doing some tweened facial expression at the same constant angle, and then cut to the black screen with text. Nothing new is ever tried. No different angle, no view of both him and the computer screen in the same shot while he types, or just something to make this feel like the creation wasn't just a week-long copy/paste marathon.

But yes, I understand that you can't exactly be blamed for that because of what you're working with. Which is why I'm not even sure why you the thought the short story would translate well into a visual medium. I almost feel that what you've done here is the equivalent of turning a cubism painting into a book.

But I'd be willing to forgive the lackluster drawings/awful cinematography if the concept of the chatbot with self awareness actually went somewhere at all, rather than just "You're a chat bot" "I'm not a chat bot", until one of them leaves in ambiguous but all together uninteresting circumstances.

In short, the concept is good, but it's not really yours, so I can't even credit you for the originality factor. Which leaves the animation/dialogue/direction which only ranged from decent to dreadful.

Jimtopia responds:

I actually appreciate this review. Real criticism, but you aren't being a total asshole.

First, I'll agree that the camera angles from the kid back to the monitor do get repetitive and boring. Believe it or not, I was aware of this when I was making the flash. Was there a whole lot I could do about it? Not really. Time was the main factor in that, progress on the flash was slow, and as Robot Day creeped up I had less and less time to draw new scenes and camera angles. if I had had a lot longer to make this, then yes I would have put in different shots.

Second, obviously you're not a fan of tweens, which I can understand. But to be perfectly honest I believe that tweens, if used properly can look good, which is something I'm trying to learn how to do, because, let's face it, I'm not the best artist in the world, and I have trouble drawing things consistently (which is very necessary in FBF animation). So I'm left with carefully drawing characters, scenes and different elements of the animation and tweening them to the best of my abilities. It can work if done properly, obviously you don't like it, which is cool. Just figured I'd throw a little defense in for tweens.

Third, I don't think using a concept thought of by another guy should detract from originality. This wasn't a video game parody, there were no pop culture references, I used some ideas from a story that very few people have read and shaped it into my own little tale in order to expose more people too it, how that's unoriginal I don't get, but whatever.

As said above, I appreciate the review, and although I don't agree with some of your points it's cool that you at least took the time to let me know where to improve.

[Ragnar83]

??????

the animation was decent but I just have one question.....WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT????? not that the graphics were bad or anything but what was it even about cause it really didn't make any sence. But I could tell based on the animation that you obviously have the patential to make some really good stuff, so next time try not to go so Twilight Zone on us.

[ArchJudgeMichaelian]

Sorry, but

I fail to see the point in this. Music was the same throughout and there was a whole two camera angles. I think that maybe if you turned this into some sort of longer story/series then it would be good, but as a standalone flash I don't much care for it.

[MrWalrus]

Worse than the original

The original that the concept is from was a text format. You can't - and didn't - add too much besides fancy background music, annoying side scrolling, and annoying cuts to the guy's face to see his expression slowly change. Further, the point of the original was the ambiguity. You don't know whether the bot is really a chatbot or even if the people its communicating with are real. In this movie, Here, you took away that by making a flawed summary and by showing the guy's face. You basically took a text story, summarized it, removed its premise, and posted it on Newgrounds, and the most credit you gave to the original was an "Inspired by" link to the author's home page on the credits. I mean - the only reason people like this is because they think it's deep and insightful, but whatever depth there is here was taken and mangled in the process from the original. "Concept by: Jimtopia" and "Inspired by a story from: qntm.org" my ass. Little to no creativity went into this.

For anyone that wants to see the original, they can find it more easily at http://qntm.org/difference, instead of at the qntm.org linked to by Jimtopia.