AWESOME!
its fuckin awesome
that was a loooooooonnnnnggggggg kiss btw love it
Reviews for "Canvas"
wow¡¡¡¡
5/5 10/10
As we see the world.
Love may be blind, but life without love, or enjoyment of any kind is... Well, colorless.
I wounder, was that the theme of the video?
Very touching!
Beautiful art design and great story! I loved it! and i watch it twice, I do hope you make more!
My Jaw Dropped Watching This....
Despite the kinds of problems described in the comments, "Canvas" is a solid, if not ravishing, piece of work. Why? Because the author doesn't give herself enough credit for what she managed to create. EmptyBrooke has had a string of lukewarm-rated pieces on this site, but then she conceives something worthy of a Front Page, not out of its peculiarity when compared to other works on this site... but because it showcases everything you expect from a Front Page cartoon.
Some of the technical details will go against the typical Newgrounds faire, but let's list them: it's 4 MB, for one. A cartoon of this length, detail, and artistic merit often goes for more than ten, easily. The frame rate seems low and the soundtrack is compressed, which means choppy panning and muffled music. Those are drawbacks, but there once was a time when you needed permission through an admin because your Flash exceeded 5 MB. Most submissions several years ago were below that number to respect the idea behind Flash: to play on all sorts of computers, not just the elite customized ones. Thus, keeping a low frame rate and staying judicious with the animation details helped this cartoon stay in the spirit of both the program and the site.
Next, we have the cartoon itself. It's a wordless love story, sappy, but with a truth and theme behind it. Not many authors on this site will make any attempt toward a serious short, and even fewer adopt the classic romance plot. On the other hand, this was originally for a competition outside of NG; pulling any of the above "bullshit artistry" for kicks and giggles on this site just doesn't happen. If there was a word to describe EmptyBrooke's approach to the cartoon, in addition to the decision to submit it here... I can only define it as graceful.
Now, the harshest part here is that the romance story includes a special effects budget, which is where the Flash begins to shine and transcend both the Newgrounds lot and the many other romantic short films. The color transition effects are extraordinary, worth the price of time alone. Nobody in their right mind can convince me that they saw that before, but that would probably refer to the use of masking, which is foreign to casual observers. Beyond that, the animation and character design helped convey a great deal of emotion and style. The cartoon follows a soundtrack without a second guess as to how or where. Loyalists to the Audio Portal can forgive the choice of soundtrack, which complements everything like a completed jigsaw puzzle, because, again, this was presented in a competition before its release to Newgrounds.
What astonishes me is how much went wrong during the production, and Brooke is far from silent about them. Viruses, deadlines, post-production editing (does that hint at a "Director's Cut" of this? Maybe that's pushing it....), and regretting her approach to the resolving shot of the film... it is difficult to encounter an author who can be as humble or even hypercritical as she is.
Granted, this isn't a perfect entry and it is far from the distinguishing tastes of most of this site's prepubescent peanut galleries, but if you wanted a good showcase of what Flash can do, what this author can do, and what love itself can really, really do... then I hope you brought your brushes and paints.