You Sick Son of a Bitch.
...
Reviews for "IAMW, Charlie Brown"
NEXTVIEW-Designs responds:
Guilty as charged.
Really good
The female voices were spot on, but Charlie and Linus could've been done better.
Good Grief indeed!
I'd kill her too, she's kind of a bitch.
Great movie.
Fantastic
Man. This thing is great. The animation is really top notch. The character's movements are very true to how they would move from Peanuts films/TV specials. Alas the animation is so good for the environments, birds, butterflies, lighting, and the like, it far exceeds the quality of the official Peanuts animation. At least that's what I can judge based off of what I can remember.
The voice acting doesn't bare as big of a similarity to the real thing, but it's passable. I think pretty much all of the voice work done in Peanuts was with child actors with little or no experience whatsoever, and the voice actors here tried to emulate that distinct type of voice. I'll give them an A for effort.
The flash had a very good narrative. Perhaps you should have included something that says to look at the extras first to get a backstory on everything. For something usually as optional as "extras" in a flash movie, these are really well done and I recommend viewing all of them as they explain a lot.
I know I've been practically bukkake'ing this movie with praise so far, but it's not without flaw as reflected in my rating. My biggest problem, oddly enough--was the music. This usually isn't that big of a deal for me, but for some reason the use of that "Mad World" cover really bothered me. It feels so out of place. It might reference the title of the flash, or the title it, but I don't give a damn. Music like that, the one in scene 3, the opening music to scene 4, it all just feels too "modern" for a movie played so straight about a Charlie Brown drama. The piano and the music box stuff fits, but the other stuff? Not so much.
My only other complaint is while the animation is exceptional, the Demon lord looks. SO. Tacky. A black figure that has a body figure that looks nothing like the aesthetic of Peanuts characters with a white outline? Ugh. Sorry, but a muscular one-eyed demon who's more humanoid than the main cast doesn't fit. An earlier reviewer says there is Dungeon Fighter sprites in the movie, and I assume the demon lord is it. I can't confirm this as I have only heard of DF, but if this is true, than it's even worse and I sure as hell cannot blame someone for not being able to get past that. In seen 2, when Charlie finally "snaps" and those long-necked, horned, big-headed black silhouette things pop out of the ground, it's very noticeable that they all look identical. This annoyed me. At least the first picture in the art gallery had one without horns.
In the end, I still find it a very enjoyable movie. While the biggest problem to me was some of the music choices- and it's a very serious problem to me-- it doesn't ruin it. The immense amount of effort that went into everything really shows, and bounces it back up from however low my complaints may bring it. I sincerely hope the next installment for this comes on time, as a movie of this quality in flash isn't something to be missed.
NEXTVIEW-Designs responds:
Hey thanks for the detailed review, this is great. I'll try to address some of your concerns.
You make a good point about the music. The last flash Joe made was all dark hip hop beats and that was a polarizing decision as well. In this one we tried the half-way approach, but at one point we were going to be more authentic with our selection and try to keep everything within the realm of classical compositions and 1950s-1960s jazz. I think this happened too late in the process though, because after we did the audio swap the scenes just didn't feel right. Joe and I had already grown too attached to the old tracks. We're resigned to the fact that not everyone will dig the music. However, you can take solace in the fact that we at least used the instrumental versions of the horrorcore tracks, haha. ;)
Regarding the demons, Joe did indeed extract DFO sprites and recreate them in vector with edits. We took the silhouette approach because they're supposed to be shadow-esque. The white outline comes from some feedback we received about how the demons were hard to make out. Admittedly there's probably was a better way to solve that issue. The small demons look the same, but that's by design, they are minions after all. What you saw in the art gallery were actually still frames taken from the same minions in various stages or their spawning.
Glad you enjoyed it on the whole, hope to see a follow-up review when we release the conclusion.
Oh my lord
that was soooo boring. maybe you could've used a different animation style for an alternate reality kind of feel.