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Age/Gender: n/a, Male
Job: breathing
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Whistle Status: Normal
Exp. Points: 20 / 50
Exp. Rank #: 655,466
Voting Pow.: 1.98 votes
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Flash Reviews: 6
Music Reviews: 0
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All Flash Reviews
6 Reviews | 2 w/ Responses
Your stories are very clever and amusing. The screenplay and pace are great, particularly
in your later works. Very very good stuff.
But - it's a bleeding shame that your drawing skills lag so far behind. I would love to see
you work together with someone whose skills are on par with professional illustrators.
I think your stories deserve it.
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"The graphics are great even for professional work."
But the characters, the jokes and the storytelling are not.
Parody is a form of storytelling, and if a story is not immersive,
it doesn't work. Each and every one of the characters' actions in
this movie is there to just to make a joke - to make the characters
a parody of themselves, so to speak. It's impossible to immerse yourself
in the story because of this - that kind of characters don't give off any kind
of feel of personality. They aren't "real" in the least. The effect is that
the viewer won't care one bit what the characters do, and will only
be annoyed by the forced humor.
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"Why do you feel you need to be a hack?"
I thought the movie was nice, so I went to your website. It confused me.
I think your stuff shows considerable skill, but you ruin it all for me by ripping off all those ideas from homestarrunner. From the layout to the mailbag to the way the characters act. You do put in a lot of your own stuff, but the stolen stuff spoils it - trust me, anybody familiar with homestar can't miss it. It's like it's tattooed across your website's forehead. "HACK", that is.
It's utterly idiotic. You are clearly skilled. You don't need to rip people off. Please. You're ruining your own stuff doing it.
p.s.: If you think you've only lent a couple of ideas as guidelines from elsewhere, please consider the fact that those guidelines ( layout, structure, mail bag, the whole conceptual layout ) are the first thing that people notice when entering your site. My immediate reaction was "oh, is this all just a rip-off?". You don't want people to think that, do you?
Author's Response:
Well thanks for your honest opinion. It's good to hear feedback from people who both like and dislike the website, and it is always helpful when the people who didn't like it actually explain why (like you did) instead of just saying "You suck!" and nothing more.
I could probably write a very long response to your review, but I'll try and keep it short. Homestarrunner was indeed my inspiration for starting FredtheMonkey.com. Before hand, Fred was only in comic form, and began in that way almost 10 years ago. Flash allowed me to take the characters to the next level, with voices and animation. I even give credit to the talented Chapman Bros. in my "Credit is Due" book on the site.
I'm sorry you feel the things I borrowed three years ago to begin the site spoil the whole experience. Many, many people love the Mailbags, so I will continue to do them even though I completely agree with you that it is obvious where the idea stems from. I think since its start, the Mailbags at FredtheMonkey.com have grown into a new and different experience. Some examples are that each one now flows into the next, almost as if it were a continuous story arc. Plus Sceb looks at real world things, like his DS and references to Back to the Future, Best Buy, Microsoft, etc.
I will never forget the things that inspired me to make Fred and the crew my daily work (work - even though I don't get paid to animate). But I feel (and hope) that with time the things I used to call on for inspiration and the actual cartoons I produce will drift further apart until one day someone else may be, as you called it, "a hack" for taking some of my original ideas. I personally think that's okay. It's one thing to rip off direct scenes and characters, but quite another to be inspired by someone else's artwork and style. Without people borrowing from what others have built we would not have many of the things we do today. How many of today's humorists, like the creators of South Park, for example, have said publically of their inspirations from the Monty Python crew? Yes, SP obviously differs graphically from the MP skits and movies, but if you examine the show closely you will see many familiar themes. Examples of this sort of thing are everywhere.
I suppose I did a pretty bad job of keeping this reply short like I said I'd try to do, but I will end with this: If I can generate laughter and smiles from people all over the world by borrowing themes or ideas from other places, and not harm those original places in the process, I think being occationally called a "hack" is well worth it. Because after all is said and done, all I really want to do is bring some joy to the world. (Boy gosh jeepers that sure sounds corny... Oh well!)
Thanks again for taking the time to leave such a well thought out review. I hope you'll keep watching the Fred cartoons and let me know if you find them original and funny in the future.
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Antibiotics dissolve the outer layer of bacteria. They do nothing to viruses.
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I'm sorry, but I thought it was boring and unfunny. The animation was good, and so were most of the scenes, but all of them were so different from each other that they made the whole story pretty incoherent - the story didn't flow very well. I felt like you tried to make a "crazy" cartoon, but it the whole thing just dragged and dragged.
Bad directing, bad story, good animation for the most part. Too many different styles thrown together without a strong framework around them.
Author's Response:
Yes thats exactly what I was doing.
Trying to make a "crazy" cartoon.
Yes. Exactly.
....no.
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"Neat idea. Needs more work, though. Badly."
Frankly, I don't see why people think this is such a wonderful piece of flash. It's good, but not that good. The gameplay is boring and repetitive, and the bugs keep most of the rewards out of your reach. A dating game where you only get to fuck one girl and you still have to stand hours of boredom and cheat your way into her knickers? That's too much like my life to be entertaining. Oh, and there is no porn involved. *sigh*
So, you can only get it on with Garnet. Sarah I didn't try, but the others didn't work. You can't reach girlfriend status with Tifa. The infirmary uses hp instead of gil. The exp collects too slowly. Many issues. All could be fixed with a bit of fiddling. It would've been a great game, if you hadn't uploaded such an unfinished version ... All in all, good work that needs more work.
*begin rant*
Newground_sucks: ( I spent some time trying to decide if this guy was being sarcastic or not. I decided not. ) The women of final fantasy are supposed to be rolemodels? Someone makes up something creative of a spoon-fed corporate happy-go-lucky plastic characters and you're disgusted? You sicken me. And you justify your disgust with the authors disregard for the feelings of CARTOON CHARACTERS? They are not real. They're not even original, for chrissakes. And you continue to compare this disregard to incest? Bleagh. What are you, religious? Squaresoft didn't set out to set moral standards, it set out to make money. You apparently are all out against anything that wouldn't pass for a pg-rated disney movie. Childish or not, your demands for respect are ridiculous. As Reginold might say: "You, my sir, are a FUCKING MORON."
*end rant*
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