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Zombie-Pimp
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Rate the artist, not the song that he's using

Posted by Zombie-Pimp - July 27th, 2007


It's important to remember when rating animated music videos, to rate it for how much you like the work of the animator, not how much you like the work of the musician.

So many flashes that use hilarious songs (like wierd al songs) have terrible art and animation, and the animators are sometimes so lazy that they'll replay the same animations over the chorus of the song each time it plays. All they do is simply cut and paste frames for 50% of the song. However, these low quality flashes are rated very high because the song is really funny and well done.

But its important to remember that the animator is the one who is presenting himself to us, so we need to rate the flash based on the animation, not the song. The only time the song matters is if the musician has collaberated with the animator (like LemonDemon flashes). Remember that most of the time, the animators don't actually have permission to be using these songs, so its not fair to credit the animator for the fine work of a musician that he found.

So remember, even if the song is amazing and makes fun of PS3's and makes you ROFL, watch it over, keeping an eye on the actual animation. See if his animations actually add anything to the song, or make it any funnier than if you were just listening to the song in Winamp? Focus on the art style, is it well done or rushed and crappy? Did the animator put any effort in this or is he just riding on the jokes of the song? Rate based on what the animator has actually done in the making of this flash, not based on the song that he's downloaded (probably for free off limewire) and imported into flash.

Rating a music video low even though you enjoy the song might feel wierd, but its only fair to both the animator and the musician. If you really want to give props to the music used in one of these flashes, then see the credits of the flash (assuming the artist gave credit, which they usually do but sometimes don't), and find the musician's website so you can give props to him directly.


Comments

i agree

I completly agree. I have notice this aswell where a mediocre animation is rated highly because of a popular or funny song incorperated into it. However, there isn't much anybody can do about it. Users will continue to vote higher based on music selection.

WE are the users, so there's plenty we can do. Tell your friends about this problem, i'm sure they'll realize you're right once you explain it, and maybe a few of them will even stop doing it too.

i was in one of these collabs.. and i totally agree. omg it was awful. but still got an award.

You are so right! I also feel it extends to Fashes which use popular video game characters etc which score so well when some poor sap who's worked his nuts off to be original is over looked. But that is the chose an artist has to make: Do you want to be popular or do you want to explore your creative side?
I believe a true artist will choose the latter.

Agreed, I felt the most recent version of "Hardware Store" scored as it did only because of the song, its not the first animation of that song Ive seen and its not even the only version in the collection page, the other version is practically the same version with worse graphics but still a high score, people just like the song and its an easy one to animate because the lyrics do all the work for for you, just like next christmas we'll see another barrage of "The Night Santa Went Crazy"...
Theres another music video collab i reviewed once, It can remain nameless, but i think most of the animation was awful and none of the sections fitted together or had originality, but it still well scoring and got an award due to the popular song it used. Me and anyone else who left a bad review for it were told by its main author that we were just plain wrong, and infact it actually was a really good flash because "it had an award", and all due to their "great" animation mixed with work of less experienced "n00bs" and its success had nothing to do with the song...
Anyway, I could go on for longer but wont. Good idea for a news post.

You are wrong... You know, sure the art is important, but the whole thing is far more important. Why are you animating? To please people or to show your animating talents? Because here, at newgrounds, you have to understand what the people want. They have some rating standards which are not only the art and animation talent. They want stuffs that are fun to watch and will give them a great moment. They are real people, and the majority of them do not animate.

Maybe your goal is to have a high score, then you should learn about how to please the audiance.

You totally missed the point of what I'm saying. I never said that the flash as a whole is not entertaining, I'm saying we as viewers need to see past that, and judge based on what the maker of the flash has done. There's something wrong when the maker of a flash didn't write any of his own jokes, didn't make any good art or animation, and didn't ask for permission to use the song that he's using, but then he still gets a high rating.

in reply to the last poster:

yeah the whol thing is very important. i realize that a good animation w/o the propper music, can and most probably will suck. but still, the point is that theres A LOT of frekin' crappy quality animations out there with a really good song as background that get high rating just because of the song. i dont mind good animations having good songs, but i hate seing crappy animations getting high ranks because some people vote 5 on the song.

thats just me

Yep, I completely agree. Flashes should be rated for what those involved with the Flash have done, not for what people who weren't involved with the Flash did.

its up to us to stop this newbification. no more 5's on the song!

NO MORE 5'S ON THE SONG!

I completely agree. This phenomena seems to be especially common when it comes to poorly put together collabs with popular songs.

yeah... ive seen soooooooooo many crappy collabs lately with good music that get awards and frontpage... is ridiculous

To be fair on the PS3 video, I was one of the nine people on the internet who hadn't heard it before, and I thought he made it. I still gave it a 5/10, because the animation sucked.

Thats a very good point, I have seen too many people feel a taste of the front page just because they used someones copyrighted song (without permission) and put together a craptastic animation. Also I see other animations with songs that arn't as funny but maybe something the author really likes and puts a awesome video together without the same result. So yes that is a good point. However I will give a good rating on a music video especially if the author composed/wrote the song themselves.

As an animation studio who does all of their own sound and music, I couldn't agree more. We decided from the start that we never wanted to worry about licensing disagreements so we brought aboard two musicians to score our animations. We haven't looked back since.

I agree, but in the few cases where the art is pretty off but the author of the flash also did the music and its good and/or funny, I don't mind giving a good vote.

This is quite true. The one flash of mine that ever won me anything substantial was Horoscope for Today.
:/

I feel you pain, and completely agree.

a lot of the top 50 are lame collabs. with mopey songs.

And I rate these collabs the same way you do.. They only time they get a higher score is when theres a re-envisioning the song itself.

you have to agree that " Maxwell's hammer" does just this.

definately, "What is Love" is another example of an excellent music video that gets my five. I'm not saying that I'm biased against music videos, i'm simply saying that other people are too biased towards them, and rate lame ones as if they were as well done as Maxwell or What is Love.

That's true, I saw the PS3 song thingy... ts slightly Over-rated...

I totally agree with ya. It's mot just with music videos. I got reviews with 0/10-s only because I used certain music which reviewers didn't listen to. But,that's NG. For example,any video with Weird-Al will be accepted.

Well......im not really a fan of music videos on newgrounds....But yes i agree. I saw way too much of dumb, crappy videos who were high-scored ONLY because of the music behind the video.....besides, theres an audio portal who exist actually to house musicians(or DJs...which r good too =D).......

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