It does my heart good to know that there are still talented up-and-coming animators such as yourselves keeping the flames of stick warfare alive. Great work, and keep doing what you're doing fellas!

Rock on, dude. I applaud your courage for doing something like this, and on Madness Day no less.

As for the toon itself, I would say this is pretty solid for a first attempt. Let me tell you, I have definitely seen worse. The faces you stuck over the madness dudes were pretty funny, and worked well for something as short and simple as this. But if you do end up continuing it, I'd at least have them change expression every now and then if you keep rolling with that idea.

Here's something else you could try. Go and watch a couple of the latest Madness episodes again, and pay attention to the characters when they're idle. Very rarely will they be completely static. There's always some form of movement going on, even if it's just breathing.

Another thing. I don't know what FPS you animated this at, but I seem to recall that Krinkels animates at 60-something? Or maybe it was 50-something... Either way, I would try stepping up your frame rate to allow for much smoother, less robotic-looking motion for the characters. I haven't done anything higher 36 myself, so I can only imagine how difficult it probably is dealing with that many frames. But, it'll be worth it in the end, I'm sure :)

Just thought of something else. GUIDE LAYERS and EASING. These are two tools that would help you immensely toward the goal of smoother, more realistic animation when using a lot of tweens. My last bit of advice to you would be to pop open a tutorial here on NG and get reeeeeaaaaaaal familiar with those concepts.

Actually, I lied. One more thing: Camera usage. Zooming in/out when the main character enters/exits a room is a good start, but you can do so much more with the cam that just that. Move it around during the action, shake it a bit, zoom in on spots where the character is looking, etc. You did a nice job on that in the last scene; more of that kind of camera movement makes for a more dynamic and engaging animation.

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Not bad for a first attempt

I'd actually say you did rather well. I've seen plenty of people's first sprite movies, and yours certainly goes in the better half of them. That said, here're some pointers:

The first thing I noticed was Hades' idle animation is all over the place. Very shakey. It's distracting and unnatural-looking, which you don't want, especially in a sprite film. This is easy to fix though. Go into the symbol for that idle animation and turn the onion skin tool on, the button should be attached to the bottom of your timeline. Using that, you should get be able to get the keyframes to line up perfectly so there's no more jittering between frames. I would apply this to every single sprite you ever animate, as it makes them all look much more crisp and professional.

Secondly, I would take the time to go over your Hades sprites again. Mainly, it's his body fur that lacks significant shading. It's important to try and have natural-looking value progression when making sprites, especially when using a lot of dark greys and blacks. On this point my best advice would be to use three shades of grey to produce the effect of lighting, instead of just two. Also, try to avoid solid horizantal or vertical walls of pixels that are the same shade as much as possible. When trying to produce the effect of shading on sprites, diagonal progressions are your best friend.

I'm a Sonic OC spriter myself, so I know just how much of a pain in the ass all of that sounds like, but the results will be well worth it if you want your own character to stand out and be memorable among the thousands of sprite OCs out there. I don't mean to sound overly critical on this, as from what I've seen so far you seem to have established some excellent starting points for future sprite development. They just need that final bit of polish.

That's enough technical stuff for now though. As for the concept, I'd call it a demo or a test run, and a fairly good one. I don't think I've ever seen Sandbag fight back before, so nice idea there. A random fight scene is as good a place as any to start with. Good luck in the future bud, hope I helped.

Got 15.7, pretty good, I like it. Unique idea, and excellent music. Nice touch allowing us to hit the radio and swap between 4 songs. Well done!

I liked it. Controls were ultra smooth, tune was catchy, the ships looked fantastic, and the lack of background can be forgiven on account of the impeccable framerate. At least half of the upgrade system was solid; I can't speak to any of the defensive ones because I didn't bother with them at all, but I can say for certain it was quite fun to keep on increasing my bullet count. I'm a sucker for modules/options/pods/floaty, orbity dealies that help me shoot things. The game kept me interested and engaged the whole way through, and I thought the laser ships were a nice touch that added a bit more variety and action. I ended with 30 dmg, 3 cannons and 6 modules, after wave 35. And then I played wave 36 so I could hear the song again. My only disappointments were the lack of boss battles, and the fact that new enemy types stopped appearing too soon for my liking. As far as possible improvement goes, addressing those things would be great for starters. Also, I noticed there's no graphic or sound that alerts you to the fact that you've just taken damage. Other than those hangups, you've got a really simple, solid game here. I wouldn't say it necessarily needs improvement, but if you do decide to carry further on with this, you've got a great foundation and I'm sure whatever it becomes would be fantastic. Mind you, I know nothing about this "construct 2 touch" jam, so... Yep. Just reviewing the game as I see it, and I like what I see.

WAY too addicting

but I love it. It took me quite a few tries to beat the first three or so levels, but it gets really fun once you learn a bit about what to do and not do in order to live longer than about 4 seconds XD It gets much easier once you admit the opponents have a faster reaction time than you and will NOT die no matter how many times you try to play chicken with them lol. My only complaint is that the last stage didn't last nearly long enough. I played through the whole game a second time just so I could face him again, haha. Anyways great job on the programming, mate, those little !@#$%^&s are really hard to kill.

Am I disappointed?

Nah. We were promised Newgrounds Chat, and that's what we got.

Listen to Mizox

i think you ought to try rhis one again, taking his advice to heart. Also, very, very subtle drums may be a nice addition. If not for the improvement at 1:38, this would've been a 6. Nice addition there, though, and it helped me tolerate the guitar. Also, I think I hear faint piano in the background, which would probably sound nice if it were more audible.

I like it.

Frankly I feel it's nearly impossible to do justice to this song by way of a remix, but I feel you made a nice attempt, and I like the result. I'm not such a fan of the first 10 seconds or so, but the rest of your arrangement made that instrument work. Aside from that I liked it all, especiallay how you did 1:28-2:10. Very well done. I think I'm going to have to listen to more of your stuff now.