Coop's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Adrellia Village #8]

Too short

Another decent showing, but something a little shorter than what I was expecting - you could have put a lot more into the piece itself, giving much more plot, for what it's worth.

Little details caused issue here - the guards for Medralia castle being reflected was poor. I would suggest that you do the cheat, but make sure that the tabard (chest cover) is made to look right, otherwise the whole illusion is ruined.

With how short the episode was, giving us a "previously" section wasn't the way forward, as half of the episode is catching up and then only half is left to give us new material. I like king Jack, but I think that your stock of voice actors is limited, so perhaps consider asking around for more vocal talent, to give you additional dialogue for the pieces. That can only help, especially if they present a professional outlook on their own work.

Something is going to happen with this series, but getting to where this something happens is what you need to do now.

[Review Request Club]

MistyE responds:

Thanks. This was a "break episode" in that it still advanced the plot by having them go to the place they should but they chattered.

With regards to my stock of voice actors, I have 4 or 5 voice actors voicing for Adrellia Village now so that shouldn't be a problem.

The closest an Adrellia Village episode got to recognition was winning daily 7th. My clock movie, however, got 3rd place.

[Chrismissed DE]

More than a little weird

Well, I wish that you'd used more musical cues, as you demonstrated with the end joke that a few different tunes do make a difference to a piece like this and that's all for the good.

The animation is nice and while I'm not exactly sure why the jacket disappears in the first place, it's clearly for a higher purpose later in the piece. The music in my eyes doesn't fit with what you're animating, but that's possibly something to do with the character himself, as opposed to anything else out there.

I feel that the jokes are a little short and there's not much for the characters themselves - it's almost like you've previously established them and we know who they (or in this case he) are (is). You've got some good animation skills and I like the flow of the piece, with the exception of the bloodstains after the main punchline has been delivered.

I've watched it a couple of times and I'm still not sure why a lawnmower would get thrown at the guy - is he really that annoying? The Xmas gag would be one hell of a way to ruin someone's day, as they sit on the doorstep of the pearly gates, looking back at their life alone, not able to sleep, nor eat, despite the fact that the Xmas dinner smells so good. See, I've written two more jokes for you, without a lot of thought. There's a simple chance to get more body in the piece.

[Review Request Club]

ToonCastleTV responds:

Haha thanks. Also It's a snowblower not a lawnmower. Why? because I wanted to do an extreme pose of the boy "Chris", and I'm a cartoon violence loving Punk >:D Yea man, I had a script written with more jokes dude for when he got to heaven's gates but I didn't have enough time to do it. What was going to happen was God was going to freak at him basiclaly for interrupting jesus's birthday party but O well! Maybe next year! And yeah, I'm a lot happier with the character animation in this one than last years. Really goes to show puting an ease to an action shows. The jacket disapering was a originally a fuck up when i was posing it out and i did a bunch of poses later without him having it and was like fuck it ill cover it up somehow =P Thanks for the feedback!

[B-Lated ClockDay Post-It]

Broken preloader, doesn't really recover

Well, this piece isn't the best, not by a long shot. I like the way that you've decided to make it around the size of a Post It! note and ran wih the idea of it. For reference, you may wish to scale the size of the piece up to actual, or even slightly bigger - you're probably 33% smaller than a Post It! note.

The preloader got stuck on a loop and I had to right click and play to get into the piece, which didn't help, though once it got started, we could see what was what.

I think that the various themes that you used here were nice and things like StrawberryClock doing backflips was a great idea. With the break piece between the two, perhaps you could have had an animated Strawberry flicking through the pad, with a Giant animated "HAPPY CLOCK DAY" being picked out on the pages, as he watches, may have been a better idea.

Some of the image quality was sacrificed, either by the quality of the original drawings, the scanner / photograph definition, or even struggles to align the images in each instance. These little details can make all the difference, so please take the time to get them right, as they do pay dividends.

[Review Request Club]

ToonCastleTV responds:

Yea, I dont know why he preloader did that... I didn't engineer it! =/
Lol and yea the strawberry flicking through is a good idea.
I tried my best man with my camera to take the best pictures I could, and used photoshop the best I could throughout, and tried the best I could to align this. The animations are all on scale just not the post it's through out. If I had been able to get into my school and scan them this may have turned out cleaner for sure, but alias I did what I could in August. I still have the post-its I drew on, so maybe I will re configure this and add more to it but this was soley for fun more or less, and it was! I did all the drawing in my basment window on a sunny days =)

[this is who I am]

Not really a video

Well, you've made a low quality slideshow of various images regarding lions, set to the tune that I can only assume is called "I Am A Lion". The concept is good, but not one that I'm expecting to do very well on Newgrounds.

Did you draw any of the images, or take any of the photos? If so, you may be deserving of more credit, though i suspect not, so I have rated it low. From what you've provided us with, some of the images are distorted, by your panning across them, poor stretching of them and even badly clipped images, that result in a massive white border around them, which looks out of place, particularly when you move to the enxt piece, that takes up the whole of the screen.

The audio quality is awful and as a result, I am left feeling hollow, as there seems nothing rewarding from either of the major aspects of this piece - not your work, combined with someone else's song, that is badly distorted in quality.

Some other people have made better slideshows that this one, by having a few key rules for them:

1) No stretching - the images are not supposed to be animated and as a result, they remain as stills.

2) Regulation image size. If you must, work on the background, so that there is something other than just the white surrounding the image.

3) Set times per image - 5 seconds per image, then fading into the next one would be nice to program and it's a simple thing, so it could teach you a few bits and pieces about the programs.

4) Your own work - yes, there are piece out there that use other people's work, but make one about a portfolio of your own pieces, that way people can get more of an idea about you.

[Review Request Club]

[Adrellia Village #34]

Audio let it down

I like this piece and the plot being exposed quickly, with little fuss, though the audio was one big carbuncle, which sapped the enjoyment from me, during this piece.

For the audio quality, I'd suggest that you start by either getting better recording equipment (I'm not sure this is an issue), or recording a little further from the microphone and spending some time equalising it, to get the most from it.

I think that the plot is good, as are some of the jokes. I would have preferred the guys to walk in the opposite direction of the arrow and then come back past it, heading where the arrow points, with the wizard saying "What do you know, he must be smarter than he looks."

There is a good chance to take this further and I'd like to see that done, but I'll reserve judgement, until I've seen a little more of the series itself, as I'm still relatively new to this.

[Review Request Club]

MistyE responds:

Thank you! The "he's smarter than he looks" suggestion will work great actually. I appreciate your review, and to grasp the entire plotline, watching the previous episodes is important. From episodes 1-12 I recapped all of the important parts but then I trashed that idea for some reason.

[Adrellia Village #12]

Not your finest hour

I think that the lack of previous episodes in this particular case has cost me, because I suffer, watching without context and while the plot moves forward, it wasn't as enjoyable as one of your other pieces.

The awkward silence was awkward, but it's not supposed to be awkward for those watching it. Perhaps have the King break the silence, so you can actually have some dialogue, such as demanding to be untied and Drake saying that he's almost got it, while the mooks behind him idle about awkwardly.

The video has been compressed to such a state that the quality is severely compromised. I'd rather see it take a lot longer to load and be a much better quality, overall.

Not that it's put me off the series, but please request them in order, so we can see what the hell is going on!

[Review Request Club]

MistyE responds:

Interesting review. I'll be sure to request them in order, though expect the first few requests - the first episodes - not to be as good.

[Adrellia Village #3]

Setting the stage

I think that this is the sort of thing that we can enjoy seeing more of. The jokes involved with other's misfortunes in every walk of life are quite something, being that everyone likes in some small way to laugh at them, even if it is just inwardly.

The animation style is basic, but now that you've set the benchmark with the earlier episodes, there is little that you can do to change it up, aside from minor tweaks to how everything flows.

I would have made one major change - not using the Kill Bill target cue the second time around. Perhaps play some other piece from the film, while Drake leaves and stop it with the record scratching noise, before quickly panning to the frozen soldier in the ice cube. Yes, he has been hit by the spell bouncing off and it's a nice closure / call back gag, though I'd have maybe had an ice amulet lying in the floor next to him, for double the laughs.

And haven't we all met someone like that, for giving us directions. You always get either the really smart one, or a village idiot, so no moderation at all. I'll be interested to see how that pans out in the next episode.

[Review Request Club]

MistyE responds:

Thank you for your review! I'm glad you got the frozen soldier joke along with the other reviews - half of the people I showed it to didn't understand it.

The next episode is another episode that sets the characters up. More for humor, though since the series doesn't focus on the other characters until episode 38 and up.

[Admincraft]

Good fun

Ah, the joys of minecraft. I think it could have used a little setup play, with you guys creating more of an environment to live in, make sure that you're above the serfs, before Ross' little incident - perhaps you've been there for a week and you've only managed to attract half a dozen friends to the server and only one of them likes to pop in every now and again, to see what's changed.

Then Ross gets the idea and tweets it, before the whole thing comes crashing down. COuld we see more of the Swain's hand wringing being exposed into some god-awful evil plan?

Great animation, drawing and sound - I love the small, yet effective team that you've got together here, it could certainly spawn more episodes of this, after you start a new server and don't tweet the address of it to hundreds, if not thousands of followers.

[Review Request Club]

[Adrellia Village #38.1]

Poor quality

Sorry, not really the humour I was expecting and the whole effect seemed to be somewhat dimmed by the lack of "finish" to the piece. The converter program that you use to make it into an .swf file seems to have taken the quality down quite a bit by compressing it. If you have issues with the 10Mb file size limit, perhaps contact Tom, as the limit is easily changeable to a size which more befits your animation.

Right, the sound needs some work, as with the scream, you've just looped part of it to make it sound longer. It may not sound this way to the untrained ear, but this didn't sound right to me. The sound samples for the crashes, explosion and so forth seemed to work well, so maybe it's the voice acting / recording that needs some work.

On top of that, your animations style is decent, but not exactly pushing the boat out. It reminds me of Cyanide and Happiness, though the backgrounds aren't as pleasing on the eye. The bookcase which fell over, for example is an horrendous example of perspective gone wrong. More time and effort into that aspect would stop you from tapering two parallel lines together on a cubic piece of furniture.

There is hope, as you create so many of these, but as with anything, it's a learning curve and as you advance, you'll learn more techniques and you'll not make the same mistakes.

[Review Request Club]

MistyE responds:

Part of the reason this scene was removed was its heavily reliance on slapstick humour (as you addressed in your review) and its failure to progress the story. I simply uploaded this here as a "special feature" of Adrellia Village #38.

I didn't notice the bookcase until you pointed it out, and I will make sure mistakes like that aren't present in future eousides,

I used to pump Adrellia Village episodes every few days, but now, I've slowed down so that the animation will look nicer and the writing will be better.

[Adrellia Village #37.7]

Good humour

I think that you've come up with a good script and have animated it well. With the recital of the script, perhaps between the setup and the start of the next line, you should pause more - don't rush these things. "What is stuff, you say?" came in too quickly for my linking.

You've done well on the writing part and while I'm not as impressed with the drawing side of things, you've still made it more than passable. Using images that you've sourced from Google and interspersing them with your own drawing is a terrible faux pas, preventing you from getting the piece exactly where I feel that it should be. Take the images as research and draw them by hand - yes, it is more time consuming, but it will look so much better in the long run.

Perhaps a symbol for your currency. A "C" with a vertical line through it, in the place that a pound or dollar sign would reside would be a great start, since it shows what you're after. On top of that, don't read the whole description of the currency out each time. The first time should suffice, while calling them "coins" afterward would be just what you need.

Finally, why is the guy in a drawing room or library, as opposed to being in a shop? I know that Almandines 'n' Stuff is supposed to be a retailer of some sort, but even an upper class jeweller has a good looking shop establishment to peddle goods from.

[Review Request Club]