Coop's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[2birds1stone]

Disappointing

I think that there was something in there that I wanted to see you do, but never got the chance to see it. With the type of flash cartoons you see on Newgrounds these days, you tend to expect the violence, the blood, gore and all the trimmings, to shock, possibly even to offend, but at worst, to showcase the artist's ability. Here, we see your drawing skills and a limited expose on your ability to animate:

Taking the birds as they are, with various themes of having both of them killed by one stone, you need to take it one stop further and actually animate the consequences of them getting hit by the stone. You could play dodgeball with them and have one die, before picking up the stone and trying again. There is a lot of scope for the plot of this and stopping at three occurrences just seems to be selling you a little short, in all honesty.

Good potential with the piece all told and I love the way that you've made the preloader - I'd perhaps consider a lorry delivering stones to the set and one bird writing up a long number of takes on a clapper board, though that's just my sense of occasion.

[Review Request Club]

evanarmagast responds:

something about animating the cute birds brutally destroying each other seemed warped to me. like, it would ruin the whole lighthearted sense of it. i personally felt that showing everything but kind of gave it a sense that it was a kids cartoon. although, i guess i could take a happy tree friends approach. completely brutal murders of adorable woodland creatures by other adorable woodland creatures. they may be a sequel idea now, thank you for your input and for the review.

[The Movie Movie]

Clever, surreal and funny

Well, the plot is never short of surprises in your films, I can say that for sure. I think that with the way that the interpretation of the whole film idea became a mime session really was where it took off, since you were building it up nicely, then added the forcefield gag, which still gets me in stitches. Given that you probably brainstorm your productions like this anyway, when one of you dies on the X360 and you have to take a few minute break. Perhaps a beer or other beverage was called for during this interlude, so Nick could question "Is this stuff stronger than usual?"

Right, little hints and tips aside, it seems like the video quality is better - better hardware, or bigger filesizes to blame for this? I think that it enables you to come up with much better pieces and of course, this was the sort of thing that led on to the Pyroscape saga, so hopefully it shows that you were improving at the time.

Keep it up, yada yada ya.

[Review Request Club]

Fro responds:

I believe when we made this we couldn't legally drink. :P

[BTS 2 Trailer]

Chilling

Ah, the suspense that was the teaser trailer for Beneath the Sheets 2. I remember it well, with all of the shit - use a Thesaurus, to come up with other synonyms, for the love of god! Okay, my Thesaurus doesn't have an entry for shit, so try my own abridged version:

Shit - Crap, poop, turd, faeces, skidmark, dump and so forth.

Right, the quality is a little low, but I'm sure that's down to filesize restrictions and YouTube or other specialist video hosting site would be better for this. I'd love to see medals again, but it's not really possible with teaser trailers, though it has been done before. Something like a tag for candid camera, when Nick is driving, for example.

Why were the shorts that disgusting? I'm not sure I really want to know, but I needed some filler text to make this review look worthwhile and meaningful. I certainly agree with your policy of resubmitting all of your old works, since we need to keep reviewing these, to make up the old deficit to my review and responses score that you caused all of that time ago. I'm not bitter, honest.

Looking forward to the real thing... Oh, wait.

[Review Request Club]

Fro responds:

We actually made a script for a movie once where we were trying to think of funny words to describe someone going to the bathroom. Ha, good times. We thought of about 20 different lines.

The shorts had a scene of their own, but we found it made the movie too long and it really didn't help. It involved Nick washing his shorts after shitting them in the first episode of Beneath the Sheets.

[Wales and Gary]

Needs a Welsh accent

What an hilarious turn of events - took me a little while (1-2 seconds) to get up to speed with the plot that Wales was the country, not just the surname used by Princes William and Harry, but it was still pretty funny.

I was surprised not to hear that Wales had a Welsh accent and on top of that, the blurb at the end sounded more Liverpudlian than Welsh, so your voice actor needs a lesson in regional dialects ;)

Sure, the piece is a little off-the-wall, but the humour is well presented. Disappearing through the ceiling was well complemented by dropping some plasterboard after a slight pause. I think that you've considered this nicely and it shows a good depth in the writing department.

In spite of this depth on the writing front, there was no joke about the Welsh national pastime - fornicating with sheep. I thought that this was a shame, since the weather was overdone and there are other things you can take the piss out of the Welsh for, such as their national dish of cheese on toast, the language, the accent, the fact that they are actually English and so forth.

Still, I loved this piece and I'd love to see more of Detective Wales in the future.

[Review Request Club]

[Saving Thanksgiving]

TURKEY!

Wow, what an epic tale of completely wrong and disturbing proportions. I love the way that you've paid attention to some D&D clichés and have addressed them, with the way that no-one ever seems to play a half-orc rogue, because their size or brainpower somehow makes them incapable. It's still possible and Slice was a fantastic character. I'd love to see this party have a further few episodes, as they'll be sure to get into trouble and fight their way out of it... I'm not sure what Sam's class is though...

All of that dysfunction puts together into a well balanced party and everyone seems to get along well, which is nice, even when the racial / social bickering starts up as filler. I think there were a few issues that could be addressed, though:

Turkeys... and most other poultry / game birds are stuffed in the neck hole, not the arse. The stuffing rests between the wings, if you carved that one, so technically, Sam stuffed him good and proper! I love that Slice sat atop the Turkey as if he had claimed it all for himself.

I'd have loved to see the gang take the turkey back to town and feed the locals with it, since there was obviously too much for just the five of them. You could have had a meal celebrating the return of Sam's father, when the three patients and possibly a few more characters enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner. Perhaps even a sketch with Slice and Dryears pulling the wishbone and having something silly happen there - just a little sketch, but these things are additional material for you.

Still, I loved it and I can't wait to see more from you and hopefully these characters.

[Review Request Club]

[First Encounter]

Not my thing

While I appreciate that this is one of the pieces that you made years ago and it was on a DS, which is now an outdated media and so forth, shouldn't thins just be left there? I mean, I've been writing stories for years now and some of my earlier works, the pieces which I used to learn the techniques are obsolete now - the work I do now is much better and that's what I want people to see. I'm almost embarrassed by those stories, to tell the truth.

Yes, there are techniques that you've learned from this and back in the day, had Newgrounds existed in its present form, with the sort of hardware that we employ, getting this on the Flash Portal would have been a lot easier and you'd have got the feedback.

As for the animation itself - take out the quality issues from the VHS videocamera and so forth, you could have used some colour on the drawings, even if it was going to take you a lot longer to make the piece, it would have been worth it.

Sounds and effects would have been a nice addition, but the constraints of your hardware was the main issue there - I hope that you've learned enough since progressing to flash, so that you can take these steps to make your pieces that much better now.

[Review Request Club]

[Super Mario 3D Land in 2D]

Yeah, that's about right

My god, those things are annoying - having to keep your head perfectly still and aligned with the DS to get the 3D effect and then when you put it down after 2 minutes, your neck feel like you've been in a headlock for a few days with a rather burly rugby player.

Clever animation, hot topic, great use of 3D to actually get the point across and one of the most harrowing screams that you'll ever hear come from the lips of Mario, to my knowledge really does make this short fantastic, but you could have done more.

Luigi could have come along wearing silly 3D glasses and saying how it all looks so realistic and then spot Mario lying on the floor, burst eyes bleeding everywhere. This could end in various ways, so I'll leave that there as a plot hook for you to say "It was a good idea, but..." to later.

[Review Request Club]

Zictor responds:

Yeah I could have done more but it was the main gag I wanted to get across... that and showing off some of my skills. Got an Xmas animation in the works and I wanted something to bridge the gap between Halloween and Xmas...

I also have a new Mario animation in the works, it'll be 2 minutes long as opposed to this 20 seconds... Hopefully that'll be the January animation!

Also it's Dave from the NG meetup if you didn't know :P

[==Firefight==]

A stepping stone

You're not going to come away from an hiatus and be able to make things like Mastermind or Larry and the Gnomes straight off the bat. If you are, you've been wasting your talent!

Okay, so the drawing standards leave a lot to be desired and with the way that the piece looks by the end of the animation, you're not really filling me with confidence, but give it time and effort to change the way that things turn out.

It was short, clunky and the guns both sounded the same - a revolver does not have the same ring to it as an AK-47. Advanced users will be firing 3 round bursts with the AK, while basic users will fire entire magazines in one burst, filling the sky (and not much else) with hot lead.

The headshot was gruesome, yet uncalled for - the bang, coupled with half of the head just disappearing wasn't to bad, though debris and ichor would have been nice to add effect, as would the burst fire.

Plot and voices were irrelevant here and I'd like to see more from you, because while this piece is getting rid of the rust, there will be other pieces that you make, which are certainly a step, if not a leap forward from where you are here.

[Review Request Club]

Phantox responds:

Firearms have the same sound when they shoot. It's not the gun that shoots the bullet, it's the gunpowder and all gunpowder is made the same.

Also, semi auto is the way that most professional shooters fire. I have an arsenal big enough to know this.

Thanks for your review

[Sealed Fate]

Awesome!

A very funny piece, that has some very good drawing and animation to boot - you're clearly one of the better animators from your class and I'd be surprised and a little dismayed if you don't come back with more animations, both over the course of your studies at the University of Pretoria and for fun, when you create "extra-curricular" pieces, judging by the range of stuff that we get on here, you'll be very welcome.

The seal is the part of the animation that you need to work on the most, because I was a little disappointed with the shape of it - I just think it didn't taper enough for my liking and while it had the cute face, I still think that there's room for improvement, even from one so accomplished as you.

You had a very good use of sounds and music, to make this one of the highest class pieces that I've seen, as I've said. There is room to make this longer and give yourself additional things in here, such as voices, but that can be saved for later pieces. If you need voice actors, then there are plenty of places to look, including here on Newgrounds. Those of us with the equipment are able to set up some decent voices and can give you extra things, but it's all to do with what's in your requirements and your design briefs for the submissions you had to make.

I'd like to hear what grade you got for this and where your tutor / lecturer thinks you can improve. Keep up the good work and best of luck with your course.

[Review Request Club]

[Salvadore the Snail]

Very good

A nice start to your animating career. I think that you've given the whole piece a nice concept, considering that there's very little show of emotion from the main protagonist, considering that he's hidden by an enormous (and dashing) moustache.

The way that you've made a slug the bad guy is a nice touch as well, though you could have gone for their common enemy, the song thrush, as they like nothing better than to pick snails up and bash them senseless on a rock, to get the mollusc inside out for a tasty snack. Still, the salty payload couldn't have killed the thrush, had the duel ensued that way.

I look forward to seeing more of your work, especially ones that have better lines - the pencil drawn effect that you'd used needs more detail, to look like you've sketched with more than just one line for each part of the drawing. On top of that, there are things like vocals that you can work towards adding in, as well as colour, but in the tradition of Hollywood, you've gone with a silent piece to start with and I'm sure you'll add the other techniques to your repertoire shortly, if you haven't already, so that you can showcase additional work.

Best of luck with your course.

[Review Request Club]