Coop's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Big Pop!]

Creationist joy!

Well, this certainly puts a different spin on things - I hope that Richard Dawkins is watching, though his denial of any possibility of a god-like being is so deep rooted, that it makes me look like I'm preaching that there is a god and we should stop what we're doing to worship him. This is not the case, I don't know what's out there and quite like it that way.

On to the animation - yes, it's got some good quirks and adds a very different outlook to Felix Mendelssohn's music, but in a similar way to Fantasia, by Disney, this almost gives us a darker parody of Rite of Spring, by Stravinsky, if you're willing to expand upon that metaphor for a moment.

The bubbles were the genius behind this piece, with the way that they changed colour in their infancy, then started to become developed and more industrialised, before descending through the tragic downward spiral of war and their ultimate destruction. I love how the "god alien" blows a new batch of bubbles, then fades into the background, so no-one can really know it it's there, a poignant metaphor for humans and faith.

I look forward to seeing more of your work

Macchia responds:

hey, thank you really for your fantastic review,
Now I'm feeling something like Tim Burton mixed with Michio Kaku!

p.s.
Theoretical physics, latest multiverse hypothesis prove i'm right:
http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/news/universe-bubble-lets-check

ok, I'm joking, thanks again!
:D

[Op. 100 "Kingdom" 3D Film]

An opera in flash. Well, maybe not an opera, because they have words, but this is close!

Well, what needs to be said? It's fantastic, the piece conveys a lot of emotion and the gravity of how this piece unfolds is paced really well. I love that you focus more on the vistas, more than on the individual characters, involved within this play.

In some of the scenes, you panned over blurred foreground images to show a crisp background, which really looked fantastic. Would it be too much of a stretch to focus on the foreground and then when you can see the background, alter the focus to set the scene, as they used to in the movies?

Some issues did come to light, however - why is the king / leader in movement 1 not armed at all? Surely, if he were dressed for war, i.e. wearing a full suit of plate mail, then he would have a sword. If you watch historical films, you will see that the leader types give orders, by waving their sword about.

In movement 2, the door getting kicked in looked too formulated - it swings open, then falls very uniformly to the floor. Something like this needs to be addressed, as it would never fall like that in reality - have it come off one hinge first and crash to the floor in a more haphazard way.

In movement 3, the sunlight is at a steep angle, which is fine - the dropping light hits the floor, yet you have squares of what I can only perceive to be sunlight on the right hand wall, well above where these beams of light fall. This contradicts the physics that you've got, unless you have this set on a world with two suns, which is a bit of a leap, if I'm being picky (I am, but that's just how I write reviews)

While movement 4 was rather sad, it didn't feel long enough to give the impression of the fall - we just see the aftermath, rather than how someone actually fell. Perhaps this is just an issue with semantics, as opposed to a glaring error, that needs addressing.

Still, I really enjoyed it. I look forward to more of your work.

[Review Request Club]

samulis responds:

Hey Coop, thanks for the great review. :)

The king isn't armed because he's a non-standard character and giving him a sword to hold would take several minutes to do and I was trying to rush that shot as it was the last one of the first day and somewhere around 1:10 AM.

The door kick had to be keyframed in... and after I saw it, I agree, it looks terrible... but it has a comical and metaphorical side- that these little characters could kick down this big ass door.

Do note that there are additional windows right below the dome that are out of sight in those shots I believe... the "god-rays" are props and rather annoying to get in place at that... when I tried one on the windows above, it ended up looking poor. Although it isn't entirely accurate, it doesn't look so weird.

I decided to do movement 4 that way simply because iClone (the 3D program) can't handle more than say, 20 characters at a time... nor do I have props designed to break. Animating a large battle and things burning and breaking isn't really possible then, so I had to stick with ruins and little faded overlays of the past. My main inspiration for this was the opening to Age of Empires I where you have a battle and then you see ruins and they tell the story of the end of the battle through flashbacks.

[Wacky Astronomy ADVENTURE]

Good, but lacking something...

I think that the humour in here, really isn't my kettle of fish, with the supernova killing off some members of the Star Syndicate. I tend to stay away from Newgrounds Politics, as it's only going to cause problems :P With the second one, I wasn't so overstruck with the pictures that you gave us for the lyrics of Happy Together. A shame really, as it's a good song.

Finally, the taking away of my entertainment, by seeing something educational and replacing it with a Clock Crew "I'm not going to do this" one liner, was a little harsh. Even for a joke. Yes, I laughed... well, smiled a little, but that's beside the point.

Try putting more effort in to making the drawings look good first, before animating them, as it's still letting you down, I feel.

[Review Request Club]

MistyE responds:

that's not the star syndicate lmao
thanks for the review

[Yotam and Adam]

Short, but still funny.

I like the way that this piece panned out, as I've seen similar things on the TV before - a comedian puts voices for people on a piece of VT that gets played for the audience, allowing for his own comedic twist on events. I've never seen it derailed quite like this, as someone catches the person involved and calls them out on it. I loved the way that it worked along with the petulance of the imitator, which was just the icing on the cake, personally.

I would have liked to see a little more colour in the proceedings - yes, I appreciate it is a style parody, but I can also see where it would have looked better, even with a basic colour set, as opposed to black outlines on a white background.

Keep up the good work, what does LazyMuffin think?

[Review Request Club]

Adam-Beilgard responds:

He thinks I'm handsome and funny and smart!

[Funny School Things Redux]

Long winded, but funny.

Some good shorts in there, some bad ones and some that are a little indifferent. I'm not sure about the characters still facing forward and "bouncing" off screen, it makes the animation look a little untidy, as if you can't be bothered to make a walking animation for them.

The writing shows good observation and a unique perspective that school-age kids have on the world, particularly with things that they have heard in other places and don't quite understand (the rape joke, for example), plus the ability to twist a line of dialogue from innocent to innuendo laden in less than half a second. I still do that and I'm nearly 30... there may be something wrong with me, though.

School has given you some good memories, treasure them and come back to us, when you've got some for College, as I bet they are just as funny.

[Review Request Club]

Aqlex responds:

Yeah, I actually purposely did the "bouncing" because if I had to create walk cycles for each of the characters in this thing, I don't think I'd have ever gotten it done. This was a re-animated version of an animation that I made many years ago, so I have since then gone into college, and have already started a list of similar situations that I could turn into an animation. I'm not sure if I'm going to yet, but they are written down in case I ever decide to do it. Thanks for the review =)

[Central Bwankers]

Best. Loop. Ever.

Because this is the most humorous, yet realistic take on what goes on behind closed doors at the banks, Governments and fiscal policy makers in any sort of vaguely organised country, that seems to have massive financial problems.

I've clicked your advert, but I think it will only be worth about half a pebble, when you get paid out. This is a shame, because you're one of the animators on Newgrounds that deserves to get something out of his work. Still, with capitalism collapsing around us, we can still have a laugh. Kind of like a guy standing on top of Mount Vesuvius, glaring down at Pompeii and yelling "Haha! You're in for a roasting now!"

The best thing that this piece has is the set loop of different sayings for the greying bald guy. I though that the third one was funniest, but the fourth, when he changed into... I'm not going to say, you'll have to watch it 4 times, NGers! That was hilarious. I'm just waiting on the 5th now, in case this gets even better... Oh, it went back to the start.

Right, now that I've watched it all the way through, I know it's awesome. Great work, keep it up!

[Review Request Club]

Sexual-Lobster responds:

Thanks man, I shall invest this half-pebble wisely, and some day it shall become an entire pebble, which the bank will use as collateral to loan out 50 pebbles to other people.

[Pip the Robot: Trapped]

Awesome short again!

Wow, I love watching this - the way that you've put in such a lot of effort (and with quite a sizeable team, I might add), to get this far, with some frankly brilliant animation, nice sound effects, a zany plot and that little something that just makes it work. I guess you could call it a soul, but I'm not drunk enough to come up with philosophy like that on the spot.

I love the sub-plot with the controlling robots, which seem to be conducting a social experiment on Pip (poor guy), while throwing things into this maze, to force him to make snappy decisions. Such a good thing that robots can't feel pain, otherwise he would have experienced a lot of it by now, just from falling down the stairs.

It's a crying shame that you only managed fifth place, because this deserved a lot higher. For such a small file, relatively speaking, when you consider the quality and the presentation, I still want to see more than just a short of it, which is where my main issue comes in. Hell, I'd love to see a 20 minute episode of this for Xmas, instead of reruns of Wallace & Grommit. That's what I'm getting at, this is the sort of thing that the kids will love.

[Review Request Club]

Zictor responds:

Thanks again for your review. You're in luck with the Christmas Episode, however it won't be 20 minutes long that would take my entire life away haha. I'm currently rethinking the current direction they're going in as its becoming a really complex story so bare with and I'm trying to simplify them! Also if you go visit the other places I post stuff you can see more progress as it develops. I've just given Pip facial expressions which is on my youtube now! Go check it out! Haha.

[Pip the Robot: Button]

Awesome short!

Well, I always like to see your animation and this one was no disappointment. You've presented a lovely piece, with well designed characters and a well designed 3D look to the characters. The plot was off the wall and I did love the way that it unfolded, gradually building up, but also allowing us to see the world from the point of view of the TV faced robot, where it appears that all of his stuff is being stolen from right in front of him.

I wonder if Pip will find some sort of button at the end of this seemingly endless maze, that he has been left at. Keep up the good work and at least give Sarah an author / writer credit on here. You know you want to!

[Review Request Club]

Zictor responds:

Thanks man, Sarah is working on a script for a future Pip short but until then I've got the rest covered :P

Next part should be up within a week or 2 so I'll send you a PM letting you know of it's appearance.

[Iteration]

Rather misses the point of NATA - Newgrounds Annual Tournament of Animation, when you don't so much animate, as move things around within the scene. The story is told in the most boring voice possible and the subtitles fell so far out of sync with the spoken word, I had trouble deciphering the plot.

Seriously, this is something to drop the animation on and write the script for - let the writers of this community have a look, before de-constructing it a little, assisting you with plot exposition and then you come back and have another crack at the animation side of things.

When it comes to the actual animation, throw in more movement and increase the drama - the narrator should be secondary and these additional scenes could be fleshed out a bit, to include a harder hitting piece of cinematography.

It's a start, but it needs a lot of work to make it past the open round.

[Review Request Club]

DimanaTech responds:

I would have to agree with you. Animation is not a strong point using the technique I used for this particular project with the time frame I was set to.

I will also definitely conduct more collaboration with the community on future projects. I was not able to contact some of the people I had planned with time to work before the deadline. That included sounds such as voice actors, and other important bits which I had to pull off last minute.

While it is not perfect, it definitely has helped me experiment and try new techniques that will help me in future projects. I'm glad people got to see it.
Thank you for your time and helpful review.

[A Goomba's Life Ep 5 (S2)]

It seems like there are improvements here from what I recall fo the last few episodes that I've watched, which is a great thing.

What needs work is the volume levels for your various voices, as some of them are drowned out by others and with musical cues in there of differing levels, I keep having to adjust the volume of my computer, to cope with this, which does distract.

Subtitles could be better utilised, to combat the quieter voices, but when the Goomba is talking and in the background, Yoshi messing with the computer is drowning out the forward dialogue, this does negatively impact the piece.

Using at least two references from mainstream cartoons is risky, particularly with the cut to Adam West from Family Guy, laughing, but also Malfunctioning Eddie from Futurama shouting "WHAT?!", can be a little too far. Perhaps sticking to the sound alone, as opposed to the animation will benefit the whole production more.

The fourth wall break didn't seem too bad and I still managed to keep up with the plot of this one, so it's a step or two in the right direction.

[Review Request Club]

DemonicDragon93 responds:

Hey Coop Nice to see you reviewing again. With the Volume Control. The Biggest problem i have there. Is i live in Military barracks and I can't really speak up as loud as i want but i'll take the chance from now on. When it comes to the Mainstream cartoons. I don't like to Abuse References from Mainstream cartoons but i feel i can get some slapsticks from it randomly.

When it comes to the Subtitles I was trying a Different Mechanic. The Previous Episodes was forced. I got these subtitles Optional. I got to keep control of the volumes with sfxs. But as always your reviews are professional and Very helpful. I appreciate all the reviews you've done for so far.