Coop's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Friendship.]

Really well created

Wow, this is something that I never expected. The whole experience is one of joy, then tinged with something sad and even a little sinister towards the end. I loved the way that the emotions that are being conveyed blend nicely into one another, presenting a very nice animation as a whole.

Granted, I can see the joins between your animation styles, but is that really a problem here? I don't think it is, even though one is smooth, detailed and flows as an animation almost as much as something filmed professionally would, while another is made by the almost rough lines of the crow's wings and so forth. The way that it became angry with the boy was impressively put across with the drawing and animation style. I had to read the notes for that part, but now the voice makes sense.

I wonder from the script itself, how much you actually deviated? The whole script seems to have given you a very stiff challenge, that you've made a very good piece from this.

[Review Request Club]

funkycaveman responds:

Thank you for the very informative review. The animation style during the fire scene was exactly to portray the shift from positive to negative emotions, then you know something is wrong(in the story). From the script itself we actually changed a lot, initially it was set in the African Sahara, and also the ending we actually wanted to show the bird when the script implied that the ending was of a shocked boys face, looking at the bird. We felt this left too much up to the viewer, and even more questions would be asked.
Thanks for the review.

[Hyperborea]

Very nice!

Wow, this is just what I'd been looking for - a wonderful little piece that was symbolic and full of little tidbits of information, subtext and intrigue, while also having a solid plot, in spite of there being no real voice acting to speak of.

I was totally enthralled by this piece from start to finish, I'd love to see it made into further episodes, especially with what goes on with the character upon his arrival in Hyperborea. It seems that the circumstances got the better of him and the way he flipped was very dark and thoroughly understandable. I'd just love to see more of it.

With the animation and drawing style, I thought that the nose / upper lip that you'd given him wasn't going to work, but I stuck with it and behold, it came good. The different shapes of the noses and other facial features that you've given your characters gives the piece some real depth and it only serves to make it more complete. Even the butterfly's flight style is forgiveable, considering it's wielding a carving knife, some hundreds or thousands of times its own body weight.

Did the tree have to die in the end? because of what it did to the main character, I think so, but if that was to be the case, the tree that he tried to steal a plank from should have trapped his fingers or smacked him in the face with the plank, before he was kidnapped by the ogres.

[Review Request Club]

exotworking responds:

Thanks for the extensive review Coop. Maybe the hero was just clearing the way for upcoming travellers like him. Or he was just finishing off the things he left behind. Who knows but him?

[thdrk and Golden Clock]

Needs more animation

Well, it started out so well, with thdrk bouncing along in the fashion of various clocks that I've seen before, though with him not being a clock (technically, I know), it makes things a little difficult to relate to.

If only GoldenClock had actually been animated in reaching down to take the hat off of thdrk's head, things would have looked so much better. What became of thdrk? Did he run home and cry, lamenting the loss of his hat? Did he get someone else to try and get the hat back, or come back, trying to trade some sort of other hat for the one that GoldenClock took? The piece is too short to leave all of these questions unanswered, so a few more pointers in the plot would have really helped.

The drawing style worked quite nicely, being amateurish and not quite as good as the more recognisable members of the Clock Crew, so I'd recommend that you stay there. With the way that your finished product looks, consider adding length to it and also some voice acting, as that always helps make a piece seem more complete.

[Review Request Club]

KombuchananClock responds:

All those unanswered questions are so needless. But hey, if you're DYING to know the "answers", you have my permission to write fanfiction for my glorious flash masterpieces. In fact, I encourage it, especially if it's erotic slash fiction. That way, you can make up your own frivolous details the plot ignored for the sake of brevity, like how thdrk turns out to be a classic tsundere and admits his true love for the CC WHOOPS I DUN GONE AND ANSWERED IT ANYWAY, SHEEEEET.

That last thing actually happened, by the way. So there's your answer. thdrk stopped being an anti-clock. Kind of a bummer, really.

As for his hat? Well, let's just say you don't really want to know what happened to it. Golden did horrible things to that poor hat. To include them in the flash would be endangering the sanity of my viewers.

[Get Your Free Tank!]

Not bad

I think that when you did this, there was a pretty decent script, a little let down by the overall quality of the sound, but bolstered by the overall animation. You could have given more to the sketch guy in the tank, but there was something about him that seemed to be right for this to work.

When he laughed, there was a little lapse, where I felt that he should have his mouth moving a little more, rather than just holding the fixed [XD] grin. If you laugh like that, more than likely the shape of your mouth will change.

Other than that, you've done a decent motion capture of the NG tank and if you'd have made the end board look more professional, you'd certainly have made a very good looking NG advert here.

[Review Request Club]

DanThelVlan responds:

Consider it 'playing' with the viewers head. I'm not done with this project.. I'll leave you all to ponder on that~

[Facebook Girl]

Sad, but true

If I were the teacher in this class, I'd have confiscated the phone from her, so no updating faceache in class for her.

The sad thing is, from what I've seen of colleagues updating their statuses at work, there are more and more people out there that get this sort of crap spewing out of their Shitter feeds than we care for and it seems that everyone is desperate to have people listen to them.

A shame that no-one else commented on her updates, like you, perhaps linking to Facebook Twitter by JohnnyUtah, would have been a nice touch, just to show what her reaction would be to all of this.

[Review Request Club]

Dosensuppen responds:

Hmmm ... it's an idea.

[LL - 99 Red Balloons]

Awesome

Wow, what an amazing portrayal of this song. Sure, the song was old, but given a new lease of life with Goldfinger, it's certainly a good tune. You've killed a lot of locks in this and that's good for the animation, but I'm sure that they'll all be patched up next time for the whole gang to get going once more.

There are some really nice moves that you incorporated into the the flash, including catching Shark Lock, from out of the pond, while fishing. Nice little gags make a fairly boring intro into something less than boring, keeping the viewer interested until the good stuff starts.

When Screw Lock descends and all hell breaks loose, I think that you did it quite nicely, with the way that he spent ammunition and weapons, comboing them together for good effect. Clearly, he had the upper hand over the ill-prepared locks.

Throwing Leaf and Explosive Lock into the mix as able combatants really does bring the piece to life, just as the symbolic nature of the lyrics really starts to hit home, referring to war and the ministers arguing, before all hell truly breaks loose.

On top of the symbolism and the way that everything panned out, I would mention on slight issue with the drawing style (hey, nobody's perfect), with screw lock, I would suggest that you tilt the screw thread slightly to the left or right, since that's how a thread works. I know that I'm being picky about it, but those sort of things can make the difference between awards sometimes.

Other than it being some infighting between the Locks, I was surprised to to see any Clocks about (aside from Clock Lock, that is) Why not Screw Clock invading and being put out of his misery? RIP Explosive Lock, we hardly knew you :'(

[Review Request Club]

LeafLock responds:

Oh wow. First of all, thanks for the huge review! To be honest, this song was the very first thing I ever wanted to animate something to, so to finally get it done is a HUGE RELIEF. And as for Screw Lock, that's actually Robot Lock. Don't ask me, it's his design, and I don't get it either. Anyways much love!

<3 LL

[Failed animations]

Hmm...

I think that a collection of bits and pieces like this is unnecessary, but there is hope for you yet - some of these animations were quite good, if places in the context of a madness piece that I'm sure you're capable of making at some point.

Be wary though, as Madness games do lend themselves a little heavily toward the physics side of things and that can become quite messy, if they are messed up. Shooting someone in the chest would cause them to fall back, such is the force of the projectiles. I've seen a couple of examples there that had them fall forward. Sure, if there was a wall behind them, they would either slide down or bounce off and fall forwards, so it's all a question of context.

Some of the scenes were just pure random and particularly the one at the end, where new things came in and you layered them over everything else, it seems that you were a little eager to get these tests, fails and miscellaneous bits and pieces published.

Why not do something differently - a chorus line of madness folk, shooting each other, in time with something like New York, New York? It's good for a laugh and with Madness Day just over 3 months away, you'd be able to apply your skills in a manner that allows creativity and practice, with purpose, as you might win a prize that Tom always throws out there :D

Best of luck, you've got the talent, so please use it.

[Review Request Club]

Nomaron responds:

These WERE quite old, and now i have improved a bit. Only ONE of these was new. You know when the Normal guy and the ATP guy run in, that was made one month ago. The rest were made when i was known as Havesomecake. Thanks for your advice.

[burungeru epidsode 1]

Well... it's decent voice acting.

If I can't say anything else good about this piece, I can always fall back on the voice acting - you've got good quality and presentation of the audio here, which does offer a lot of potential to the piece.

I'm not sure that the way it works with everything else is entirely perfect. It was a shame that you couldn't have expanded upon the plot and given more of a show, Yes, the drawing was adequate for your two characters, but considering one of them did nothing but provide the salad and the rest of the plot was the consumption of said salad, followed by a few lines, you're not really going anywhere with the piece.

For me, comedy involves gags and to do that, you need better writing. SOrt that out and you could easily fulfil the potential.

[Review Request Club]

Horsenwelles responds:

i salad

[My best and last flash]

Wow

Well, in a bid to add some parity to the NG World here, I feel that I must do something for the parity of the piece. Frankly, it's poor from the start to the finish. Sure, there was a quirky joke with the loading bar and yes, it did drag on for too long, from even a comedic point of view.

There is no colour to this, there are just slides of typed words, which I can get in larger quantities, with better storylines from my local bookshop. It's not that difficult.

Work on the drawing side of things and if you insist on making this piece again, perhaps consider hiring a voice actor to read the lines out, putting a subtitle bar across the base of the screen, to show what is being said, while incorporating it properly with the flash.

Then you can work on the animation, which will develop as the piece progresses along other avenues, such as a better level of drawing quality. I can appreciate it if you are drawing with a mouse, but this is hardly trying. Try zooming in and using a smaller mouse pointer, to get a higher degree of control for your drawing. When you zoom out, it will look so much better. After that, you can make individual parts of them move, as opposed to just moving the whole image across the screen, like poorly driven shadow puppets.

[Review Request Club]

Kieran123 responds:

Don't talk to me about puppets. It's triggering.

[Doodle episode 1]

Well, that was poor

Seriously, you need to go back to the drawing board on this piece. Granted, that isn't all that far, from what I can tell, but to be an animator on here, you're going to need a few tools at your disposal:

1) Drawing skills
2) Animations skills
3) Sound quality
4) A plot

I've seen some five year olds draw with more skill and imagination that this and the end piece is much more rewarding to watch. Granted, they don't know how to use flash at this point, but they have 9 years of head start on you.

First, get the drawing sorted out. It needs to look something better than a stick figure, in the first instance. Then you can animate it - consider moving body parts and take it from there, as you can even use mundane things, such as yourself to get inspiration for how the thing is to be animated.

With the quality of the sound, I could barely understand one word in every three, so I was struggling. Subtitles across the bottom of the screen, white font on black background is the preferred method of this, please look at getting that to work. Failing that, make the sound quality better - don't mess with your voice so much, perhaps even considering saving up and investing in a more professional microphone and maybe even a graphics tablet.

Then it comes to the writing area. With your animation severely limited as it is, you'll be hard pushed to get a writer to assist in your endeavours at this point. Make some decent animations, showing progress and you may get people interested. There are scripts lurking on the Writing and Flash forums, so go and have a look for them. Try animating them, watch the tutorials and develop your skills. You're not a lost cause, but I believe that this piece sadly is. Who builds a brick wall in the middle of the street for no reason and writes "Doodle's car" across the rear half of the vehicle? From a writer's point of view, these things need answering.

[Review Request Club]

rian20000 responds:

shut up asswipe