Coop's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[SRM Needs a Roommate!]

Ah, the price we all pay

Well, another triumphant episode, with the guys getting into their usual bunch of scrapes. I guess that we can say they have more than a few brushes with the unnatural over their time, but that's part of the charm of this whole series.

A good selection of music in this one, but I just get the feeling that something been lost a little on your animation style - maybe it's that I'm not much of a fan of the less polished version of events and I'd love to see something that looks smooth and flawless. Not to worry, this is your own decision and the way you work, so it's no big deal.

The writing is overlooked quite a bit here, but it really does give the impression that you think a lot about what goes into an episode, before you even start storyboarding. I'd love to see some sort of "making of" documentary, possibly hosted by SRM himself, as it's obvious he does all of the animating and vocal talent etc :P

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

I really like putting in supernatural elements in my toons, even if it's just in little bits without going over the top. It keeps things interesting and unpredictable.

Thanks for the props on the music - my buddy created it specially for the toon. While the animation doesn't look as smooth as the old animation, it also doesn't look dead and lifeless. I hate hate HATE the symbol based stuff I was doing. Some Flash-based animation can do it well, like the recent My Little Pony cartoon, but the vast majority of it looks like stiff garbage. I would rather take rougher but fluid over smooth and rigid any day of the week.

Glad you enjoyed the writing! It used to be a lot wordier but I edited it down with the help of one of my professors. We worked from script to storyboard and so on. I actually start with a really rough storyboard with a rough idea of dialogue then make a real script and full storyboard from there. Unfortunately, most people don't care how the cartoons are made and think they just happen, which means that sort of production wouldn't net much attention.

Thanks again for the great review, always a pleasure hearing from you!

[Mario's Castle Collab]

Rather amusing

I think that parody is the greatest form of flattery and you've not disappointed with this offering. Sure, there are jokes that I wasn't as impressed with as others, but the way you've presented the whole piece, I'd say it's turned out well.

A shame it doesn't really expand to fit the frame, but then again that might take away from the presentation, by blowing the sprites up to a size not befitting the way they were designed.

As with collabs like this, I do like picking out my favourite artist, which in this case was Mr. Lange. His work was funny, well written and a decent observation. Perhaps change the tower for some sort of clock, with one of those mechanisms, to indicate the change of the hour. With that, I feel you'd have an even funnier joke for the one where Mario falls and gets ground into paste by the mechanism.

[Review Request Club]

[show reel ---2011---]

Not bad

I think that there's one major issue with most show reels is that they portray stuff out of context. This one doesn't seem so hampered by it, which always helps the case.

There was an issue with detail, which I thought should have been addressed, mainly to show that if you're going to do lots of fine detail, you need to do it for everything in the picture, not just the character that you're animating at the time. Come to think of it, making everything else blur slightly out of focus, then plucking them back to sharp focus for the action and depositing them back out of focus when they're finished could make a nice comic-book style animation. Poseidon was the one where I saw this the most - the background looked crisp and the drawing actually took away from it. Perhaps it's a problem with using actual photos for your backgrounds?

The one with the guy on his console had two things I wanted to address - sharp focus on the background, softened and almost ruined focus, because of your additional detail in the foreground. We've covered that earlier, so onward. The controller looked particularly square. If you're animating with an eye for detail, you need to have a stab at making a PS3 or Xbox controller. Without, it just looks naff.

Having characters with speech is great, but showing lip-sync, without anything to sync to really doesn't show us anything. If you've got a piece of audio with lyrics, try to get them to sync with those in places, if you want to show off your talents.

[Review Request Club]

Horsenwelles responds:

hehe about the controller... Jman was playing with a crappy PC controller, so... i kept it in context.

as for the staggering amount of lip sync sections, tbh, i didn't have much left from last year's reel added with all the content since, so i just worked with what i could muster.

thanks for a 5th "7" review in my long line of 7's :D

[Animator vs Animation III]

Very cool

A fitting end to the whole progression, but I feel that there is always one critical problem with the end, which is that there will be no more. Granted, the material that you could use for this was always going to run out, but perhaps the animator will get a new PC and we'll see a Windows 7 reboot? Perhaps if you gave The Chosen One a love interest?

Anyway, concentrating on this piece, the little things are what makes this piece so enjoyable to watch - the observations about the MS Word paperclip, which up to now has been a minor annoyance, but I shall always think of this animation when it shows its face again. Using the tab key to punch Chosen was incredibly well thought out, as were the text-based weapons. You've clearly spent as much time with the writing as with the animation and that's what should be lauded even more, because we all knew your animation skills are fantastic, but no-one seems to notice the writing behind such a piece.

Minesweeper was brilliant, as was the fact that you kept playing Solitaire, while things were happening around you. A shame that when the focus moved away, the pointer couldn't have kept playing, so in the fights on top of the solitaire window, we could see the occasional playing card move up - this was the one continuity error, I felt. The fact that Dark One got trapped in Minesweeper and took his time to find a way through the minefield was brilliant, despite its futility in the end.

I'm looking forward to seeing more of your work, as I know you'll not call it quits at a piece such as this. What you'll have for us next will be a surprise to all, no doubt.

[Review Request Club]

[Dem Parodeez - 2]

Strange

I'm not really sure how I managed to understand all of that, but I did. Dhalsim is a character that you either love or hate in Street Fighter and clearly from the plot of this, he was hated, because no-one wanted to play as him.

Perhaps I'm missing something here, becuase I'm not sure what it's parodying, unless you're parodying Street Fighter or any of the games / movies associated with this franchise. If that's the case, I'd rather stick to the Street Fighter collab, if it's all the same to you.

If I were working on this, I'd get a really awesomely well-spoken narrator to spend ages making the perfect narration track and animate it like you have, ironically. Perhaps also calling "Stretchy Arm Dude" Dhalsim and referring to him as a stretchy armed dude, when you introduce him to the piece.

[Review Request Club]

DahDoctow responds:

hahaha. all the narration was on the spot which probably isnt a good thing

thanks for the review

[Kirby - A Snack Too Far]

Brilliant

For this sort of short joke, your comic timing was awesome. The animation was good, as was the music. A shame that the sound effect of the explosion wasn't up to much, but the character sitting there in shock afterwards was a nice touch as well.

You've got a nice drawing style and your animation flows well. I'd suggest that the blood and gore is a little more animate, as it would probably cause something to hang off their shocked face and maybe drip onto the floor. I liked how it got stuck on the camera, as that's a nice director's nod to the camera. With your animation, you don't need to make that sort of adjustment, but I guess you thought it was right.

[Review Request Club]

[Happy Birthday Bahamut <3]

Needs music

Well, the sentiment is there and it's awesome, but you really could have used someone making some sort of metal backing track for you to use with the singing. Pretty good without a tune for you to sing along to, but other than that, you've made a decent fist of it.

I'd say that grammatically, you need to stretch the vowel sounds out, rather than the consonants. Listen to the words and you'll understand, as you're singing "Bahamuuuuuuuuuut", rather than "Bahamuttttttttttttttttttt". A little issue, but I get bugged by those things.

Personally, I think he'll really laugh at the ponies.

[Review Request Club]

Ragnarokia responds:

Thanks for the tips but really I didn't mean my singing to be serious now everyone thinks my singing sucks :((( well it does, but still you know I think I'm a little better than the not trying singing here :)

Thanks for the advice though, I probably could have done the vowels instead thinking back but I did just want to rush it since had little time hehe.

Music wise, I did think of getting some music for this, however I realized I sucked at having different volumes on different tracks etc, if I had some talent in flash I would have done :)

[Bahamut's BDAY Flash]

Happy birthday, Bahamut

Thanks for bringing it to all of our attentions that Newgrounds' favourite dragon has aged by another year (This means all sorts of shit in D&D with size categories and weapons etc, but let's not go into that.)

Well done with yoinking all of the pictures from across the back catalogue of Bahamut's collection of flash over the years, though he's pretty much stopped making them now, which is a great loss to the community as a whole.

I'm really impressed that you asked me to contribute an old photo of me for the medal - yeah, if you find it peeps, you've done well. A real shame I couldn't find the last one, but I've given it a lot of thought and a damned good try. Perhaps it would have been good if you could have added the audio of Bahamut being drunk on a YouTube video (research really helps in these things), so that would have given something else for us to laugh at.

[Review Request Club]

[Bunnykill 5 Part 1]

Impressive, as always

Well, you've done it again and left us with a wicked cliffhanger, ready for the next instalment, that is due out "soon". I've only watched this part twice and already I want the next part.

Right, down to business, as you're never going to satisfy everyone with everything, there are going to be some issues that I must raise - this piece just seemed to have a little too much Metal Gear Solid for my liking at the start and it actually took me a minute or two to warm up to this episode. Almost as if you're taking the series away from how I thought it should be.

With the state of the scenes, I wouldn't bother with scene identification - it harms the progression of the work and people can identify the scenes from seeing them in the scene select menu. Just making a clean break would have helped.

Some of the scenes, particularly those on the rooftops seemed to take advantage of a three dimensional environment with a fixed camera plane, as you've had snowball dive over onto the rooftop of parts of the building and disappear behind them. It's as if they are the traditional Hollywood scenery, where there is just the front of a building and you can hide behind (within) the buildings.

Attention to detail is fantastic, with the cityscape in the first few scenes and little things, like the lightbulb being shot out. A shame that the fire couldn't have spread, but we're in the realms of being as simplistic as possible, while putting across a fantastic production. I'll have to go back and double check the ammo counts for Dust, as he tries his damndest to kill Snowball. The other thing I would have changed there would be the blood splatters - the blades are too clean and it puts me off slightly, since the scenery isn't going to be as bad as after a Tarrantino fight, but you'd expect something.

Dust being lazy when getting bits and pieces off his gunblade is inspired and as a result, some sort of arrogance within the character is shown. I'd love to see how this pans out when Snowball gets back up - we all know that he can't be dead, as he's the hero!

A lot of credit to Rajunen, as he's done a wonderful job with the music and overall, I was very pleased with the effort level that has produced another award winning result.

Bring on the next one!

[Review Request Club]

Mottis responds:

Thanks. Was a good read.

You're right about the backdrops looking like 2d carboard objects. But that's something I delibiretaly was shooting for. A videogame-ish style. The way Snowball can use the doors to move around the stage faster than it would be physically possible, and the way the platforms/backgrounds work. All part of the plan. But I understand if everyone is not a fan of it.

The blades getting bloody has always been a slight nuisance to me. On one hand I would LOVE to have them get bloody, but on the other hand, it's essentially useless, the blade would get bloody from the first kill, and stay that way for the rest of the movie and.... that's it. It's not a lot of work to add either, but the blade staying clean was a deliberate design choice.

[A Goomba's Life - Ep 2]

Getting better

Well, it's nice to see that the presentation looks a lot better with the fact that you've zoomed out a bit more, thus lending to the softening of the sprites' lines and contributing a better flow to the animation. Overall, the quality has improved markedly over the course of one movie, so you're on the right track there.

With the writing, can I ask why you used the words "Yippie Kai-Yai Yay, Motherfucker!", when if you were trying to parody Die Hard, it's just "Yippie Kai Yay, Motherfucker!" I don't hink you'd be sued for copyright infringements on one of the most famous catchphrases in all of Hollywood.

The only place I've ever heard a boot to the head gag was The Frantics, back in the day with the "Last Will & Temperament" sketch. Is this the sort of thing that you based it upon, or was it just some abstract craziness?

The addition of subtitles has helped you mightily here and I'd expect to see something more come of the whole production as you move on with further episodes. One last thing - on the menu, perhaps you should make the box around the "start" and "scene select" writing,a s well as the flower - otherwise people might get confused. Granted, this isn't as important as it would be for episode 1, but I'll bring it up now because I forgot in the review for the first about that.

[Review Request Club]

DemonicDragon93 responds:

I'm sorry i just noticed your review.

I wasn't worried about copyright infringments. I fucked up on that part.

Yea your right about the Frantics part. One of my favorite gags.

Thanks for your honest review