Coop's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[A Duck Walks Into a Bar]

Really well animated

While the material may stink as much as last month's left-over jambalaya, you've really captured the essence of the joke, with a well drawn duck, good animation skills and a pretty decent delivery through voice acting and timing.

One thing I would suggest is that you either have a calendar animation to signify "the next day", or a caption, so that the viewer can determine this more clearly. Other than that, it was pretty much perfect.

I really want to see more of your work, as the animation is first rate here and if you can continue to up the bar, you'll be well at home here, with plenty of applause and credit for your skills.

[Review Request Club]

[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.

[OMG! A Wikileak]

Loved the subtle nuances

Well, there is a great deal to be said here for this cartoon. The South Park imagery for my mind was the animation style - cartoony with the impression of pieces being moved about as per older animations, or even the style of Gretel and Hansel.

This style of animation does leave a little to be desired, as when the suited morons throw their arms aloft, the suit shoulders don't crease and the lapels don't cloe in on their neckline. Would the animation benefit from this? Personally, I'd say yes, but I can see where you're coming from if you were to disagree.

The writing is subtly done as a tribute to Julian Assange and the very idea of whistle blowing with regards to corporations. Now if only they could do it for major sporting teams and players, we'd all be able to enjoy it. I can just see a Tiger Woods take on that :P

Perhaps it would have benefited from a second guy rushing in with the second part of the WikiLeak about them all being shitbags? Wouldn't it have been more prudent for one of them to say "Who said that about us? Let's sue them!" as that seems to be the more typical American knee-jerk response these days.

[Review Request Club]

[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

[Sheik's a woman?]

Pure genius

Now this is a piece that I can appreciate, for the sheer joy that the belly laugh gave me, plus the fact that I've had the chance to demonstrate the joke in real life, except the battery that I've received afterwards.

Really well animated and drawn, it's a real shame that you haven't carried on animating (or rather submitting to Newgrounds, since you've clearly got a lot of talent, both for writing and animating. With the way that these gags are delivered, you've clearly got more than one string to your bow.

Are there any other computer games that you can lampoon for us, or have you got some original characters in the pipeline?

[Review Request Club]

[Produce Prank Day]

Interesting work

I think that the way this is all put together, you've clearly been inspired by something like The Grinch and various other pieces which cause you to lose it, because everyone is so nice about the festive season.

With that in mind, I think that you've done a decent job with this cartoon, though I would stress that a little more work is required to get the drawing up to standard, without which, the animation does suffer a tad. Make the images better rounded and perhaps draw the detail on the face in "softer lines", as they can look a little harsh, especially if you catch them as straight where the brain feels a curve should be.

I'd love to see you lampoon Easter with this fellow as well. Up for it?

[Review Request Club]

[R.O.C. Ep002]

Incredibly awful

Am I seriously supposed to mark something that you barely even wrote here?! Good god, man - there's no animation that you've done, it's all created by this program in incredibly low quality, with hardly any reference to grammar from the speech translation program either. The only think that it tries to do right is raising the inflexion at the end of a sentence that concludes with a question mark.

Yes, for a few seconds, the Hot Pocket idea was interesting, even enjoyable, but repeating the same thing over and again, without human emotion in there, you suffer. Next time, if you get one of these movies going, get some proper voice actors and sync it all up, you'll get more kudos from me. Perhaps trying to animate it would make a nice difference - we'd really love it if you made another Clock Crew effort out of this one, since that's the benchmark there and at least those guys animate their own stuff.

It needs a lot of work, before I'd be happy with it, let's put it like that.

[Review Request Club]

ninjadezombidetueur responds:

A+ effort for your review assignment........lol.

[The Teddy Bear Present]

Needs a bit of work

Well, I think it was barely any of the descriptions that you gave it, the closest of which being an "a".

The part where the Teddy Bears seem to explode out of the box just seemed to drag on a little more and in parts of the piece where there was something to read, little consideration is given for those that can't read very fast, even those that can are hard pushed to reach descriptions.

The animation in the early going was too fast, jumping from scene to scene, before settling on something that never really shows the plot being exposed to the wider world. With the way that this lacks that, I'd suggest getting basic skeleton of a plot in place, before you progress further. Then, working on the drawing and animation skills will help in other areas. Zoom in a little, use a slightly smaller tool and don't make it obvious that your drawings are created byt the addition of various shapes together. The devil is in the detail.

On top of that, when you advance enough, you'll have a set of animations that are suited to your forte - adding sound. You've got this skill licked at the moment, so consider adding more and more sounds, perhaps even something like voices as well, should they be required.

[Review Request Club]

[My Very First Animation]

A few hints and tips for you

Alright, so kudos for making your first attempt at a flash submission. I can't vote it any higher, but that's only because you're not up to a high standard yet. With time and effort, you can certainly do just that though.

I'd suggest you start with looking over some tutorials about triggering the music, when you press play. From there, I'd also suggest that you find a piece of music which is better suited for theme and for length to the animation. Get yourself into an area where you can cut 10-15 seconds, or even stretch the animation out a little to make the ends meet.

On top of that, you have stickmen. This isn't all that bad, but they aren't animated very well. Search for Xiao Xiao and see some fine examples of sticks, that you may gain some inspiration from. Then, when drawing, zoom in and tidy them all up, before you animate them. Suddenly, the piece looks a lot better.

Subtitles should be displayed across the bottom of the screen, for the ease of reading by the viewer. Consider having them typed, so that we can understand them quicker. Failing that, get yourself a voice actor, who can give you great samples to work with. From there, you'll have a much better looking and sounding piece, which should bring you good reviews.

Once that's in place, a plot should be the next main thing to focus on. Since yours does not have one, it's alright at present, since you are mainly using this for practice, but progress will require that you come up with decent short movies, compelling games, or even funny series of toons that people will like. Feel free to check out the Writing Forum, to see if there are any pieces in there that you either like, or will inspire you toward your next piece.

[Review Request Club]

[On The Moon (Episode 20)]

Classic stuff

Firstly, I loved the stamps and I'd pay decent enough money for a "first day" cover of those things - Getting the little things right has always been your strength, particularly in flash where there isn't all that much detail, you still come through with some crucial observations that others haven't made. The car that flew across in the background is another nice feature here and I can't for the life of me work out where that was from, possibly because I was spending too much time to listening to the rest of the plot.

When it came to the NASA scientist, did you use some sort of software to slow your voice down a little? It seemed odd and I know that you do your own voices. The accent was fine, it just sounded a little strange when I listened to it, truth be told.

Once again, some great animation and a top-class piece that you've submitted to Newgrounds. I'll have to stop by and check out more of your stuff over the Xmas break. The sheer work that must go into making one of the more successful flash series on the internet today is phenomenal, surely, so I really do appreciate that the product that comes out as the final submission is really worth every single second that you pour into these projects.

I think I've said before about getting into your mind, but as that might be a disaster, without prior training, I think that seeing the finished processes that come out from your brain are a much better (and safer idea)

[Review Request Club]