Coop's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[SRM Transformers 4 Part 2]

And so it ends

A shame really that this only came up with enough votes to reach 2nd place for the day. I'd have said that this piece was better than TOFUTWO, but what do I know?

Still, when all is said and done, you've lampooned this series pretty well over the five episodes, so perhaps it is time to cut loose and find something else to rip the piss out of. How about SRM does RED, for example? Or Lord of the Rings, if he fancies a change of scene?

Of all of the Transformers flicks that you've made, this one was weakest on sound quality, which was a shame. I'd love to see you take it a bit further and give us some nice quality there, or as I've said before, possibly some new transformers, where both Autobot and Decepticon alike find that they have new shapes. Some will be pleased (Jazz, for being alive again; Bumblebee for similar reasons and now being a half decent car; Melatron will not be so pleased, though Frenzy could be used, because he's insane.)

Still, I'll leave you with that thought and hope you can find time to thrill the geeks of the world.

That, or make an SRM does Thundercats piece...

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

I was really hoping for daily 1st - it's the one award I never got. Come damn close though. I remember watching TOFUTWO and not being angry that it won out - if anything, it made me realize that my animation really needed to step up soon to be taken seriously.

I don't remember there being any sound quality issues with this toon - I recorded the dialogue at the same time as SRM Transformers 4 Part 1, so it should sound pretty much the same. Maybe something went bad on your end? Toon sounds fine to me.

This was the last SRM Transformers toon I made, and the last I plan to make. There was an SRMTF4 planned - even animated the first minute of it. I didn't like it much and I figured I wouldn't top this though, and I think I made the right choice.

I've thought of other SRM parody series', but never really went far with any of them. I revisited SRMTF and Team Fortress 2 with Meet the Cliffjumper, but that's the last SRM-based parody I think I made. I'll do more someday, and I've got an SRM toon akin to Fallout 3: Mel's Addiction in the planning stages about Duke Nukem. That's gonna have some nice parody sequences in it.

I've thought about another SRM Transformers toon as a one off, but I think it's best to let that rest. As for Thundercats? I didn't grow up watching it like I did with Transformers or GI Joe.

[Day in the Life - Cthulhu]

Great stuff

Simple concept, made funny by the additions of various bits and pieces, such as Cthulhu's "voice" and the fact that he seems to lean over the garden fence every morning and chat to his friend, Dagon.

Perhaps this needs to be revisited, as Cthulhu's adventures in space would be just insane. Particularly with the whole Star Trek theme that you're playing, while they fly through the depth of space. Perhaps it could be adapted into some sort of music video for "I Believe In A Thing Called Love", by the Darkness.

Overall, I think that the commitment was questionable, as it seemed so promising, only not really having that much plot in there. I know that you're a good writer and you've set the bar so high, it needs to be that you keep up to scratch, if you're not pushing yourself.

Still, it bagged the front page and if this is the sort of thing that you should be making to press for that all important hardware.

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

This animation was basically a retelling of Call of Cthulhu from an innocent Cthulhu's point of view. My commitment for this was actually pretty damn good - I made it more or less overnight, with a little work going on in the week before. If I hadn't been up til 3am or whatever making it, I probably would have finished the real story and not had them go to space. I feel like this was a better way to end it though.

Glad you enjoyed the toon - I had thought of doing a second Cthulhu/Dagon cartoon, but I never got around to it. It's definitely not high on my priority list, but it's something I've toyed around with before. Making it a music video to that goofy song isn't really my style - I've tried making a music video or two before, but didn't have good results.

[[CD10] Colin on Clock Day]

Colin Mochrie FTW!

Well, that's a nice change - an upbeat piece of music, accompanied by a legend of the animutation scene through the years. Colin Mochrie really is a prince among men.

So, the animation was pretty psychedelic, a little repetitive and the musical loop got a little annoying after about 20 repetitions, but that's a minor thing that you could fix by making the file slightly larger. We've got a 10 meg limit and for Clock Day, no expense should be spared. Always think "what would StrawberryClock do?" and then do it even more, particularly with submissions on the 15th of August ;)

Thanks for the advice about swallowing knives - I'm trying to cut down.

Punisher responds:

I was just teasing you about the knives. Don't actually do that.

Thanks for the suggestions.

[[CD10] How About I..]

Well, it's the tune, but no real video.

Hmm, I should give you some kudos for throwing some sort of animated .gif there in the shape of the parrot. How about you slap my shit? You kinky fucker.

It could have been so more, but when we consider that you've only thrown a good quality sample loop from the very catchy tune of Yolanda Be Cool, you're almost onto a winner. I almost wish that you'd animated the parrot to act in a video similar to the actual music video for this track.

Still, I'd love to see what you're capable of outside of Clock Day, so give it a shot :)

[Review Request Club]

Punisher responds:

I do not actually want to slap feces, it is merely a figure of speech.

It is more commonly seen on the internets with an angry gnome picture type meme thing.. this is just moreso in fun. Like a parrot with sass.

[Danger Global Warming]

Good, but I'm unsure

I think that you've made a good looking piece here, but there are a few bits that need to be looked into, in order to benefit from the impression that you're trying to make:

1) This is directly ported in from YouTube. While this may not bring into question the validity of who wrote it (I'm positive it's yours) I think that you need to find a way to get the video itself uploaded here, as opposed to hosted on YouTube and embedded. I'd rather see you and Newgrounds get the ad revenue for the clicks on this page

2) Screen size - you've got the small screen in the middle of this piece and have filled up the border with useless wastage. You could make the video so much bigger, by utilising the resources available to you. If the file size limit is an issue, PM TomFulp and get it increased to around 20 meg.

3) Background - the black border, surrounding the largely black presentation doesn't go together well - lightening it up would help, so that you can convey the dirt, pollution and desperation better within the video itself.

I'm not sure that I agree with the messages in the video, but these might not even be your own, so I won't dwell on that, to be honest.

[Review Request Club]

BruceKnox responds:

WELL GEE... AS SOON AS I CAN GET A 5oo MG VIDEO TO PLAY IN A SWF FILE SMALL ENOUGH TO FIT ON THIS SITE - YOU WILL BE THE FIRST TO KNOW - ALONG WITH JESUS, SATAN AND THAT KID FROM ASIA WHO SMOKES 40 CIGARETTES A DAY.

AGAIN ANOTHER AWESOME COMMENT JUST PROVING THAT NEWGORUNDS IS ONLY INTERESTING TO SHOWING SMALL FILES MADE BY KIDS SHOWING OFF SHIT, INSTEAD OF GIVING PEOPLE LIKE ME THE OPTION TO DISPLAY ACTUAL WORK.

SO DEAR NEWGROUNDS, WHY CANT I UPLOAD SOMETHING OTHER THAN SWF FILES HERE??? WHY ARE YOU RETARDING ME AND OTHERS (IF THERE ARE ANY OTHER PROFESSIONALS ON THIS KIDS SITE???) WHY NEWGROUNDS, WHY???

BRUCE

[Milk & OJ Bestest Friends]

The rumblings of 2009

Ah, so we begin your collection of 2009 flash presentations by a milk and OJ toon. I half expected to see OJ Simpson making an appearance here, but was left to a glass of some sort of fruity beverage instead.

I love the way that you've got things together for this piece, complete with one of your lesser known characters vomiting his guts up outside McBurgers. Now all we need is to throw in something to do with SRM and perhaps Spudboy and we're away for the start of something different. How about the two of these characters dancing away in SRM's fridge - he's bound to want something out of there, like car keys or something a little retarded.

I can see that by starting the year with an award winning piece, you're ready to take the next step in making more impressive flash movies and who knows, even games?

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

I like the phrase "something a little retarded", not sure why, but I do. SRM is in the background of the restaurant; I'm pretty sure I just reused the background from the McBurgerbell cartoon. Also, if you pause the cartoon and zoom in really, really close on the vomit you'll see a cameo from another one of my characters!

To date the only game I've made is Hitler's Strawberries. Rik and I keep throwing around ideas for Hitler's Strawberries 2, but our schedules conflict and it generally just doesn't happen. I also had plans for a Contra-like SRM game based on my CoD4 toon (previously called SRM the FPS) but that didn't pan out, obviously.

[SRM Transformers 4 Part 1]

Rickroll'd

Wow, what an exciting episode of plot holes, merchandise pushing and over the top sound effects, compared to the music. A shame that your animation is too advanced for G1 Transformers, but I still keep coming back for more - this stuff is awesome and it really gives me something to enjoy, while in the mood for some proper nostalgia.

The way that you bring in new characters all the time and they keep coming out with new moves that I'd almost forgotten about, much like Jazz getting torn in two by Melatron (I noticed that you spelled his name "Megatron" in one of the bios :P) is brilliant. Keep that old skool humour coming!

With how you've added blurbs and bios about the characters, you've made one crucial error - the buttons for next and previous are the wrong way around for convention. If you think of it like turning the pages of a book, you'll have previous to the left and next to the right. I moved straight to the menu key,l which confused me, to be honest.

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

Huh. I never noticed that the menu buttons were the wrong way around before. I don't think I did that in my other cartoons with menus. Welp. I did notice the Melatron/Megatron misspelling, but whatever.

I was really happy to work in a few references to Michael Bay's Transformers with this cartoon, just to keep things current. Conecrusher's design and Jazz's death are both awkwardly translated from the movie for whatever effect.

SRM Transformers 4 Part 2 didn't get made until like 6 months after this one, just because I was so worn out by this cartoon. It was a huge undertaking and the two parts were originally written as one 15 minute epic. It turns out a lot of that is because I wrote way too much dialogue, but it worked as an ending to the SRM Transformers cartoons. Once you see SRM Transformers Part 2 you'll realize I'd pretty much hit the peak of the series and wouldn't go further. I did start a 5th cartoon, but I scrapped it due to low quality, comparatively.

[Fallout 3 Mel's Addiction]

Great work

A legendary idea of how someone gets that badly addicted to a game, that they play it to destruction and beyond. I think my brother was worse than that at one point - he used to come to the table for one meal a day and that was only because Mum forced him to get off World of Warcraft for a short while.

I almost expected SRM to walk out of the Gamestore with the till still under his arm, but no, you took it one step more sublime - the shotgun to the computer. Yet another mighty step towards further progress with your work. Careful though, as I noticed that Mel's jaw seems to have an imperfection in it , near where you have it hinged. Iron that out from the animation standpoint and you're looking very good.

Another solid performance that earns you another award. You're getting quite a collection of them :)

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

I just got New Vegas a few weeks ago and I'm feeling it kick in again already!

I base most of my cartoons on something I've either experienced or seen, and this is no exception. Write what you know, right? The shotgun to the computer was just taking a joke one step further into more cartoonish territory, which I'm glad I did.

As for Mel's jaw, I don't think I ever noticed. It used to happen sometimes when I hyperextended their jaws back in the symbol-using days like this. If you look back at SRM and Wuggeh, I actually painted over every frame that this happened in, which back then was like all of them. Since it was all gradients it was really, really noticeable.

Glad you liked this toon! Unfortunately it was one of the last cartoons I made to get real attention here at Newgrounds.

[Tactical Directive Pt1 v2]

Not as bad as part 1

Hmm, there are parts of this that have improved over part 1, although there are still things that hold this piece back greatly. I note the contrast in that this piece only got daily 4th, as opposed to daily 2nd, which part 1 got. This might be down to portal activity, or the fact that there's a lot less combat in this.

As Mindchamber says, you're being held back by the art in this piece. You really need to concentrate on your drawing skills, as while you can animate pretty well, there is a major issue with the fact that you're animating images which aren't up to scratch for a piece of this magnitude. I thought that the sniper's earpiece looked a little out of place here, as there was no other detail on the stick figure, other than the eye patch. Hair would be the solution here, as you would know where the face orientates, which you even get in Madness, unlike here. The one angle, where you look at the guy with the bionic eye side on, it looks like he is making a weird face, as the earpiece looks like an eye - changing the drawing style, possibly with a cable running over the top and down into the collar, just like they would use in the SAS, for example. A little detail that makes a lot of difference.

The quality of the voice acting seem much improved. Although some of the lines are a little quiet, it is something that you can work with now, taking care to iron out the problems and make the piece so much better.

There was a long pause after the explosion, where the screen went black. It seemed like it was going to take forever to get on with the piece. Fading it in a few seconds earlier would have done the trick, as without that, there is a degree of disruption to the immersion that you as a director are trying to create.

That is not to say that I was not impressed with some of the newer features. You produced a decent rain effect and this was nice to see, giving rise to other parts of the animation that you're capable of. The explosion was similar, although with the blood splatters, you seem drawn to hard lines - blood would spurt forth initially, but then the corpse would continue to have a little flow from the wound, particularly a head wound of such magnitude.

I enjoyed the writing, as once again, you've left the piece on a knife edge and you're setting us up for something that's going to be interesting to watch as a production in its own right, as well as a continuation of the story. Keep up the good work on the writing front. Now that we have a writing forum, you may wish to give us some insight and allow us to help you, if possible.

You did have the same issue with subtitle bar, but as these were both released in 2008, I guess you haven't really had time to spot it yourself, so if you could correct it for your next submission, that would be great.

[Review Request Club]