Coop's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Tactical Directive Pt1 v1]

Unfinished work

Alright, let's see what we've got here - I've just sat through fifteen minutes of this and it is certainly a well written piece, that draws attention to various issues and I can see that your research may have been conducted across a wide range of films of this nature.

As for what needs to be done, you have a longer list than I'd expect from a piece that is this well written. Start by having the grammar checked. The opening line, for example should be "people that dress up for their own funeral." You don't take your clothes with you and get changed when you're at the church, after all.

On the preloader, you've got the start screen, but no button to get you to the menu. That needs to be fixed, as it's unnecessary to get viewers to right click and press play.

The piece takes a while to get going, as it's very quiet and setting the scene, while it may take a while, could be edited down for time. You're not bad at tracing, but the drawing aspect needs to be worked on, as it lets the writing down.

The voices are very hit and miss, as it seems that from your three voice actors, at least one of them doesn't have a professional microphone, so we end up with poor quality volume settings and the occasional static crackle over the recording, which is a rookie mistake, to be frank. I understand that these actors might be your friends, but there are plenty of Voice Actors out there, just have a search on the Audio Forum. I might even be able to supply some, if you were interested.

On the final phone call made to the guy in the office, you can see a glimmer of the scene beneath the subtitles bar - sorting that out is not a major issue that you need to sort, but it is something that just needs to be tidied up to give a more professional finish.

I know that it seems like a pretty damning verdict and a piece that has won a daily second place award shouldn't be scoring so lowly on a review, but a small catalogue of niggling difficulties can make a huge impact on the enjoyment of the piece overall. I will watch the second one and if this goes even further than just these two parts, when you've improved your animating skills, you might want to come back and remake the animations to cope with your new skill levels.

Best of luck.

[Review Request Club]

MOC-Productions responds:

Thank you for all your constructive criticism. It is well appreciated. I'm aware of many of the things you pointed out and agree with most of them. The only thing I'll point out though, is that there is a menu button on the load screen. It's up at the top. Believe me, I wouldn't neglect something like that lol. Thanks again for your helpful review.

[Ghosts 'n Goblins V.2]

Not bad

At first, I thought it was a game, but when I wasn't able to do anything, I gathered that it was a movie, but that's about the only thing that gave it away for me. Try adding some sort of script for this piece, as otherwise it's just a gameplay demo, which wasn't all that good, to be honest.

I'm extrapolating and seeing the script underneath this a little, though I'm not exactly that well versed on what the hero is doing or why he's fighting against a mouse pointer, in some sort of "Animator Vs. Animation" piece.

Perhaps in the third instalment, he's going to break out of the game and make it to the user's desktop, where the fight becomes a lot more real. Making a story for us to follow and adding subtitles to bring it all together would make this piece a lot better.

We've got a great piece here that just needs a little more work to polish it and we're talking something that could legitimately push for awards.

[Review Request Club]

Pienkaito responds:

But it's labeled as movie. Oh well. You ain't the only one.

This has more potential, but due to deadline issues, it didn't come out as good as I hoped.
The main point about the V.2 series is about a creature, which has the ability to change the past videogame-generation.
Also, the hero (Sir Arthur in this) sees Curse-R as a threat/enemy.
The series maybe inspired by "Animator Vs. Animation" but this is different. Not totally, but different.

Thanks for the well-written review.

[SRM Call of Duty 4]

Awesome! Another award!

A very good and witty expose on the intricacies of gamers and particularly the lesser known problem of gamer kids. Now that they are coming into their own after the first generation of gamers had kids and brought them up, the problem seems worse than ever.

Perhaps you should do something about a dad that plays one of these games against his child, absolutely owns him on the game, then the kid resolves to practice for ages, then finally gets one over on his dad, who proceeds to hang himself, or something equally retarded like that.

The ideas of people gathering around the girl sniper from team Mel was inspired, since that's what I've seen first hand on certain online games that I used to play. Now I stick to much more mature games, that I get on better with, thus reducing the chances of seeing friends of mine asked if they want to cyber.

The connection problems was a great aside, as I've seen that as well - a shame that you didn't have the game transpose them onto another map and restart the whole thing, because it went on the fritz. I've seen that happen a few too many times over at my girlfriend's, causing her brother to absolutely lose it with the Xbox.

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

The whole bit about the kid practicing for ages sounds like the inverse of an old Simpsons episode from the first season or so, where Homer keeps practicing this boxing game so he can eventually beat Bart. Right before he wins, the system gets unplugged and Bart retires undefeated. I wanted to keep it to just a mom for this though; nothing really deep here, and no commentary on our poor single SRMoms.

The connection joke came around completely by accident. I had these little movieclips of SRM walking, accidentally left them in place and it ended up looking really funny. I've also been blessed with crappy connections my entire life, so it was good to have a joke from experience. Same with the Mel as a girl gamer. That's basically the only mention of a girl I've ever had in one of my cartoons aside from that shitty Prototype cartoon I made like a year after this.

Glad you enjoyed this cartoon - it's one of my most enduring and popular cartoons, and still gets a good number of hits on Youtube and Newgrounds. It used to be called "SRM the FPS" but it got no views whatsoever. Changing the title and resubmitting it changed that overnight.

[SRM short: McBurgerBell]

So much symbolism in such a short piece...

Well, that was an interesting piece, that really got the the heart of the matter about fast food outlets that seem hell bent on extracting every single penny that we earn, just to pad their profits.

I love the fact that SRM bought the wacky meal for the toy and then he proceeded to eat it. I never knew that was why some people bought the meals, as they never seem to do anything with the toys - we used to keep them until the batteries ran out, or they got broken and then they got discarded to some toy box that was cleared out once a decade.

Still, the animation seems smoother than ever and the voices are now very clear. One thing I would complain about is that the subtitles are a little on the small side, unless you expand the screen - was that the intention all along?

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

I thought up this cartoon on my car ride to move into my dorm for my first semester of college, and as such it's really my first complete animation from that point.

I don't really know why I decided to have SRM eat the toy; I probably just figured it was funny. I've still got all my old cheap fast food toys lying around somewhere in my parents' house. Those things are resilient for how crappy they are.

The subs were really tiny just because I thought it was nice to have them sort of out of the way. I would never do that ugly gradient subtitle box again though, ugh. The voices are so clear because at this point I'd gotten both a good mic and learned some decent Flash techniques for sound, so it ended up sounding really nice. Glad you liked the toon!

[SRM Gear Solid: Snake Eat]

Great stuff

Well, what an interesting take on MGS, with SRM... MGSRM, which seems to work.

The fact that you deviated from the voice of SRM this time works really well and gives a whole new dynamic to your work, especially when you use things like the "bocks" gag, for the usual touch of SRM.

Yes, maybe this was a little short and there could have been more gags in there revolving around stealth and Snake finding something to eat - perhaps a Nandos or Taco Bell, for example would have bulked it out - I liked the communications, though they seemed a little colourful, compared to what I'm used to seeing on that front.

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

I was actually going to release it as SRMGS, but acronym titles don't turn out well for me - see NOTLS 2, 3, and redux.

The reasons I deviated from the standard SRM voice and language was because this was for that big Metal Gear Solid collab back in the day. My .fla was enormous for some reason that I could probably figure out now, and I guess the lack of cock jokes meant it couldn't fit in with that collab. Or the NG collab boys didn't find it funny enough; whatevs.

I think it says in the description that the reason this toon is so short is because of that collab. It said "30 seconds maximum" in the original requirements, so I built it around that. The cartoon originally ended with a guard walking up to the box and saying "You've got to be kidding me" and leaving it at that. Anyway, glad you liked the toon!

[A Child Vampire's Lament]

Should have co-authored Celx

To those that have read his work before, the artwork of Celx-Requin is unmistakeable. He definately deserves credit for this, so why not add him as a portal buddy and then co-author him in this piece, since he would at least qualify for "additional art" or "art".

A chilling story, set just right for Halowe'en, when all the children come out to play and little Abby stalks the streets with malice in her heart. The grim reality of the tale is conveyed using simple words and the sketchy look of the drawings from Celx. It always looked like a storyboard for me, so there is real potential to take this further - narration, real animation, where the vampire's kiss is dramatised, more than just by the viewer's imagination and the sounds of death and the screams are very real and chilling.

I wonder, will you return next Halowe'en for another chapter of this tale?

[Review Request Club]

linda-mota responds:

The drawings and art are mine, he just put the story together in flash. But you are right, though I'm new in submitting flash. Anyway I'm happy you enjoyed it! Happy Halloween!

[NOTLS 3: The Evil Jeb]

Funny story

It kind of reminds me of a rather silly game of Call of Cthulhu we played a while ago. In the absence of the Necronomicon, we took a phone book and put the dust cover over it, thus creating the Necrotelecom - the phone book of the dead. I guess you've created one similar here - the phone book of the Jeb.

Some good things here to note - SRM seems to be more intelligent here, while some of the parts make no sense at all, like Spud not being able to pee - he has no genitals, but the pee has to go somewhere!

I loved SRM paying homage to Evil Dead 3, particularly with the chainsaw and the way that he seems to be quite skilled at amateur DIY. I just wish that at the end of it all, we'd seen him back at work in the store that he worked in, for that ending, with a "hail to the king, baby" or whatever you could have come up with for that.

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

A "Shop smart, shop at S Mart!" ending would have been pretty boss, especially if it was at Amish Stuff, which is actually a real store in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

This is one of those toons where SRM is inexplicably intelligent. He's gotten more eccentric and less stupid over time, but this one is a little uncharacteristic. I just thought it would be fun to have a sort of road trip/action movie with SRM and Spudboy. To be fair though, I never drew Spudboy with genitals or pants, so it's a mystery how he does just about anything.

Glad you liked the toon! I saw you didn't review Hitler's Strawberries, the Flash game I made with some buddies right before this. I can't answer any reviews to it since I wasn't the head author, but I still urge you to play it so you can experience the wacked out cutscenes I made.

[GTA IV: Petty Crime Spree]

Nice parody

Well, it certainly summed up Rockstar Games' contribution to the gaming industry. My god, to think that they used to make games that I thought were good.

Still, this piece has decent animation, though not what I'd say is your usual standard, as you seem to have made the car a little angular and while the movement of everything was smooth, it just seemed like the angular front of the Dodge Charger (?) was a little too rough - smooth out the curves and it will look fine.

I love the crack about the half wanted star, as it seems that he wants to be a really bad criminal, but he has already succeeded, by making such ridiculous crimes, that he could only be a laughing stock.

Good voices and overall a decent piece of work.

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

The side of the Charger was a traced image from a picture on Google - I used to do that for all my guns and stuff too! I couldn't find a good front picture, so it ended up looking really lousy.

This animation is pretty much my first go at animating people - nowhere near what I'd need to do for my later toons, but good enough for the time. It was for a GTA collab that never happened.

Glad you enjoyed the toon - I thought it highlighted some of the absurdity of the franchise. I haven't gotten to play Red Dead Redemption yet, but my buddies love it!

[SRM Transformers 3]

Very amusing

Another great lampoon of the Transformers franchise, especially the way that Grimlock wanted to buy the toys for Goldspud, whose name sounds like a rapper's alias.

Some good work there and the transformation cheat with Starscream and the two not-all-too-dissimilar decepticons was a nice piece of work. Bringing back Brawl, when it was part repaired was pretty much the kingpin of the Decepticon's moves, though that exposes a major hole in the plots for the whole series, in that the Autobots never finished the work off, merely causing them to retreat until next week.

Still, there is some good method in there and the viewers are treated to a spectacle that increases with quality in every episode, unlike the subject of the lampoon, which only serves to increase the irony. Have you considered bringing this back for a second season, or even making the lampoon of the Transformers movie, as opposed to G1, keeping the voices the same, remaking the figures to look worlds apart (Melatron is a brilliant example of this) and messing with it there? I think it could work really well.

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

The only time things ever get done on Transformers is in the movies or season finales, when characters actually die or are sent to the moon or whatever. This one was the finale of the first season so some guys actually do die, but it's Transformers so they'll probably be back later.

I reference the Michael Bay movies a bit more in the second season, with the introduction of a character and some quotes here and there. The series stays rooted in G1 though, since that's the most beloved.

I do continue this series with a second season; SRM Transformers 4 parts 1 and 2 make up about 15 minutes of cartoon. I broke them up into two halves since there was just so much to do. I also got kinda tired of working on SRM Transformers for a while and wanted to take a break between episodes. That season is the last one though, until further notice.

I ended both seasons of this series well enough, but still leaving room for more. If I can think of a third arc, I might do it. Then again, I'm busy as hell these days so who knows.