Coop's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[SRM Transformers 2!]

Great joke!

Wow, we're really getting cracking here with some quality animation and some really funny material - the writer's strike gag really got me going, plus the fourth wall gag with SRM Prime was pretty good, since this is the first transformation that you've done. You made it look professional and not one of these cut-corner jobs, where you start with shape 1 and make it into shape 2, despite neither one looking anything alike.

Bringing in additional characters has helped you and even though the Dinobot was there and it was more of a wild animal than a plot device, particularly as it was munching on Brawl's turret. Euphimism?

Keep coming up with these funny pieces and you'll get those awards that you so richly deserve!

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

Transformations were the #1 complaint in reviews for the first toon, and I didn't want to half ass them. I think it took me something like 7 hours to actually make Brawl transform back and forth. It was more or less my first experiment with frame by frame animation, and a lot to think about as a relative newbie. I didn't want to just use a shape tween, since those are always awful.

Transformers randomly brings in new characters all the time, so I figured I would do the same, even if they don't get any character development.

[SRM Transformers]

Awesome!

I love this piece - can't believe I didn't review it sooner, to be honest, as it's one of yours that I had seen a few years ago, when I first saw this on the Portal.

Now, while the jokes may be a little stale and dated from the point of view of a cartoon from 30 years ago, that doesn't really matter, as everyone else is spewing out these jokes, as if Megatron is bout to destroy the world and there would therefore be no tomorrow. You've adapted your characters to make this piece and while I'd like to see new characters, I can see this working, as they fit nicely. Will you be remaking these for the movies, or just sticking to the G1 versions?

Toy sales tended to drive most series back in the 1980s, but now it's more about everything merchandise, as opposed to just the toys, so that might be an angle for the newer stuff, should you be so inclined.

The vocal effects sounded brilliant, despite Melatron's voice being a little out from his usual, as it was just Mel. I'm always disappointed to hear people not doing Prime's proper voice as well, but that reinforces the stereotype of your characters for the base shapes, as opposed to ripping the copyright directly from Hasbro, I suppose.

Keep them coming, this series has legs - any thoughts on Marvel parodies?

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

This was my first big hit on Newgrounds; glad you remember seeing it back in the day!

I watched a lot of G1 in preparation for the entire SRM Transformers series, and I was also watching Transformers Animated at the time. Those were my biggest influences, but I stuck it to G1 more than anything. If I were to make another I might parody something else in Transformers, but G1 is definitely the easiest, and the closest to me personally.

I'm glad you liked me basically dressing up all my characters for this. Everybody in this was just one of my characters in a robot costume really. I start adding in new characters and having the Transformers actually transform in SRMTF2 though. I figured keeping the Transformers to my base characters would be better for parody purposes.

Vocal effects credit goes to my buddy Xander - he did a lot of work on this one, and he does even more on the future SRM Transformers toons. I wanted to make sure we got those robot voices, since I knew it added so much to the classic Transformers cartoons. I didn't want to do Prime's voice though, even though I can do a decent voice kinda like it. I did a Metal Gear Solid parody with SRM, and I did my Solid Snake voice for him. SRM with a voice that doesn't sound like Fat Albert just feels wrong.

Glad you liked the toon, and I hope you enjoy the whole series. I could do a Marvel parody someday - I was actually going to make an SRM Transformers 4 trailer back in the day that would parody the Iron Man trailer. That never came around, but I could see myself making a superhero cartoon someday.

[I Am Jebby]

Nice parody

If I can really call it a parody - I think that was the most vague parody of anything I've ever seen, to be honest. With the way that you told us about I am Legend at the end, it kind of hit home, but that may just be me, as I am a little tired.

Congratulations for you winning the Daily Fifth - I see that it meant a lot to you to finally win an award, which is understandable, to be honest. I only hope that you'll get to winning a Daily Feature and will look back at this piece and see the roots that you came from.

The animation skills are being developed, as is clear to see and the new things that we can see, such as the samba dance that he performed. Interesting, funny and a little bemusing, if I'm being honest with you.

I'd like to see you expand your drawing resume, to really give us a show of what you're capable of. I know that there are more projects that you launched from 2008 - 2010, which have done this, but the feeling that if you had some scriptwriters giving you new material, you might be able to develop these for more award-winning stuff.

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

If you ever see the trailer for I Am Legend, this is a really close parody of it. I even hunted down the music, which nobody credited in the trailers.

This was the first award winning movie I made and far from the last. Unfortunately, when I finally started expanding out and doing really different drawing (to the point of doing whole cartoons in frame by frame) a lot of my Newgrounds popularity had worn off. As a result, some of my cooler cartoons like Pizza Waffles (Which you'll see in 2010) didn't get anywhere near as good a reception as I'd hoped.

[(16-bit) Russio]

Not bad

A seemingly random stretch of scenarios thrown together to a slightly annoying tune that somehow grows on you after a while. I can see this going further, though I am not sure where this would lead. The way that the various parts of this are disconnected is a little iffy for the context of the piece and it does look a little disjointed for my liking.

The different things that the Russian does, particularly the Tetris sketch, which leads to some sort of skydiving escapades. With the way that that was conceived, I'd quite like to see you develop this particular part further and perhaps make a whole episode devoted toward that part.

[Review Request Club]

Surn responds:

Thanks for your input. All the sketches do go together. If you watch again, after the first scene think: "What do you do on a Saturday?". As for the song you're the second person to mention some degree of displeasure in the music (which suggests I should be more careful when looking for a song to use).

As for the developing Tetris sketch it would be somewhat difficult to think of something that hasn't already been done (albiet with stick figures, but still). But I'm glad you seem to like that part.

Again Thanks for your input.

[Africa Dudes]

Note to Stamper

Chips are called French Fries when they are from McDonalds in the UK :3

Right, this is a particularly funny, insughtful and cutting edge animation... Oh wait, no it isn't. It sucks balls and you should all feel ashamed of yourself for your racism and homophobia. The Kenyan lad that just brought me my cup of tea is incensed!

As with all collabs, there were some good, some back and some indifferent jokes, some that we could really relate to and a few that leave me questioning what form of editing went into the process.

Did you do the sky as an afterthought, give them all a blue screen to work around, or just make it with that in mind all the way through, telling them to animate it each as a focus for their piece.

Some of the gourd masks were incredibly well detailed and I particularly approve of Swain's work, though chluaid's part was bizarre and well conceived, even when dragged out for so long.

A nice fad for a week or two on the front page, no doubt. Willyou actually be carving your own mask like this out of gourd, pumpkin or marrow over the next few weeks - that would be great for the art portal and you'd certainly get some plaudits. Any artists seeing this, get your knives and paints at the ready!

It was interesting to see how people worked with the masks, as to how much changes they could get away with. RomeoJr was the only one that did any animation to the faces of the masks, though it would have been funny to have these guys turn away to put different masks on to change their emotional states.

[Review Request Club]

Stamper responds:

the hell is review request club

i wonder if it's anything like the Fuck Coop83 Club i just founded

[Jebby VS Ice Cream Truck]

Damned heathen wagons!

Wow, what a noble little crusade embarked upon by Jebediah, his two distinctly different only sons, Mini Chewbacca and Mini Pope. Which Mini Pope was this, as surely Nazi Pope could replace him, despite John Paul already having been dead for two years at the time of publication.

That aside, we have a very nicely animated piece that shows the true potential of your skills , as the iceberg breaks through the waves. There is still plenty more to see, beneath,k it's just that we haven't seen them as yet.

The destruction of the ice cream van was a slight problem, as the component parts didn't burst into flames, which would have topped it off nicely. Give it a little more attention to detail and you'll be making some stunning pieces.

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

Mini Pope is just one of the dozen or so characters I came up who are basically Jebediah wearing a different hat. I even used the same movie clip of Jebediah, stretching and skewing it slightly for each character. I enjoy using the Jebs, they just don't have much potential for animation right now.

I pretty much used the same explosion technique I used for the bus in Night of the Living Spud. I used that same explosion movie clip for YEARS. Vehicles are notoriously hard to draw, and so is blowing them up. I haven't tried doing really good hand animated explosions yet, but I hope to in the near future.

[NOTLS 2: Spud Terror]

And an Evil Dead reference to boot! :3

Ah, how far this series has come. I could certainly see that the SRM added douche-baggery has increased the length of this series, though it appears to have drastically reduced the life-expectancy of the main protagonist for this piece.

Wuggie for a brain - who'd have thought it? Plus machine guns, just to make it even more dramatic and far-fetched.

Seriously, what other movies did you watch for this, as it looks like you got the idea for the machine gun arms slightly modified from Evil Dead when Ash's arm is replaced with the chainsaw, towards the end of Evil Dead 2. Not that I dislike that movie, or any of the series - they all have their places.

I'm looking forward to the third episode of this, as it's looking like being some fun, in spite of the main character recently being lobotomised. Was that a 40k chain sword that you animated?

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

This was actually a big reference to Planet Terror, Robert Rodriguez's half of Grindhouse, even going so far as to use the movie's theme music. The main character has her leg chewed off by a zombie, and has it replaced by a machine gun. I highly recommend it! At the very end was an Evil Dead reference with the chainsaw arm, yeah. Also I reused my chainsword from SRM 40k because I was lazy.

The influences for this cartoon are the Evil Dead, Grindhouse, and a Bud Light Halloween commercial.

[The Real World!]

Nice work

The animation looks better, as the characters seem to have been re-drawn and you've given a much more rounded presentation, though that cat thing did deserve to die. Wuggie should have been armed and taken that fucker out though :P

I can understand the frustrations and I only hope that you've got all of the issues resolved now. With the way that things looks to be getting better for the future, would you consider ever animating scripts that other people write for you, or are you strictly a one man writer / director? Obviously, I'm thinking towards the Literature Portal, which will have Flash scripts submitted there, for animators the pour over and find a decent one for them.

It's a good indictment of the situation of reality TV shows and the fact that the population is getting dumber by watching them incessantly. Perhaps you need to make a piece with Paris & Nicole in Hell, with some sort of cameo from SRM as the Devil, or something similar, so that you can show how funny that would be.

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

I've since had problems syncing sound to animation, but I figured out a lot of solutions since. You'll realize a lot of the talking animation in this is just random flapping with no emphasis on timing or hitting the right beats in dialogue. It would have been better if I knew the tricks I knew now for fixing out of sync audio.

I don't think I'd do other peoples' scripts for cartoons like this (professionally is a completely other topic) although I have voice acted for other scripts before.

And yes, icanhasPayneburger deserved to die. I don't know what the hell I was thinking with that one - probably just too much Arfenhouse.