Coop's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Pablo The Knight]

Dammit >:(

I thought there was going to be some other sort of gag, rather than that "I couldn't be arsed to animate" line. It was going so well and then the way that the cannon was presented was a great precursor to a suitably epic fight scene. What I didn't get was why you didn't animate the fight.

Still, there's some good work here and the animation is superbly rounded, though I was surprised not to see a single cow in this piece, nor even hear a cow noise from the battle sounds that you used.

A little more work and making the fight scene would really help you here. Good luck :)

[Review Request Club]

Imacow responds:

Lol, thanks coop. No cows in this one unfortunately. Some more may be coming along though. Thanks for the review

[Dirty Animal Dubstep Rave]

Simple concept, great results

I love the way that this piece worked out, with the various animals that you put together for this piece. It was a shame that you didn't do any colour splashes with the gopher or whatever it was that went across the screen towards the end of the piece.

Another nice addition might have been something like a polar bear, since the white background would have made for a challenging colour spray, perhaps a snowstorm of some description.

With the way that you've put this piece together, I'm expecting a lot of random shouts for various types of animals to be presented - would you consider a second version of this, if you could find an equally enthralling tune?

[Review Request Club]

[Cooking With]

Cookery program channel hopping

A real shame that you didn't have voices in this piece, as it might have really helped you along here. With the way that the three channels are introduced, you've got what appears like the cookery show on Gremlins 2, once the gremlins have taken over on Channel 1. This is quite funny, especially when he is confounded by the tin of tomato puree.

Channel 2 appears to be the cook who is preparing a romantic meal for her and a psychic / telekinetic powered mate. Lobster is fun, but it could have been a little less resigned to death.

Channel 3 appears to be a knife wielding maniac vegetarian. If you believe about Hitler being a vegetarian, you're pretty much onto the right thing here.

What irks me is the "cheats" used for Channel 3 and the chopping of the fruit - at least throw different arrangements of the same shape into the frame, ready to be chopped and pulped. This also confounds matters with Channel 2's final presentation, which has an apple, banana and pear alongside the lobster. The same shapes as we see on the rival channel.

Surely Channel 2 could say something along the lines of "now take your lobster out of the pot - look at how cute he is" etc and then dump him in the pot, for example. I can understand that channel 1 isn't going to have many lines of dialogue, if any. But 3 could as well as 2.

Give it a shot - you've done a good job with this piece, now go out there and do an even better one with the next one :)

[Review Request Club]

[The Love I'm Searching 4]

Wow, impressive

A very nice piece that has far reaching consequences and the style of the cartoons being drawn onto a partially traced, partially photographic background is incredible. I think that you've interpreted the music very well and have provided something very compelling to watch, while fascinating on the style and plot fronts.

I think that the style of giving the four main protagonists in the gang the same headphones, but represented by differing colours does lend a little bond of sisterhood to the girls and as a result, it allows a more empathic link with the viewer. This friendship that is shared seems to be a stronger one than the outward bond of the siblings, since they seem quite against one another, which is understandable, when you are in the same surroundings as a relative as close as them for too long.

Some of the references were a little strange and I had to watch this a few times to pick up on how the plot was being exposed as a whole, but aside from adding a subtitles bar, there wouldn't really be all that much that you could add to this piece by a way of improvement. I wonder if you would ever bring these characters back as a sequel?

[Review Request Club]

Skaijo responds:

Your review is highly appreciated. As it is, there won't be a sequel to this animation as this work was the the capstone to a series where the main focus was crazy fast pacing and random fighting/action scenarios. The goal was take a bit of a risk and try something on a sensitive note. I had a lot of fun working this out (thought the song certainly had it's repetitive moments of agony). The style of this and hopefully future animations is a combination of all Flash techniques used side by side, harmoniously. The next step is vector art and more subtle shading--which I hope you'll get to see during the next major project.

I've got an older sister myself. The bond I have with her is so strong that I easily take it for granted whenever possible. xD

[Doraleous and Associates]

Awesome!

The irony of the situation that I just stumbled across this series today on The Escapist. You've got some brilliant writing and a great comic timing across the group that really gives us ways to laugh at the misfortune or bad planning of the party as a whole.

Some good jokes, like the fearsome "Tightanus" (or is that Titanus?) and the fact that we haven't really learned too much about the party, except for the slight incompetence and petty infighting, we've learned that Drak is just a big softie, but that's so often true with the big guys.

I think that this is your best piece so far and Tom has certainly made the right choice in allowing you to submit pieces like this to the Portal. I look forward to seeing more episodes over time :)

[Review Request Club]

[CoolJaw: P.S. I-V]

Perhaps a Menu leading to sub menus?

Building up to another story, you seem to be spawning more contents pages than actual story here and it's starting to drag the piece down, in all honesty.

What you need is some sort of menu page that shows each one of your comic book serialisations on a page, allowing you to click and find the links to the chapters. It will make the start much easier for people like me, who have already seen the originals and much less tedious for those of us that haven't.

You've got some dark, macabre writing and looking at your piece overall, I think that it's nowhere near as good as Snowblind, so you need to work more on the game there.

Again, there needs to be some sort of logical progression of the speech bubbles, as I feel that moving from right to left on a page is somewhat odd, unless I was reading in Arabic, since that's how it works in languages in that region. Perhaps pay attention to these fine details and move on from there.

[Review Request Club]

Celx-Requin responds:

Hello,

I agree, sadly at this point when the series is almost done I'm way too much of a sloth to recreate another menu, that said you can use the scene select to jump past the other "act pages".

Thanks,
- Celx

[Shark Black: Demo]

Well designed and performed

I do think that this piece needs a little more in the way of better voice acting and perhaps some subtitles, since I didn't quite catch all of the lines, because of the voice you chose and the limited lip synching. The mouth doesn't change shape dependent upon the word that you're trying to get them to say, it just oscillates between open and closed.

When it comes to the background detail of this piece you've certainly gone overboard here and that does mean bonus points for you. It also sets the bar pretty high for you to recreate when you make more of these pieces.

I don't know if it was a bridge that the guy ran across, but the strobe effect of the piece in that sequence, before the police station and the other buildings that he ran past just seemed to make me a little nauseous. That could do with shortening and perhaps changing for something a little easier on the eyes.

Finally, when the sword is shown in the room, should it have a pointed edge so close to the hilt? I always thought that katana tended to have the blade move straight to the hilt and not deviate for artistic purposes that might blunt or weaken the blade. As the guy says in the following scene, "I note small details"

[Review Request Club]

Celx-Requin responds:

Hello,

The film actually does have subtitles (english, and spanish), you just need rollover the subtitles tab and turn them on.

Yeah the backgrounds in the next one are going to be even more detailed, which is why its taking so dame long to finish.

I agree with what you said about the bridge scene, however when running off the source .swf file it works pretty well, sadly its really choppy on newgrounds...

Thanks for the review,
Sincerely,
- Celx