Coop's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Adrellia Village #13]

Christ, more filler.

I'm not sure I can take much more of this - the substandard voice acting, where everyone sounds the same, but just subtly different. The plot being exposed through characters talking to themselves. Eluding to an Oubliette, which is a form of dungeon, only accessible through a hatch high in the ceiling - why don't you just use the word "dungeon"?!

I know that this sort of thing needs to be done, to add some sort of continuity to the piece and give you the foundations for the next episode, but if you're going to have a monologue, perhaps have it read by a narrator. This can either be a third person (someone completely neutral to the plot; an additional character, for example) or be in the first person (since it's Drake's story, why not have him tell it?), because then the voices wouldn't be such a problem. You could have had Brutus dispatching the assassin personally, or getting a secretary to do it for him and saved a lot of issue there, for example. Sort the writing out and the rest of this would fall into place, for the most part.

[Review Request Club]

MistyE responds:

Thank you for your review! This will be taken into considerationn.

[Adrellia Village #11]

Nothing overly spectacular here, just a situation of having your two dimensional "cut outs" waving at one another. That's not animation any more than shadow puppetry is high budget special effects. You need to work more on motion tweens and work out how things would look when the model turns in three dimensions, as opposed to flicking from facing one way to the other, as it looks amateurish here.

If you're going to say that we must watch the previous episode beforehand, perhaps a link would help? At least give us a number to add to the nav bar to look at.

I was unimpressed by the lives that Darrell had - it took me a while to comprehend that they were lives and each time his health went down to zero, he carried straight on with another life. It just wouldn't work in gameplay, I feel. Perhaps making a "real time" battle from Fanal Fantasy was the wrong way, so you should have parodied Mortal Kombat (Soul Caliber may have been better, since they use weapons).

Crediting a voice actor, when no actual voices were used was lame - there were even blocks of text that we had to read to carry on the story (they were up for way too long as well). There are so many issues here and I really hope that these reviews are making an impression, because they need to, else you will keep making the same mistakes.

[Review Request Club]

MistyE responds:

Thank you for your review! They are, and episode 39 will be a good improvement!

[Game of The Year Edition]

So, what's this game you're selling? I just feel the need to give you my credit card details right now, because I simply MUST play it!

Absolutely genius, with some fantastic writing, animation, textures (I loved that brickwork gun, it's great for urban camouflage) and the overall presentation, which gave a humorous lampoon (I hope!) of the gaming industry. Great voice acting and delivery kept me engrossed, as did the facts about some of the Game of the Year editions that I've downloaded before. Sometimes, they're worth it, if the game has been out for a while and you get all of the DLC to go with it.

You put a nice American Dad gag in there with the gaming deity Japanese guy, who is insulting and consescending, while saying something that we can't understand. I also loved the quit about the rip-off engine, as these little things make all the difference.

Finally, putting the OOC chat at the end, when the guy worries that it is actually true was just the cherry on top of the icing, in my opinion.

If this isn't going to win awards, then the system has failed, frankly.

[Review Request Club]

[A Goomba's Life - Ep 4]

Not bad, but not brilliant.

I like this series and I think it can really go a long way. The main thing is that you're going to have to get the balance of the volumes from the various voice tracks balanced out. One minute, it's really quiet and a little muffled, when suddenly it's a really crisp, really loud scream, which has me reaching for the volume control once again, to turn it down to a more manageable level. Some of your voice actors seem to have better equipment and software than others. It's a shame, but you need balance, even if it's done digitally, before splicing the sounds with the movie itself.

The plot is decent and it details a day in the life, yet also leaves us with something for the next episodes, in the form of the call back gag. The mouse need not be in every episode, but you might get Yoshi run off at an awkward moment, chasing after the mouse, for example. A nice balance of characters has been presented, but in the titles, I'd throw all of the icons out at the same time, to save time and space on the piece, giving a more compact and efficient title sequence.

You're looking good, but with a few more changes, things could be better - moving more than one sprite in different directions at the same time will really help, if you do it more.

[Review Request Club]

[1 Take 1 Loop]

Very clever.

I love the way that this piece progresses through the loop, developing from one scene to another and back again, without seeming to have gone very far at all. The fact that each frame is hand drawn makes it even better and the music integrates with it very cleverly.

You've clearly worked a lot on the story, moving from one scene to the other, which really helps the layout. his is one of the more detailed pieces of frame-by-frame animation that I've ever seen, yet it still looks a little weird in places, which is the curse of FBF - the nose on the initial character is strange, but not insurmountable. Little touches make all the difference and the quirky look of the clown's nose as it changes shape is brilliant.

You chose a great track for it, though give credit where it's due in the credits section, since this piece loops, not having an end, where you can show this. You've not put a comment about it or anything, so even if it is you, more kudos can b obtained.

[Review Request Club]

Carr77 responds:

Thanks man, I'm glad you liked it :D
The credits are in the menu, and it do say the name of the song, and who made it :)

[Papers]

Like the main character of the piece, this whole presentation seems quite disjointed. I can see from the movements of Papers, that he is supposed to move like that, but the plot flowing in the same sort of way is not what should be put across, I feel. Try putting subtitles in and when there are breaks in the narrative, you need to move quickly and seamlessly to the next part. This can be achieved by either aggressively cutting the piece, or more probably by adding narrative lines, to drag that side out.

The different characters that you have there are great, with the mugger and the landlord. The landlord would benefit from the subtitles the most, as I thought he was saying "rape", as opposed to "rent".

Giving a little more to this piece, you could certainly have been set for the first part of a potentially successful series. I was hoping it wasn't Clock Crew, when I heard the narrative from Speakonia and I was pleasantly surprised. I wonder what else you can have happen to Papers. Why not work on something good happening, rather than all being bad?

[Review Request Club]

Surn responds:

Well I'm glad you found the cartoon enjoyable. Overall, the depressingness would seem to be the most common complaint and you would seem to be right about too many bad things and not enough good things happening to Papers. As for subtitles, I'll probably pass on that unless I have a character speak in a foreign language. Thanks for your input.

[Adrellia Village #10]

You're making this hard for me. Really, with the fact that you're going a little beyond poetic licence, by stating that Drake knows what gears engaging sounds like. You've used too much of the "cheat" cut scenes and stuff that you've not made, so I can't give you credit for that. Re-using the scenes and just flipping them isn't all that much work, either, so it's kind of a lazy piece, especially when you throw in my pet hate of part voice acted lines and part text, with no vocals.

Most of this episode is chaff, where we get nothing to really advance the plot and it's just filler material. Given the time spent on this episode and the last, you could combine them together and not lose anything of importance, while still having a script of note, to really get the piece moving.

The ideas are essentially good, but I would suggest that you sit down and look at the scripts, before moving to the storyboard part of the process. This would allow you to catch issues and deal with them, before the piece starts to take off and you publish with issues such as you've shown here.

I'm not saying that you should give up, but learn from these mistakes and give yourself a chance to win some awards.

[Review Request Club]

MistyE responds:

The gears are the only "cheat" cut scenes I slipped in there that I know of. I'll be learning from these mistakes by episode 39.

Thanks for your review.

[Adrellia Village #9]

Too much "waffle".

Wow, this needs an overhaul - seriously, some MMOs don't give you that much of a tutorial in how the game works. You've shown us Drake's life bar, then forgot about it for the rest of the episode, so that can be cut as unnecessary. The lines which blur between you needing voice actors and you not needed them is blurry, which really needs to be addressed. With them as they are, you will find that it really irritates people unless you go one way (voices for everything, including thoughts, but with a little effect, to make them sound as if they are echoing within his head) or the other (no voices at all).

There was a lot of unnecessary filler material in this episode, which dragged the plot out to approximately 2.5 minutes, but I'd recommend that you take steps to put more substantial filler in there, else people will start to notice the plot holes. Better voice acting is a must, as is defining the characters through making them look different. Not their uniforms, as then they stop being "uniform", but giving them different hair styles, shapes of faces and so forth. These little touches make all the difference.

I feel that in this episode, you need to be ruthless and spare nothing from the wrath of a director, sending waves to the cutting room floor, speeding up the plot and getting towards the next art of the story. I hope that by the time we get to the 30s, we can start to see improvement of these episodes.

[Review Request Club]

MistyE responds:

With regards to the life bar, it will be used later on in episode 11 with the boss battle. Thanks for your review. #33 and on marks a good improvement.

[Adrellia Village #7]

Ah, a decent length episode at last! There were a few issues with this episode, like the pronunciation of "tailsman", which didn't go down too well with me, when it kept cropping up. A good writer finds a compromise synonym to help a struggling voice actor, such as amulet. On top of that, your narrator has the world's single most boring voice and I did catch myself drifting off to sleep, while listening to that long monologue.

What I would have done to change it up, would be to have Drake meet a bard, who tells him the potted history of Medralia (Very poor name, changing the "A", to an "Me", by the way) and gives him a few hints along the way. Have him pluck a few strings on the lute and have the whole speech be delivered with aplomb and gusto, so that Drake doesn't get bored.

There is so much of a chance to make this better and if your voice actor can't make the grade, then you'll have to move on, getting someone who has a range of voices, that you could use, to more effect.

The basic, sketched backgrounds didn't do you any favours here, as you went from the reasonable background to photos, to these evolving diagrams, which looked sketchy and poor quality, taking away from the overall effect that I feel you're after.

I hope that these get better, as at the moment, when you've learned better techniques, a redux may be called for, with better voices and animation.

[Review Request Club]

[Adrellia Village #6]

For an episode with a sound track consisting of Enter Sandman, I was expecting a lot from this, but you've given me literally nothing to go on. Giving us plot that is exposed through two or three lines of text is plain bad. The writing needs the most work, so that you can then expand upon it in the story board section, followed by making it into a decent piece.

Sure, text gags have been used in Star Wars parodies for ages, but that said and done, we just don't put up a blank canvas and write on it, during a modern film. Express it without words, as a picture is worth a thousand of them. I write in a form that I one day hope will be professional, but that aside, I cringe when I see this shortcut used. In cartoon terms, it's the sort of shortcut that Homer takes and they turn up in the next scene with half of the car replaced with wood and a badly fitting wheel. I'm not sure why you gave us one tip about Drake hurting his elbow, but you can show that in some detail, easily. I can even relate to it, having chipped a bone in my elbow a few years ago.

Now, I want to see something happen in the next episode, so that it at least shows signs that you might improve later in the series. I'm fortunate to have seen some of the later ones, because I intend to nurture that progress and help you make the series better.

[Review Request Club]

MistyE responds:

Thank you. The next episode is six minutes long and provides backstory, not necessarily plot advancement, but Drake makes it to Medrellia to warn the king.