Coop's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[LoL: Oh Yes And Spiders]

As epic as LoZ gets!

Well, this is a fantastic piece, in spite of the fact that I was never really into Legend of Zelda as a kid, so I never grew up around the game as a young gamer.

I love the way that you've given such depth to the characters themselves, plus some of the lesser characters as well, giving more depth than most authors of pieces such as this would let themselves in for.

I'll admit that when I saw the file size at 12 megabytes, I was a little awestruck. Seeing the whole thing through, my feelings haven't really changed, except my respect for you has risen dramatically, for watching this epic production.

I'm glad that you had the subtitles, as the clock chimed while I was watching it and at 10pm, that's a long chime, so I think that for the benefit of not seeing something like that happen and having people need to return to the start, you could implement a scene select menu for your piece. That alone is the one major change for the good that you could make for this piece.

The downside of this is that you've shown what a 2-year hiatus could do for you, but as a result of this, you are going to have to bat to a higher bench mark for your future productions - I'd love to see what you cna cook up next for us to watch :)

[Review Request Club]

Emptygoddess responds:

Hopefully what I cook up will be delicious and have a nice vinaigrette base.

[Wilson Beard's Cannons]

That's a lot of Arg!

Well, what more can I say? We've seen a wonderful piece of flash that really proves that there's a wonderful sense of humour both in the voice acting community and the flash authors community also - It's so convincing, I was almost halfway to the phone to call them myself.

I think that the captain that lost the battle looks a little well, considering that he has lost everything - you'd have expected a lot of flesh wounds and more torn clothing than usual. Perhaps it could have been portrayed as the two faces and then zoom out when the feature pans around to the punchline of that joke.

I like the way that it's set in the 1600s - 1700s and yet there is still a very modern twist to the piece, which blends in nicely. You've complimented Druox's voice acting and you're not a bad animator yourself :) Keep up the good work.

[Review Request Club]

[Day of the Madness]

Gutting twist

Literally!

Still, this is probably one of the best madness style pieces I've ever seen - the plot is more than just abstract violence, it's complete with speechless expression about a group of people with one common goal - survival. I love the revolving door policy of introducing characters, as you certainly went through a fair few of them, killing them off pretty much indiscriminately, making for a much better quality of film than if you kept all of the characters you wanted to keep alive. I even felt a pang of sympathy for when Curtis decided to take his own life.

Some great animation, though why do the teeth go absolutely crazy when they become zombies? I think that you've developed a great rapport for this piece, with the mood that you set from the start. Perhaps next time, you could add some voices, as that would be novel, since no-one ever does a madness flash with a voiceover.

With the way that it's going, keep it as it is for the next piece, I'm highly interested to see how the story pans out, or even if this is not the final countdown, since we're seeing "to be concluded", which would indicate the final piece is next, but would that just be a mammoth cureveball for us?

[Review Request Club]

[How To Win Portal Awards]

Not bad

I know it's an oldie of yours - it's even pre-redesign, so we're talking a 3 year old piece here, but there were still things that you could have added on top of what information you've given people on the awards in question.

Perhaps you could have told people what they need to achieve in order to get the awards - underdog, for example being the greatest difference between the review average score and twice the portal voted score.

I'd have suggested that you give an image of the award itself, this description and your tips on how to win it, with the option of having speakonia read it out to you - sort of a TL;DR button, if you would. This would be something that disables the music automatically, but if people want to, they should be able to change the track and / or mute it altogether. I know you've got the talent to make something of what I'm thinking about now, so give it some thought and perhaps come up with a new, more modern version of this infomercial?

[Review Request Club]

Frenzy responds:

Thanks!

~ Z

P.S. Please forgive the lateness of my reply.

[It's Great To Be A Pirate]

Simple and effective

A very nice little jig, that seems to fit with the simple accordion riff that accompanies the singing. I like the way that you've tied the animation up to the lyrics, but I think that the main things I would have changed was the start - there could have been the face of the captain, berating the men, while the accordion player started playing.

It's a good drawing style, that flows nicely with the rest of the piece and the crew, while relatively few people works as well, although I'd have suggested that they were drinking from assorted grog bottles, as opposed to beer tankards - it took up less space in the hold, to take harder liquor, rather than beer ;)

[Review Request Club]

[A Grand Ship]

A little muffled

It's funny, but there are sadly some limitations to the piece overall, which is a real shame. The voice work is decent, but there are still sound quality issues which require some work with the vocal artist to sort it all out properly.

When nit comes to the animation side, as you're a lot more involved in that side of things, your animation is quite simple, when you take into consideration things like how fast the lip sync moves and the fact that the two pirates don't actually move around that much does take away from the piece a little. Putting something like having the captain walk behind a screen in the cabin would have been better, when he came back dressed as the Dutchman and the bunny, just to keep people interested. Perhaps also a chest that he goes through for props, like the Pirates of the Caribbean DVD, for example.

These ideas are a few steps for taking the animation forward and as a result, you will end up with a much improved piece. Good luck.

[Review Request Club]

Sgtkillstuff responds:

Thank you! I could have made it a lot better, but I didn't have a lot of time to finish it and there wasn't really a long enough pause in between the names for me to really add anything special other than a quick change. I'll make sure to make my next submission more interesting though.

[Samuel and Rosella]

Quite funny

I like this song, it's catchy and in the true essence of LemonDemon, it's got a catchy rhythm and some very funny lyrics. I think that you might have been able to get a better quality recording though, as it sounded a little muffled, as if the sound quality has been reduced by compressing it or something. You've only got a 2.6 Meg file, so you've got plenty of bandwidth left :)

Perhaps you could have done something with Samuel's chin, as it sticks out more than Jay Lenno's or Bruce Forsyth's. A few minor tweaks here and there with other aspects of the animation will really bring it on as well. Perhaps things like drawing a better set of binoculars and having Rosella stand more to Samuel's left when he fires the bazooka - those things have a large backdraft when they fire, so paying attention to details like that certainly help ;)

Finally, I think that something needs to be done about Rosella's facial expression - don't be afraid to do stuff with her - I never see her lips move or the expression she wears change at all. A few tweaks to that will help, plus lip syncing when she sings that one line before they stab the teenager with the umbrella would make the world of difference.

Good job, I look forward to seeing more of your stuff.

[Review Request Club]

chesster415 responds:

Cool, thanks. I'm usually more game oriented, but I wanted to animate this before someone else did it. I probably could increase the sound quality a bit.

[[TT] CD09 -thdrky-]

Needs some hard work

This is one of the usual pieces of flash that we see coming through on Clock Day - I can't really see how the file size is 1.3 meg - it sounds and looks like it should be a lot smaller.

I think that you need to start with the drawing aspect of this - perspective needs to be used with the road ever so slightly, for two reasons - It looks like the protagonist is standing on top of a hill, so some work behind the plane of the character, building and dustbin would certainly help. Secondly, if you make the road narrow ever so slightly, you'll give a much better look of the thing, as the parallel lines just seem to look out of place.

When it comes to the use of Speakonia, I'd certainly consider tweaking what you've got, as it's very difficult to understand what it being said - thanks for the flash cards, I guess. I'd consider adding some subtitles in a bar across the bottom of the screen (this will help your road issue as well ;) and do something with the images that you've liberally borrowed from Google Image Searches. Take them and cut out around the image, then you can do more with it, even animating them, rather than having a slide show as your only animation.

Perhaps you need more characters :P

[Review Request Club]

YukariYakumo responds:

Ran is working on the drawing, and I'm trying to improve my Speakonia skills. But unless I can find a good microphone, we're stuck with text-to-speech software for sound. Next time we'll actually have something interesting though, not just stereotypes and Google. Maybe some more characters too, who knows.

[Love Adventure]

Pixelated surrealism

Not your best piece, I have to say, sadly.

I think that this is a decent piece of music that you've chosen to interpret, I like the way that you've come up with a great deal of scenarios for this, but I felt that the main issue I had with staying with the piece was the lack of detail. Don't get me wrong, sprites are all well and good, especially when someone as accomplished as you comes to manipulating them, but in this case, I felt that you were zoomed in too much on the whole of the flash, so details were lost, particularly on the girls faces. Perhaps you could have progressed from Atari to Amiga for the graphics package and still send out the same message

The plot is quite wide-ranging, so you've worked well on that. A good obscure reference for the the whole piece, you could say, so it works quite well, even leaving me a little confused from time to time as to what is actually happening.

With regards to your question in an earlier review, you're responding to the reviews, erg, you're reading them. I like people that listen to what I have to say :)

[Review Request Club]

Emptygoddess responds:

Actualy if anything i was to clear. I should have used less colors and bigger pixels! BIGGER!

[VERONICA: Dark hobbies]

Nicely detailled

I think that you could certainly do with adding a little colour to the proceedings - it would be like Sin City, with making the blood stand out, for example. I think that the drawing style is excellent and even the occasional regressions (Yaoi?) frames that look a little simplistic with the art are well placed for the effect.

It's not a bad plot and the characters are certainly there for the pervert vote in the audience :P I think that developing these characters would be a wonderful thing.

The covers were nice and I think that perhaps some sort of 'centrefold' where you see a wonderfully animate picture of the girls doing something like when Veronica ran the guy over in the car - do that like the cover art in full colour and you'll have a great impact, before continuing the story to a triumphant conclusion.

[Review Request Club]

Emptygoddess responds:

Your reviews are well thought out, verbose, and thoughtful.

I'm not sure why you're here.