Coop's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Rotoscope Compilation!]

Good work

There's some great little sample piece here - I hope that all of the artists submit their own little pieces here, so we can see them in less compressed beauty, so that we can appreciate it in better video and sound quality. Some of the pieces did suffer more than others and that does drag the overall quality of the piece down, though I'd love to see what you guys are capable of with more time and remit to create your own things.

You all have some really nice skills here and showcasing them like this does help to get the group more exposure, but as just a few seconds of your material, with more credits than anything, I struggled to see more than just a quick animation demo.

As for the interface, I'd have liked to see a "play all" function, allowing us to run straight through them, as opposed to having to click on each character and view their piece like that. Sure, it does help with showing who wrote and animated what, but it seriously compromises the flow. Perhaps consider watermarking the name or tag over one corner of the animation, so that people can give credit where it is due.

[Review Request Club]

akoRn responds:

Thanks for the fine review, Coop. And yeah, I kinda low my personal piece so that the others can b shown in best yet low quality as possible. And thx. I'll make sure to make a play all button IF we'll make another compilation with another assignment.

[Pentagon n' Oval 2]

New brand of racism :P

Wow, this was far too long in coming out, to be honest. I can just see Mastermind watching these sort of things on his computer in an upcoming episode for future reference.

The way that they bounce is pretty standard, though I'd have appreciated a little more movement when it comes to some of the emotions that are shown - you could make one of them sag a little, as he sighs and possibly change the coulour of the later guy, as he yells "Fucking traitor, Clint!"

Still, it's a funny little flash and I wonder how many of them will be dead and / or waking up in hospital for episode 3.

P.S. THIS REVIEW SUCKS

[Review Request Club]

The-Swain responds:

haha well hello to you too sailor

[Two Nerds and a Robot]

Great short

You so need to bring these guys back! With the exception of the wobbling gut of the second nerd, this is really well animated. I'd probably insist on some voices for these two, just for the fact that you've got so many nerd jokes and clichés that need to be attended to.

What becomes of the robot? With that boot print in his brain, does it go on a killing spree, wrecking the nerd's chances of ever winning at the science fair that will eventually take place, no doubt.

Was the jaw dropping inspired by Ren & Stimpey? The animation just seemed heavily influenced by that and I would be surprised if it wasn't. Particularly with things like the step in from off-screen and other bits and pieces like that, you seem to be leaning that way.

A great piece of music and a very accomplished piece of Flash work. I look forward to seeing more :D

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

The bit with the jaw drop was actually a Tex Avery gag, but a lot of animation in Ren and Stimpy is John K. writing a love letter to Tex. The instructor for my Advanced 2D course was a really big Tex Avery fan, so I had to have a nice take in there.

I started writing another cartoon with these guys and SRM, but it never went anywhere. I have them pop up in the background here and there, but I'd love to use them again. Fat guys are really fun to animate. The robot was actually taken from another cartoon I wrote but never made about a kid in the 50's with a robot best friend. They'd fight Soviet robots like the one in this toon.

Glad you liked the cartoon!

[Pizza Waffles]

Great progress!

Another step forward with the animation - sure, some of the drawings that you've done don't look quite as smooth as they could with your old style, but that's the beauty of Frame By Frame, as more focus is directed towards the drawing side of things and errors there become somewhat obvious.

A little touch up here and there gives you an incredible looking piece that's certainly a great show of what you're up to now for the works that you're creating. If anything, I'm a little disappointed, as this means you're animating less submissions, but the higher quality does certainly make up for it, certainly.

Perhaps a few more voices later in the piece, when the guys are staring in wonder at the land of pizza waffles, just for added ambience. I know that you cut it, but perhaps an indicator of something along the lines of "Okay, so we're going to take a waffle, throw some pizza toppings on it, bang it in the oven and POW! Pizza Waffles!" for an intro, making it really simple and hard hitting. I'm not advocating education for those too slow, more that it would help completion of the piece.

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

There was actually about 30 seconds of animation that was going to be in the beginning where the guy with the hat faints and the other guy makes a pizza waffle, replete with crazy camera angles. If I had a whole semester to do that, I would've. I only had half that time so I focused on the core of the animation, which is the journey to Waffleland.

This cartoon has some ugly frames in it, no doubt. There's a cleaned up version with MUCH better backgrounds on Youtube called "Pizza Waffles DELUXE" that I uploaded. I'll eventually get around to updating the .swf here, but eh.

My output has slowed to a crawl, but I'm learning a lot more than I used to be. The cartoons are also of generally better quality, but I lost a lot of fans due to the wait and change of styles. Glad you liked it though!

[SRM Star Wars Holiday!]

Redesign?

Wow, if you're upping the ante, by shifting to Frame By Frame, you've made a good step with this one. Not only have you exposed the conspiracy of George Lucas' tyrannical companies and their dreams of World Domination, via capitalism, but you've shown what a great animatior that you've become over the past few years. Granted, it's only a few months since I started viewing and reviewing your work, but the progress is astounding.

The writing is good too, with the addition of Chewbacca's son, Lumpy into this latest foray, but it's good, without breaching copyright laws, which would have LucasFilm's own team of Lawyers flying over there in their TIE-Fighter, quicker than you can say Carrie Fisher is fat.

The call backs are first rate, with the fact that Jethro is on screen, as he is on your profile and SRMClock is in fact an ornamental clock in this piece, keeping himself occupied with indicating the passage of time.

A nice shout out to the three newer movies of the Star Wars franchise, which shows that subtlety is a nice art that you're using, which certainly compliments a nice shovel full of irony, as well.

Keep up the good work - I'm not fussed with which way you take it, as there are great outlets for both FBF and "traditional" animation, though I can tell from your icons all over your profile that you prefer this episode in general.

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

I liked that the writing was more subtle in this cartoon than in some others - I know some of my other cartoons kind of hit you over the head with random humor and whatnot. Personally my favorite joke in this toon is the "Dargonball" one, but Engrish usually gets me pretty good.

I'm always happy to put Jebediah or SRMClock into the background. You'll see one or both of them in the backgrounds of my next few toons in one place or another. My opinions on this episode kind of flip flop depending on how I feel - sometimes I think it's too wordy, and sometimes I think it's clever. The animation is really crude compared to how my next few toons look though, especially the new SRM toon that will be out before Christmas.

Anyway, think of this cartoon as SRM's awkward puberty between the symbols and the more refined style of my next few cartoons.

[W40k Dawn of Awesome 2]

Moar Spehs Marehnes!

Wow, seeing that you've done a damned good Chaos commander (Ahriman?) voice, I love the way that this flash turned out. The idea that Chaos wouldn't know what these metal boxes really are, since they have shed loads of tanks of their own, but you were a little light on the demons that clustered around this piece, so there's work to be done there.

As for the Sonic section, you put yourself in a decent setup, but the jury is still out on whether or not you should have stayed over Sonic the whole time, or if him poking out from behind in certain parts of the piece made it better or worse. Most of me wants to say worse here, but with the way that this worked out, I can't completely condemn it.

Still, I'd have loved to have seen more plot with this one and I've got a pretty good repertoire of Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40k jokes and even a script or two lurking about, if you're interested.

I think that 40k is becoming even more popular and over time, these pieces will certainly be outdated by new rules and so forth, but with your skills, you're certainly able to push forward and give us some good laughs along the way, as Games Workshop launches forward and releases tons of new merchandise, that everyone wants to own, mortgaging their house, selling their relatives and various other seedy methods of cash generation - perhaps you need to focus on that in the next W40k piece?

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

I wish I could do that ridiculous dinosaur voice! It's from one of the Dawn of War games.

The sonic bit is just me taking a joke really far - glad you enjoyed it more than most people have.

There's never really much plot with these cartoons - the Dawn of Awesome cartoons are usually made when I'm extremely stressed out as a way to blow off steam. Not much thought is usually put into them beyond me giggling to myself before animating.

[SRM: Return of SRMClock]

Joy of Clocks

Ah, the fact that you've ripped off Terminator 2 for the final scenes really does put this in perspective. The addition of evil genius, Ray Romano as a protagonist here really helps the story, as I was kind of missing him over the past few months.

Will we ever see a remodelled SRMClock? Only 15/8/2011 will tell! Still, I'd love to see this pan out, so that we can see how you make it into a woman for T3 :P

I think that the plot has come forward as well and the only thing that slows you down is the fact that animation takes so long to get sorted. I feel slightly robbed by this, as the work is incredible and much more deserving of awards than the stuff that I see submitted alongside it.

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

I did feel robbed by this cartoon since it came out so well and got very little attention. This is the last full-on symbol based SRM cartoon that I can think of - after this things get kinda... jiggly as I ease into frame by frame animation.

I don't even want to know what would happen if I made Ray Romano.jpg into a woman. SRM toons are a boy's club anyway. You still see SRMClock around some backgrounds if you look for him in my new cartoons though.

Glad you liked this toon! If I make a third SRMClock I'll have to find another movie to rip off, considering I've done Star Wars and Terminator with this one. Maybe Robocop or Predator?

[March of the Giraffeys]

Interesting documentary

I love the idea of the Giraffey, though it does seem a little rushed. Perhaps slow down the vocal presentation a little, as else it will sound a little gabbled. The way that you introduced them all was a nice touch and it all seemed like we were learning a lot about them.

I was a little disturbed by the fact that they kept dying. How many Giraffey were lost during the one year? I think that this particular facet may have been ever so slightly overdone, so toning it down would help a lot.

I long to hear more about these gentle creatures that we know so little about. I'm sure that there is plenty more that you could show us of this. How exactly does a plateau flood, by the way?

Also, I had a little problem getting this to play - it lurched straight to the credits. Is this something that needs looking at, or did I do something again that is not entirely my fault, but I'll be buggered if I can work out what I did?

[Review Request Club]

TheL1st responds:

Actually the project did get a little rushed, I started out of the gates veyr strong but lost faith but heckling from others around me gave me the motivation to finish it.

about the jump to credits, I have not encountered this problem, mayhaps you pressed the "credits" button instead of play?

[Flash Class Assignment]

More holes than swiss cheese

I think that you've got the animation down nicely, but the whole piece is really let down by a lack of sound, glaringly obvious absences of parts where animation should be (The portfolio was empty, as was the "live action scene") and the test kept telling me "wrong dipshit, as opposed to even giving me a chance of a correct answer.

The solutions I'd give are as follows: A soundtrack. You can find plenty of audio on the Audio Portal, that you can download and use in your flash submissions under the free use policy. That will allow you to get your pieces more recognition, as they won't just be well animated, but largely two dimensional. Sound effects might also help, such as a high whistle for when Ben slips and a comedic "thwack" for when he hits the deck. Consider shaking the "camera" at that point, for effect as well.

With the questions, give us multiple choices and allow us to get the correct answer one way or another, rather than just calling us dipshits, because you couldn't make the quiz work properly.

Add the portfolio - I'd love to see what you're capable of, since your drawing skills are simple and effective. This gives people a lot of a chance to see through the toon itself and into the mind of the artist, allowing you to convey more complex ideas.

[Review Request Club]

blakem5 responds:

Thank you very much for the tips...though I do have music for it but for some reason it doesn't work on here...works fine on the .swf....same with the portfolio it works in the .swf version but not on here, it's really confusing...and as for the test I never got that to work sadly and my teacher was no help either lol...but thank you very much

[SRM: The Last Soda]

It's happened too many times >:(

I hate it when that happens. When I used to work in a supermarket and the machines did that when no-one else was on shift, I used to tip the machine and usually get rewarded with stuff I didn't want. Woo-hoo :(

The idea that the games SRM picked are ones that he would pretty much automatically lose at is genius. He then stumbles to Guitar Hero, which wasn't a good choice either in the end, but he could have won at Rock Band - I see him as one of nature's drummers. The question is, what if he misses? Should he sit closer?

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

This cartoon was a while before I really conceived of SRM as a three dimensional character. I couldn't really see him playing drums back then, although these days things would definitely be different.

This is probably the most significant collaboration I've made to this point. I'm doing a team production animation next semester for school, so we'll see how that comes out. I like this toon though; glad you and a lot of other Newgrounds folks did too.