Coop's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Death of Mini Rasputin]

Very good stuff

I love how the work of a silent movie can be recreated here, the way that things come together and give a well rounded presentation of the death of diminutive dictators. I'd have suggested a little more work on the random additions to the film, to make it look aged and slightly damaged, though the reel coming apart for the "scene missing" part was a nice bit of observation.

With the sickle in the back, the Uzi (?) and SRM putting the boot in, I can certainly see that the years of oppression have taken their tolls on the downtroden masses, who get a well deserved chance at revenge. Perhaps they would like to see something a little more, as the figure slipping below the waves is a relatively peaceful death, in spite of the beating, the stabbing and the shooting that happened before.

Who next on your list? Mini Kim Jong-Il? Mini Napoleon?

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

My favorite bit is that the waves were going super duper fast even though he was falling in slow motion.

I did another Mini Rasputin cartoon for my Surrealism class; you'll see that when you get to my 2009 cartoons. I never really went far with other dictators - I have Mini Castro and Mini Rasputin, and I used Mini Rommel in my comics a bit. They're all really just Jebediah wearing different hats though.

[Warhammer: SRM 40,000]

Good, I expect more from this universe

Yes, I've been there and done that. I have paid money into the corporate whore, that is Games Workshop and yet, I still go back for more. I think I'm over my addiction for now, but we'll have to see.

As for this, I'd be very interested to see what you'd make of the various other races in this universe. Any of the Xenos races would be hilarious to see SRM take on, with Orks, Eldar, Necrons and Tau all available for lampooning. Imperial Guardsmen would be easy to take the piss out of, so that one's up to you.

I liked the fact that the chainswords actually moved, though I always preferred marines to be armed with power weapons, as while cleaving through armour is quite funny and destructive with the chainsword, it's much easier with the power sword.

Still, that's just a matter of personal preference. With the way that you've progressed with this piece, I think that it's showing that your animation is much improved after a period of less than six months, so we're looking at better productions coming out in the future from you :D

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

Had no idea you were a Warham!

40k is one of my favorite settings, and I love it at the heights of its silliness and awesomeness. I did write up a sequel to this cartoon, and I actually went so far as to record the dialogue and start animating it. For one reason or another I never moved on with it though, so it's just sitting 10% completed somewhere on my hard drive. I don't think I'll ever finish it, since going back to three year old work methods doesn't sit right with me. That cartoon would have had Tyranids and the Inquisition in it, along with Space Marines.

I did make more 40k cartoons with the Dawn of Awesome series. They're intentionally terrible, but have done pretty well here on Newgrounds. Go figure.

[Explosion Force 5]

What a great trailer

Brilliant writing, some excellent jokes and the way that this is portrayed really works. I love the fact that you've gone a little Michael Bay with the explosions, as that's what blockbuster movies are made from, in his eyes.

WHat you will find that you need to do is get the mic working, as it's off the mark, with the volume - the voices are too quiet and the explosions are too loud, so you find yourself turning up the volume for the vocals and then down again for the booms.

The descriptions that you give the characters is great and though SRM and Cousin Mel don't really seem to be on the same page with their attitudes to one another, they are going to have to work together to make this plot go just right. Kind of like Tango and Cash, in one respect.

I'd love to see this as a movie, as opposed to just the trailer. I'll have to go back through your repertoire, in case you did.

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

Honestly, I love Michael Bay. His movies are stupid explosion fests, but they don't aspire to anything more so why would I complain? I figured this cartoon was a decent send-up.

I hate the sound issues in this toon - it's like when I watch some shows online, I'll have to turn my volume way up only for the commercials to come booming out of my speakers. It's kind of a pain. I've since gotten a pretty good setup to keep it from happening though.

SRM and Mel aren't quite on the same page, since it's supposed to be the brains and brawn combo that a lot of buddy cop movies have. I never made an actual "Explosion Force 5" since I'm not sure how well it would work as an actual cartoon. I did make a trailer for it's sequel, Explode Harder though!

[Dawn of the Jeb]

Interesting stuff

Again, some brilliant humour from SRM who takes things a little too literally at times "Get down here", as he jumps from the first floor of the mall, for example. The setup was great, as was the joke about the living Amish, though you could have had them saying things that sounded particularly quaint and olde-worldy, since that's obviously how they still talk :P

With the way that SRM bounces off concrete floors and punches through the mall ceiling, he must be pretty indestructible, so having Wuggeh save him almost seems redundant, since he'd probably be made more intelligent by a zombie infecting him. I think that there is a great scope for a sequel here, as the Jebs try to escape from the mall and overrun SRM's home town.

I loved the acting of the "lower bufdget" variety, when Cousin Mel says "I'm not dead", followed by "You so is". Monty Python inspired at all?

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

The part where he jumps down the stairs was more out of laziness than anything else - it was quicker and kind of funnier to have him just fly down the stairs headfirst. I agree on the suggestion to have the Amish say olde worldy things instead of just zombie groans though!

I never really figured out what SRM is made of. In some of my more recent cartoons he looks like a big Chiclet. Sometimes I think he's rubber, I dunno. I like indestructible cartoon characters. I never made a "true" sequel, but I called back to this a few times with Mel as a living Amish.

That "You so is" joke was more because SRM just doesn't like Mel all that much, and is pretty convinced in his own mind of one thing or another. I love Monty Python, but that had nothing to do with it!

[SRM does Gears of War]

Well received and funny

Wow, that's pretty cutting edge, when it comes to humour incumbent in a game that's not all that old. You've given it your own brand and in a tough market, with the Queers of War piece made by the NG Staff, you've done yourself proud.

I think that there was a great deviation from the whole plethora of things that those guys came up with and the fact that SRM couldn't understand what pressing the X key meant, though he could do most other things involved in the game. Perhaps this was some sort of fourth wall block that he couldn't cross, but his cousin could.

Good to see Wuggeh in this piece as well, since this seems to be the second time I've seen him do anything, which is nice, as it adds some variation, as does "Expendable Guy", who might just have to turn up in future episodes, to give you more call back gags :P

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

Glad you liked this one - there weren't many Gears toons on Newgrounds when I made this, a dozen at most. Queers of War and Johnny Utah's Gears cartoons are better, but I like the niche I carved out with this one.

The fourth wall is worth breaking, and I like some of my jokes here. The timing could be better, but eh, it's learning.

I loved using Wuggeh in cartoons, but it's kind of weird for me now since the real life Wuggie died this year. Who knows what I'll do with him in the future. Expendable Guy is pretty much in the same boat as the pizza guy from the SRM and Da Cousins cartoon.

[SRM Holiday Extravagornza]

Merry Quanzamas

Ah, the joy of seeing the more functional animation, the completely dysfunctional plot and SRM doing his thing in his own style is brilliant. I think that there is a great thing said for your writing by the way that you remember things that happened earlier in the series and threw in things like the cousins now being dead in the closet. Perhaps you can bring them back as part of a Halowe'en special?

The idea of getting into a knife fight with Santa is funny, but the way that it means that no-one in the house will get any presents any more gets past the fact that Santa wouldn't bring presents anyway (sorry kids) and gives us an excuse for more off the wall madness.

At this point, the sound quality is starting to let the side down, but I'm confident that you can surpass this with future flash, getting used to the equaliser and sorting those issues out before publishing. It's nice to see that things are starting to get themselves into nicely coherent works.

I almost suggested going back and redoing old episodes, but we never saw that with The Simpsons or Family Guy, because they sucked at the start, compared to the new animation techniques and the way that the voices have developed. Don't do that, as that I feel would be a step backwards for you - get your new material out there, as that's the main way to get new fans.

I've not noticed that much difference with your voices, but that might be down to the relative age. Perhaps with time, a small, but discernible difference will creep into the voices, who knows?

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

I don't think I ever called back to the dead cousins Ted and Fred, but versions of them were used in a tribute/parody to SRM a fan of mine made called SSM. They're pretty obscure but hey, I like callbacks a lot as you can see!

The sound quality in this is better than in my earlier toons, and it stays at this level of quality until the end of 2007. Night of the Living Spud has the worst sound I think, but it's sequel: NOTLS2: Spud Terror is when I started getting serious about having good sound and figured out the appropriate publish settings to make my cartoons sound good.

I've thought of redoing cartoons every so often - I wanted to remake Jeb City at one point, and I thought earlier about remaking the first Jebediah cartoon where they're on paper. I decided it's better to move forward though.

My voice doesn't change too much, it's a little deeper in my later cartoons because I grew up a bit, but I always had a pretty deep voice. Anyway, thanks for watching and reviewing!

[SRM and the Janitors]

Much improved!

Well, this was easily the biggest step in your young animating career, by the way that things progressed - the sound was better the animation had come along so much and yet I still felt like we lost something from Socially Retarded Man along the way. Perhaps he gained intelligence and it made him kind of scary. I like the idea with the marshmallows and so forth, but when he stopped things and made it like a public service announcement, it seemed slightly wrong.

Awesome work on the drawing front, as everything is so smooth now and even the janitor looked well drawn, despite the fact that you made him as scruffy as you dare. I think that this certainly meant that you were going to create better looking flash in the future.

Oh well, on to 2007 and I'll see for sure that you've fulfilled on this potential that you've shown.

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

It's kinda funny to think that this came out the same month as SRM and Da Cousins - the jump between visual and sound quality is incredible. This cartoon still has iffy sound and the visuals are nowhere near up to snuff for me now, but it looked great at the time.

I'm glad you enjoyed this cartoon and are noticing a progression. Although SRM is giving a bit of a PSA near the end of this, he's still off mark - I wouldn't by any stretch of the imagination call janitors the darlings of our country. I like to think that it's a natural progression from being completely crazy and stupid to just being off target in most of his assumptions.

Thanks for watching!

[SRM and da cousins]

So that's where the fishball went...

Nice to see that your call-back gags are spanning multiple episodes now :)

I like the idea that not only is Socially Retarded Man retarded, but all of his family seem to be as well. The cousin that lives in the closet, the mother that eats the VCR and the other cousin that eats carpet, but doesn't say much.

I think that I would have had the pizza guy post the pizza slice by slice through the letter box at the front of the house, then fold up the box and do the same, but that would cost you the hilarious scene with the "mailman". Of course, he could burst out of the door at that point and go to that sketch, but when the pizza boy says he's just a pizza boy, SRM could say "where's your pizza then?" It's how I've pictured him - completely mental, but with occasional flashes of really dumb logic.

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

Mental with moments of logic is pretty indicative of SRM, especially back when he was an honest to god moron.

If you look at the characters now, Mel (the purple one) is more or less the point of logic in the series, SRM is his counterpoint, and the two headed cousins are dead. This cartoon (and lots of my older cartoons) got some great references in this parody a fan did: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkkymF b9ttg

[The Jebs meet their uncle]

Good use of "curmudgeonly"

Another instalment of the successful Jebediah series, where I see the beginning of Socially Retarded Man's relationship with his friend, "Freduardo". A nice touch to have him running around with a little colour on, as he's clearly a separate entity from this universe, where the Jebs live.

Uncle Jethro was quite a handful, showing off his exaggerated memories of what things were like back in the day. Communists being as they were and of course Adolf Hitler running around, unchecked.

Back in the home would have been a nice thing to see, as old people noises are simple to do and could have filled up a few seconds, as one snoozes in his mushed up meal-pulp and some guy pinches a nurse's arse, because he's lonely. A little more detail in the backgrounds would have been nice, but with the way that it's set up, I'm not trying to expect too much from this sort of piece.

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

"Meal-pulp" is my new word of the day.

I'm pretty sure this is the cartoon of mine with the most lukewarm reaction. Not many people saw it back in the day, and those that did didn't review it too highly. Glad you found some enjoyment from it though.