Coop's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[SRM Babysits]

GOOOOAL!

Well, there were a few small issues with the sound that can be taken care of by putting a little distance between yourself and the mic, possibly even using a pop-guard, if you're going "super pro" with it all.

I think that the animation is still coming on, though the shapes are a little basic there and I'm convinced that you can improve them with relatively little effort. Have you got a tablet now, did you have one back then? That could radically change the animation style and the overall presentation. With the way that it looks, I can see SRM coming forward over the next few years of animations.

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

I got a tablet about a year ago, and while I'm making fewer animations, they're of much higher quality. There's an SRM cartoon I'm working on now that I think will be my best yet. I didn't have one back when I made my old cartoons, and things were either mouse-drawn with the brush, or I drew lines and bent them how I wanted them. The sound in this cartoon is still using that shitty battery operated Radioshack microphone, that was later peed on by my cat.

[Madness Inflammation]

Not bad, but a few isues:

Overall, for the effort, I'm going to give it a seven, as there are some parts of the piece that dragged the piece down, which was a shame. Some of the art work is excellent and probably only second to Krinkels, when it comes to Madness. Some issues with shaking of the characters and poor quality of the figures that were animated were only minor issues though.

If you've put this much effort into getting all of your pieces ready, I'd say that it is pretty much down to the organiser to make sure that all of the entries actually have sound. You don't come along and have two or three pieces that are mute, save for the backing music - throwing up the word "headshot" does not compensate, nor would it be particularly Madness - Hank's kills were across the rest of the body as well, which took away something from the spirit of the piece.

It was a shame not to see as much of Jesus as in other Madness pieces, as he is as integral a part as the Clown or even Hank. The two new guys from Combat 5.5 and 6.5 were nice additions, as they have clearly made their mark upon this series so far.

With the name graphics for people, please note that the names should be secondary, rather than a massive icon that takes up a third of the screen - we want to see the action, not your tag, so make it less eye-catching (greyscale, see through?) and make it slightly smaller, so that people focus on what is going on, as I'm a purist here and want to see what people can produce in flash, not in the Art Portal.

Happy Madness Day!

[Review Request Club]

vogxhamraks responds:

haha Ty for the 7 anyways i hope u enjoyed it

[Astronave]

Nice and witty

This kind of reminds me of Red Dwarf, but with a few other bits and pieces thrown in, such as Farscape, Star Trek and maybe even a little Watchmen as well. I think that might have been the music, when Dr. Manhattan was building his glass complex on Mars. That whole piece of music sounded like the one you used here.

A little more work is required on the presentation as a whole - some of the musical cues are quite loud and I find myself messing with the overall volume through the piece, which distracts me from the plot. It takes a long time to set up and when we get there, the actual material that had been painstakingly set up seems gone in a flash.

With John's face, there seems to be an issue with two lines on his face, which I don't understand why they are there - perhaps removing them would make his features slightly better to look at? Also, consider using shading to round out the features, as parts of his face do look quite angular, which is great in the case of a dull, featureless ship interior, as the architect / designer doesn't need to appease human tastes with it, as only John will see it.

Subtitles would be a nice addition, as sometimes I had difficulty understanding what the computer said. More practice with the voice acting could be useful as well, but that will come with time. The Audio Forum on Newgrounds should help you to find a better voice actor if you need one for your next piece.

Good luck, I look forward to your next creation.

[Review Request Club]

Stampini responds:

Hi, thanks for taking the time to put together this detailed review. Some very valuable information for me there. Add "2001 a Space Odyssey" and"Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy" to the "similar to" list.

Much appreciated.

[Tales of the Jeb]

Good stuff!

This is another nice sign of progress in the early days of your career - the animation seems to be improving and the background addition of the "school book-come doodle page" really seems to fit nicely with the concept.

I personally like the gags such as "My other only son" and "Yet another lazer sound", as it shows that you're thinking about the surroundings and the breaking of the fourth wall there really does give it some nice additions to the piece.

I think that breaking the resolve of Mini Castro would only make him run off to his friends, Tiny Mao, Small Gorbachev and Little Kim, which could lead to hilarity later one for this part of the series :P

Already, the characters appear to be moving better and with that in mind, this will undoubtedly translate to better, smoother animations that you can produce in later works. If you were producing this at the time of writing, I'd suggest that you zoom in and use a smaller tool, to improve the drawing style, to match the progress with the animation. Learning new tricks is difficult, but it seems that you were doing so here.

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

This is one of my favorites out of my old cartoons. All my old cartoons are based on comics I wrote in the backs of my school notebooks, and as a result they really didn't look much different than this. I never noticed how off the drawings were though - there's Squigglevision, and then there's this mess.

If I were to do this cartoon now, I would probably use the same general style - that of sketches in a notebook. I would animate the characters more and probably use a transparent .jpeg of some crinkled paper to really get the feeling down.

I also stand by the Anti Communism Llama and will do so til I die.

[Jebby 2.0]

New and improved

Ah, some new, in depth animations and a much improved outlook on the whole animation that you've produced, really. This piece goes to show that you'd made use of the practice and experience that you've gone through for the first few pieces that you had made up until this point.

The writing is coming on, with the extremes and the way that you suggest scenarios that I would not necessarily have come to the natural conclusion of, such as ripping one's intestines out through the eye sockets, but it does portray a fantastic look to it all.

I trust that the new characters will be available in all good toy retailers, some bad ones and even the back street collectors shop that doesn't really ever get deliveries, but somehow the new stock just seems to breed there. Not just that, but could we expect to see these 'new' characters appearing though in later episodes of this progression.

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

If you were to find a Jebediah, nonetheless a Jebby 2.0, it would almost definitely be in that Chinese part of town that sells "Sailing Moon" and "Robert Cop" action figures.

I don't really know my intent for this cartoon, since nobody really knew about Jebby at the time. Hell, they still don't.

[A very SRM birthday]

Socially Retarded Birthday!

Wow, when you said that Socially Retarded Man was completely off the wall, you weren't kidding. A decent little piece, that goes into just how bizarre SRM actually is. The idea of filling a spud with fruit juice, then frying it is completely off the wall, but topping it off by stealing some ice cream from a store just seems to add to it and I can't really explain how.

I'm not sure why the kids' arms fell off and why there was so much blood, but that might just be me. Perhaps have some better work with the splatter effects and let's see what sort of things this can produce as a result.

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

This was when I was pretty heavy into the random/monkeycheese school of humor, which I don't exactly look back on fondly. I'm glad you still enjoyed his really out there behavior. Personally I'm glad he's grown up a bit, as you'll see in my more recent cartoons.

Kid's arms falling off and blood going everywhere is pretty rife for comedy. I would do something a bit more technical with the blood effects now, but it was pretty good for the time. Also, that audio crackling makes my ears bleed.

[Jeb City part 3]

Interesting, yet slightly confusing.

I liked this one, as it got us to the end of the serial, by looking through the way the original film was set out. A shame really, that it seemed rushed, without really taking the time to expose the plot of the whole piece, more with the idea of "let's just get to the final fight", which is something that lots of writers face at some point in their lives.

I think that you can certainly come around to a more engrossing part of the story were you to remake this today, but I won't labour that point, as there were so many things to look at there - the duck that manages to double up as an automatic weapon. Giving it the appearance of four legs seems strange, but I guess you were trying to get the wings and the feet there - surely, the feet would have been orange, like most other ducks? Still, your animating skills look to have progressed now. From reading previous reviews, you've upgraded your microphone, which is a great step forward, now it's just a case of getting it all together, with the quality, but again, something that probably comes with time.

I wonder what else you can give us over the rest of the 2006 season?

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

Oh dear lord I actually never noticed that the duck had an implied 4 feet. I guess it's a platypus then.

This really was just a way to end the story. Most noir stories (hamhanded or not) end with the hero and the villain squaring off, and one or both of them dying. I took that a little further by killing the love interest, if you can call Baby the llama that.

[We Are So England]

Soul Limbo would have been better

The backing tune you had was a remix of "Soul Limbo", which would have been a better tune in its own right. Not that I'm really complaining. My real gripe is with the English accent you used :P

Hmm, I can see that this piece is a very interesting take on the generic North American perception of your cousins over the pond here in UKville. We're not all that bad, though there are some of us like that, I will admit.

Still, this is a more advanced piece, where you're starting to experiment with movement, so the animation is coming on and I'm encouraged to see that you're at least trying to develop your skills, which as I'm sure I will see, pays dividends on your works in the future.

Now that you've got the basic shapes, I'd advise that you work on rounding odd the pieces, so that you produce a figure that looks like they are using legs, as opposed to stilts. It's a steep learning curve, I'm afraid.

And where did you come up with the sousaphone from?

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

I've had it told to me before that it sounds more like a posh American accent than an English accent, and it totally does. It's the same voice I use when I want to sound like a snooty country club owner. Funny thing is I've been to the UK twice, and as much as I enjoyed my time there, I didn't pick up on that accent for this cartoon.

This is back before I really had any sort of grasp on characters existing in 3 dimensional space. That weird dance thing he does is like the ugliest thing I've ever animated. It's hard for me to believe I went "Huh. That looks pretty good" after animating that.

That sousaphone music came from looking for "Tuba" on findsounds.com - I use that site for pretty much all my sound effects, and even did back when I made this cartoon.

[SRM and Wuggeh!]

Madcap

I think that this is a different flavour to your other pieces that I've seen, but you've got a witty way of making this all come together. When the door got kicked in, perhaps a little more details with splintering wood, perhaps the hinges would still have been attached to the door, or part of the door left behind to demonstrate the destructive quality of the kick that SRM had when he enters the fray.

You've made a decent piece and Socially Retarded Man clearly is nuts... I think I know a few people like him near where I work, which is kind of worrying. The cat seems very nonplussed by it all and understandably so. Why would you feed a cat a biscuit? SRM would, as he doesn't know exactly what a cat would eat, I guess.

The next thing is where do you go with a guy like this? Do you have him go shopping and then try to walk away only paying the pence amount for his bill, as he missed out the three hundred pounds that it came to. That's the real beauty of the piece - you can get away with more, as he has no real inhibitions, that would stop him.

Looking at the kitchen being dirty, did you just make it dirty as he said it was, or was it an afterthought? Perhaps throw a can of something at the wall, to make it more of a mess.

[Review Request Club]

Battosai810 responds:

SRM was originally intended to just walk into situations and make them really awkward for people, but I ended up making him more of a crazy character who just does unusual things for laughs. You'll see this more with cartoons of this era. These days he's a bit more of a balanced character, but he's still eccentric to say the least. I'd compare him to Strong Bad in still being a functioning member of whatever society he is, but having crazy schemes.

The kitchen was actually supposed to be immaculately clean - you may not be able to hear too well, but I make a sparkle sound effect and have little white sparkles pop up. Crudely conveyed, but it's there. It's just another bit to showcase who out of touch this guy is.

Glad you liked the toon!