WarpZone's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[SuperTurboGamingDeluxe 01]

Interesting... and 180 degrees from Miscle Bird...

I think I just figured it out. You're not just one guy, are you? I mean all of these cartoons of yours have been pretty different in terms of style, writing, humor and quality. I'ma check something, real quick...

Yup. By actually visiting that URL you kept flashing in my face before and after each cartoon, I was able to cleverly deduce that you are a team of four guys. That certianly explains it. Moving on...

This was pretty good as far as gaming humor goes. I'm glad you didn't waste a lot of time on sitcom-esque name-repeating and boring character interaction. You just laid the basic bare minimum groundwork and moved on to the references, flashbacks, and cutscenes.

Not especially original, but pretty well-executed. I'm not surprised to notice that this is also a but older than your other submissions. I like how you sketched (or vectorized) caricatures of all those video game characters. Most people on NG would just drop in a JPEG of the characters. This way, everything kinda blends together as part of a uniform style. So good job, there.

The animation was a little wonky, little more than talking heads and with a rough surface that really doesn't take advantage of Flash's vector capabilities, but for what is basically a gamer webcomic set in motion, I guess you really don't need anything more than that. I've seen gamer toons with better surface than this that really weren't as funny.

(Then again, there's always Bonus Stage, which is the funniest damn thing evar, and constantly flipped between incredibly crisp surface and intricately-crafted frame-by-frame. But I'm not going to hold you to Matt Wilson's work, because that wouldn't be fair.)

This concludes my review tour of Royal Toaster's submissions. I'm glad I discovered your work, and I hope my reviews were genuinely helpful and not too much of a blow to your collective egos. Please IM me if you'd like my input on whatever you're working on currently. I can't always think of a great idea on my own, but I seem to be dynamite at looking at someone else's work and telling them what I would have done differently.

Thanks for being good sports. :) Feel free to rip apart my pretty-much mediocre flash games in reviews of your own.

[Pariomortis Trailer]

Huh...

Interesting. Kinda reminded me of the old He-Man cartoons from my youth. Mostly, it's the logo on the armor, I think. Looks too spacey and not midevil at all.

The male characters looked like clones when they were all lined up like that. Or maybe action figures, hehe. I liked the transformation sequences. I was just starting to think "how could the village be the last bastion of humanity if their opponents are also human," when they started to shed their clothes and pounce. Good stuff.

One suggestion: If you're going for drama, google the Voice Acting Alliance. It's a forum of hobbyist voice actors and actresses whom I've found tend to do better work than most professional Voice Actors in the cartoon industry these days.

Your own voice (or the voice of whomever was speaking in this) is a little slushy around the S's. I noticed it in some of your other toons, too, but it's more of a deal-breaker when drama is the goal.

Overall, it seems like an interesting concept for a combat-centric cartoon series. Sort of the dark side of those old 80's cartoons, where the sword swings actually connect and blood goes everywhere. Could be very powerful, but only if the voice acting sounds sincere and believible.

Also, make sure there is some human interest in the characters, or else it's just a bunch of mooks fighting a bunch of werewolf mooks. Google TV Tropes for more information about avoiding cliches, averting them, or twisting them to your advantage. You're good at writing dialogue, but this trailer leads me to believe you might be a newbie at actual storytelling. Learn from what other storytellers have done with the movie format, and you'll go far, indeed.

Three down. :) One to go. Reviewing TurboGamingDelux now...

[Authentic Japanese Sword]

Way funnier than Steriod Bird or whatever. :D

I thought the writing in this one was hillarious. the voices were a little hard to understand, but I'm willing to chalk that up to poor microphone quality. The delivery sounded top-notch on the announcer.

The dragon's voice seemed a little off, but I couldn't tell you why... it just didn't sound like a dragon? And yet it also didn't sound enough the opposite of a dragon to be hillarious. It was just kinda... adraconic? Moving on...

Needless to say, the cinematography was great. You did a pretty good job of mixing Flash with RL video footage. I especially liked the different moves the guys did while fighting the dragon. Far too many Live-Action/hybrid cartoon experiments drop the ball during those particularly interactive moments.

I hope you scored well on your assignment. :) Overall, this was great, and much funnier to my lazy American brain than Muscle Bird. I'm gonna review your other submissions real quick because you seem interested in my opinions. Do keep in mind that they're just that: opinions. Even though I type a lot of words in my reviews and I may tend to use complete sentances most of the time, that doesn't make my reviews any more valid or less subjective than the next guy's.

Keep up the good work. :)

[Muscle Bird]

Moderately funny dating tape parody.

It's not as funny as those Mad TV dating tape sketches, but it's all right. I found the whole Muscle Bird character kinda dull. Most of the humor is observational, and kinda stale if you've ever seen any other parodies of dating tapes before.

I would have liked to see more of an effort to draw humor from the ridiculousness of the character. One bright moment was when he started pecking up the steroids, hehehe. But I think there was potential for more Bird Humor, here. (For one thing, burds have hollow bones. What would that be like for a stuntman? :) )

I suppose I should be grateful you made a furre flash that was only minimally creepy. I'll take a look at your other work. You clearly know your way around Flash, and you're willing to work hard on the story, humor, and character design. Even though my personal reaction to this flash was lukewarm, I can tell you're a great animator.

I look forward to your future works. Keep experimenting, keep trying. I'm sure you'll blow me away with one of your submissions. It just wasn't this one.

BorrisMoose responds:

Thanks for the in- depth review dude, it will be really helpful when working on future submissions.

[Contra]

Woah! A stick figure fight with an actual theme!

He could have just made a bunch of stick figured beating the crap out of each other on a colored background, and this probably would have gotten a decent score.

After all, it's something we've all seen before, but he's choreographed this particular fight scene pretty well. There are lots of melee and gunplay hits packed between frames, often in time with the music. Ropes and smoke trails that react very well physically, and subtly weighted arms and legs shift sublimely as the bodies hit the floor. All that stuff makes this an excellent stick battle movie.

But instead of just another nameless faceless "experimental film" kind of stick figure fight, this is classic Contra! ZOMG! You got Stick Fighting in my Sprite Movie! You got Sprite Movie in my Stick fight! The result (in this case) is an incredible tour de force that combines the wow-factor of well-done sticks with the nostalgia of your favorite sprite movies, and manages to surprise you at the end with a genuinely cinematic couple of seconds.

Daverandomster has taken two overworked newgrounds trends and exploited them both to great effect. As soon as I finish this review, I intend to check out his other work, and I suggest you do the same. I can't wait to see what he does in the future! You just know it's going to be good.

[*Hyperanimation! Pilot]

Not bad. :D

I don't know that I'd call it "Hyperanimation." I mean, I've seen much more high-quality animation by other Flash artists. It's certianly better than the average fare around here, but that's not really saying much.

What you've got here is a basic meshing of sitcom and comedy cartoon, with a small dose of irreverant web humor (zombie!) and a few novel visual jokes. I liked the bomb-shaped cereal, in particular.

I also liked the way he subverted expectations by actually buying the cereal. (Though I notice you didn't actually draw him paying for it... don't tell me Hyperanimation skimped on the animation because it was too much work?)

Mr. Oven Mitts was funny for exactly three seconds, and now that those three seconds are up he will NEVER be funny again, so I hope you have something else lined up for him besides Straight Man + Sight Gag.

Overall, you managed to make ti through the show with decent visuals, adequate sound, and mildly amusing writing. The speed of the show is definitely an asset, here. When you can't produce great content, at least you can get to the point quickly. I look forward to seeing what you do with this series. You're off to a good start. Just keep it up and nobody will be disappointed until you start running out of ideas. Who knows, maybe you'll even do something awesome with it.

JunkFoodKing responds:

Yeah. Mr. Oven Mitts just didn't have many lines this episode. He's no sight gag.

And, I did skimp on the animation at the store scene, but let's just say Dack is a thief.

[RWD: 010 Mario12]

I guess this really IS high-quality spam...

Okay, first go back and read the description to RWD's first few movies. Then you'll get a clue and realize that they're not making actual movies. They're just making spam. But they're making the best spam they possibly can.

Apparently, at some point they decided that lying in the Author Comments is an essential part of the medium. It makes about as much sense as anything else spammers do around here, I guess. At least this has some effort in it. It's actually pretty funny and it works fairly well as a deconstruction.

At least do your author research before you spazz out and give it a 0. It's not horrible ENOUGH to earn a zero, and it certianly doesn't merit the kind of kneejerk reaction you guys are giving it. Some work went into it, and no ammount of spammer trappings can gloss over that quality. At worst, it's worth maybe a 4. Higher if it made you chuckle a little. Save your zeros for the no-effort spam that deserves it.

[Join The Army!]

Did I win or lose?

I think I missed like the very last guy, no one else, because it cut away too fast for me to click on him. But then I didn't die, I just had a bunch of bad guys standing behind me. Was that the good ending or the bad ending? I kinda expected it to end with either death or glory, so the ending I got seemed kinda ambiguous.

I'm kinda confused on your message here. Were you trying to glorify war or make fun of it? Again, it was kinda ambiguous. Don't blame yourself, though. I'm just really dense. Subtlety goes over my head every time.

I liked the production values. Sure, you used tweening and loops, but st least everything was nice and consistant. I would have liked to see more character development if this is part 1 of an ongoing series. If it was a one-shot, well, like I said, it could have had more of a point to it. Either pro-millitary or anti-war, but give us something. This wasjust like... "War exists. Also, here's some monkeys. The End."

Good job, though. You show some nice solid animation principles here. Keep up the good work. Just, you might want to look for a writer or something to help you with the story a bit.

[Alex Seryoua: Episode I]

Great stuff! More please!

It was absolutely awesome. I loved the design of the alien complex and the way the bio-suit worked. You also picked a great voice actress for the role of Alex. How about some VA love in the author comments?

The only flaws I can think of are it's too short and the running animation looked pretty stiff and forced.

I would have used some music from Newgrounds if I were you. Not because the HL music sounds bad, on the contrary. I fully expect you to be able to go to DVD with this series, but in order to cash in on it you'll need to change the music. So that's kind of a shame.

Also, the whole Alex/Half-Life association makes it feel kinda derivitive, and the aliens look kinda like Vortigaunts, so... yeah, it feels a little derivitive. I probably would have named her somehting other than Alex just to avoid that whole comparison. But I don't think anyone would call this plagiarism. Just a little "familiar."

The storytelling seems great, too. The reason I say that is because they IMPLY so much without actually really GIVING any information directly to the audience at this early point. And you've got three writers going in on this? I am looking forward to this one!

danomano65 responds:

well, i understand the music suggestion. i may do that. also, you may not believe me, but i've played all of half-life and totally missed the name Alex association. i just liked the name with the last name. i'm really not trying to parallel. but i will look into the music thing.

[Elevator Action++]

Oh, yes. XD

Heh, that was awesome. Pure class, all the way. I was actually in suspense waiting for him to jump. Heehee. SHOT. Awesome. XD