WarpZone's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Omel]

Powerful, creepy, meaningful stuff.

I shouldn't even try to interpret this. It's much too personal for that, though it's so abstract it practically begs for viewer interpretation. I will say that after I read the author's comments, and realized that ALL of the shorts were about death, not just the obvious ones, the one with the picture frames suddenly made perfect horrific sense. That and the one with the dog drinking the memory of the other dog seemed really sad. Okay so I lied. Interpret interpret interpret. Anyway, thanks for sharing. I hope it helped you work through your feelings.

[Principled Depravity]

Story + action + style!

Friggin' awesome, man. Some things like the plants could have looked better if they'ed been hand-made instead of 3D, but since that would have taken hours and hours longer than what you did with Swift3D, I don't blame you. I agree that the explosion scenes needed some orange particle fire or something. Perspective felt a bit off in a few of the dramatic perspective shots, like when he's pointing a gun at the camera, his hand and the gun should look bigger than they otherwise would.

These are all extremely minor complaints, though, compared to the awesomeness of the final product. You've done the three things almost nobody does on Newgrounds. You actually put some effort into it. You actually told a coherent story. And you tied everything together with a unified style. For doing those three things, you get full points. Can't wait to see you do it again later.

LogFish responds:

Thanks a lot! I know this is a shameful plug but you might like my SC series if you like plot (unfinished currently, needed a break so did this one) - start with StarCraft: Reconnoiter heh.

Yea there's definately a few things I can work on here, admittedly this is doing far better than I anticipated, I did this more for my own entertainment than anything else! I'll put more work into ironing out bugs and things in later episodes - thanks a lot for the big handy review!

[Nameless 6 Vol.1]

I don't use the word "lolzorz" very often...

...but I just might whip it out for this review. The whole thing was just hillarious. The close-up of his heart was my favorite part. I'd compare it to Bonus Stage in terms of writing but it's funnier than that. Just when I start to think that some walk animations might be a nice touch, you find a new way to make fun of the lack of animation. Keep 'em coming!

[FBF - Crazy]

Nothing much new here.

Graphics: Okay, it has FBF in the title, so we know it's gonna have little dots bouncing around, stick figures fighting, splashes of some sort of liquid, squares or other geometric shapes, and if we're lucky, 20 or 30 frames comprising something that's actually original and interesting. We weren't lucky this time. Oh, well. Can't win 'em all.

Style: One thing this FBF did differently from your typical FBF is that many of the random lines and shapes seemed to be drawn using vector tools, rather than pen tool scribbles. I have to admit this is used to good effect in the scenes with the square bouncing between two springy lines.

Sound: Great tunes. That you've heard before. Ripped straight from the audio portal. Better than nothing, but he runs out of frames 1/3 of the way through the song.

Overall: Nothing really new or original here, just another "me too" FBF. While it tries to copy a lot of what's in other FBFs, some parts, especially the splashing liquids, are actually less impressive than in all the other FBFs on Newgrounds that inspired this piece.

That said, the artist shows competent use of the vector tools and a moderate work ethic to have come this far. I look forward to future submissions by this artist, especially if he throws something together with a story and characters. I think he could do some impressive stuff.

[Everything's Perfect?]

Not bad. :D

Graphics: Quirky, detailed, but not quite realistic characters. Well-developed backgrounds with simple fill coloring. Jerky, lurchy animations. Many scenes are little more than photographs with one or two poses per character, but these shots have nice composition nonetheless. THIS is how you execute a "talking heads" cartoon in less than a week.

Style: Music, voices and what little detail there was in the graphics, all came together and contributed to the whole. I thought winning the doughnut was a nice touch. Not quite over-the-top like winning the lottery, not as cliche as the other nice surprises were.

Sound: Well-recorded samples and just the right ammount of music. The acting was cheesy and ham-fisted, of course, but I assume that's what you were going for.

Violence: Okay, I get it, he's gonna get hit by a truck or something as soon as he steps outside. Just get it over with... oh, no. He survived. Okay. Well, I guess he got a promotion, now he's gonna get mugged on the street and all the money in the world won't save him from the mugger's knife... oh. Okay, he made it home... oh... Oh, I get it, he's gonna find his wife in bed. Okay. Then he'll either shoot them both with a gun or slit his wrists. People in these flash cartoons ALWAYS slit their... wait... what the... is this a loop? Replay? What the...? Has this guy ever been to newgrounds before? It's like telling a joke with no punchline.

Humor: The acting was kinda funny due to the cheese factor, but that's all. If there was a joke here, I guess it's "cuckolds exist! Ha!"

The thing is, the way you set it up, the audience sees it coming a mile away, and they expect a twist of some sort. You didn't provide one. That's like, standard procedure on The Internets. If you're attacking a theme that's older than time itself, like cuckold jokes, you've gotta at least TRY to mix it up a little by doing somehting unexpected.

I mean, think about it. The audience knows, from the moment the dude with the bad 70's moustache starts talking, that he's gonna have something bad happen to him. And then as soon as he says "Honey! I'm home!" the audience knows that there's going to be a cuckold joke. You'd have to be dead not to see it coming.

So... why would you end it this lamely? The audience was expecting something to happen, and instead... nothing happened. The thing the audience predicted on like, page 2, was exactly what happened. No more, no less.

And it's not like we identify with the protagonist or anything... his lines are so cheesy, we don't even think of him as a person, but as a device for advancing the plot. We expect an anvil to fall on him or something, because that's what classic media has trained us to expect when a character says "Ah, what a beautiful *noun*."

You had the opptounity here to either eclipse those expectations with some kinda crazy, over-the-top disaster, or else surprise us with a twist ending, like his wife WASN'T in bed with another man the way we expected her to be, or Moustache Dude goes "Kinky! A threesome! This is the best day ever!"

But instead of playing with our expectations, you just... showed us exactly what you foreshadowed. No more, no less. That's boring.

Overall: Competent animation, despite rough surface. Voice acting was cheesy, but recorded VERY well. Writing was a huge disapointment. No jokes at all despite a cheesy comedic look & feel.

I like the fact that you actually tried to write, though. You have all the neccessary parts here to tell a story. Next time, just work harder on playing with the audience's expectations. Telling a joke is like a magic trick. Make us watch your right hand, then BAM hit us out of left field with something unexpected.

But toy with us. Don't just show us stuff that happened, unless the stuff that happened is inherently weird and interesting. Cuckold jokes are ancient history man. You gotta punch the old material up a bit!

[Bbq-ish Cop]

Wow. That is surprisingly good shit.

Graphics: Various random crap photoshopped together, with a static overlay that serves to smooth out the rough spots as well as adding to the ambiance.

Style: Campy, cheesy, and weird. Feints at character-driven drama for a moment there, before stabbing directly into the heart of irreverant web-humor. This is the same formula everyone uses at NG, but beefburger and his cohorts managed to really nail the execution, this time.

Sound: Great voices, decent music, kinda crap sound effects, but who cares. It's great.

Violence: Shooting skyjackers makes red lines fly all over the place. I've seen worse. Like, today, I've seen worse, on the protal. I'm not complaining.

Humor: It was more weird-funny than joke-funny. Nothing new in terms of making fun of the establishment or parodying the sterotypical holywood blockbuster. The timing felt a little off on the "suck my dick, nah not really" joke... maybe some extreme close-ups showing the (lack of) character reaction, or else the burger guy just barely starting to move towards the end of the awkward pause like he's actually thinking about doing it, might have added to the humor there.

Overall: Funny. But more than that, it was weird and attention-grabbing. I'm not sure why. Probabaly something about the aesthetics. It kinda reminds me of... shit, I can't think of his name. You know the guy. Did all those animations for Monty Python. That dude. It reminds me of his work.

Bbqbeefburgerman responds:

I do not know this guy you speak of. But thanks anyhow.

[World of magic 1episode]

It's too short. :(

Or should I say: "excessive reduced continuity of a film in this surrender. Please produce infinite drawings for adequate happy look fun time in future! Audience requires advancing animation for three minutes. Less than this is unacceptable. Please forgive many blam points. Surrender again with longer life span of movie!"