WarpZone's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[CU- A Moment With Karl]

Wow. The Simpsons really has gone downhill.

Graphics: So, apparently College University is some simpsons ripoff that's been availible on the web for some time now. I think I've heard of it before... anyways, this is a well drawn and animated cartoon. The artist has a stylized yet consistant sense of anatomy and proportion, and every pose, gesture and lip synch is sublimely keyframed and tweened. I'll bet the creators have professional animtion experience. (Working for Matt Groening.)

Style: Bold cartoon colors with good lightind. Crisp, bold fonts. Tiny dots in the centers of perfectly round eyeballs, which tend to almond out at the chaarcter ages. Curved tube-like arms and legs that are hardly anatomically correct, but when used consistantly, imply a three dimmensional figure. Four fingers on each hand. I may have forgotten to mention this, but the art style looks kinda like the Simpsons.

Sound: Crisply recorded, generally amusing gravelly voices. I think I remember this Kung-Fu guy. Wasn't he the fat Texan in the episode where Santa's Little Helper banged a racing hound?

Violence: Nope.

Interactivity: There's a button you can click on to buy stuff. I award no points for interface.

Humor: Great comedic timing, a little sarcasm, a little "so sad it's funny" pathetic character laughin'-at, and a nice brisk pace. The little boy going "I'll cut yew!" Didn't get funnier every time it happened, unfortunately, it just kinda sat there and died. I found the repetition much funnier in, say, that episode of College University where Sideshow Bob kept stepping on the rakes. Still, for a short this shows promise, and even makes me slightly curious about the DVD. Maybe someone with one of those "disposable incomes" I keep hearing about would even be tempted to click on that. Me, I'll stick to my trusty stack of VHS tapes.

Overall: "SAXAMAPHONE! SAX-A-MA-PHOOOOOOOOONE!"

parks2 responds:

Hey thanks for the well thought out review, so I'll respond with a well thought out response. I know were a "Simpson's Rip off", but no more than The Family Guy is. I must say that beyond the physical similiarities- your comparisons are way off.

Using four fingers in cartoon characters is common practice, it fits nicely on the hand shape. Unless you are going for realistic- stick with 4 fingers, 5 looks creepy.

Kung Fu Karl's voice isn't based on the Fat Texan Investor from the Simpsons- That's a straight up Texan accent- KFK is a grizzled, washed up action star, who smokes weed all day- His voice is raspy, with a hint of a southern accent.

The repetive humor of Sideshow Bob stepping on the rakes over and over in the one scene, playing off of the absurdity of having a parking lot full of rakes, added to Bob making the same noise everytime- It's not even the same concept of having a strange 10 year old kid with an overly large knife, threatening a weirdo who is giving them advice. The point was that the kid wasn't listening, and the advice wasn't getting through- thus nothing happened.

Other than that- thanks again for putting so much thought into the review- I do appreciate it, but I just had to correct you on those particular Simpsons comparisons.

And yes....Saxamaphone.

[Kirby PO'ed]

"...dressed in rags and humiliated."

Graphics: Great use of sprites. The scribbled-in additional graphics such as the note and the blood look bad and clash with the pixelated elements. For some baffling reason, the artist decided to make all the objects fade out instead of fading a black box over everything, resulting in semitransparent characters whenever the screen fades to black.

Style: I thought it was stupid. You do not do this with Kirby. You do not associate Kirby with slacker grunge music and paraphenalia. Maybe this was supposed to be an attempt at challenging contrast of elements, (which if it was, I guess I have to admit, it certianly clashed with my preconceptions and challenged by ideas about Kirby,) but I seriously doubt any sprite artists at NewGrounds are that artistic or clever. More likely, it was a cheap joke. Either way, the Flash as a whole didn't amuse me. Your mileage may vary.

Sound: I wanted to give this a 1. Style, too. But then I realized that however much I may not have liked the movie, it is competently rendered. Dammit. The lame, washed-out, boring annoying grunge tunes are perfectly suited to a Mountain Dew ad, and the sound effects are all kirby, and timed very well with the animation. It's just... this whole Flash is just wrong, darn you! :P Things in Kirby don't bleed!

Violence: above average. There's shooting and crushing and bright red pools of blood. It's not realistic enough to be TOO horrible, though.

Interactivity: Movie. Painful, painful movie.

Humor: Other people might tell you this is funny. For all I know, they might be right. I didn't laugh.

Overall: I think I've made my feelings pretty clear. No, I'm not a Nintendo Fanboy, I'm a Kirby Fanboy. I reacted the same way when it was Amy Rose up there on the Flash screen using a vibrator. It's just plain bad and annoying and stupid and wrong. That's my opinion, anyway. I'm sure other people will love it, though, so my two can't have hurt it that badly.

Balik responds:

Hey, man. Wouldn't it be boring if kirby would just go up to Metaknight and go "Please give me my Mountain Dew back kthxbi". Thanks for the review though :).

[Clara Adventures (redone)]

Good...? What the-!? These usually suck!

Graphics: Author attempts to bite off more than she can chew graphically, with arms that are way too long, legs that are a little too short, elbows and knees all over the place at slightly weird angles. Still, I'd rather see an attempt at something ambitious like this than more lifeless stick figures.

Style: More barely-pubescent stupid teenage drama than an episode of Dawson's Creek. Once I finished puking, I decided that high school angst and comdey probabaly appeal to some people, so the author's faithful execution of it should be rewarded, not punished.

Sound: Lackluster popular music plus annoying breathing into the microphone equals sub-par sound. At least it wasn't a guy pretending to be a girl by jacking with the pitch of his voice in GoldWave.

Violence: None.

Interactivity: Movie.

Humor: There was only one joke. For some reason, though, it tickled me.

Overall: I don't understand why I liked this. I usually hate pretentious 2 minute opening themes with 45 seconds of movie attached to them. I guess something about this one just rubbed me the right way. Maybe it was the fact that it actually had a plot and characterization in it, even if the characters and theme were kinda trite.

Suggestions: Check out some books on how to draw comic book characters. They'll tell you everything you need to know about relative arms, legs, and torso lengths. You're off to a great start, kid. I can't want to see what kind of movies you and your friends put out when you're in college. :)

[robot_intro]

O.O

This is not a demo. Demos are a plague upon mankind, and need to be destroyed. This... was a work of art. O.O

[Tink's Tutorial Vol. 1]

AMEN, BROTHER!

Graphics: Now, you too can stop making half-assed stiuck figures and learn how to make vector-based people and clothes that use fully three-quarters of your ass! YAY!

Style: This is the type of tutorial I would make. :D That's not neccessarily a good thing. It's a shame he couldn't teach the noobs how to make truly EXCELLENT artowrk, but this is still better than sticks and Madness ripoffs.

Sound: OW! MY EARS! Oh, wait, there's some music at the end. That's kind of- OW! MY EARS!

Violence: None.

Interactivity: Movie.

Humor: Maybe ten's an exaggeration. I just found this very entertaining for some reason.

Overall: Again, it's not inherently worth the score I'm giving it. I'm giving it a biased score because I agree with the message. Death to sticks as an art form! !Viva la calidad!

Make more tutorials, you lazy bastard. And start using lip synching! :P No reason you're the only person who can tell other people to try harder! >:D

[What is a flash?]

Ceci n'est pan une flash.

Graphics: Best use of crappy JPEGs I've ever seen. Vextor aret is your typical so-so Lockery.

Style: Classical music, big words and flowery text all combine to simulate a public television special. Then things gradually get faster and faster and it goes off the rails when communistlock starts heckling. Soon there's almost too much going on at once to read AND laugh. You have to pick one or the other.

Sound: That's some good music. And some crappy, crappy robot voice. Good job.

Violence: none.

Interactivity: Ceci n'est pan une game.

Humor: Moderately funny, in a John Cleese kind of way. I mean, seriously, who likes to listen to some guy prattle on for pages and pages of text on some subject, no matter how insightful or apropriate his comments may or may not be? Hey, wait... isn't that StrageLock...? *BANG!*

JujubeLock responds:

"Style: Classical music, big words and flowery text all combine to simulate a public television special. Then things gradually get faster and faster and it goes off the rails when communistlock starts heckling. Soon there's almost too much going on at once to read AND laugh. You have to pick one or the other."

This is true, and is the one biggest mistake I made with this flash.

[Pie Noon]

I thought I got it...

Graphics: Quickie sketches. Fortunately, the author has some interesting character design. I don't know how much was original and how much comes directly from Oddworld, but either way the author gives the impression of a sprawling, fully realized world with bizarre characters. Quick and dirty, but it gets the job done. More impressive than the art or animation is the cinematography.

Style: Oh yeah. ^_^ This is where it's at. We got us a pie-eatin' contest! GRRRRR! I don't know about you, but I got caught up in the mood right away. :)

Sound: Great music, ripped form soemwhere. The author does an adequate job synching events to the musical score soemwhat. Too bad the end comes before the sound is finished. I think maybe the author's computer runs this movie at a different speed than on mine. Next time, try setting the sound effect compression to "stream" It lowers the overall sound quality, but it lets you better predict what part of the mp3 will be playing on any given frame of your movie.

Violence: I reckon it looked might tense for a moment there, but both them boys walked away from it, right?

Interactivity: movie

Humor: Steef Pie... that's like a cow pie, right? If not, I don't think you need to worry about the humor coming across to non-Oddsworld fans. As I've just demonstrated, we can make up our own punchlines for something like this. XD

Overall: It kept me entertained. Bravo.

R-Taco responds:

How do I set the sound effect compression to "stream"? I'm pretty new at this Flash thing.

And a Steef pie isn't like a cow pie. Without revealing too much of the game's plot, let's just say that Stranger has made himself an even rarer species.

[Metroid Sex Education]

LOL! I'm easy to please.

Graphics: Great simple metriod, the advanced forms are kinda crappy and stiff, as is Samus running. Decent old-timey effects.

Style: Great parody of ancient Amnerica's bass-ackwards sex-ed films. Somehow, it ends up also imitating Metriod II pretty darn well. The sound really sells it, though.

Sound: The guy's voice is mutilated wonderfully to achieve a variety of comedic effects. The constant whirr of the projector that's almost louder than the voice makes you feel like you're right there in class with your head down on your desk. The only thing missing was an occasional washed-out whimper sound effect from the game. Oh well. Suspense of disbelief starts to fade when the guy starts talking like a bored modern youngster, but otherwise it's great.

Violence: Extremely low. There is talk about killing. Also, some wavy lines go across the screen. These might represent attacks.

Interactivity: Movie.

Humor: I loved it! XD It's not baby animals going through a wood chipper, though, so it might not be to your taste.

Overall: Again, I am probably in the minority for giving this a 5. It tickled my fancy, though. If your fancy is simmilar to mine, it might also get tickled.

[Lilium Ranger]

Okay... this one's funny too. :)

Graphics: Not shit-hot, but good enough for a Lilium parody. Pasted-in JPEG photographs look as bad as they ever do in Flash.

Style: Perfectly matches Lilium's style, while parodying power rangers when the style abruptly shifts.

Sound: The same old Lilium theme, with the addition of slightly grainy... well, you'll see.

Violence: None.

Interactivity: Movie.

Humor: Short and sweet. Your milage may vary, but I thought it was funny.

Overall: XD

PowerRangerWHITE responds:

thank you for the swell review citizen <3