WarpZone's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Last Robot Standing]

I hate previews. But I'll try to be objective.

Graphics: 5 some nice drawings and good animation on the spinning, flaming ship. They don't work together to paint a vivid, convincing scene, though. I'd CG the sketches if I were you, or if you don't have photoshop, replace them wirh graphics. Hey, you want to know a good way to make the sketches look convincing without much work? Invert them (so it's white lines on black paper,) duplicate it to a new layer, then blur that layer and set it to additive (or "screen, depending on what program you use." That will produce a nice glow around the lines. Then just tint the whoel thing so it's green-on-black, and poof, you've got the world through the eyes of a computer.

Style: Easily the best part of the presentation. I wouldn't change a thing if I were directing this movie.

Sound: Okay. Could be better. Robot voices are easy to do, but hard to do in a way that sounds interesting. The music was interesting and not too booring. In would suggest closed captioning for the whole thing, not just some scenes, because the voice is a little tough to understand.

Violence: Low. The complete annihilation of an entire alien civilization is much less violent and horrific than most music videos at Newgrounds. Even though this is a low number, I consider this a positive thing. Blood everywhere when you're playing a robot would just be kinda lame, you know? Stick with the explosions.

Interactivity: Movie.

Humor: None.

Overall: Not bad. Visuals could use some work. It looks like a bunch of different parts and drawing styles stuck together. Try to make it all vector, or all hand drawn, or all CG, but don't mix and match unless the various styles compliment each other. Also, DON'T POST DEMOS. Don't post half-finished projects. Don't post part of a cartoon or a game and go "If people vote 5 I will release the whole thing!" Just release the whole thing. I know you want encouragement, but this is not the way to get it. Try asking for beta viewers or testers in the forums. Don't just throw it to the general public.

Kholint responds:

Thanks for your advice about the non-vector and vector art. I'll take it into mind next time!

This is an intro movie to an actual game wrote using DM, and can be run using the BYOND software suite. It's a very fun game, and should be finished pretty soon. I just thought you guys might like to see the movie. It seems pretty nice to me. :p
Anyway, thanks for your (relatively) lengthy review! Many thanks.

[Covetous Dragon]

Meh. Didn't really grip me.

Graphics: Nice, colorful D&D throwbacks. The only problem is, they weren't animated at all. Attempts at 3D effects such as the dragon swooping towards the camera look cheap and fake and amaturish. Try drawing simpler characters but animating them better. This drawing style would be okay for still images, but it looks like crap when you move them around a little bit and try to pass it off as a cartoon. I like what you did with color. Would have been nice to see the wizard cast a couple of spells. For that matter, maybe shown some sort of emotions on the humans' faces? Just a thought.

Style: My graphics and style scores always run together. As mentioned, this artistic style, while good by itself, doesn't lend tiself to the type of animation that you've attempted. Seriously, this is Monty-Python era shit, man. Get with the program. Curve your lines, draw your characters at an angle, and actually animate them. The pace was kinda tedious. Once the first guy died it was obvious what was gonna happen but you made us wait for it. It wasn't "suspenseful," it was "boring." Suspense is when you're WONDERING what's gonna happen. Thankfully you avoided the typical noob mitsake of a pretentious 10 minute title screen for a 2 minute movie. Also, real D&D adventurers work as a group. Or they stop slowly walking and start running when their party emembers disappear. If this all happened in a surprise round then it should have happened quicker. As it is, it's like "What are these retarded adventurers waiting around to get eaten for?"

Sound: Good sound effects, except the wizard screaming sounded like a really young man. You could have recorded your own old man screming and it would have sounded more convincing than that. Intro music was lame. I've heard it before. Everyone has. Yawn. At least you cut the intro short THANK GOD.

Violence: Blood spattered upon the wall. CLANG! CLANG! No big deal.

Interactivity: none, unless you count closing the window at the first sign of credits.

Humor: None.

Overall: Don't get me wrong, I know the author spent a lot of time on this and he was TRYING really hard to be stylish. It's just that I feel he focused his efforts in the wrong places. This isn't Reading fucking Rainbow. Remember the eighties? When people with budgets animated everyone's arms and legs moving? Yeah. They followed that up with the 90's, when cartoons became stylized and dynamic, and then the 2000's, where cheesey retro style clashed with Flash technology to give you the neo-nickelodian bizareness that we have on TV today. At no point did animators go "Hey, you know what's wrong with contemporary aniamtion? All these frames and detailed movements! We should stop doing that and just drag a decal across a flat background." If I believed this were an intentional design decision, like something minimalist or something, maybe I could respect it, but the characters are way too detailed for that. If you want to impress me without real animation, draw your characters by hand and load them into Flash as PNGs. These stain glass window warriors are just lame.

Also, from a writing point of view, it just NEEDS something. I dunno... talking? Actual combat? Effort? A plot? Hope? A reason to care about these characters? Arrogant Draconic poetry? Anything. Just give it a goddamn POINT!

lazy48th responds:

Thank you for the constructive criticism. I shall try to learn from my mistakes for next time. I'm going to also post my final project soon (maybe today), and would appreciate more honest feedback...

[homework is fun]

Fair to partly-funny

The style and sense of humor kinda remind me of Space Tree. Not bad. Not great, but not bad. I can't really think of what to do differently, since it's one of those "I'm not really trying and that's what makes it funny"-style cartoons. Keep it up, I guess.

[Ken's Date (Apple Switch)]

Not as good as Nightlght Press's switch parody...

All "funny ass hell" aside, I thought it was a very well-executed switch parody. The guy's voice is funny all by itself, and the timing and his inflection is just right to parody the switch ads. Only one real joke, but it had me smacking my forehead against the desk, going "That's just wrooooooong..." XD Not too shabby.

[Hitler and Dave]

Can't get much more irreverant than Hitler comedy.

I found the rambling dialogue amusing. I do have to agree with some of these other reviewers that towards the end it started getting stale. I guess if you should take a lesson away from this, it's feel free to cut some of the dead air out of your improvs if you have that option. Like, you couldn't do it if it was live improv acting, but if it's a Flash like this, or a video, you can always skip a second or two of footage if nothing interesting is happening. Maybe skip to the next new joke, or whatever.

One more thing: they say Art is powerless unless it can disgust as well as delight. On that note, the pig chewing with his mouth open was a very powerful image.

[Stone Age Robot - Part 2]

Not bad... but not good either.

Okay, the author put a TON of work into it and you can tell. It's just that it's not interesting. First of all, there's no reason for the robot to think in terms of "prehistoric" and "modern." I assume the glowing green thingy is of alien origin. If anything it should think it's on the wrong planet, and should think like an alien. (Also, I assume the robot is just a mannequin made out of sticks and stones, mysteriously animated by whatever the green thing is. So wouldn't that make it more of a golem?) I know I'm overthinking this but there's just so much "yeah right" to this story that I couldn't get interested. Anyway the robot should be able to just walk across the bottom of the lake. It's not like it needs to breathe or anything. And how can the caveman lift such a heavy stone contraption using a primitive fishing line? Even if he's really strong for a human the line would snap. And why 3 megs of download for a 2 minute film with 3 lines of dialogue? And how come th... *HEAD EXPLODES*

[Engrish]

Interesting style, but the story sucked.

"Butler shoots master in pool." Yawn.

I voted "Nothing too new or interesting," but actually, the way the butler was drawn looked kinda cool, with the shine on his suit and such. If only the animation had told a story that was actually interesting to me in some way, I might have scored this higher.

The formula for a good first flash is 3+ minutes in length NOT due to a long intro or slowly displaying text, consistant art, and a plot that requires at least a short paragraph to explain.

Hopefully, the artist will do something longer in the future. He shows some promise.

Von-Lark responds:

It's just a scean from an English novel.

[RO: Love of a Sprite]

Best Sprite movie I've seen in a while, BUT SHORT!

The animation was done really nicely with these sprites, though I'm sure that's partly because they're ripped from a very well-animated game. They are just the right size for their backgrounds and don't look jagged or pixelly. The text fade-ins are also well done, and fit with the mello love-story music (except for the girl's spazzing about his injuries, of course, but I assume that was intentional.) Not especially violent or funny, but that wasn't the focus of this story. Voices would have been nice if he could have gotten some good ones, but of course excellent text work beats horrible voice acting. It had a nice loader and a start button. If the music started over when you restart the movie, it would have had all the interactivity you can ask for in a linear movie. If ONLY if had been LONGER! I was just BARELY starting to get interested in these characters! Come on, man! Overall, I give it a 6. Make it longer and tell a good, interesting story allt he way through, and you WILL score higher.

[There she is!!!]

The archetypical love story, told through sketches

Boy meets girl. Opposites attract. But he doesn't think they can be together. She pursues him. He runs. He tries to explain to her why they can't be together. He tries to show her other men who would be a better match for her. She will not be swayed. She follows him around and drives him crazy with her constant attention. Finally, he just... gives in. And he finds out that the issues he was afraid of, that he felt made their love impossible, might not be such a big deal after all. Maybe he even feels something for her, too. Just maybe. Can it ever work out between them? Check out part 2, Cake Dance.