WarpZone's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Iron Manhood]

That was terrible. XD But SO FUNNEH.

I think the defining moment was when he put on the gimp mask during the buzzsaw scene. It's just a (literally) lame cock joke, but you told it with panache, and you really went that extra mile in terms of parodying IM's construction scenes. You didn't just make her smile in the last scene, you had her shake her hair down. It's the little details like that which push this movie from "kinda funny but lame" to "awesome animation."

Your drawings are mostly crap, but I can't wait to see more of your stuff. You're all about breathing life into your animation, and it really pays off.

[There She Is!! step4]

Surprisingly deep. And yes, this was predictable.

This is where I thought the series was going, back when I first saw Step 1. SamBakZa denied it at the time, insisting it wasn't an allegorical story about interracial love between humans, but just a happy-go-lucky love story about two star-crossed lovers.

Well, time has passed, the series has grown, and even though the characters have grown closer together, the society they live in is still shocked at the pairing. There was only one way this could end, given what we know about the characters and their world. I'm glad he didn't dumb it down. He's exploring all of the implications of these rabbits and cats and their fictional society.

I'm not disappointed with this episode at all. Everyone else is bitching about it like the world's gonna come to an end because the frame rate went down, but there's actually much more emotional content packed into the story in Step 4. This is great storytelling.

I'm not depressed by the darker tone, either, because it could really go either way from this point. There could still be a happy ending! Only time will tell.

It makes me wonder if there's any country on Earth that has riots in the streets because a girl dated a guy and they were different. Is this the situation in amalloc's home? I hope not. :(

Amalloc should sell pro- bunny kitten heart shirts. :) I totally would buy one to support the cause! :) And I live in a country where bunnies and kittens have been living together for all of my adult life.

< (: (: 3

[mr.frog]

The most elaborate Frogger sprite movie ever.

Just kidding. (It did have a frog getting hit by a truck though!) This was great. It was well-animated and very stylish. There were plenty of visual jokes, and even though the ending was predictable, the middle was full of surprises.

I'm not sure how I feel about the fake grainy background. I guess anything that prevents it from looking like Flash is considered an improvement, to traditional animators? Personally, I think the best cartoons, Flash or otherwise, make the viewer think of physical objects... I don't understand what is gained by faking an older medium's artifacts, unless it's a retro or historical piece.

But the cartoon is so good, I wasn't thinking about the grain filter after a few seconds. So it's all good.

Make more, please! :D

[Whookos Short:What's That]

Muahahahaha!

Excellent. XD

Despite the length, you managed to both tell a story, and do so with flair.

Also, kudos for not putting some pointless 20-minute title screen with music before and after the 20-second movie. That alone spells class.

I look forward to seeing more from you. I can't wait until you get really ambitious and do one that's about 40 seconds long. :P

[Double Dragon 2 Zomg]

Score: ZOMG!

I'm not sure why, but I found this extremely hilarious for some reason. I'm not even sure if it was an homage or a parody, or if it's a parody, whether it was making fun of DD2 directly or just mocking badly-done sprite movies on Newgrounds.

But whatever it was, it was freaking hilarious. XD

Do River City Ransom next!

LSD265 responds:

uh thanks man glad ya liked it

sorry I don't know what River City Ransom is? lol..I might have to play it..

[Tom & Wade fight the spam]

The Vote is a Lie.

This was pathetic.
I'm making a note here: Epic Fail!
It's hard to understate my disappointment.

Newgrounds Flash Portal:
Everything by Everyone
So as to amuse us all
except for the Kitty Krew.

But it's no use blaming people for their bad flash
If you keep on flaming Tom will come kick your ass
So bad flashes get through, we can't blam the Kitty Krew
Cuz you people are all voting five

I actually liked it...
I'm using irony right now,
even though your flash survived submission.

It gave me a seizure!
And made me throw up. And hurt my eyes.
But if I say anything,
soon my account will be dead.

There's no point in voting with you morons online
I'll be called a hater, I get that all the time
So before you internetters yell "u no can has do betterz"
Note the people who are voting five

And believe me, they are voting five!
I just got frontpage cuz they're voting five!
I'm dissing Newgrounds and they're voting five!

Voting five!

Voting five.

[All Quiet on theShoreline]

Hmmm... actually, I like where this is going.

You're not just spamming the portal, you're actually telling a story in the process. I like that. Not many flashes on Newgrounds bother to have a story in them.

I think after you've done like, forty of these things, you should bundle them all together into one SWF, mess with the pacing a little bit, maybe add a few scenes, and you'd have the whole epic adventure set to In The Navy.

If you do all that, and then actually synch it up properly, I bet you'd get a blue score, easy.

Caecilius responds:

I was actually thinking about doing that.

[Don't Deport Me Scotty]

Illogical is right...

If it's intended as a PSA, it doesn't really work, because like Schlock said, he's a permanent resident, and (as far as I know) permanent residency is unrelated to the current controversy surrounding illegal immigration.

If it's intended as a pure entertainment cartoon (which I doubt, based on the link at the end,) it doesn't work either because it's just not that funny.

I suppose it's thought-provoking, but only if the viewer falls for the straw-man argument that Schlock's situation is analogous to illegal immigration. If you take this movie as-is, it has no real bearing on the issues discussed at the website promoted at the end.

I've seen better arguments for human rights buried in episodes of ACTUAL Star Trek, particularly in TNG, DS9, and Voyager. A more directly analogous story would involve, I dunno, a Cardassian or something, stowing away onboard the ship. Maybe he's tricked the computer into rotating him into work shifts as some sort of minor engineer, even though Starfleet has no record of him and doesn't know he exists.

You could tell the story from the guy's point of view. Why he came to the ship and what's waiting for him back home. Demonstrate why it would be so inhumane to send him back. Maybe he does a good job and everyone likes him, but then he gets discovered and the captain has to deport him. And like everyone's all torn up about it and they want to appeal the ruling, but Starfleet says its hands are tied.

Actually, you know what? Voyager would be the perfect backdrop for a story like that.

That's how I'd do it, anyway.

[Mindy Learns a Moral]

Quirky. Sterotypical. Over-the-top. Good stuff!

There's no question that this turned out exactly how Andy intended it. :) For better or worse, you've got a quirky, overexagerrated drawing style, extremely labored writng, annoying valley-girl voice acting, and, to quote one Babs Bunny, "plot-holes big enough to drive a mac truck through!" And to be honest, I don't know that I'd have it any other way.

The visuals range from minimal-tweening, a little light FBF, and lots of stationary shots of blinking cell-phones, but after the first scene you won't be thinking about the art anymore. Somehow, even though the story itself might be crap, the way it which it is told dominates the viewing experience. You will care about this vapid sterotype, oh yes. You will also care about her damn phone. I'm not sure why. It just happens.

This is what all those traditional animation books are talking about, between sets of ghey little storyboards of Jetsons-era characters prancing awkwardly about. This is the power of traditional animation. This is the magic.

I do take exception to the phrase "today's teenagers" in the author's description, though. You saw almost EXACTLY this same story back on Tiny Toons in the 1990's. A lot of these memes date back to the Cosby Show in the 80's. And perhaps to a lesser extent, these same themes have been with us since Happy Days. (Or maybe teenagers have always been like this, and we just didn't start recording it accurately until we invented TV.)

The theme may or may not be timeless, but it sure feels that way. Regardless, Mindy manages to breathe new life into these tired memes, and while there may be room for improvement, it's very watchable and easy to digest.

I'm tempted to recommend that the artist waste less time on totally obvious plot twists and exposition, replacing it with more banter and one-liners for a quicker, snappier show... but if he did that, I guess it wouldn't really be Mindy anymore. Someone has picked up the torch, for better or worse, of a bygone era of cartoons. I think it's Tiny Toons, but someone older than me might say Bugs Bunny and someone younger than me might say Animaniacs. Could it be that this cheesy cell-phone drama really is timeless?

Man. I feel really old now. :P All reminiscing about the 90's. Heh.

TmsT responds:

Of course "the teenager" doesn't really change over the generations, but I'd rather be making fun of today's teenagers than yesterday's, since the latter don't overreact anymore (as they are no longer teenagers). But you can be sure that I will keep taking motifs from the classics, especially old sitcoms and Shakespeare (which are almost the same thing if you think about it, really) and no-one shall be spared from my convoluted plots, false/unresolved endings, and unrealistically overblown dialogue! >:3

I wanna bring back what "Doug" should have been if it was allowed to keep developing and maturing along with its audience instead of getting bought by Disney and made to stagnate into something that even I, a fan of the original series, just couldn't watch.