WarpZone's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[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

[Subordinate Droids 3]

Skateboard crash joke = a start.

Okay, let me explain something. It's not enough to just put content in your cartoon. People just walking around doing stuff is boring. You need to add drama & comedy to this. As it is it's just a bunch of painfully slow scenes with painfully obvious conclusions and painfully boring dialogue.

Or to put it another way, here's what you're doing right now:
<Title Screen>
Hamish: I'm hungry.
*Hamish fixes a sandwich*
Hamish: "Great, now I can eat this sandwich!"
*sandwich falls on the floor*
Hamish: "Oh no! How will I eat my sandwich now!?"
*Hamish picks up the sandwich, blows the dust off of it.*
Hamish: (Insert really obvious pun that nobody laughs at. For good reason.)
<Ending credits>

It's boring because 100% of the things that happen in this cartoon were totally predictable. You need to mix things up a little more.

DRAMA:
*Hamish makes a sandwich and starts eating it.*
*Robot runs in* "Sir! Don't eat that sandwich!"
*Hamish looks at the half eaten sandwich and starts panicing*
Hamish: "What!? Why not! What's wrong with it!?"

Now the audience is in suspense. This is because the audience doesn't KNOW yet what's wrong with the sandwich. Like Hamish, the audience is anxious to find out what was wrong with the sandwich.

This same scene would NOT be dramatic if you already SHOWED the audience a bad guy poisoning the sandwich ahead of time. This is important. If the audience already knows there is something wrong with the sandwich, then they will EXPECT this entire scene so you mgiht as well skip it, or surprise the audience by doing the opposite of what the audience expects:

HUMOR:
*villian poisons sandwich*
*Hamish picks up the sandwich*
Robot: "Sir! Don't eat that sandwich!"
Hamish: "Oh my god! You're RIGHT! This is that crappy low-carb bread!" *throws sandwich in the trash*

You can further mix it up by making random, silly things happen. This could be humor or it could be suspenseful action, or both. Either way is fine, as long as it's UNEXPECTED!

RANDOM DRAMA:
*After the sandwich has been thrown away, the trash can starts to glow. We do NOT show the audience what's happening in the trash can, we just show that something weird is happening and cut away. Later, after the audience has forgotten about it, it'll be that much more surprising when a SANDWICH MONSTER attacks, and the audience will realize what the trash can scene meant.

RANDOM HUMOR:
If the sandwich monster wasn't random enough, maybe Hammish goes on to make his next sandwich out of two playing cards and a packet of hot sauce, because that's the only other food he could find in the house. Then when he tries to bite down on it, the packet breaks and the suace squirts out and hits the villian, who was hiding in the kitchen and maybe muttering something funny about why the poison didn't work.

INVERSION: (Do the exact opposite of what we expect)
*Villian poisons sandwich*
Robot: "NO! Don't eat it!"
*Hamish eats it*
Hamish: "Hey, that was a pretty good sandwich."
(This is funny because we were expecting him to be poisoned and he wasn't.)

After a surprise has been revealed to the audience, you have to explain why the surpsising thing happened. Either have the character wonder about it:

Robot: "Um, sir, don't humans die when they eat poison?"
Hamish: "Yeah, what's up with that?"
*They go study the crusts of the sandwich to try and figure out why*

Or have someone else figure out what's going on:

Villian: "Wait a minute... That's wasn't the poison I put in the sandwich! It was..."
DRAMA: "My new Monster Potion!"
COMEDY: "Laxative!"
RANDOM: "Coupon Spray!"
(If the sandwich was spiked with something random and silly like "coupon spray," now the audience is wondering what the heck coupon spray is. Show it in the next scene!)

The trick is to ask the audience a question, or pose a mystery, THEN answer it LATER. If you show the cause first, then the effect should be something other than what the audience expects.

You can learn more at www.tvtropes.org

Good luck mate!

sorbitol responds:

You could have just posted the web address and saved me a lot of time! :)

I do know most of this stuff already but my main objective with this episode was to introduce some new characters.
If you see episode 1 you'll see that the reason things were happening was not revealed until the end of the cartoon.
Then, in part 2, I gave them a more bona-fide adventure.
This time I was trying to follow Hamish through his normal day and bring some new characters in with events slowly building up to their conclusion.
But I'm grateful you've taken the time to recognise some potential in these cartoons and go to the trouble of braking things down in the way that you have.

I've had a little read through the site and bookmarked the page.

Thanks a lot WarpZone!

[Money (Thats what i want)]

God this makes me feel old.

Not because I was around in '59 when the song first came out. Oh, lord no. I'm not THAT old. But I was around in the 90's when they did basically this exact same thing on Tiny Toons Adventures, except the jokes were funnier and there was a whole lot more going on.

Don't get me wrong, you brought a little something all your own to the equation, and it was pretty well done for a Flash music video, especially the direction and cinematography. I just can't help but compare it to the Tiny Toons version, which hit all the same points, and then some.

eddsworld responds:

Yes the Tiny Toons version greatly inspired mine, and it proberly shows, but i just wanted to try and animate my own version.

[ScientLOLojyuuichi!!]

LULZ!

That was awesome. XD A great parody of Tom Cruise's latest self-destruct, as well as a fitting tribute to the first Animutation.

My favorite parts were Tom's spazztic huckstership at the begining, the subliminal Brian-washing, the CLOUD, Anonymous's physical appearence, the gratuitous boobage... hell, the whole thing is just packed with so many little details. Great job.

I know I'm using this phrase wrongly, since I actually like what's presented here, but MAEK MOAR!

[Game Fuel = Death]

LOL! That was great. XD

It was short, simple, and silly, but you really nailed the pacing and managed to make the most of text-only dialogue. I think the use of short, simple phrases helped a lot. If you'd flashed something longer like "Hello? Is anybody there? I'm not dead by I am very badly burned!" it wouldn't have worked nearly as well as it did.

Are you familiar with my friends at the Voice Acting Alliance? http://voiceactingalliance.com/board/ , remove the spaces. They provide quality amature voice acting work, for free! Just remember to be polite. Flash authors have kind of gotten a bad rap in that community because of that actions of one or two dickwads, so I'm doing what I can to turn that perception around.

Keep up the good work! You're off to a promising start, even though it's sticks.

[sleep mind, sleep]

Even the Cane Man can see that this was great! XD

That was awesome. I experience the same nonsense trying to fall asleep every night. The one thing I would adjust is, every time I think "But I need to fall asleep" while starting to dream, it wakes me up.

I love how he snapped awake whenever he realized that the dreams don't make sense. That bit was spot-on.

So, yeah, it's not just you. :D

[Clock Suckers Episode 7]

"Why do you keep SHOOTING me!?"

The best part is, I actually saw part 2 before I saw this one. XD That's right, folks. Head to the CU website or google it and you can watch part 2 any time now.

One thing, I don't like the way the CU website it laid out. You should just have a big list of all the episodes, seperated by series. Not a blog format with maybe the latest 3 episodes randomly mixed with CU, KFK, and the podcasts.

And lord, if you think the CU website it poorly laid out, just try finding anything at CollegeHumor. I've seen airplane cockpits with more concise interfaces.

Um, yeah. That's my detailed review of the delivery mechanism. The actual content is excellent in every way. XD

(I mean, except the art, which is only decent, but for something you cank out once a week, just decent will have to do!)