Old updates to the main page.

Thursday, August 19th, 2004  6:28 PM ET

The Film Fest lineup continues

I haven't and am not doing anymore reviews until my own film fest movie Pamela is complete, but Lock 'N Toad updates wait for no man or movie. Evil Ash saves our butts by reviewing Jake, Retaliation, AND Abortion, which was released earlier today. Obviously Mr. Ash's opinions on Retaliation are not shared by the rest of the staff (at least not entirely, as I know I felt that the movie had some problems too), because if there wasn't dissent between us, well, then there wouldn't be much of a site.

Tomorrow gives us the Backwards Chain Movie headed off by Digital Taco. This has been in the works since as long as I can remember, and I'm hearing good things about it, so keep your eyes peeled. So far we haven't reviewed any chain movies on Lock 'N Toad, but maybe that's about to change.

Oh, and because I've promised something like fifteen reviews that I have yet to deliver, I've hired someone to smack me across the face with a two-by-four:

Note: The part of Aaron in facemeetsplank.jpg will be played by Gustave
 

Tuesday, August 17th, 2004   8:30 PM ET

The Summer Film Fest has BEGUN!

Howdy all, Gorosaurus here!  This is my first update... ever... so bear with me, here.  I'm probably gonna screw something up, so be sure to get in touch with the staff here if you find that I've accidentally set off an e-bomb or something within the html here.

But more to the point, 3dmm.com's annual Summer Film Festival has started.  The only movie up so far, one day in, is the Dave Smith thriller "Jake."  Everyone's favorite friendly neighborhood Aaron Haynes is on the case like Dougboy is on imposters.  Orcus jumped right into action as well with a review of his own.  Hopefully our other reviewers will manage to cover this movie, and the many others destined to follow, before the Film Festival is over.

In other news, I have officially destroyed my computer chair's warranty by putting 3 years worth of use on the thing in less than a day's time.  In other words, I have completed reviews of the entire Community Clash series.  This first half of our 'SagitUpdate' has brand new reviews of Episodes 2-6 of the acclaimed series, all by yours truely.  Word on the street has it that double-A is about ready to strap down and get his reviews done as well.  Of course, he's got many other grand plans in the meantime, so keep your eyes peeled, fellow Toadians.

...Alright, I admit, that term is pretty sad.  I'll give it some work.
 

Wednesday, July 28th, 2004   1:20 AM ET

Our first "We're Sorry" update

There were a lot of reviews planned for this update that didn't happen for whatever reason. I've been extremely busy with the Awards movie, some emergency college stuff, and this short film I've taken on for the Film Festival, plus other lame excuses, so only one new review from me: The first episode of Community Clash.

Evil Ash has been pretty busy on the other hand: He's reviewed Cycles and A Life of a Sheep, and rather than putting them on hold until I'd finished the ten million reviews I wanted to do a really big update with, I've decided to go ahead and do this short one.

The next big update will be our answer to Explode Productions' Apfigur-themed one as Jon and I review all of the episodes of Community Clash. So stay tuned for Lock 'N Toad's Sammy Sagiutarius-themed-update in whenever we're able to crank 'em out.

I also owe Klaymen a review of 3DMM Evil, which I'll be getting to for a one-review update soon.
 

Wednesday, July 28th, 2004   6:10 PM ET

New images

Big, big thanks to Adam Clough for Photoshopping up some fantastic looking images for the site. You'll notice that the banner, the logo, and all the avatars are now about ten times more kickass than the simple crop-and-upload jobs I did with Paint Shop Pro 5.

Though I did edit mine a bit. ;)

Movie/review update coming soon.
 

Wednesday, July 28th, 2004   1:20 AM ET

Many things

I'm gonna make Goro start doing some of these.

Anyways, first things first -- somehow, the full 3DMM Download we had up was carrying a fun little passenger, the w32.jeefo virus, which had infected the .exe file. At first we thought something about the way the download was compressed was causing antivirus programs to set off red flags for no reason, but it turns out it was the real deal, so we've gotten rid of that for now. Our deepest apologies to anyone who downloaded and tried to run it, because DAMN. We really, really, really weren't trying to screw up your computers. We're looking into how it could have happened, but so far the best guess is the lockntoad.com server got infected at some point and the virus attached itself to the .exe file I had hosted on my /homyguyz directory. We'll see about getting a download version of the program up that doesn't violently rape your system soon. Again, our deepest apologies. We're taking turns hitting ourselves for you.

On a happier note, four new reviews are up, two for Gorosaurs's Ninja Gaiden, a classic from 2002 that goes hand in hand with JP's Doom series, which has also been reviewed by Jon Barton. Apologies to Sammy, for Community Clash 6 has still not been reviewed, but only because everyone who wants to do it would rather review all previous episodes first. Once my Stranger 4 and UTD obligations are fulfilled, that'll be my next major project, so look for it next update.

The four new animations are from deep within some extremely old folders of mine, one being the Boundless Ben airship scene from JDR Revolutions, which I'd been meaning to hand-fix to play on normal computers before Frankie released the fixer. The others are just random crap I'll never use (except Rocket 2, which I may finish some day for the hell of it). If you want to submit animations, please feel free to do so -- I have a lot of neat clips from other directors sitting around that I should probably get permission to put up.

Additionally, several title glitches referring to pages as "JDR Revolutions (Aaron Haynes)" have been fixed.

There may be another update as early as tomorrow, so keep your eyes peeled. I've still gotta do the 2004 Listing update as well.
 

Saturday, July 24th, 2004   12:50 AM ET

Six new reviews and four new movies pages.

Not a bad start, eh?

First up, the new releases: I hit Raider's A Life of a Sheep, a charming little film about a loose collection of white spheres that move around jerkily. Heh, seriously though, this movie isn't half-bad: The animation and construction are definitely sub-par, but as a very early newbie effort, I daresay he's done better than most of us have, which bodes well for his future. Some neat attempts at unique shots even if they didn't quite work, so check it out.

Goro meanwhile got Identity Unfinished, about four tantalizing minutes of James Burgon's epic project, which was released by Thomas Bown. Hmm. Anyway, while it's a shame we'll never see the story play out like it was intended to (I've read the script, and it's really, really good), it's got some great directing in the first section and a few scattered sequences of tension and gore in the second. Definitely worth a look.

Backdated reviews: I got both Dooms, which are very tasty indeed, and Orcus reviewed Kyle Magocs's 3-minute music video thingy Ice Cream Man, as well as the opener for my dream project Uprising, released in 2000 and all but abandoned today. Who knows, though.

Additionally, we've uploaded a working download for 3D Movie Maker in the Utilities section. Go easy on it, please.

That's about it for now. Later.
 

Tuesday, July 20th, 2004   2:30 PM ET

Grand opening, or something.

Welcome to lockntoad.com.

The general idea behind this site is actually something I've had in mind for years: a 3DMM archive that focused on differing viewpoints between reviewers, and provided multiple reviews per movie. This is implemented in the Review Archive section, where you'll find a list of specific reviews organized by each reviewer, allowing you to browse a particular reviewer's archive as well as being able to browse by movie. Each movie has its own page where you'll find screenshots, general information, and links to the reviews; if you're not familiar with whose avatar is whose, check the Staff section, where eventually you'll be able to read up on community history and general reviewing philosophy of all these bums. For now it's just me. The newest reviews added to the site appear in the sidebar to the right -- clicking the movie name will take you to the page for that movie, and clicking the avatar will take you to that particular person's review. The "More...." link at the bottom goes to the previous review updates in order.

Upon browsing around, you're likely to find sections that aren't quite complete or don't have a lot of content yet. This will change as we continue to update. We currently have 55 movies and 117 reviews....not too shabby to start out on, though you can bet we'll spend most of 2004 backdating through older movies to build our archive. If you want to see a particular movie up and we're taking a while to get to it, just request it in our review threads in Critic's Corner.

Big thanks to the following people for making this work:

Rubin Ridley, for doing the sidebar images and giving me advice on how to build the site.

Gorosaurus, for providing the webspace, taking screenshots, uploading movies, and basically doing whatever I whined about because it was taking forever. You rock. Also for the Vlarion reviews.

Orcus, for helping me comb through the site and find errors. We might have missed something, but the fix list was like three pages long, and that's a good thing. Thanks a ton, dude.

Fred, Jorrit, and Tom, for the amazing work they've done on Explode Productions over the past three years. Without EP the community would have collapsed long before this could have even been a possibility. Your hard work is most definitely appreciated. Keep those updates comin'!

Greg Strnad, for getting me my start in the community. DF's still my one true home for 3DMM.

Andres De La Hoz -- your interest in the site probably made it get finished a good bit faster than it would have otherwise. Glad to have you aboard.

Jon Barton -- Easily my favorite reviewer in the community, nobody is more dedicated and dependable than Jon when it comes to review requests. Sorry I took so long getting Y&S done. That was a hard movie to review. Without Jon this site wouldn't be half as good.

Z-Man -- JDR Revival aside, this man ROCKS. His journalistic review style is a fantastic addition to the community, and if Dan can achieve half of what your script calls for, The Prowling is gonna be the breakaway hit of 2004. Now get that lazy bum you hang around with to turn your NG2 writings into visual bliss.

Evil Ash -- I hope his spontaneous decision to start reviewing creates a trend in the community, because the more active people giving feedback, the more people are going to want to work on their movies. Talented guy, looking forward to seeing your work.

Jeff Ching, for the box office and all the support throughout the community. This guy's everywhere.

Anyone else I've forgotten. You all kick ass.