Everything you did/didn't want to know about the reviewing staff on Lock 'n Toad. I advise you run while you still can.

Aaron Haynes
A 3DMM veteran dating all the way back to 1995 when the program was first released with a weird history in the community. Got my start on DragonFilms in 2000 with the first four episodes of the Vlarion series. Running about four hours back to back and sporting an RPG directing style complete with battles, HP damage, worldmap and equipment sequences, text-based dialogue and MIDI music, Vlarion was shaping up to be the one series that broke every moviemaking rule in the community in the following years. Posted on the board occasionally but generally avoided it for the more decentralized and encouraging atmosphere of DF and e-mail based communication with fellow moviemakers, Alternate Vlarion 3 was released to the board in 2002 to almost unanimous negative feedback. In the months following REDUX, a Rebirth of 3DMM/Showdown tribute and a sort of "State of the Union" address to the community directed with Gorosaurus, the Vlarion series has finally begun to get a bit more widespread critical acclaim. The final installment in the series, Alternate Vlarion 4, is scheduled for release in late 2004.

My review style focuses largely on interpreting the more subtle ways that films speak their messages -- community history, dialogue and plot patterns, character development and payoffs later in the movie, and unintentional references, coincidences, and ironies. Reviews are capped off with a Critical Score, judging the cinematic merits of the film, and a Personal Score, which amounts to nothing more than how much I enjoyed the movie. Scores don't often drop below the 60 point range and very rarely below the 40 point range -- typically if a movie is bad enough to get less than a 4/10, it's clear that the director isn't ready for their work to be judged on the scale the community's best movies are judged on.

3DMM films are by nature a precarious thing. It's a buggy, outdated program riddled with limitations and problems. There's no money in it, it takes an extremely long amount of time and effort to make anything worthwhile, and the only thing you can hope for, other than personal satisfaction, is a fairly large degree of positive feedback from other directors and peers in the community. To this extent, I try to make my reviews as detailed and ultimately constructive as possible, gauging the director's intent and message of the film as best I can and giving personal advice as to what might be improved. I don't consider setting my scoring window higher than lower for most movies to be low standards; for what the director was trying to achieve and what came across in the film, the outcome can be critically flawed but still uphold its principles to a certain extent, and thus deserves a score tailored to that extent. I have no problem giving a film a 100/100 if it really deserves it -- there's always room to improve artistically, but films can be challenging, consistent in tone and message, revolutionize a stylistic technique or method of storytelling, and generally achieve great things. The greatest movies released to the community, or even just the ones that do everything they set out to do in a powerful, unique way deserve the highest score we can give them. Perfection has no place in cinema, but greatness can come along in a variety of ways.

With that said, take my reviewing style with a grain of salt or whatever the hell you want to call it. I know I certainly do.

E-mail: amhaynes@bulldog.unca.edu
 

Orcus (James Quicksell)
Director of Slightly Confused and the upcoming sequel Moderately Confused. Know what? I'm gonna let him describe his own reviewing style. So there.

Gorosaurus (Jason Meckes)
Good 'ol Goro. He pays for the site, and on top of that I hear he's a pretty good animator to boot (actually, he's probably the best character animator I've ever met, nevermind 3DMM). A lot of what Goro focuses on in his reviews are the creative steps directors use to push the medium forward. He wants to see something new, something highly innovative that fits with the message and overall feel of the movie. While he's typically a nice guy and can get very enthusiastic about some films, he's no critical pushover, and his more recent reviews have established him as one of the most observant critics in the community.

Goro has several older reviews on the site that aren't quite up to the quality level of most others. These may be redone at some point down the road.
 

Z-Man (Matt Burkett)
Has been in the community longer than anyone on the staff (except possibly Mike Belfance, but he's a DF alumni). Very journalistic in his approach to 3DMM films. Has little patience for randomness or unpolished 'fun' movies (see JDR Revival). Holds 3DMM movies to a standard not unlike the one he uses to review real movies, which weeds out a lot of the amateurish conventions present in many, many flicks throughout the history of the community. Like Andres, doesn't have much tolerance for many of the cliches most of us take for granted. Not very active as a reviewer, currently, but here's to a comeback down the road.
 

Jon Barton
Creator of Yeti & Squidworth, Liquid Sunshine, and the upcoming Ringworld. Jon's a very critical reviewer, and tends to examine the narrative qualities of a film almost as strongly as its cinematic aspects. Narrative and thematic consistency is key.

Andres De La Hoz
The most notorious critic in 3DMM history. Don't be surprised to find a movie you enjoyed (or even made yourself and were proud of) being violently torn to shreds in his famous stream-of-consciousness style reviews. Andres has no patience for laziness and holds movies to an incredibly high standard. It's often he who brings the average score down a few points lower than it would have been otherwise. While it's outdated and not entirely accurate of his viewpoint anymore, read his manifesto to get an idea of what he's looking for.
 

Evil Ash (Sean McNulty)
All of Evil Ash's reviews contain spoilers in some form or another. Don't read unless you've already seen the movie or you're prepared to hear what happens!

Mike Belfance
One half of the Justin Wawrzonek/Mike Belfance team, the brains behind the writing in Videogame Nightmare and Teh Epic. You decide what to make of that.

Zaps (Ben Lee)
A 3DMM critic with a unique perspective on the community -- he hasn't been around for more than a few months, so he's experiencing everything from 1996 to 2004 for the very first time. Like Daniel Martin, Jeff and Rory Price, and James Waumsley, Ben has has the (somewhat dubious) honor of being immortalized in the JDR series as "Boundless Ben", who was voiced by Justin Wawrzonek, who also uses Timothy to represent himself in 3DMM movies. Whew.