Hey so I know that there a lot of people who make stuff on NG with a lot of ambition who often get frustrated with the way their work is received, or what they perceive as their finished being that's below their own standards and so on.
Well anyways Ira Glass has something to tell you and it's totally legit,

That shit is so straight up.

There are a lot of people on NG who have really improved drastically over the past year or two, my favorite example right now is Bocodamondo. WHO'S YOURS? (inb4 anyone says "myself". Don't, that's tacky. Also inb4 anyone points out that you're not supposed 'inb4' on the first post).

Just thought I'd share because I was sick of looking at my fucking PIPA/SOPA post, JEEZ
Oh and yeah PS I guess I'll have some new animations soon but I'm kind of in lazy mode right now :(((

In the meantime MY POKEMANS: LET ME SHOW U THEM

So yeah like yeah I know a lot of people who come through here are too young for political engagement, and a whole other lot of us aren't located in the US anyways, but this seems like something NG would be taking seriously and unless I've missed something it seems like it hasn't come up?

HERE'S A PRIMER,
.

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And here's a longer, basement dwellier explanation for the brave and patient,
.

.
So yeah just wondering.

For everyone else who doesn't care, here's a cactuar. If I get 100 comments I'll change it to a pic with boobs LOL J/K no I wont.

K BAI <3

HEY GUYS So I just finally finished a cartoon with my bro Caxx that I've been working on for ages on and off, and now it's in the portal and you can go take a look-see RIGHT HERE YEEEAAAHHHHHH SHIT if that sounds like something you might be into.

Also sorry for never making my own stuff lately but this was totally one of those things where I had some kind of quick idea that I probably could've finished in like two weeks and then just kept adding more and more thins to it and next thing you know it's almost the end of October (wait, how the hell is it almost the end of October already...?)
I also had a really busy summer... aside from a lot of paid work I also went on vacation for 3 weeks (although I was working so I don't know if you can still call it a vacation), I got back and moved and set up a better office, and then my main computer suddenly died, and yeah then I got it all fixed and cleaned my place up and here we are. FREAKING ANYWAYS I promise to have stuff out more than once every 6 months from now on, I have my shit together now so I can actually get things done.

You can check me out on Facebook now for updates and extra stuff too, I'm gonna try to post production-related stuff pretty regularly from now on so if that turns your freaking crank then now you know where to find me :0

SO YEAH THIS FLASH RIGHT HERE is kind of a little bit of everything, actually I won't even say anything about it at all except that I've recently discovered that I really like to draw food.

Here is a cartoon burger to tide us all over in the meantime.

KBAI
<3

Okay so PICO DAY WAS FUCKING GREAT AND THERE WAS A LOT OF STUFF THAT I REALLY LIKED and it also made me realize how amusing Golfinho is, I LOLLED, I CRIED (I didn't cry).
But okay seriously though, here's the thing. I totally meant to do a Pico Day bit, but (as is often the case) I started working moar and moar on it and worrying about all kinds of details and crap, and the next thing I knew I had a production that was just complicated enough that there was no way for me to be able to push it through, even a few days late. SO RATHER THAN RUSH IT, I decided to hold off and save it. I'm still going to go through with it sooner rather than later (I'm not going to hold onto it until next year, or anything like that... at least I don't plan to) but I'm going to take some more time and not cut any corners. I was trying out sort of an ani-comic format... which I've always wanted to do, but has a bit more of a learning curve than I had anticipated.

Check this out though, I think it's a great example of how the ani-comic genre can really work, even for action sequences.

...DON'T YOU?!

ALSO: I was wondering awhile back whether to do Pico Day or TOFA, feeling that I'd only had time for one. I had started to think more recently that I would have time for both... and now I realize how silly that was, because after balancing some priorities I have time for neither. BAABAAWWWWW rite. Good luck to everyone who enters though, I'll be cheering from the sidelines so MAKE SOME COOL SHIT AND DON'T DISAPPOINT ME or something, blah blah blah blah.

On a bit of an upnote (maybe?) I am TOTALLY COMMITTED TO THE NEXT MOVIE JAM so when is it anyways huh?!?! No, really though.

I'm going to be reviving a short thing that I had started literally years ago with NG as the intended destination. It's a short 3-part series and it might be too abstract for a lot of people here and it's really not intended as humorous (and I'm not trolling this time either) so I dunno how it'll go over, but that's half the fun. I'll just leave it at that for now because otherwise I'm just RUNNING MY DAMN FOOL MOUTH OFF... and I really do believe more in talking about something AFTER you've finished it than trying to show off shit that isn't done. SO HERE'S A SHOT OF SOME SEXY EYES and hopefully I'll have the first installment ready to go this month. AAAIIIIIGGTTTHTHHHHTTthhbppttptptp

kbai <3

I want to do both TOFA (kind of) and Pico Day (for once), but since they're both this month (um, am I right?) and I'm slow as hell to do basically anything, I know that I'll only have time for one. I think it's gonna be Pico Day. Just putting that one out there unless anyone has anything to say that will get me AMPED FOR TOFAAAAA OMMMFGGGGGGGG Yeah who knows.

We made a MvC3 short! I actually started it the day after I saw all the staff ones but I got distracted with other stuff. But anyways HERE IT IS!!!!11one.
This was the first time I've actually submitted a Flash that was FLASH and not just a container for a rendered video. BABY STEPS OKAY!? I got a lot of practice gabbing though so it was totally worth it. I also recorded my own loop version of Dante's theme for some reason because THATS THE KIND OF GUY I AM or something.

Later on I'm gonna post a bunch of Wilhelm Park related materials (like the backgrounds and maybe some breakdowns and stuff) to the Art Portal... a lot of people have been asking me about the bus or commenting on it, and I wish I'd had time to answer about it earlier or whatever, but yeah it was all done in flash, no swift or anything.... I kind of want to write a tutorial on how to do that kind of 3D stuff in Flash, but I suck at writing stuff like that and there are probably better ways than the way I do it anyways. Hurr hurr.

TL;DR- yeah, the bus in Wilhelm Park was done completely in Flash... all 30-some-odd layers worth. BLEGH.

In totally unrelated news I thought the visuals, tones and effects in James Lee's Purged were really awesome. I'd link to it but it's on the front page, FFS.

Here's a picture that pretty much sums up the MvC3 Flash, if you didn't feel like watching it (yeah but go watch it though):

HEY GUYS well I finally finished something I've been working on for a while now... I started a Flash in October that had meant to get it done for the Hallowe'en contest, but in hindsight I have NO idea why I thought it would only take me about 3 weeks.

Oddly enough it could almost have worked for Valentines day?

CHECK IT OUT!
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/
562466

Anways there's probably a lot I could say about it but I'm kind of burned out from grinding super hard the past few weeks to get past the finish line so I'll just leave until people have a chance to actually see it, heh. There were a lot of images and music that I only used for a second that I might post to the art and audio portal later on too if people want to use them or check them out. Hey why not right?!

Thanks a million to Tom Fulp for raising my upload limit to accomodate what ended up being a HUGE file (in flash terms anyways) and giving me some awesome advice on a few last-minute decisions.... HUGELY appreciated.

OH ALSO super apologies to the few people I've inadvertently left hanging on my collab commitments :((( You know who you are but I'll get my shit together and try to make it up to you stat.

AND OH YEAH PICO DAY is coming up, what's everyone doing for that? I always want to get in on it but never have the time, anyone collabbing?

AWWWWRRRIIIIGGGHHHTTT!!
here's a screenshot, okay bye now

So in mid-October I started work on a submission for the NG Hallowe'en contest, thinking that I had about enough time to wrap it up at least within a day or two of the 31st. Hells no! By the weekend of Hallowe'en, I was just getting to the VO recording and had to kind of admit to myself that I was pretty much screwed as far as making the deadline was concerned.
I'm still working on it though and the more I do, the more I start to realize how many different things are really involved when you try to tackle everything yourself. Not that it hadn't occurred to me, but actually doing it definitely kind of puts things in perspective.

Obviously there are lots of people on NG who have done (and regularly still do) solo projects, so I've been wondering how everybody balances their priorities within their animations? Like, we can assume that if you're animating something in the first place, then you have a story, or maybe a joke, or some kind of statement that you want to express visually. From that point, you probably work out the characters and scenery depending on what you feel is most important to get your idea across. Obviously everything in a film or cartoon matters somewhat, but we can all agree that no single person has time to make every aspect perfect.

That said, TELL ME--

1. Do you tend to think of writing, be it a longer story or a quick joke, as a means of putting your drawings into motion? OR do you think of animation as a way of bringing your writing to life?

2. Which elements do you feel are most important? whether it's voice acting, character design or movement, scenery, etc? What is the least important thing, or the one thing that you feel you can slack off on as long as everything else is right?

3. How do you plan and balance everything, what do you start with and what comes next?

TL;DR - HOW DO YOU DO IT!? GO!

Pic related, I guess.

At the beginning of this week I animated a short part for Redharvest and Ricepirate's latest 24 Hour Collab, which was just posted today... it's already earned daily 1st which is awesome, thanks everybody who watched and voted! GO CHECK IT OUT!?

Having to work within the 24 hour limit (or roughly so, for some) was not only a good challenge AND a good workout, but turned out to be a great way to learn some new tricks on the fly. I tried out VCam for the first time and I was instantly pretty pleased with it... while there are some things that I want it to do that still need to be done manually (like panning backgrounds at different speeds), it's definitely a time (and brain) saver in a lot of situations.
I also discovered that even the latest version of SWF2Video (the best program I've found so far for rendering flash to various video formats) doesn't co-operate with the latest Flash Player version. ERRGH.

This was also a great opportunity to check out a lot of artists that I wasn't familiar with until now, I have to say I was pretty impressed with much of what people were able to pull off within 24 hours.
I've been working on a few longer things for quite some time now, but this whole experience and the chance to get some practice (and feedback) definitely inspired me to try to join up with more efforts like this in the near future. YAY COMMUNITY!!~~

TL;DR, watch the collab here.

PIC RELATED: IT'S MY SHIT

I finally managed to submit a short flash amidst all the other things I've had going on... based on a story that a professor of mine told me once about an infant that was deliberately deprived of human contact, and resultingly developed a language to communicate with the construction cranes he/she saw through the room's only window. Fairly heavy content, I suppose, and I had originally had a more grandiose plan in mind, but I had to cull things to be simpler and simpler as I worked on it.

Check it out!?!?

I managed to pull off a lot of little tricks here and there that I thought worked out nicely, though overall The whole thing ended up fairly short, and the tricks in question were so filter-intensive that I had no choice but to render the whole thing as video. Really I'd have made it a lot longer but I've already got a 6-minute animation in the works and I really need to keep focused if that one's ever going to get done. I'll write a more detailed explanation on my personal site later, probably when I'm not trying to study for an exam or something. Ahem!

It ended up taking about 5 days, on the 6th day I did the foley and on the 7th day I rested. And by rested, I of course mean wrestled with video formatting issues and data size.

THAT'S MY STORY for now, bpbpbpbpbpbpbpbpbpbp

While the Art Portal has been working out pretty well for me so far, I've yet to submit or even participate in an actual Flash... despite signing up what seems like ages ago, and having lurked for years. This makes me kind of sad.
THIS NONSENSE WILL END SOON.

First off, I got off my ass and submitted a few things to the NG Levels Art Collab, which looks like it's going to be wrapping up relatively soon, though at the moment a few slots are still open for anyone who wants to take a shot at submitting something.

I've gotten onboard to do one of the voices for Kieran-S's vampire hunter series, Edwin. I'm just about done my parts but the release time for that will be pretty much up to him... STAY TUNED.

I'm doing a bit for Paperbat's Birthday Collab, mostly for shits because I don't know paperbat or anything but Araelyn assured me that it'd be good times. I have NO idea how this thing will turn out overall, but I do plan to be drunk for at least a portion of my contribution and THAT sounds pretty damn professional if you ask me.

LASTLY and most time-consumingly, I'm still grinding away like mental on my Paper Dolls short/music video. I'm hoping to make some serious progress through January and have it up and running by Feb, but I've done it a weird way that requires all the scenes to be comped as video after I've finished. And it's taking FO' EVA EVA but so far I've been really amped about the results I've been getting, having never really used flash at all before I started this thing.

IN THE MEANTIME I've totally been neglecting my personal site at
RedMinus.com, and like a complete fool, haven't even gotten around to updating some vital sections yet. I suppose I'll go get right on that now since I'm in a typey mood...

If you find any of this stuff interesting, feel free to add me on Twitter. Admittedly I've mostly been using it for asinine ramblings but as things start to pick up it'll be my main real-time updater. YEEHAW!

Here's a screenshot from a recently completed Paper Dolls section,
aaaaaand I'm out.
<3