I'm sixteen now. Which means I can drive if I feel like applying for a license. Which I don't.

If you've been following my news posts for the last while, you may remember that I do those little "year in review" type things with all of my flash submissions when my special day rolls around, and I'm proud to say this year will be no exception. And if you actually bother to read the whole thing, thanks in advance.

So let's just jump right in here...

The Madman. I hardly participate in NG holiday contests anymore, but this time around I had the idea, nothing to work on, and a neat song I wanted to animate. Since then, I've improved quite a bit, but I still think it's kinda cute.

Bits I still love:
+ That first bit with the chin-ups
+ All of those run cycles

Bits I'd do differently:
- That one mourner has a weird hand. I have no idea why I drew it like that.
- That thing where all the graves are goin' by shoulda sped up a lot more

Trigger-Treat was a game by Manly-Chicken that I did the art for. Blame everything else on him.

Bits I still love:
+ The main character sprites

Bits I'd do differently:
- Those cutscenes. Ugggghghhhh.

(Then somewhere around here I got my username changed from Elfman-Rox)

I Can't Afford a Wheelchair is my most viewed submission to date, and is still one of my all-time favorites. I, like many other artists, hate just about everything they've ever created once it's done and released, but for some reason I still like this one. Maybe I need another year. Even though it's not much, I learned a ton about game design while making this. I really need to learn to program better, 'cause creating a game on my own was a lot of fun, and I want to do it again sometime.

Bits I still love:
+ The cutscene-text system
+ The cutscene progression/skip system
+ The art style/animation
+ That poster in the back that randomly changes
+ The whole game, really

Bits I'd do differently:
- The boss's skin blends in with the background on some monitors. BUT HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW?
- I still have no idea how to save data

The 3 Day Flash Pass reached completion at the end of March. The whole "3-day" thing is a bit of a misnomer as after all the animation was finished, it took half a year to find someone willing to score the whole thing, and after that I ran into a ton of issues with the scene selection page. Thank god for Mike Breed, 'cause without him, this may very well have been delayed another couple a years.

Bits I still love:
+ The team
+ The menus
+ The combination of all of the different styles

Bits I'd do differently:
- I never found a good balance between audio quality and file size, which really sucks 'cause the score is amazing

Mark loses it. Not too much to say about this one; it is what it is.

Bits I still love:
+ All the colors worked really well together
+ The combination of the fbf & tweenin'
+ CHRIS

Flipped was my first entry to NATA 2012. It was a change of pace, as it was my first non-comedy movie in about two years. It's okay.

Bits I still love:
+ The 2.5d backgrounds. TOOK FOREVER BY THE WAY.

Bits I'll hate forever:
- The whole story is very ehhhhhh.... . The theme inspired the presentation of the movie, but the actual story came second, which is kinda backwards, and made the movie feel a little bit empty.
- The sands of time paradox - If you were to flip the sands of time, you'd immediately reverse direction and flip it right back, which sorta makes the whole "backwards story" thing illogical

My next NATA entry was a fun style to animate in, and was also pretty fun to write. It's also probably my best-animated movie to date.

Bits I still love:
+ The pseudo-3d again
+ The syncing of the voices with the soundtrack
+ The art & color
+ MAN THAT ONE BIT WHERE HE PUTS THE CIGARETTE IN HIS MOUTH LOOKS SO LEGIT

Bits I lose sleep over every night:
- The title
- That bit where he puts the folder down looks so freakin' choppy
- The lighting is a little inconsistent

Plunge n' Lunge was created in three days for the Seventh NG game jam. It was a pleasure to work on.

Bits I still love:
+ The whole experience of making it
+ The team
+ The soaring animation

Bits that will haunt me forevermore:
- The swimming animation looks bad when you're going really fast. Ergh.

Partners in Crime was done in a similar style to my last NATA entry, but this time was more oriented towards action scenes, which is something that I tend to avoid. An all-action movie was a fun way to tackle that.

Bits I still love:
+ The mouse :D
+ The explosion scene
+ All that "multiple shots at once" stuff. Can't remember what it's called
+ Best freakin' credits sequence ever

Bits that I've contemplated suicide over:
- The elevator falls faster than the safe- something I didn't notice at the time and a million people had to tell me in the reviews
- The blandness of the backgrounds

That brings us to today, where I have yet to release my last NATA animation (which, for the record, is complete) but I can't until I fix some video issues. Stay tuned for that, and another cartoon just around the corner, which will be my first comedy in a while.

Seeya next year, ya goofs!

TL;DR get out

(and yes I did another portrait)

It's coming.

Today I stumbled upon a brilliant gem of an NES homebrew by the name of Thwaite. If you're a game designer/programmer/whatever, this is a game you have to check out (You'll need a NES emulator to play it).

Description from pineight.com: "A hippie guitarist who has visited your small town for years has gone rogue and launched ICBMs toward your town. Break out the fireworks that you had been saving for Independence Day, turn them into makeshift anti-ballistic missiles (ABMs), and shoot down the incoming missiles."

Video, if you don't wanna download it
(The actual game is only a small fraction of the video. After that there are some other games that all suck.)

This game may not be the best in terms of gameplay or controls, but what this game does so much better than many modern-day games is the attitude toward the gameplay. If this game were designed way back in 198X, it would most likely would have space-shooter-type graphics and fast-paced music, maybe with flying stars in the background. However, the author behind this game took a much different approach, and created a much more compelling atmosphere that gave the story feeling. The townsfolk aren't trying to save the world, save the galaxy, or even save themselves. Instead, the music and graphics imply that the townsfolk have accepted their inevitable death, and are fighting only to make the most of what little time they have left. Almost like they'd rather just go out with a bang (quite literally, considering the fireworks). It's at times like that where every second counts, and in RPGs where you have to save the world from day one, you never really get that feeling.

Anyway, still workin' on my next NATA movie. Progress has slowed since I downloaded that emulator. Eeeerggggh.

(NATA preview)

I made it to the next round of NATA yadda yadda yadda you get it now.

(If you haven't seen 'partners in crime' yet, click above)

Normally I'd discuss who I just faced, how I came up with my idea, stylistic decisions, etc, but I really don't feel like doing that this time. In fact, I usually make these posts the day the resulta were posted, but I dunno, I guess that's gotten old by now. Or it has for me at least, tell me if you guys like that sorta thing.

Anyway, this post is going to be a bit more casual and blog-like instead of the usual 'reflections on my last flash' sort of thing. You can skip the next paragraph or so if you don't like reading those.

First off, as of late I've been developing this weird new sleep pattern where with each night I slowly grow closer to being completely nocturnal. Right now I'm going to bed at about 3am and waking up at 11. I don't know why, but I think that this has something to do with my constant need to be productive for every waking hour; if I spend an hour in bed where I'm only sorta tired before I fall asleep, that's an hour I could have spend working on a movie. For that reason, I'm always pushing myself to work until I'm so tired I fall unconscious within five seconds of me getting into bed. Worse yet, I have no motivation NOT to continue doing this, for I really don't have any sort of job or education to wrap my schedule around. I mean, maybe this is even better for me. Who knows?

Speaking of productivity, once school was no longer a part of my daily routine, I've been falling into this weird habit where I can't do one thing at a time anymore, or it feels like a waste of time*. Whenever I animate, I either have to put netflix on (so I feel like I'm making progress on whatever series I'm trying to finish), or livestream it so my work is serving a second purpose. I've actually reached a point where I hardly listen to podcasts anymore, because unlike shows, they'll always be there no matter how much I listen to. Even though they provide equal entertainment (and distraction), for whatever reason I just need to be constantly making 'progress' in one way or another. Do any of you guys ever have this problem?

*that's the weirdest mix of tenses ever

On an unrelated note, I'm getting really sick of video game parodies, particularly minecraft videos. 90% of videogame parodies have the same garbagey jokes where it just pokes fun at elements of a game that don't match up with real life, either through exaggeration or an overwhelming amount of deadpan humor. For Christ's sake, the reason videogames aren't realistic is so they can be FUN. If all games had realistic physics and gameplay, they wouldn't have the same appeal. I mean, mario can jump a billion relative-feet in the air because that's the only way we can go AROUND obstacles in a 2d environment. You shouldn't think of your jokes as witty observations if they were only designed that way for the sake of the game having good design. Last Saturday night I sat down and made this as a means of showing how easy it is to write the trash plaguing the front page of youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i22WkzDiF2Y

And for the record, the only time I've ever played minecraft was at a friends house for about 5 minutes. I don't have the time for that game. Too slow and boring. Point is, you don't need to play the game to make the jokes. Now go post that on everyone's wall and make it get an undeserving amount of views.

---BORING BLOGGERY OVER---

I NEED A PROGRAMMER!

Recently I've been looking around for programmers for an idea for a game I've had for a really long time, but I'm really worried about PMing people, and I hate having to make these open news posts asking for programmers because I can never respond to everyone, plus I never know how good/reliable anyone is. That's what makes it so hard to find a programmer that's willing to just sit down and make the game you want them to. No one wants to just take commands from an artist and transform someone else's ideas into code, so a lot of the time the programmer that you've called upon will just lose motivation. In most cases, whoever didn't come up with the game idea is the first one to flake, and with programming, that becomes much more likely due to the probability of a bug coming up that takes an extreme amount of dedication to fix. If you are a programmer and upon reading this you want to help me out with a game, please keep in mind that I need someone who will NOT have to change any elements of gameplay simply due to the difficulty of programming them. You're also going to have to show me stuff you've worked on in the past, and proof you won't drop out halfway through the project.

(This is NOT a casting call. You can leave a comment if you're interested in working with me at some point, but I don't want a whole load of PMs and portfolios. The details of the actual game will be released at a later date.)

tl;dr you're no fan of mine if you can't take five minutes out of your day to read this

Quick hand loop:

First of all, if you didn't see Animals of the Metropolis, Check it out now.

I'm fairly pleased with how it came out. Personally, I wouldn't change a thing even if I had more time. Somehow, I tied for first in the animation category with a perfect score of 20/20. This is big for me, 'cause no entrant who's as heavily oriented to tweening as I am has gotten 100% in that department since 2008. I was docked quite a bit in the structure department due to the rather abrupt ending among other elements that lacked satisfaction, and I'll admit that the way I chose to organize the events was less than conventional. In my defense, though, my idea was to create it in a movie trailer-esque fashion, which naturally means I'd be leaving out some details (and the ending, of course!) Unfortunately, it isn't easy to convey that a movie is only a trailed without slapping on a fake green n' white "approved for xxx audiences" screen. It's harder than you'd think to make it look like a preview without making it look like a parody.

As for the movie itself, lots of inspiration came from other movies on NG, such as Almighty Hans' 'The T intro', and this gem one or two of you may remember by someone you probably remember less. My use of the whole "no outlines" style isn't completely foreign to me, though. It's a style that's really fun to work with that I've used every now and then since 2008-09.

Nevertheless, I succeeded this round, due to the fact that my opponent unfortunately couldn't quite make the deadline. Next up I'm going against TeamTamago, which should be a fun battle. Best of luck to all the other entrants!

With the release of the "Latest from your Favorites" section I'm probably going to stop making news posts for every new movie, but if you didn't see my latest submission, Click Here for my open round entry to NATA 2012.

On that note, I placed sixth out of fifty-four entries in the open round, so I'm pretty pumped to see how the rest of the tourney plays out. Also, congrats to Pahgawk for placing first out of the 54 entrants. I'm a bit peeved that he was able to outdo me, as he's the same age as me AND he finished his entry eleven days early. Hopefully this'll motivate me to step it up in the next few rounds.

Anyway, my first opponent is BananasFoster, who as far as I can tell is pretty close to me in ability. I'm basing this off of his unfinished open round entry, so he may have more up his sleeve, but I'm pretty psyched to be going up against him anyway. May the best man win!

That's all for now. Seeya jerks!

Chris made some audio and I animated it.

Vote it n' review it.

ALSO - NATA.

I'm doin' the tournament again. This'll be my third year. I already have my idea for the open round, and as such, I'm already suspicious that everyone has somehow stolen my idea. Best of luck to all those competing. Lots of well-known animators have entered, but every year a hearty chunk of the folks who said they'd compete never finish their entry to the open round. So we'll see what happens.

Oh yeah, and I'm $800 in debt 'cause my old computer broke.

Grab a bowl-a popped corn and watch the Three-Day* Flash Pass!

It takes some time to load, so go ahead and read the rest while you wait.

This past week has sucked pretty damn bad (and the recent deaths aren't helping), but hey - I got the collab finished, and as of right now, things are looking up. I'm going to be getting a new computer pretty soon (my last computer literally exploded), and this is great 'cause I've been saving for a new iMac for about three years now. Believe it or not, my last mac was about eleven years old before it spontaneously combustion'd. (I didn't know computers actually did that, but I guess they do).

Also, within the past two months I started a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) collection. So far, I have 42 cartridges and around $400 worth of equipment, which you probably don't care about, but I've taken a liking to. (God, I'm such a geek.) Seeing as my computer's busted, I'm starting to regret a few of the purchases, but for the most part I haven't really wasted any cash. For some reason NES games have this strange sort of charm to them that competing systems of the time didn't have. They had more vibrant colors and sounds, in addition to not being limited by the infamous atari brick-pixels. Plus, the way the developers work around the limitations of the NES never cease to fascinate me when it comes to music, sound effects, gameplay, and color palette.

Also I'm pretty sure I lost the first round of 'Clabtrap,' formerly the Newgrounds Hip-Hop Comp, but I got a couple votes against one of the more respected entrants to the competition, so that's gotta be worth something.

Also, here's my Twitter again. Take that Richard.

I know I don't!

Above is the link to my 'hype-track' entry to Clabtrap 2012, formerly known as the NG hiphop competition. I thought it would be fun to enter, so I wrote 16 bars in maybe an hour or so. Then I was all set up with my mic and everything when I remembered that I have absolutely no experience in rapping, singing, or even talking with emotion.

Well, I wasn't going to let my hour go to waste, was I?

Other then that, it's been a pretty unproductive month, as most Februaries are for just about everyone in existence. (Shrug.) I'm still working away at a bunch of different projects, as listed below.

ALSO, FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER BECAUSE I'M SICK OF GETTING ALL THESE FAKE FOLLOWERS that think I play the "I'll follow you if you follow me" game. I also need a boost in self esteem, so GO GO GO!

IN THE WORKS:
-THE 3 DAY FLASH PASS, a collab that is finally nearing completion after what was much longer than three days
-A FIGHTER GAME that was just recently started, and probably won't be completed in a long long time
-TWO OTHER COLLABS that will be released who-knows-when
-A PUZZLE GAME that's been on the backburner for about three months
-AN XMAS FLASH? (It's gonna be a while before you get to see this one)
-NAILS

Oh yeah, and if you didn't get a chance to play my latest game, check out I Can't Afford A Wheelchair!

(Run cycle from fighter game mentioned above)

That game I promised you guys

If you remember me complaining about not being able to find a sponsor, this was the game in question. After finding a sponsor, some weird stuff happened where part of the agreement was broken, and a whole bunch of stuff happened but now everything's fine, so don't you worry about a thing.

Also, follow on me on twitter 'cause with my lack of fans I feel my witty remarks are wasted.

That is all.