Yo! Long time no news-poast! A few weeks ago I uploaded Hyper-Breakers: Caffeinated Chaos Pt. 2, the last to a three-part story I've chipped away at.

It's probably my most ambitious animation yet, and I'm very happy I was able to get it done! It was nothing short of a miracle that I was able to wrap this whole thing up during the summer, with days before my senior year at school began. Thanks so much to everyone who gave this one a watch!

Reflections

I get the impression that many people on Newgrounds want to make their own web-animated series. I see tons of "Episode 1's", "2's", and "3's" on the portal whenever I go to check it. Whether that would be someone wanting to build up their idea into a ultra-polished network-ready pilot, or if one wants to capture that same down-to-earth magic Eddsworld achieved. Whichever, I hope my few notes on how I made these shorts it is of some help to those people looking to make something, whether my work and mindset is taken as something "to do" or "not to do", haha!

Part 1 (and early ideation)

Part 1's where I first got my feet wet with making a full animation with voice acting and such. I started thinking about making my own series of animations when I saw some of the stuff people were uploading around 2017. And of course even before that time I was watching the Eddsworld cartoons for years. The main characters, Aaron the cat and Todd the dog, really are my first OC's. I just exited my drawing-sonic arc (thankfully), and still had that look floating in my head. I doodled two characters, a cat and a dog, and made them the focus of whatever story I was gonna make.

(My very first sketches of the characters of Caffeinated Chaos, my drawing skills were uh... pretty rough...)

For the plot, I tried to draw from what I was familiar with. I'm from New Jersey, and one of my favorite stores to visit is Wawa, so I based the plotline around a late-night visit to a convenience store. I started to flesh out the story from beginning to end, how I would introduce the characters, what would happen in the end, and all that stuff. Now during that time, my high school would always host a film fest at the end of the year, and I wanted to finish this in time for that. I began animating animating from all points throughout the story, making backgrounds, thinking I could handle the work.

I had all these moving parts but I failed to seriously consider one thing. I had no experience doing something of this scale at all. I've made flipnotes, walk cycles, animation tests, but I've never made a complete short-- let alone a 3-part series-- up to this point. As expected, I burnt out and fell flat on my face. I wasn't happy with how it was coming out.

So I started over.

The deadline for that film-fest passed, and my pet cat passed away a month before. I took a break for a little bit. After, I made the decision that I was gonna tackle each section of this animation one at a time. Oddly, the first section I decided to animate was the middle of my story. My plan was to show the conflict of the story, and if I was up to it by the end, move forward and complete the story by animating the characters' introduction and resolution afterwards. So, throughout my virtual freshman year of college I chipped away at this in the background. I cut scenes, and even recorded dialogue up to the very end.

In the end, this part got completed. I had to ask myself: "Do I want to finish this?"

My stubborn ass decided I was gonna see this damn animation to the end.

Part 0 (and Getting Frontpaged)

So continuing with my backwards production, the next part I tackled was the introductory beginning. I had a lot of ideas for this part storyboarded, and some early animation too, within my unfinished attempt at the series. I punched up the dialogue, redid the storyboards, and began animating from there. By this point it's a few months after Part 1 was uploaded in June, and I'm a sophomore now. I prioritized my schoolwork, so the greatest bursts of work would be done on vacations like winter and Thanksgiving breaks. Once the summer vacation began again, is when I made my dash towards the finish line.

Almost exactly one year later from Part 1, Hyper-Breakers: Caffeinated Chaos Part 0, was uploaded to the portal in early June 2022. And to my surprise... I received my first-ever frontpage award! It felt awesome to see something I made get featured!

I think what makes this entry stand out against the other two is that I really focused on comedy. In my mind I was gonna save the action for the finale, so I tried to jam-pack this entry with visual gags. Gags like a boom-mic falling into frame, a character getting swooped-up by a giant bird, and a guy crashing his new ̶D̶o̶d̶g̶e̶ ̶C̶h̶a̶r̶g̶e̶r̶ Chodge Darger.

Compared with Part One, I was able to improve the artwork more, included painted backgrounds, and have a much snappier-pacing. More generally, I think I've improved the greatest with this entry.

The Finale/Part Two

(Link at top of post)

The finale, Part 2, is the longest and most advanced of the entries I've made. I was always intimidated by all the work I would have to do when I got up to this point. However, this was helped immensely with turning my organization up to eleven. I did various things like:

   •   Have an organized folder structure for the animation on my drive

   •   Write up an outline document to outline full story before scriptwriting

   •   Separate scenes into separate files, opposed to condensing all the work into one project file.

   •   Keep an excel sheet to track my own progress on roughs, ink and paint, etc.

One thing that this taught me is that taking time and having steps to organize things, paradoxically leads to less time overall working on a project.

On the whole I'm most happy with part 2 out of all the entries. I learned a whole lot about organization, and my own skills in animation. I was quite scared about doing a whole fight scene in this animation, as I had never animated one before, and it wasn't really something I could be more relaxed and limited on, like the opening act. But in the end I think ended up doing some pretty smooth work for my first go! Looks like all that time spent watching Sakuga MAD's was worth it.

The Takeaway: Having Something Completed

In the end, I have three animations I could call a complete work. Though I'm sure the series can come off awkward, rough around the edges, and downright "what the fuck is going on in here", I consider this a personal success! I had a creative idea and I took the damn thing all the way to completion! So I guess my advice isn't really on what are good things to have in a series, but more so that it's gonna be a project that one should prepare to be in for the long haul.

Each part of this series had around a one-year turnover from the point of starting animation. What I hope people gain from doing this work as I did, is becoming more efficient and familiar with each routine. For me, every Hyper-Breakers cartoon was either longer or more detailed than the previous. But in spite of that, I was able to do a greater amount of work for each successive animation, and still have it on schedule.

Even better... this is all the more prep and exercises to get me ready for my senior project. My senior animated project has to be 4 minutes, and is a mostly solo production (besides voice work and music, in which other people are helping). So with the work I've done up to this point, I think I'm in a good spot!

So, even though this might come off as cheesy...

Thanks to @ozone, @tacopug, and @ntilcheff for being class acts on the Animation Forum

Thanks to @gorbogobmin, @chimpshrimpin, and Paperwoodchuck for standing by my side and lending a hand with this project

Thanks to everyone who watched my silly movies

And thanks to Newgrounds for being the best art site ever!

And uh... at the end of these newsposts I always put a link to my WIP thread in the forum or uh... something like that... Here ya go...

https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1469915