This past week has been pretty intense, from wrapping up my finals to seeing myself in a few projects here on the site. I'm really stoked to have had my follower count triple in a little over a week, so i'd like to welcome you all who are new here to my corner of the site!

Recent Stuff

Tankmas

I was very lucky to participate in this year's Tankmas AVENTure as one of the artists. Many thanks to Splatterdash, GeoKureli, TheDyingSun, and all the others involved.

My piece used two of my characters from my Flash Jam game as the ones who were supposed to deliver the catering for the Advent party. There was some miscommunication, and they ended up at the abandoned mansion where last year's event took place!

This is probably one of the few instances Frederick the Fennec and The Don Weasel work together, perhaps he's just paying off his debt?

Sketch Collab

I'm very pleased as well to have taken part in Newgrounds' Sketch Collab for this year, organized by Ozone and Nick Conter. Those guys did an awesome job supervising the collab!

My bit begins at 2:50, it was inspired how my Dad tells me that he would have a stand off with our cat to get a chair, the cat always won.

Future Stuff

I hope to use this vacation I'm on now to hammer out some more work on stuff I want to get on here, like Hyper-Breakers.

I also have a work-in-progress thread that I update on the Animation section of the forum.

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

Aight, thanks for tuning in. Merry Christmas to you all!

Woah I haven't made a news post in a while...

Hyper-Breakers

I've been working on a series I hope to contribute to the site, Hyper-Breakers. It follows Aaron the Cat and Todd the Dog as they fight their way through a summer vacation. The first part I got uploaded a few months back, Kiwi Store Brawl.

I got set on doing this 'cause I wanted to have a vehicle to tell all the crazy stuff and BS my friends and I come up with, also the prospect of making a series sounded really fun. The original idea was to make something with Regular Show's casual situation-turned-crazy, mixed with the serial-style and action of DBZ, all condensed into 2-3 minutes per bit. I know, sounds like a big task but... it would be really cool.

I still have my original Flash files from an old take on this, they were never completed as I quickly overwhelmed myself before even uploading anything. I thought it'd be interesting to attach a comparison of stills from the same scene with the old flash and my current reworking of it.

Original unfinished Flash (2020)

Rework in Opentoonz (2021)

This bit of advice @ozone gave to me on the forum has stuck with me.

Hey, here begins the start to a long journey!

Frederick the Fennec Commission

Earlier this year I asked the highly talented @sleepfacingwest to compose a theme for my goofy-looking character Frederick the Fennec, and he delivered wonderfully!

Though Frederick was originally conceived as a side-character for Hyper-Breakers, I've wanted to make stuff about him ever since I stuck him in my Flash Jam entry. He also beat Aaron and Todd to be uploaded in an animation first!

School and Studies

I've been pursuing 2D animation as a student at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. I'm really trying to hone my skills with the classes I'm taking. Last year was a stay-of-execution from moving away from home, but now I've gotta keep up with the pace of the city.

Work-In-Progress Thread on the Animation Forum

I have a thread in the animation forum where I sometimes put exercises and in-progress bits! You can visit it here:

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

That's it for now, stay tuned!

I was one of the users who participated in last month's Flash Forward Jam. My entry was Delivery Defense, a game that plays like laserdisc games from the 80s with a few of my characters.

The artwork for the game was very rough, and this was the very first Jam I participated in. But on the day the results came out, I was very surprised and excited when I saw that I managed to snag 3rd place for "Movies with Interactive Elements". I'm very thankful to @tomfulp , the judges, and everyone who played!

I first heard about the jam back in December when the initial donation by @Dungeonation was made, and I read that it would be heavily based in Actionscript 2. At that point I had little to no knowledge of the language and programming in general, but since I doodle a lot in Flash 8 I thought it would be a great opportunity to learn and experiment.

After a few ideas I settled on a game that works like those laserdisc games, like Dragon's Lair and Cliff Hanger (One that, surprisingly, uses footage from the Lupin III series) where a movie plays, and the player needs to respond to prompts to progress. I'm currently studying to be a traditional animator and I thought it would be a simple enough concept to learn to program.

Flash's "actions" panel and some online documentation actually made some basic interactivity very easy to pick up, and I was able to cobble together a basic system very quickly.

The sudden boost in online delivery apps over this pandemic I thought could be involved a little bit with the story, I've been ordering from them a lot lately, probably more than I should. So I plucked a character of mine, Frederick the Fennec, a goofy looking fox whose design was inspired by 60s cartoon characters, and made him a delivery driver for one of those services. The angry restaurateur I'll call Mr. Weasél, a character I originally envisioned as a con-man before this game, but I guess is now a mob boss too. I made a storyboard where Frederick gets into a situation where he gets chased by goons, and has to evade them.

The finished animation was completed within four days. I mean its rough-looking as hell but damn I was so happy I was actually able to do it.

I'd actually like to share some storyboard/animatic-ed sequences that I had to cut to reach the deadline, they might be hard to read so I'll write a short description underneath:

Frederick flips off the goons, but drives over the divider. The player has to react to a prompt so he avoids the oncoming car. With his car leaning to the side, he gets up and the madman kicks it back upright.

On a side note, I tried to make his car in the game look like a Triumph Spitfire.

This is would have been the most climactic sequence of the game and I was a bit sad to cut it. Frederick flies out of the smoke of an explosion and rolls off the highway down a cliff. Falling, he has to climb up his car, and reaches the goons' van and has a stand off with one. He goes in for a punch, and knocks the guy off. The soda can bit and the falling-off-a-cliff were kept, on the upside.

I never would have though so quickly my silly game would get 800 views. To me as an artist, whose illustration isn't even the best, really shows how much of an awesome community and platform this site has, thank you guys so much.

And to add: Flash/Animate is an incredibly powerful software, and I hope it can maintain some kind of relevancy going forward with the help of Ruffle.

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