Newgrounds.com — Everything, By Everyone.

Oh, I've missed you all so much!... Not really, though, because I never really went anywhere. I've still logged onto Newgrounds every day for the past year.... I just haven't submitted anything... which I truly am sorry about.

Villainy had just gotten going at a good pace at the end of 2011 when I hit the skids. One thing after another prevented me from ever finishing Episode 2, though it'd been in development the whole time. Finally I put everything aside, buckled down for 2 solid months and finished it. It is now my proudest achievement. Soooooo much better than Episode 1. You can watch it here on Newgrounds now. VILLAINY EPISODE 2

I've also finally got a plan for a YouTube channel. Before I uploaded all of the Villainy cartoons to their own "Official Villainy Channel" but that never quite took off the way I was hoping, so I'm disbanding it. Taking it down. Seems a shame to dump all of those views, but meh, it really wasn't that many to begin with. Not a major loss, in my book.

Instead, I've started a new channel with my brother called WingDog which you should absolutely go subscribe to. Since I'm not going to be the only one making content for it, from now on things are going to be uploaded to it MUCH more regularly. It'll be nice to just have all of my videos (Villainy or otherwise) right in one place. Go subscribe. You'll be doing yourself a favor. But more importantly, you'll be doing ME a favor. I'm much more important than you. (Villainy Ep2 will be public on YouTube in a few days. It's just exclusive to Newgrounds for the time being. Don't bother trying to upload it yourself, assholes, it'll just get taken down. You'll be wasting your time.)

ONE LAST THING! Do me another favor. Jeff and I (we co-created Villainy), want to try something new. We had an idea for a series we're calling "Tweet A Title." Here's how it works. You follow @TweetATitle on Twitter, and you just throw out a title at us.
For example:
"@TweetATitle Mr. Dick's Dick Lube Disaster lol"
And then we turn around, write a short cartoon about it, and I crank it out as fast as I can. (Seriously, like within a matter of hours). No restrictions on what the title is; it can be anything your imagination comes up with (five words, one word, all verbs, all swear words, whatever). We're thinking about making it a weekly thing, but first we need to see that it's an idea that has legs. We need a place to start, though. So as an experiment, we'd be charmed if just a few of you could do exactly that. If it turns out well, "Tweet A Title" could become a weekly, or bi-weekly thing on WingDog. (More incentive to subscribe).

Also, I can't end this without recommending you follow my handsome face on Twitter. I tweet good. You won't be disappointed.

Talk to you soon.... I really mean it this time.... also, here's a goat:

Hi everybody! It's me, James. Sure you remember. I was the guy with the big nose and the deep voice that doesn't match my build? Remember? I said that thing and you weren't sure if I was being sarcastic or not? It got awkward and now things are weird between us? No? Huh. I must have imagined all that then.

ANYHOO! Now that the redesign has finally launched (FINALLY) I thought I'd go ahead and give my incredibly biased opinion of it. Because if there's one thing strange people I've never met want from me, it's my opinion. Now, let's get right down to it.
___________________________________
VISUALS: X X X X X _ _ _ _ _ 5/10

I was surprised to see that when the redesign launched the guys at the office decided to go with such a familiar visual style. The color scheme is largely the same as it was last year at this time, and I can't help but feel like they really just tried to play it safe. The fact is, it's not all that different from the previous design. I had to take some points off for that. Perhaps most vexing is that Tom made such a big deal about resizing all the icons for the thousands and thousands of flash movies on the site, and yet they haven't even been implemented. I kind of took that as a big middle finger to the doodoo hole. I expect we'll see a front page post about that from him soon with a big "LOL" as the headline. Then there'd be like... I dunno, a troll face, or whatever the shit you kids are into these days. Troll faces, right? Yeah. Anyway, well played, Tom. Ya got us. That was one mother of a practical joke.
___________________________________
NAVIGATION: X X _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2/10

I hate to say it, but I think it's actually worse than it was before. Ya really dropped the ball here, guys. I swear, it took me a good 15 minutes just to find the home page. When I finally gave up, I went to try and watch some of my own cartoons (since they're the only things worth watching on this damn site) and I couldn't even navigate to my own userpage! What the hell?! I'll grant that part of it was my fault, since the batteries in my wireless mouse died, and I was really just staring at the Firefox startup screen until I changed the batteries, but I'm not taking all the heat for this. At some point, you guys need to start taking some responsibility for my actions. When I finally figured out how to get to your damn site, I tried searching for something in the search bar, and I didn't find what I was looking for. But oh, I'm sure it's MY fault that I never clicked the "search" button or tapped Enter. Real mature, guys. Grow up.
___________________________________
PORN: X X X X X X X _ _ _ 7/10

Not bad, team. Not bad at all. There's some quality stuff here, and PLENTY of jizz dried up on my carpet. I haven't yet located the scene of MindChamber and Stamper going at it, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and point my finger at your broken search feature. Like any red-blooded, American man I can't get off unless I've watching a sprite movie about a battle between Sonic and Shadow. (We all try to climax RIGHT when he transforms into Super Sonic, but has anyone ever timed that successfully?) The Madness Combat knock-offs are okay too, if you're into that kind of thing (I sooo am). Really, the only reason you lost points here is because of the Audio Portal. I searched the entire Audio Portal. Not one set of boobs.
___________________________________
NEW FEATURES: X X X X X X X X X X 10/10

I can't express it enough. They're all great. You've made good on every promise in this department. From the first new one, to the last new one, I love it. Could I pick a favorite? Probably not without pulling a muscle. I would have an easier time picking which of my children I love more (the hot one, obviously). I'll admit I was worried that when I came to the site post-redesign it was going to be exactly the same, with nothing new added at all. Thank GOODNESS that didn't happen. The changes are gonna bring in TONS of new, untalented hacks to the site, and they're gonna just be clickin' those ads of the scantily clad RPG babes like crazy. If it's not too early to ask, can I get a ride in the private Newgrounds Jet when you buy it? Thanks, T.
___________________________________
OVERALL: X X X X X X X X X X 10/10

Surprised by the score? Don't be. Here's where you went right: This redesign is identical to the old layout, and we here on Newgrounds are TERRIFIED OF CHANGE!!! Why, the slightest tweek is enough to throw us into an uproar. Remember when you added the super-awesome widescreen layout to the flash movie screen so they could be viewed at larger sizes and adapt to changing monitor technology? HATED IT. And when you chose to make all the movies auto-play so more people would view our videos? LOATHED IT. And when you added the Featured-Game at the top of the homepage above the flash movies to showcase some great new game that newcomers to the site might get hooked by? HOW FUCKING DARE YOU. Every one of these changes popped the ass-pimples of almost everyone on the site, and yet you went through with it anyway. And we were supposed to do what? ADAPT? Well we did, but we were NOT happy about it for at least a day or two. What are you taking notes from Facebook or something? Obviously not, since unlike Facebook, all your changes actually do make the site better, BUT THAT DOES NOT GIVE YOU AN EXCUSE. I am so mad just thinking about the word change, that I'm going to finish typing this and go to bed because it's 4 AM and I have work in the morning, and there is no reason I should even be typing it, since it will likely be viewed by around 40 people.

THANKS FOR THE REDESIGN YOU SAID WOULD BE DONE BY LAST PICO-DAY! It looks great. JUST DON'T CHANGE A THING.

Episode 1.

At long last, Villainy has come to fruition. December 2007. That's when my friend Jeff and I came up with it. It's been in development for almost 4 years already. Though I just started the first episode this past July, it sure feels like I've been working on it a lot longer.

Really proud of the series as a whole, even though I only have one episode animated. We've written the entirety of what we're calling the first season of the show. There's a 7 episode story arc planned, and I can't wait to get to the later episodes. (Especially episode 4. I'm so hard for episode 4.)

There's a whole website devoted to Villainy up and running here. Learn all about the characters (almost all of whom don't appear in the first episode), and the history of the show.

I really feel like there's more I wanted to say here.... huh... guess I'll let you know if I think of it.

Yeah, so I finally finished the Epilogue for Gone Too Far Too. I actually had it done about 2 weeks ago. I was going to upload it as a separate movie, along with a bunch of Easter Eggs and previews to stuff I'm going to be working on next.

Then I thought, "Fuck that." And I just attached it to the original Gone Too Far Too file, and submitted that to Newgrounds on like... Sunday I think... yeah... and anyway, I couldn't ever watch the epilogue here on newgrounds. It remained as the old GTFT file with the "Coming Soon" sign on the epilogue button. I tried uploading it a couple more times, but to no avail...

Then I received a message from Deathdream, saying it is up and working. Turns out I needed to clear my cache in order to view the new version.... go figure. So ya hear that? Lemme say it again.

If you can't view the epilogue when it gets to the end of the movie, it's because you watch Gone Too Far Too too often, and you need to clear your cache!

If that doesn't work, you might as well kill yourself, because you are REALLY missing out.... no, not really... the Epilogue is a whopping 21 seconds long, and it's just going to piss a lot of you off. But the GTF3 isn't going to make a lot of sense to you if you don't watch it.

ANYWAY!

What's next?

Gone Too Far 3?
Dicks, nah. Don't expect that to be out anytime soon. And I mean don't even expect it out by this Halloween. It's not going to happen in 2011, I can promise you that.

Flash Dancer 2??
Wrong again, stupid! That's dead. Dead as a (this would be a great place to make a joke about the recent trajedy in Arizona, but that would be unspeakably insensitive and evil, so I will do no such thing) dead spider. I meant it when I said I wasn't going to use commercial audio in my flashes anymore. Flash Dancer and its sequel are 100% about commercial audio. I can't pick different music from the audio portal, that's not possible, and plus the music is what makes it great anyway. Soooo... fuck it! I've got a minute and a half of smooooth animation of a poorly designed dancing guy that I don't know what to do with. I'm considering it a waste of space on my hard drive that I'm not going to delete. It's like a cheery little corrupted file that I can watch every so often for nostalgic amusement. Wanna see what I've got done? Yes? You'll get over it.

That Mysterious Web-Series???
Man you are terrible at guessing today. Oh wait... actually yeah. Yes, that's what I'm going to spend my spare time toiling away on for the next several forevers. That's all I'm really gonna say for now. Not because I'm being mendacious, I just really don't have much to say without going off on a tangent. And tangents stink.

A screenshot you ask?
Why sure, I'm feeling generous. I'll give you a screenshot in my next post. I have no idea when that's going to be, but you'll get one! I mean it. Take it easy folks!

Just uploaded this.

I suggest you stop reading now. That's definitely the most interesting thing in this news post.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Bitching
Chapter 2: The Story Continues...
Chapter 3: The Last of a Lot of Things
Chapter 4: What's Next
Chapter 6: What Happened to Chapter 5?
Chapter 7: The End
______________________________________
______________
Chapter 1: Me Bitching like a whiny pussy
I just did some MATH. I can't be sure... but if I worked an average of 3 hours a day everyday since May (and I SERIOUSLY think that's low-balling it)... we're looking at around 500 hours of work. That's an absolutely disgusting number. I feel like I need a shower. I'm need to go make some friends...Seriously like, most nights over the summer I logged about 5-6 hours of work. Sure, there were days I didn't do any, and some days where I only got an hour or 2 in, but there were an equal number of days where this is all I did from sunrise to sunset. I'm obviously a very shitty animator if it takes me that long to make a 3 minute cartoon. That's fucking embarrassing. It's a good thing that I'm not humiliating myself by blatantly publishing that shameful number on the internet for the entire world to see. Yuck. That's the most amount of time I've ever spent doing anything. If not, it's neck and neck with masturbating.

Chapter 2: The Story Continues... Help me out here.
And to be honest, I'm not sure I can draw the line at 500. I am, after all, not fucking done with the cartoon yet! I have to do the "epilogue" because I was too slow to finish the thing the way it was meant to be finished. There shouldn't even BE an epilogue! GAAAH!
So I'm not sure what I'm gonna do yet. Should I insert the epilogue into the Gone Too Far Too flash file and reupload it?
That could be a problem because then anyone who wants to see the epilogue will have to re-find this flash, or I'll have to advertise it, and I feel like the vast majority of people who watched aren't ever going to get to see it. They won't know its there.
Or should I upload it as an entirely separate flash? (Gone Too Far Too Too. Gone Far Enough. Gone Too Far Too Point Five.)
The problem with doing that is that it's only going to be about 30 seconds long. Seems like a waste.
What do you think? Talk to me, sport. Let's figure this out.

Chapter 3: The Last of a Lot of Things
Gone Too Far Too is the last cartoon I'm ever going to use commercial audio in (unless you count the still-in-progress Flash Dancer 2... which you should, but I'm not gonna). There's a lot of ways I should be making money with my cartoons that I'm not because I'd be breaking the law thanks to commercial audio.

It's also the last time I'm going to put such an unnecessary amount of detail into the artwork. Seriously, I get that its nice to look at when you pause it, but spending an hour on a frame that's going to appear for literally 1/30th of a second is lunacy. It's not worth it. It really really isn't. Don't try to change my mind on this. Drawing every blade of grass around a tombstone in the distant background is retarded when the viewer will miss it if they blink at the wrong time.

This is going to be the last time I use Actionscript 2.0. It's time to man up and take on AS3. It's time to actually use some of the new tools they've added since Flash 8.

It's the last time I animate at 30 fps... probably. 24 is good enough, I think. I'm not ready to call this one yet, but 30 fps is a real hassle for a number of reasons. I think I'll be happier if I make the change. 6 less drawings per second of animation will save me a shitload of time.

I think it's going to be the last time I enter a contest here on Newgrounds, too. 50% of my flash uploads have been for the contests. That's faggoty. First of all, I don't want people thinking I'm greedy, and only upload stuff to Newgrounds because I can win money by doing it. Second, it obviously takes me a long time to make my cartoons, and if I'm spending all my time making Christmas and Halloween animations, I'm not going to be happy with myself. I need to spread my wings. I realize Gone Too Far Too doesn't technically count since I'm disqualified for the commercial audio thing, but it's still going in the Halloween Collection, isn't it?

Chapter 4: What's Next (Collab?)
Next, besides the stupid epilogue shit, is exciting. One thing I guess I'll get out of the way right off the bat.... yknow Flash Dancer 2? How many of you are waiting for me to finish that? 10? I think that's a fair estimate. Well I've got some bad news for those 10 of you. My motivation to finish that is looooong gone. I started it literally the day after I finished Flash Dancer 1. I've worked on it, and put it on hold, worked on it, and put it on hold, etc. I'm like, a minute and 40 seconds into it I think. I don't care about it anymore. It's a waste of my time to try to finish it.
Still though, I feel bad about just dropping it and letting all that work go to waste. It's a mildly entertaining 1 minute and 40 seconds, after all.
So I just had a stellar idea: Collab? I think it could be done, I just need some good animators that are interested. I've never done a collab before. The idea intrigues me. Let me know. PM me, IM me on AIM or Skype (I'm DonkeysBazooka on both), email me, whatever.

Beyond that, I'm gonna make a web series. It's been in development hell since 2007. Time to pick up the torch and run with it. That's enough about that for now.

Chapter 6: What Happened to Chapter 5?
I dunno.

Chapter 7: The End.
The End.

Allow me to start with something most of you will care more about than the actual intention of this news post. Goodness knows I always aim for your approval.

So George Lucas is giving 50% of his wealth to charity.

What a selfish prick! The man is worth $3 billion! Does he really need that $1.5 billion? If I were one of the kids with Children's Diabetes I'd just take photos of myself frowning at a piece of cake that I can't eat and mail it to him. Then I'd die and mail him a picture of my coffin.

I'm a wiz at makin' people feel guilty. Even from beyond the grave.

They can't even have cake, George Lucas! Is your fat ,white, rich life really more important than fuckin' that?

_______________________

now about the title of this news post:

that goal of mine to finish this cartoon by August 7th? completely failed.

how close did I come? I'm not even close. It's embarrassing how not close I am. I'm completely done up through 3984 frames. The final thing is going to be around... 7000...man.... the reality of that just set in while I was typing it... :-/

am I ready with an excuse? You bet I am. It's not like I haven't been trying. I've worked on it just about every night since I began. Hours every night. It turns out, animation is just a lot of work!

Particularly, since I'm using a very complicated art style. This is, hands-down the best looking thing I've ever made, and I'm very proud of the results. I knew what I was getting myself into when I started making it all detailed, and adding shading to all the animated characters and running it at 30 frames per second, but I figured if I started in fucking MAY I'd have time to finish before the clock ran out on me.

Buuut it looks like I overestimated my ability as an animator in-spite of the fact that I gave myself such a huge amount of time.

Oh, and to clarify, the reason I needed the Halloween Flash done by August 7th is because I'm heading to Los Angeles that day to start an internship and take classes and date celebrities and what-not. My schedules going to be tighter than a nun, and if its taken me 3 months to get halfway finished with this thing on an open schedule... how much am I going to get finished in the next 3 months?

I did the math, and the answer is shitty. I'm really not very good at math, so there's a glimmer of hope, but fuck just the same.

________________________

also, I'd like to take this opportunity to invite you to follow me on twitter.

and now i'd like to take this opportunity to apologize for wasting your time inviting you to follow me on twitter.

your friend and mine,
James

okay, here's the weekly whatever.

um.. i'm completely done with about 1 minute 15 seconds, and i have the preliminary sketchy bullshit animation done up to 1 minute 45 seconds-ish.

i am basically shitting my pants about getting this done before august 7th. but try as i might, i dont see how i'm ever going to do this. that doesn't mean i'm not going to try, im just praying for a miracle.

and thats a problem in itself since the only miracle i can feasibly pray for is that i suddenly develop more talent.

and in that sentence lies an additional problem in that i don't know who i'm praying to, given the that god doesnt exist.

but ah well.

now that's what i call a screenshot!

oh, be tea double you, if it looks as if all the screenshots ive posted all have the same background and look really similar, that's because i'm only picking screens from the very beginning, cause anything later would reveal too much.

and i'm all about surprises. so suck it

this is just that weekly thing i'm holding myself to to make sure i bust my ass on the damn animation.

... that's about it. it's coming along slowly, as usual. though i did get a whopping 6 seconds done last night! :-O

but other than that... yeah... screenshot?

sure, i guess.

even the screenshot is boring. what a bad news post. no wonder you hate me

Dear Diary,

Good news about that file size problem. I got it down from 18.9 MB all the way to 3.9 MB. I think we're clear for take off. So you can stop worrying.

Also, today I hit the 45 second mark on my Halloween flash. 2 weeks ago I said I'd reached 30 seconds. I may have been rounding up a tad back then, but this time I assure you I'm being honest. In truth, that number scares me a little. With the final cartoon slated to be over 4 minutes long, that puts me at less then a quarter of the way done with only 8 weeks left to work on it. I need to be done by August 7th, because I'm not gonna get to work on Flash for the rest of the year after that. And for some reason, no matter how many anxiety attacks I have at home and at work, time doesn't seem to be slowing down.

It's not that I mind living on only 4 or 5 hours of sleep per night. It's just that, my boss tends to frown upon making up for my lost sleep while I'm still clocked in. He's all "We're not paying you to sleep, Jamie!"

And I'm all, "That's what she said."

And he's all, "That doesn't make any fucking sense! I'm cutting your pay! And I'm sleeping with your girlfriend!"

And I'm all, "Whatever. ZZZZZZZZZ."

That's not snoring by the way, I actually looked at him and said, "ZZZZZZZZ."

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. The flash. Now I remember. Sorry to get sidetracked there, Diary. That's been happening a lot lately. Often while I drive. I usually rely on the shrill sounds of shrieking women and children to snap me back to consciousness. Speaking of which, I should really get some new windshield wipers. All they do is smear the blood, and it makes it even harder to see.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. The flash. Well that about wraps up everything I have to say about the flash at this point. Thanks for listening. You're such a good listener.

Gosh, I sure hope nobody stumbles across this diary entry. It's private, don'tcha know. I think someone would have to be a real poopface to read someone else's private thoughts. Or just human. Yucky.

K, bye.

Love,
James

P.S. That growth is getting bigger. I might have to get it looked at, cause pretty soon I'm not going to be able to cover it up with a scarf anymore. Not because I don't have a big enough scarf but because all my scarves are wool, and its almost summer. And you know what that means. Moths. Moths love wool.

P.P.S. I think Tom is sooooooo cute. <3

30 seconds in, the file size of the .swf is 18.5 MB. i expect the final thing to be over 4 minutes.

thaaaaaat's not good.

I'm doin' something way wrong. And I have no idea what.

Any ideas? (And you'll forgive me if most of what you suggest i've already tried.)

UPDATE: okay... well i think i know a big part of the problem.... i'm just going to ignore it for now though and worry about it when i go to upload a 60 MB file in October. then its Tom's problem.