So I just got beaten out by the awesome ButzboPrud in NATA's novice round, and I gotta say I had an awesome time. In the end, it was a three-point difference out of 100 between our scores, super close! I've also had the chance to chat with and get to know a lot of the animators that I've been seeing stuff from for the past several years, which is totally awesome.

On top of that, I've had the chance to work with some really cool voice actors these past two months. There was ATheatricalSongBird on my Open Round submission, and Chongo for my Novice Round submission; they're both really cool people that you should follow and hire to do your voices. here were my submissions, in case you missed 'em:

SPACEMAN 2000 (Novice round)
A Nude Holiday (Open round)

Due to an unfortunately bad choice in submission-time on my part, I ended up not being eligible for a daily award for my Novice Round piece, Spaceman 2000. I submitted at around 7PM, and, as I've recently found out, the daily cutoff time is something like 9PM; from my understanding, the normal two days for judgement got cut down to about one day and two hours, which just wasn't enough time to get out of judgement with its current backlog. So yeah, guys, y'all need to get over to the UJ page and get voting!

Unfortunate timing aside, I received a lot of positive feedback on Spaceman 2000, which is always good. When I got out of judgement, I was sitting just above a 3.8, which is probably my highest score right out of judgement so far. Plus the NATA judges gave generally positive notes/scores and some good advice for the future. After a month of hearing the same audio bits, I wasn't sure if the piece was even funny anymore, so it was a welcomed boost to my animation confidence to see it generally well received.

Speaking of animation confidence, I feel like all this work in NATA has helped me come a long ways in my animation abilities. I'm closing in on one year of submitting here on NG, and I'm definitely further along than I thought I would be at this point. I've started to add a lot of full-bodied movements to my animations, and I feel like I'm getting a better sense for things like color, art, style, and themes. My current plan is to have two more animations done by the one-year mark, more on that below. Perhaps I'll take a small break after that to put together a first-year reel.

Aside from my actual NATA submissions, I've worked on two NATA-related collabs that you may have seen:

Sarcastic Walk Collab
Sarcastic Bounce Collab

They were totes fun to work on, and there'll probably be two more coming up. Look forward to 'em!

So what am I gonna be doin now that I've had my ass handed to me in NATA? Well, I've just sent a new script over to Chongo, and I've been working on another animation using a comedy sketch from the audio portal. I suspect I'll have one done in a weekish, and the other in maybe two-three weeks. They might be done sooner, but I don't wanna over-rush my deadlines after this whole NATA ordeal. I'll definitely try my best to have them out before I hit my one-year-of-submissions-day. After that, I start my first official animation class, which I feel I am definitely well prepared for. It'll be nice to have a chance to really study animation in depth, though.

All-in-all, I had an awesome time in NATA. I'll definitely be joining again next year, assuming I have the time. Can't wait to see how this year turns out!

AlsoImadeatumblrifyouwannacheckitout... I promise not to update it too much; in fact I haven't updated it once! Hell, I don't even know how it works!

If you're still reading, congratulations; you've earned a glance at this Planeasaurus.

Hey there peeps and peepettes,

Just got finished with my novice round NATA entry, and what a month it's been. I started the month with no internet, went to an out of town graduation (with some wonderful flight cancelations and delays), worked on a shoot, and somehow got around to actually animating. All in all, I had fifteen days to actually animate this piece, not including the two days for audio editing and writing.

Speaking of audio, Chongo did an excellent job with his lines. You should check him out if you're feeling up to the challenge of sitting and watching cartoons.

The toon is a semi-parody, semi-original take on awful scifi shows from the seventies; you know, the ones with intros like this. I mean, what is that? Is that a robotic bear playing with a child? But yeah, you get the point. There's a heap ton of little in-jokes for scifi watchers, and out-jokes for those of you that aren't. Wait, in AND out jokes? Jesus, there's something for everybody.

The piece ended up being my second longest yet (the mp4 version is exactly 5,000 frames long), which, in hindsight, was an awful idea. I still got it done, though! I even did a little remix* of the main song for the credits.

Next month should be another hectic one, I'll probably be working on a documentary for about ten days. I should be back with 20ish days to animate, just in case I make it through to the next round. I'm also working on two pieces for this in-between-rounds-down-time, might actually get one of those up soon.

here's that link, one more time: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/618744

* by remix I of course mean that I sloppily added snippets of Chongo's voice over portions of the song while half asleep in a caffeinated haze at 3AM last night.

Hey there cool cats and denim damsels,

Finished my NATA open submission, you can click this general area to begin the viewing process. It's about being naked or something like that. I don't even know anymore.

Expect more work out of me in the next month, regardless of whether or not I make it through to the next round of NATA. I'm starting a smaller piece to work on between rounds, should be funtastic!

I'll leave you guys with a lil' pic from my submission, to titillate your interest and such. I mean, just check out that clASSy sponsor placement!

Well, first things first: brand spankin' new cartoon!

This is the one.

It's been a while, but it's done. After the swift kick in the nuts that was my previous cartoon barely scratching 1,000 views when I put in two months of work (compared to under a month for 11,000 on the one before that), I picked up the pieces of my shattered soul and testicles and carried on into the new year.

So with this new year comes new goals. I'm currently thinking I'm going to try and get at least one decent animation done each month of this year to advance both my own portfolio and my presence here on Newgrounds. It might not be a feasible goal, but, for now at least, it's what I got.

I've currently got around eight shorts rummaging around in my head: three original comedies, an educational original about space geared towards people that like dirty jokes, one stupidly-short short (might be Feb's cartoon with there being fewer days and all) two parodies of television shows (Breaking Bad and Parks and Recreation), and one video game parody. We'll see which ones become fleshed out enough to a point where I feel comfortable with making them.

I'm a bit hesitant about making parodies, at least the video game one. There's this culture here where people can't easily get noticed without the help of pop-culture, but can just as easily be despised for it. I don't know. People who do parodies well end up with beautiful final products, but those that have problems in even one area of their short end up with a torrent of zeros instead of an objective review of the content. I guess those zeros balance out with the fives from people that like the source material, but that seems just as cheap to me. The idea of doing something that people can immediately relate to excites me and scares me at the same time.

I'm also making it a goal for myself to enter into [at least] one of the many animation competitions here on Newgrounds this year, most likely NATA. On top of that, I'm making it a goal to collaborate at some point, perhaps through the new Collabinator? That might have to take a backseat until I'm more comfortable in my abilities to pace my animation schedule, though.

In any case, I'm done boring you; go watch my cartoon. I'm gonna have breakfast and watch an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Peace.

Figured I gotta do one of these eventually.

So I've just finished my latest animation; it's a bit of a departure from the others that I've made. It's about a bear that leaves the zoo in search of his home, a story inspired by the depressed, neurotic polar bear from Central Park, Gus. Check it out here!

It's a big file, a bit over 20MB, so it might take a minute or two to load up. This has basically been the last two months of my life, so I'd love to get some feedback on it! I really feel that it's the culmination of all my Flash work, even if it contains zero jokes about porn (which, unfortunately, means that I'll be entirely missing that demographic).

If it's slow to load here on Newgrounds, you can always check it out on YouTube. The YouTube file has slightly better sound quality, but not all of the effects rendered out properly, making the animation a poor shell of what it is here on Newgrounds. Plus, it's only in 720p for now. I obviously recommend the NG version, but here it is if you so prefer:

Thanks for checkin' it out/giving some feedback!

-SafePlagiarism

P.S. If you like the music, there are plenty of links to the band's work at the end of the NG version.