Well, here we are. 5 years. 5… fuckin’… YEARS!!

I can’t believe it’s been 5 years since I decided I wanted to make crappy sprite animations! It feels like yesterday I was working on Stupid Thwomps on the floor, with a trackpad, and no knowledge on animation whatsoever. And yet I had fun. The thing got blammed, as it was a REALLY bad 10-15 second frame-by-frame sprite movie of Mario killing some enemies and then getting cornered by randomly falling Thwomps. I didn’t even know things could get blammed at the time, so I was like “what the fuck happened to mah moovee?”. Then I begun “working” on other short things, like Yoshi’s Ball ’n’ shit. I felt proud at the time, now if I look back at these movies I legitimately wonder how I got away with posting such horribleness. But I do remember having a ton of fun making them, sometimes even working with friends by my side, and they were like “dude this is so cool! add this random thing!” and I did. I was only just starting to discover the limitless storytelling possibilities animation offers.

But let me take a step back, to when I didn’t know Newgrounds yet. Let me take a step back to when I was, I don’t know, nine? Eight? I don’t remember exactly, but I do remember I started browsing the internet at a pretty young age, probably not an appropriate age, but hey, now I’m here. I loved Mario at the time, so I watched a lot of the so called “bloopers” on YouTube. You know, the ones before gaming videos exploded, the ones where people actually told stories out of game footage. I’m sure some of you know what I’m talking about. Anyway, I loved these things, and at the time, I wanted to make my own. I had my own stories to tell.

Someday, while I was browsing through these “bloopers” I ran into my first ever sprite movie, SMB: Game Over by Yoshi-1up (the link is to NG, but I actually saw it on YouTube first). My mind was blown. That wasn’t game footage! How the hell did they make that? Animation, right, but how? I eventually found out it was called “Flash Animation”. I looked all over the place trying to find a version of Flash that I could use, but couldn't get it to work. So I started experimenting with Photoshop, since my parents used it for work. I didn’t know it could actually animate at the time, so what I did was rip some sprites myself from a fan made PC Mario game called Super Mario War or something like that, create tons of individual images and then blend them together in QuickTime 7 to create a movie. I don’t even remember how the hell I managed to do that, but I did. And the result was satisfying, so satisfying that I was already beginning to think of making more, but then I realized that the amount of work needed (and disk space required) was just too much. So I completely stopped working digitally, took my camera, and started drawing things on paper. Then I recorded the drawing for a second or two (yes, recorded, for some reason I didn’t feel like taking pictures), erased it, and drew the next frame over it, then edited the segments together in iMovie ’06. And so I made my first cartoons. Well actually, not my first, as I had been experimenting with animation already at, probably six or something, but they were flip books. This time I was actually recording stuff.

Holy shit, this is getting really long. Better go back to NG. So, I discovered Newgrounds in late 2008/early 2009, through another Flash game site called Y8. I had noticed the NG logo on some of the games over there, and since the ones with that preloader were usually the best ones, I one day randomly clicked the tank, and BOOOM! NEWGROUNDS DOT FUCKIN’ COM, BITCHES!!
It was just awesome. My interest in making my own sprite movies, or just animation in general, was reborn. I’ll be honest, I was pretty much exclusively into sprite movies at the time, but I sometimes stumbled across things like Legend of Miyamoto (which I had actually seen on YouTube before as well) which were and are just bloody awesome. Then I found Yoshi-1up here too, and watched his other movies, then Bigfoot3290, and the great Psycosis91. And then, at last, I found Super Mario Bros. Z, which I’m sure you’re all familiar with. That was the thing that REALLY got me looking for a working Flash. So, in the end, I found it. I finally downloaded Flash, and started making things. And yet, even though SMBZ was the thing that had inspired me to finally begin, I didn’t want to make something similar to that just yet. I wanted to make comedy, like Yoshi-1up. So I tried. Did I succeed? No, looking back at them, none of my movies were actually funny, but who cares? I had FUN! Then as time passed, I started being more directly inspired by Alvin-Earthworm’s work.

Whew, anyway. As time passed I made all the things you can see here if you want. I doubt that, and I don’t recommend it either. I’m embarrassed of some of that shit. D:
And then, in about 2012, I got tired of sprites. I had an open project (yes, Shadow’s Powers), and I couldn’t bring myself to work on anything else until that was finished, but, problem is, I couldn’t bring myself to work on that either. So it just became procrastination, and a few smaller projects on the side. I later made Da Turner Sketch, which was a ton of fun to make, and I like to consider that my last sprite animation, even though the 3rd part of Shadow’s Powers came out after it. I’m not sure why I’m writing about these crappy animations, as most people reading this will probably have no idea what I’m talking about, or who the hell I am in the first place. :P

And now? What now? Well, now that I’m done forever with sprite animation, I gotta do ACTUAL animation! Between 2013 and 2014 I’ve developed quite a lot of interest in ACTUAL animation. In fact, I only last year started really watching people like HappyHarry, Egoraptor, Jazza and so on. Before, sure, I had seen historical stuff like Tankmen in 2010, and the Madness series in late 2011, but I never really felt like these type of things were the ones I wanted to make. The person who really, REALLY got me into it was HappyHarry. That guy’s work is just awesome. I fuckin’ love him. Anyway, I started trying to learn art. Initially at Draw with Jazza, but then I got the opportunity to take a 2 month drawing course at an actual school, so I took it. I’ve definitely improved thanks to it. I mean, I’m still shit, but I’ve improved.

Well, I think I’m done. I have an animated short coming up fairly soon (my first ACTUAL animated short). It’s not any brilliant, the poses are wrong and I’m not skilled enough to fix them (yet), but it’s just an experiment I suppose. I also do feel like I’ve skipped some pretty important stuff, for some reason, but you know what, this post got too long. Who’s gonna read the whole thing anyway? xD

So, let the next 5 years here be even better (or just better in general)! And more importantly, more productive. I feel like I could’ve done a lot more, and that’s not a feeling I want to have 5 years from now (holy shit I’ll be 21 then yay so exiting). 2014 was and is a bit of a weird year for me, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to release more than 2 shorts by 2015, but I’ll do my absolute best from now on.

Cheers! *drinks a bottle of champagne*