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TheInterviewer
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TheInterviewer's News

Posted by TheInterviewer - March 30th, 2022


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Interview No. 181

Interview By: @The-Great-One

Patreon Post Date: Mar 23, 2022


Today's guest is one of Newgrounds biggest collaborators on the site. With his contributions to Everybody Loves Raymond!, Pico Day Cartoon, and recently the Evangelion Collab. I am pleased to welcome, @Wandaboy.




Q: How did you find Newgrounds and why did you join?


A: Honestly I forget, I think it was because of OneyNG, Spazkid, Psychicpebbles,and sleepycabin mostly back in 2015. I joined cause i wanted friends to animate with or just talk to while i animated.




Q: When and how did you become interested in animation?


A: Probably around the same time, 2015. Just growing up on youtube and seeing alot of newgrounds animators and videos reuploaded there made me want to animate! It helped to be around talented and amazing people on newgrounds also. without the push from my friends to keep animating i don't think i would have continued or came this far.




Q: You started off on Newgrounds in a number of collaborations. Do you decide to join a collab or are you sought after? What draws you to a collab?


A: When I first joined the site in hopes of making friends, My good pal @HenryEYES introduced me to many of my friends! Everyone was having fun and I got invited to join their little collabs!




Q: When did you become interested in voice acting? What can you tell us about your work on ShoeNan?


A: I don't consider myself to be a voice actor lol but my friend @carmet just asked me and @henryEYES to voice for his cartoon. and of course we had to! his cartoons are amazingly animated and super funny!




Q: How did you become a part of Duncan & Jones? What can you tell us about working on this series?


A: Well when Henry introduced me to everyone when I first got involved on the site, I met snackers. He is an amazing and talented animator and artist. I just offered to clean up or animate any shots he needed! then one day he asked me to voice the bad guy in one of the episodes! I was really happy, getting to work on the cartoon is one thing, but being a character in that show really made me happy.




Q: One of my favorite collaborations that you have participated in is Everybody Loves Raymond!. @heyopc and @Droid were the collab organizers. How did you become part of the collab? What was it like to work on it?


A: Oh man that collab was really cool, I dont remember how I got invited but there were a shit ton of people apart of it! The voice chat was super full of people screaming and animating. It was a chaotic server haha but man the vibe of everyone working on it together was fucking awesome!! Everybody went crazy when this youtuber/twitter meme guy Ricky Berwick joined the server for a part lmao. It was a super cool collab.




Q: You and multiple other Newgrounds members would work on a movie for Pico Day 2021 entitled Pico Day Cartoon. Who organized this collaboration? How did it come together?


A: I got everyone together with the help from @Ninjamuffin99, We just make pico day cartoons every year with our friends! so it doesn't take alot to get everyone together to work on it haha. Picoday is a great time for everyone but especially for all my friends cause it means we get to make a cartoon together and make something funny or badass! i can't wait to see what we make this year!




Q: What happened with the Evangelion Collab? How did the collab start and what were the delays that lead to its now recent release?


A: heheheheh...Well I SWEAR to god it's almost finished. we are just waiting on one more piece of art then we are gonna upload the cartoon!!! The delays were mostly just people needing more time, everybody was going at their own pace and it was very chill I think. Also i had pc issues that couldn't be resolved for half a year so it took me awhile to finish my part, i almost didn't make a cartoon for it cause i was just super depressed and felt like i had every problem hitting me. but luckily my friends snackers and phantomarcade helped me finish the cartoon. i appreciate them a lot for helping me with the animation. This collab has a lot of love put into it, my pal Magibuable made sure it was edited perfectly!! and Ninjamuffin made sure we have nice ass music for the credits. I know im rambling but all the animators,artist,editor, and people who contributated and helped are fucking amazing and i love them all!!

well i made the release window about 2 months lol. and nobody finished that early so we just decided fuck it who gonna wait for this collab. and we all took it at our own pace, alot of people are working jobs or take longer (like me) so we didnt mind. we just released and im so happy. the site looks awesome and everyone did amazing submissions for it. @arkoisangel made a amazing background which pulls it all together, im so thankful for everyone help with the collab!!! thank you magi, ninjamuffin, arko, phantomarcade,snackers and tom you guys helped make this the greatest collab ever!!!!




Q: What lessons can you give to those looking to start a collaboration or join one? What pitfalls should they look out for?


A: if your gonna make one just let anyone in, for your first collabs and if they are shitposts like alot of mine are lol just let anyone in! its fun to meet the community and mingle! And joining collabs... just join the ones you think you will enjoy! it never hurts to try right? honestly just look out for troublemakers! and try to meet your deadlines lol unless you all are taking it slow and relaxing hehe




Q: What can we expect from Wandaboy in the future?


A: i hope to show some better animations and funnier cartoons! music and 3d stuff also (i've been learning a tiny bit recently) Newgrounds is the best place on the internet, the people i've met here and will continue to meet have all been so amazing. without this site i definitely wouldn't have been an animator or maybe even alive! I can not explain enough how much this website has changed my life for the better! there isn't a day that goes by where i'm not thinking of newgrounds and the amazing friend group i've met here. Also sorry if this sounds preachy or sappy im just very happy that im around a community where everyone is so talented and cool, i hope anyone who is reading this will go around and collab and meet people and post awesome stuff! im not always free but if you hit me up to collab or whatever feel free to! Thanks again for listening to me ramble and for the Interviewer for Asking me these questions!




Wandaboy is one of those collaborators that came together with HenryEYES and ninjamuffin99 to make some of the funniest and creative animations on the site. If Wandaboy's name is attached to a project, you better believe it will be something to jump into. For the notoriety, the chance to work with some of the site's best, and most important, for the fun.




The Tank Tribune is a part of Dohn's Desk Productions

SUPPORT ON PATREON | SUPPORT NEWGROUNDS ]


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13

Posted by TheInterviewer - March 23rd, 2022


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Interview No. 180

Interview By: @The-Great-One

Patreon Post Date: Mar 16, 2022




[ PART 1 | PART 2 ]




Q: Let's talk about your winning entry for Pico Day 2021. You would work alongside larreth, ScratchPit, and Vinski for MADNESS: Off-Color. A combination of Madness and Pico, that's a pretty clever idea to start. How did you flesh it out from there. Was there perhaps inspiration taken from Madness Accelerant?


A: I hadn't played Madness Accelerant prior to starting work on Off-Color. The initial idea was just to make Madness Interactive but HD and with a control scheme that felt comfortable in the year of 2021. I wanted it to be much more juicy and have more variety in its gameplay than the original, so I started out just by remaking some of the mechanics and systems from Interactive. I was keen to collaborate with people from Newgrounds, so I asked Tom Fulp where would be the best place to find people to talk to/share progress on it. He suggested I use the Collaborate feature on Newgrounds itself and also suggested the Newgrounds Podcast discord. Through the Collaborate feature, I received a DM from Larry. I got him to draw some mockup character sprites and then at the end of the second day of development, the game looked something like this:



The game got people's attention and it was a lot of fun to work on. All of the programming was systematic, so all of the guns and weapons worked the same but just needed variables to be tweaked. After all that had been set up, it was just me making content. Levels, guns, melee weapons. The parts that took up most development time were the boss fights, but I'm glad I spent so much time on them because they're the highlight of the game now. It was about half way into development that Larry started getting a bit unsure of himself and the workload, so he asked if he could bring on a friend Scratchpit. I was keen to get more people onboard and I'm glad I did because he drew some of the coolest looking weapons in the game. When I was showing some videos of the gameplay in the Madness Project Nexus discord, Vinski DM'd me and asked if I needed sound effects for the game - so he'd shoot through sounds for anything new added in. For the OST, I tried reaching out to some metal/dubstep artist on Newgrounds but the deadline was approaching fast so by the time anyone responded, there simply wouldn't be enough time. I was listening to the Somewhere In Nevada album throughout development and it just seemed like a perfect fit, but I didn't feel comfortable taking music made by strangers. I checked the songs pages on Newgrounds and all of them were marked under the terms of being able to use so long as credit was given, and when I started posting videos of the game with the music in it - the clips made its way to the actual artists of the songs and they reached out, super excited for the game and THANKING me??? Like, I was the one who stole YOUR music for MY game and you're thanking me? It was a very eye-opening experience, because we're all just hustlers trying to work on cool shit, and we can respect homies also trying to make cool shit (so long as we're properly compensated for our work) After the game came out, the songs got more listens + reviews on their NG pages, which felt awesome.




Q: A collaboration between Andyl4nd, milkypossum, and yourself that would win Best Game in the 7th Annual Pixel Day and Best Game of January is called Olive's Art-Venture. This collaboration reminds me of the Power of Three game collabs, that involve a programmer, an artist, and a musician making one game. The most well-known being Toss the Turtle. How did you three come together to make this game? What was the process behind working on it? From the first pixel to the final frame.


A: I specifically remember a morning when I was living out in the bush. A bright light was coming through a piece of plastic in the roof that made for an impromptu sunroof. My mattress on the floor, I lent up and scrolled down Youtube. I didn't want to go into Melbourne that day to look for work/an education that would take in a loser like me, but I was feeling more and more guilty for being such a burden to my friend's parents. Scrolling down Youtube while tying up my shoe laces, I saw a video called "All you can eat!" by Andyland. It was such a cute video! I loved the fact that it looped and it used mixed media. I subscribed to him, turned on notifications and then that was that. I would watch every Andyland animation that would come out from that day forward. I was a huge fan of his content for such a long time, but it wasn't until I'd follow him on Newgrounds that I'd get an interaction from him. He followed me back there AND on Twitter. I went ballistic! This person who I had been watching for over a year now was now watching ME? It felt unreal.


I didn't want to bother him at first but since we were mutuals on Twitter, I saw him tweet out that he was streaming on Twitch and decided to jump into the chat. He was working on a music video collaboration, but we started talking about horror films and games and all kinds of things. I felt bad for basically spamming his chat with this back and forth conversation, but he said he liked my games and that made me really happy. I said if he ever wanted to work on a game sometime, he could always DM me and he seemed cool with the idea. The stream ended and I figured nothing much would come of it - a good interaction with one of my idols and I was happy! Then not even an hour later, he shot me a DM on Twitter and asked if I'd be interested in collaborating on a game for Pixel Day. I specifically remember him saying something along the lines of him having a friend who was competing and him being jealous that he wouldn't be able to without a programmer. And like, I didn't care what I had going on. I needed to do this! It was a once in a lifetime opportunity!

We started chatting on Discord the next day, where he would send me this string of ideas:


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I wasn't initially keen on the idea because I already knew there would be difficulty with getting a game to recognize drawn shapes, but after doing some mockup programming we decided to give it a shot. Andy also sent me this screenshot the next day:


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If there's one thing I can say about Andy, it's that he's amazing at coming up with mockups and initial concepts. He goes with his gut and just makes the best selling argument for them. After seeing this image, it was basically impossible to imagine making any other game than the one we ended up making. This was the very first mockup image and you can just see how much made it into the final game. The main character, the two enemies, the overlay hud, they all made it into the released game. Some of those sprites being the EXACT ones he drew for this mockup. Isn't that just insane?

We got the movement working, we got the character casting a basic waterbolt spell and I used sound effects from Mario Paint/Wario Ware. This is what it was looking like:



The game was coming along really well at an incredible pace. The talk of music came up and knew exactly who to reach out to. I had never collaborated with Milkypossum prior to this game, but I had listened to her music a lot and I just knew she would be the perfect fit for the project. It was like the stars aligned to inject cybersonic rays into my skull, informing me of a godly prospect - MESSAGE MILKYPOSSUM, it said. I willingly obeyed the call. Now that the game is done, I don't think there was another person on the planet who could have done the game justice. The OST milkypossum made for the game is phenomenal and I'm thankful she was available to work on the project otherwise it would have simply been a worse product. I'm not saying I don't know any other talented musicians, but this project specifically and the genres of music it required were MADE for Milkypossum's touch.


The team worked asynchronously. We would wake up, and someone would have posted their work. Whether it be a new song Milky was working on, a new animation Andy had finished or a brand new build of the game I had posted. It was rotationary, never stopping. None of us had to kick the other up the ass. We just kept working and pulling our own weight. It was so incredibly seamless I am convinced one of us signed a deal with the Devil and will lose their firstborn five years from now.


The first draft of the boss was added in half way through development, but it was super buggy and unpolished. Just me playing with the sprites Andy had made, and I promised I would finish it later that week... It took me a lot longer to get around to the final boss fight again. I think it was only in the final week that I buckled down and resumed working on the boss once more. I got feedback from playtesters during this time and made the game easier in a lot of ways, because most people simply couldn't get past Floor 2.


I don't think I could have imagined working with anyone of either Andy or Milky's caliber a year ago. The world truly is a small place and things can change so quickly. You just have to keep going until your turn arrives - otherwise you'll miss the opportunity and hate yourself.




Q: You and quite the handful of Newgrounds members are working on a game entitled SHOOT TRIP DIE. Hopefully getting it on Steam. How was this project formed? What advice can you give to those looking to form a collaboration for Steam? What is the game about?


A: I wouldn't be the one to ask about this. LeviRamirez is the one who is spearheading the operation, being both the primary artist and programmer for the game. He spent a lot of time working on it by himself, but it's only after a while he decided to show all of his friends (including mwa). We gave feedback on the game and got to draw boss portraits. Maybe you can ask these questions to him directly, if you get around to interviewing him! It should be noted that the game is 90% Levi doing everything, with us just playtesting and making music/additional art.




Q: Your latest game is quite the concept. Wordly Defence involves a way to submit data to Twitter in an automated post. Quite ambitious. How did the concept turn into a game? Have you worked on this any further? Is there potential to make an automated tool for Newgrounds?


A: Andy and I are looking to work again in the future, collaborating on a game and pitching it to a company (to hopefully get paid for our work on it). Since it's to advertise a specific website, the ability to automatically post scores to Twitter and promote said website could potentially be a really vital selling point. The idea was tossed around, but I didn't know it was possible until digging my hands in and testing with it. Once I had developed the test, it took very little to make the rest of the game and give it some polish. 


It's done by taking a Twitter URL and appending specific information onto the end of it. A very long string where the spaces and emojis are replaced by unicode. It was a case of trial and error. I don't think it'd be possible to make an 'automated tool' that could be used universally, but I have thought about making a writeup on it to share what I learned and how others can apply it to their game. Food for thought!




Q: What is in your opinion, the definition of video games?


A: A game is an interactive problem that must be solved. We love solving fun problems - and it being a video game allows us to add fun things like sound effects, music, animation and special effects. Imagine a Rubik's Cube but each time you turned it, it emitted a firework and made a fart sound effect. It would be the best Rubik's Cube ever made. Not all games have inherent 'problems' to solve, but rather, we create them by wanting to learn more or uncover mystery or experiment. Games like Garry's Mod might not seem very challenging, but it's up to us to tie a balloon to a chair and discover what happens if someone is sitting in it.




Q: What advice can you give to those looking to start making games? What programs would you recommend? What pitfalls should they avoid?


A: If you want to start making games, you just need to pull up your pants and open a game engine. People will lead you to believe that you need to learn other programming languages before learning a game engine, but that's not true. I tried learning C# through online tutorials prior to using Gamemaker fulltime and it didn't let me apply my learning to anything specific. Yeah, I was making dinky little math equations and word scramblers, but it wasn't what I wanted to be doing. If you start with a game engine, you are able to see the fruits of your labor the moment you press that play button. You're able to interact with your creation in realtime. It's extremely motivating and you will find out what problems you have to learn to solve, rather than a website providing them to you about things you don't care about. You will CARE about the game you're making and have fun doing it. Screw the books, come back to them later, open up Unity or Gamemaker and get cracking with the fun stuff. Unless you're getting paid to do it, there's no reason to act like you need to do things the boring/difficult way.


Start with 2D development, and try 3D development once you've figured out whether you like the program or not. Gamemaker is the easiest program I've used, so I will always recommend that. But Unity is also great, so is Godot, so is Construct, so is Scratch. I wouldn't recommend Unreal because of how bulky it is. It's really hard to get feedback from your friends if they need to download a 100mb file just to test a walking simulator. It's overkill for indie development, in my opinion. If you use Gamemaker, you can always DM me if you need programming help!


Use Aseprite for drawing basic Pixelart, you can compile it yourself for free. If you don't know how to do that, just use Paint.net. Use BFXR for generating sound effects and use the Newgrounds Audio Portal for finding background music. With all of those, you can produce a game that thousands of people can play online. You just need the time and patience.


Watch a lot of tutorials. Having them running in the background like a Netflix series. Passively absorb information simply because you want to. If game development isn't fun for you, then you aren't going to get very far. You get good at the things you enjoy doing even when you're bad at it. Those are the people who rise above everyone else because they spend their free time addicted to their hobby.




Q: What can we expect from Stepford in the future?


A: I'm going to be looking into ways for me to earn some passive income so hopefully a Steam release or two. Aside from that, I just want to make fun and crazy shit. I've made the games I wanted to make when I was younger and I've got the connections I wish I had when I was a small Stepford, so now I'm just gonna do silly stuff. Beyond financial concerns (like paying rent a year from now), I've accomplished what I wanted to do in life and now I'm just enjoying myself. There are a few projects in the works (like an NSFW game with Arzonaut, the Tarot Card collab, a game for CoolMathGames, the pitch Andy and I are collaborating on, etc.) but you'll just have to wait and see! I'm very excited to show you in due time.




Stepford I've crossed paths with firstly on the forums. Their works on multiple game projects has made them one of the best programmers to collaborate with. Stepford and the team behind Olive's Art-Venture reminds me of the days of the Power of Three. They're collaboration on a multitude of projects have brought many a Newgrounds member together. Who knows? This may lead to bigger games on the site and beyond Newgrounds going forward. I can only see a bright future ahead for Stepford.




[ PART 1 | PART 2 ]




The Tank Tribune is a part of Dohn's Desk Productions

SUPPORT ON PATREON | SUPPORT NEWGROUNDS ]


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Posted by TheInterviewer - March 23rd, 2022


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Interview No. 180

Interview By: @The-Great-One

Patreon Post Date: Mar 16, 2022


Every tenth interview we touch on an underrated, deserving, or up-and-coming talent on the site. This interview will be no different. Today's guest has been a huge hit on the site with their works on Olive's Art-Venture, Wordly Defence, and recenlty 360 Degrees. Their first entry on Newgrounds was also their first Daily Feature win, Gun Knight (by Stepford). I am most pleased and privileged to welcome @Stepford.




[ PART 1 | PART 2 ]




Q: How did you find Newgrounds and why did you join?


A: When I was around 10 to 12, I was a huge fan of the animated content that would make its way to Youtube. Madness Combat, Eddsworld, Happy Tree Friends, etc. I remember sitting in after school care in the computer lab in primary school where a lot of websites were blocked including Youtube. My friend had found a way around it though, by going to Bing and searching for the titles of videos and then using the embedded Bing player they had for the video links. That's where we would show each other these cartoons and I specifically remember watching SKYRIM IS EPIC by psychicpebbles. We were too poor to have internet at home, so I would try and get in after school care as often as I could to use the internet they had. On the laptops they let us take home, it had a copy of Flash so I tried making my own clone of Eddsworld that had all of my own friends instead of the main cast. I remember exporting it but having trouble uploading it to Youtube ( probably because it was a flash file instead of an MP4 but I was too much of a stupid child to figure that out. ) With my love for all the previously mentioned media that also had its roots embedded in Newgrounds culture AND conveniently needing a website that I could upload FLA files to, I'm sure it's no surprise that I'd eventually register an account here.


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In the Newgrounds dump, there are still some files that I uploaded back when I was a stupid little goblin child. This was one of the characters for the Eddsworld clone. This was when I would have been 13 when this was uploaded.




Q: What was the first video game you ever played?


A: I remember being at my dad's place when I was around 7 or 8. Nobody was in the house except my stepmother who I disliked at the time. My dad had gone to work and I can't remember if I was crying because I missed him or because I wanted to go home to my actual mum's place. Either way, my stepmum asked me if I wanted to play on the Playstation 2 to make me feel better. She put in "Men In Black II: Alien Escape", and I remember it being that because the loading logo practically drilled into my brain. I was holding onto the controller, heart racing. I had watched my older brother and dad play the Playstation, but never had it all to myself. Watching the logo spin over and over... and nothing happened. The game just didn't load. I watched it spin for about 10 minutes before knocking on my Stepmum's door and telling her that nothing was happening. She then put in "Futurama" for the PS2 and I specifically remember trying to hit literally everything with the hammer. I also remember how difficult it was to move around in a 3D space with an analog. I was sliding against the walls to move where I wanted to go and I don't think I even got anywhere in the game, but I remember it being so fun I could feel my chest expanding and lowering.




Q: What inspired you towards being a game developer?


A: I really wanted to be a porn artist initially. Having free access to the internet at such a young age infected my brain with all kinds of maggots. At the time, I looked up to people like Spazkid, Shadman and ZONE. The fact they were so artistically talented that they could SURVIVE off drawing hot ladies sounded like the perfect career choice. (The brain of a 15 year old is a very rudimentary one. (I'm going to be 22 this year.)) I remember buying a WACOM tablet and trying my best to become an artist. I would have tutorials playing on one side of my screen with a pirated copy of Paint Tool SAI on the other. I tried to draw just about everything but it honestly felt like trying to light a match on a windy day. There would be times when a drawing would start out amazing, or there would be glimmers of something I really liked - and then POOF. Gone. Unsalvageable. I would trace over other artist's works with my own changes, remove their layer and feel tears form in my eyes as I looked upon the monstrosity I had created. Even while cheating, it was impossible for me.


This trend continued in my other mediums as well. I tried to learn piano but could just barely follow along with the simplest of Youtube tutorials. Learning very little about playing the piano, rather just learning how to play specific notes in a specific way to make it KINDA sound like this one song. I might as well have been playing Guitar Hero instead. I tried all kinds of creative mediums but anything I would make would disappoint me so much that I no longer wanted to attempt it. 


I was in Year 9 at High School when I attended an IT class, where I would be learning how to make games in Gamemaker 8. I was familiar with Gamemaker 8 because years and years ago my older brother had also gone through this class, taking the program from the school computers and putting it on our home computer. I watched him make a platformer once and I drew the sprites for it. It was called 'SuperFly' and it had Superfly by Curtis Mayfield playing in the background. From that experience, I was familiar with the interface and I was able to make games faster than other people in the class. I enjoyed using the program so much that I would do class work at home and show my teacher/friends the next day. 


Even though I was bad at it (just like drawing/music/etc), this time it was different. I didn't hate my creations despite them being bad. Even though they were buggy, awful and downright UGLY, they were still games to me. When I drew poorly, it wasn't art to me. When I played poorly, it wasn't music to me. But coding poorly didn't make it any less of a game. My friends would laugh and were excited to try my games. That's what made this medium click for me. I had been on this super long and depressing journey of hatred and self doubt, but I finally made it to the ending. And I haven't looked back! That feeling of watching someone else play my games has never left me, hearing their reaction to the little details. There is nothing like it. Why am I on this Earth if it's not to leave a positive feeling in the minds of my friends? The fact that I can make them experience something with nothing but my bare hands, a computer and enough time, it's fucking magic!!! I don't care if nobody remembers my name when I die. I don't care if my obliterated corpse is never recovered and nobody learns what happened to me. As long as there is a singular person out there who plays something I made, and it provokes them. It makes them think that they can make something. That they WANT to make something. Just like how other games inspire me every day, that butterfly effect is nitrous in my fucking veins.




Q: You have a Bachelor's Degree in Game Design. What school did you attend?


A: I don't have a bachelors YET. I'm currently studying at SAE in Melbourne. I hope to have my bachelors by the end of this year. I put that on my profile just to show what I am currently occupying myself with study-wise and don't doubt that I will get that bachelors... with enough time. It's difficult to stay focused on studying while things have been prolific online. Why do I need to learn how to make games when I am already doing it, y'know? But I need that piece of paper. I need to show my family that this isn't just me sitting in front of a computer for nothing. 10 follows, 100 follows, 1000 follows, hundreds of thousands of views. It means nothing to people outside of the space. But that piece of paper will mean a lot.




Q: When Butzbo was here, we talked about the education Newgrounds members attain from school versus Newgrounds. What would you say the differences are?


A: As someone who dropped out of highschool, uni has been incredibly useful for me in terms of my skills as a person rather than a creative. Setting deadlines, waking up at the right time every day, eating well, good hygiene. If it wasn't for uni, I'd waste away. I'd sit in the corner of my dark room in front of a screen, living off of delivered food - sleeping at 11 AM and waking up at 9PM. I still struggle with that stuff but uni forces me to try and be better. I've heard stories about drunks who still manage to make their way home every night because they have a dog/cat that needs feeding. Even if we'd rather just live our lives as hedonistic sloths who do whatever the hell we want, it's useful to have promises we must abide by. Rules we set for ourselves don't mean squat without consequences and I don't want to fail my classes (any more than I already have) so I gotta kick myself up the ass and continue to try to be a contributing member of society.

Newgrounds is where you find people who are interested in the same things you are and have the same creative drive. If I need someone to make music for my game, I can rely on a member of Newgrounds more than someone I've met in person simply due to the fact that this Newgrounds member will be making music every day REGARDLESS of whether it's on my project or not. Due to the much smaller pool of possible people you're able to meet in real life, it's unlikely that they will be as skilled and self motivated as someone you can DM online. They're there to learn, but it hasn't consumed their life yet. Newgrounds is full of people who have found their ignition and you can truly make something special when you're both on the same wavelength. And of course, due to the nature of it being an online platform - you need to learn how to market yourself. Use proper capitalization, use aesthetically pleasing formatting, inviting people to follow you and your content. It's the kind of stuff being in a classroom doesn't teach you, you just need to jump into the water and drown in it. Choke on the water, lights becoming stars, vision turning colors. Are you going to die or are you going to start trying all kinds of things until you start lifting back to the surface? Classrooms wont put you in those situations.




Q: Your first submission to the Portal and your first Daily Feature win would be for Gun Knight (by Stepford). What can you tell us about this game? Looking back on it, what would you have done differently if you made it today?


A: I had played Friday Night Funkin on Newgrounds a few days prior to posting it onto the website. In my mind, Itch.io was the only viable online gaming platform - but here I was, getting addicted to a game on Newgrounds, a website I hadn't used in ages! I had never successfully built a game for HTML5 because Gamemaker 1.4 was so rife with bugs for the online platform. It took a lot of guesswork and finagling. But I was determined!!! I wanted to try and get my games online rather than being downloadable. I took my most popular game on Itch.io, that being Gun Knight and spent 4 hours trying to make an online build for it.


Gun Knight was a game I had made when I lived out in the Bendigo bush. I had ran away from my mother's home and was living with a friend whose parents bought a plot of land in the outback. I didn't have a job and I wasn't studying. They were just letting me live there because they felt bad for me. There was rarely hot water and I would wake up with bats or massive spiders near my bed. I applied for a few different unis but I would have to go in person on different days, so I spent a LOT of time on the train between Bendigo and the middle of Melbourne while applying for these schools. The only thing I had on me at the time was my phone so I would write down game ideas on these super long train trips. I remember writing something like "vertical resolution, it's kinda like gungeon but the runs are way shorter. just move upwards. roguelike item hoarder but items change gun parts rather than the character." I got home from being in Melbourne that day and told my roommate all about the idea and they were like "Go on then." encouraging me sarcastically. I got a build of the game running the very next day. You could only change between three triggers and it only had slime enemies, but the shooting was already feeling good. 


It was my first game to get any attention, as it received a banner position on Gamejolt after it had officially released. It got lots of views and downloads on Itch as well. It motivated me to keep updating the game. I showed the game to the representatives at SAE, and despite me not passing Highschool, they let me on an "Experience Based Entry". So I have Gun Knight to thank for me getting into school as well! The game only had one boss originally, but I came back a year later to add two extra ones and a lot of new items.


About half a year after that is when I started working on the HTML5 build for the game to upload to Newgrounds, and I would never have guessed how many more eyes would see it once a web version had been uploaded. It still gets about 1.5k views daily on Itch, which is insane because I had never had a game go over 200 views in total prior to posting games for the web platform. Just the fact that Tom Fulp had seen it made me go crazy. Those 4 hours I spent making a web build was the greatest decision of my entire life. In terms of minimum input to returned output, nothing will ever top what I got out of posting that game to Newgrounds and I will be forever thankful. I have been the happiest I have ever been all of my life since that day.


The one thing I would change about the game is the art. It's so disgusting. So many different mismatching styles and sprite sizes and color palettes. It's vile. When you aren't an artist and you're a small fry, nobody will collaborate with you. You either have to suck it up and use your own crappy drawings or use free art packs from across the internet. Gun Knight used some of those and I truly hate looking at the game because of that fact. Nowadays, I do the art all myself or I get a friend to collaborate with - something I'm so thankful to be in the position to do.




Q: When Piconjo made his return, a holiday for him came with it. You would participate with Piconjo: AFK. Why a fishing tycoon game?


A: I really wanted to make an idle game and just apply as much juice as possible. The next holiday didn't really matter too much to me. I'm sure if Clock Day was up next, we would have got Strawberry Clock AFK instead. Piconjo being the main character worked extra well due to his inherent hatred for traditional Newgrounds culture, so him fishing them out/exploding them didn't seem too random. And due to the fact he had been gone for so long, the whole "GONE FISHING" thing just worked. So it could have been any character, but I'm glad it was Piconjo.




[ PART 1 | PART 2 ]


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9

Posted by TheInterviewer - March 16th, 2022


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Interview No. 179

Interview By: @The-Great-One

Patreon Post Date: Mar 9, 2022


Today's guest is a highly praised creator here on Newgrounds. His animation style moves seamlessly between his movies and games. From hit such as 'Save the Sock', 'DUCKS!', and 'Brain-Toasting Dungeon', all of which have won him the Daily Feature. To works as Win & Corn - 'Draw a Card' and 'Dogs of the Planet', which have won him the Triple Crown, the Daily Feature, Review Crew Pick, and Weekly 1st Place awards. With 'Dogs of the Planet' winning multiple accolades outside of Newgrounds. 'Brain-Toasting Dungeon' would win the 1st Annual Flash Forward Jam for Best Movie with Interactive Elements. I am pleased to welcome @Butzbo.




Q: How did you find Newgrounds and why did you join?


A: My first approach to NG that I recall was from a friend from school showing me the classic video game sprite animation Rise of the Mushroom Kingdom, it was so much fun to watch so I continued looking for more sprite animations and over time I kept finding them hosted on Newgrounds.


As a spanish speaking kid, my english was super limited at the moment, but thankfully there was a good amount of animations without dialog, and over time I slowly began finding my way around the site and portals.


I also kept finding more of the other unique animations (highlights like the YuYu and Salad Fingers), and probably after a few months of watching and playing Flash (by 2006) I finally began goofing around with Flash 5 and a tiny Genius tablet, and decided to make a little animated project to see what could happen, so around that time I finally made an account.




Q: When and how did you get interested in art and animation?


A: Not the most surprising answer, but as a fan of cartoons as a kid I spent a lot of time just drawing and trying to make my own characters, inspired by shows I liked (Rocko's Modern Life, Dexter's Lab, Spongebob just to name a few).

I was intrigued to try animating with more classic attempts such as flipbooks and making stop motion with toys. During school I never considered it as a possible 'career' at all, it was much more of a curiosity, but once I discovered the accessibility of Flash I got more seriously intrigued to focus on animation.


Since a big starting influence were sprite animations, I actually made a few attempts with videogame sprites, but quickly grew bored and decided to try my own weird characters to see what could come out. After managing to finish my first flash cartoon (Solar Burn) I was eager to keep using this new found power.




Q: What brought you to Design School?


A: When I was finishing 'Enseñanza Media' (the Chilean equivalent of high school) I wasn't 100% sure of what to study, I actually liked maths and physics and considered something closer to that, some kind of computer engineering or even aiming at something like astronomy.


However, after learning a bit of drawing and digital editing softwares (extremely basic stuff, but good enough for the time) I got more inclined to study something in that line.


By that time I was already interested in animation, but that was a pretty new option to study in Chile so I wasn't as convinced with the alternatives available at that moment. So finally, design school seemed like a decent balance between creativity and technology with (hopefully?) enough occupational fields.




Q: What can you tell us about Loopdeloop?


A: Loopdeloop is a community event in the form of bi-monthly challenges where participants make a loop based on a theme, then those loops go to their site and are screened at a few locations.




Q: What can you tell us about your works on Pencilmation?


A: Around 2015 I was ready with Design School, and had just started doing freelance work, that's when I was contacted by Ross Bollinger, the creator of the series, who had seen my animations on NG, to begin collaborating on a new batch of episodes for his channel.


It was among my first commissioned cartoon animation works, and an entertaining one at that considering the simplicity of characters and the graphic gag-based humor, since these shorts were simple in elements, there was an important design vision to them to make the most out of these simpler assets and keep a clean composition, which also made it a good challenge, they've done quite well on Youtube so it's surprising to see how much reach those cartoons have gotten.


I animated around 6 episodes around that time, and later on I continued working on color palette design for many more of them.




Q: How have sponges inspired your works?


A: While that's more of a goofy profile line, when I try to describe my work I usually think of my characters as squishy and spongy creatures in the way they move and have usually large eyeballs, so I guess that kind of counts, haha




Q: Your first movie here on Newgrounds is entitled Solar Burn. What can you tell us about this first movie? How do you feel looking back on it?


A: Ooof! That was the first time I decided to upload an animation to the internet, I remember just learning how Symbols worked on flash and being excited to make characters walk and run through the screen with the basic 'Motion Tweens'! it took me about a week and I was really proud at the moment, especially as it wasn't blammed! (It may have entered the portal with around a 2.50 score, phew). Now, looking back it is a bit of a mess, I had no idea about how to animate a run cycle at all and I recorded some audio which may be kind of painful to hear, haha.


But anyway, with details like the pictures of food and the explosions in between, it does feel like a 'very mid 00's' flash cartoon to me, so looking back there may be a little bit of charm in that sense.




Q: What can you tell us about the Chilemonos Animation Festival and the Mantequillo animated shorts?


A: The Chilemonos Animation festival is the biggest animation festival in Chile, and also a big one South America, one of my favourite events which I rarely miss. They bring international guests of all kinds, and get a great selection of shorts every year.


It also has a latin american specific category where I've participated with shorts a couple of times and is always a great event to meet creative folks.


In 2016 the festival had their first version of a Cartoon Network Latinoamérica pitching contest. where artists from the continent could pitch a show idea in front of content executives. My pitch was this small series called Mantequillo, a kid made of butter who had to face the daily challenges of being slippery and easily melt down (based on a small round of webcomics I had made with the character), it was the winner of that year contest and we later went into a phase of production for a couple of small shorts (the length of interstitials (15 seconds) shown on commercial breaks), there wasn't much more development after those mini episodes, but even to this day I'm surprised by the fact that a short cartoon of mine aired on Cartoon Network.




Q: You have participated in the Newgrounds Annual Tournament of Animation in both 2013 and 2014. What drew you to these competitions? What was it like competing with the other animators on Newgrounds?


A: Similar to events like Loopdeloop, when I have the time I try to join these creative contests to keep practicing and have an excuse to explore different ideas. During both years I was still in design school, so it was challenging to make a small short film in around 3 weeks for each round, but I was eager enough to participate even during more demanding exam seasons.


The competition was a lot of fun, they had a theme for all animators, and in each round, after uploading my take on it, it was also a great reward to finally watch how the other animators gave their own spin to the theme.


In the 2014 event I made it to the finals against Stejkrobot where we had to make something inspired/in the style of the other animator based on what we had seen on our previous submissions, it was kind of an epic animation showdown. My short was Chicken castle, an action short with robots which was easily the most complex short I had animated at the time (maybe even anime-like in some aspects, but that's stretching a bit). I ended up pretty close with 2nd place. It's quite fun to go back and rewatch those shorts. Those 2 tournament events were pretty unique experiences, and for me it was like taking a bit of a crash course to keep up the animation practice, I highly recommend these types of events, such as the more recent NG Animation Jams.




Q: What can you tell us about animating in Mario Paint?


A: That was a fun curiosity, shout outs to the Gaming Historian for making a documentary on it focusing quite a bit on the creative aspects of the SNES software.


Once in a while I would find some medium that looks fun and weird -but also approachable- and just give it a go. In my case I sadly don't have the original Snes setup so I found a way to make it on my PC by animating on my tablet. I made this tiny animation with 'fish' characters.


It was a fun experience to try animating something with more basic technology, for example there's no 'onion skin' so you would have to animate by copying the previous frame and editing it. It takes a while but the retro interface is fun to interact with so it had its charm.


Also you could use the music from the Mario Paint composer so you could do a bunch more stuff with it.

I don't think I would recommend it for something more complex due to its limitations and setup required, unless the 'retro charm' of animating on a SNES is enough to intrigue you.




Q: You won the first annual Flash Forward Jam in 2021 for Brain-Toasting Dungeon. You have stated in the description...


"So for the Flash Jam I wanted to make something technically simple but taking advantage of features I miss from the 'golden age' of Flash animations, I really liked the simple interactivity of buttons getting you to different segments of animations, so I focused as much as possible on this simple 'mechanic' to make a little adventure. Enjoy!"


The process behind this is a lot of history in working with Flash. How would you describe the golden age of Flash?


A: To me this was the era of early to late 00s, I would describe it as an era of sprouting creativity, when all of the sudden making animated cartoons became more approachable, with absolute freedom on what you wanted to make, from parody content, to completely new and refreshing original animations which wouldn't have a chance in other spaces

at the time. One thing specific to my Flash Jam submission was the interaction with buttons which in flash can be freely customized as you'd like, even including details such as scene selection, easter eggs or mini-games within animations, it's a unique feature which is pretty much gone in the more contemporary and standard landscape to watch video/animation online.




Q: One of your most ambitious projects which would win you the Daily Feature, Weekly 1st Place, and Review Crew Pick on Newgrounds hitting the Triple Crown, as well as multiple awards and recognition outside of Newgrounds would be entitled 'Dogs of the Planet'. A project that you worked on for half a year. When AlmightyHans was here we talked about The Ballad of CrippleKane. A year long project that consumed his life. How did working on 'Dogs of the Planet' affect you? Where did the project begin and when did you know it was done?


A: Dogs of the Planet began as a little innocent Loopdeloop submission for DOGS, I had asked my musician pal Moralo Gonzalez to make an acoustic song for that loop describing each of those dogs. Months later I kept on thinking on how this animation could evolve into something larger, kind of a musical-short or video-clip, and decided to give it a go!

Narrowing it down, it probably took around 3 months pre-production (everything from choosing and designing these dogs, making an structure for it and working with Moralo on the first rough version of the song) and then 3 months of continuous non-stop animation, those last months were much more heavily dedicated to the project, I was animating around 4 hours per day after I was done with my regular job, and even more during the weekends, so I would agree with the life-consuming bit, but on a shorter scale in this case. As much of my free time as possible went straight to continuing with the short.


I think every involved personal project that takes more than 2 or 3 months to complete comes with an extra challenge of endurance, over time you question if you're making progress, if it will be worth the effort and even if you should be doing something else with your limited time! Not the most exciting part, but I've found ways to get through defining some clear reasons and motivations to finish it, which helps a lot to get over those dry moments, also working with Moralo was fun and helpful to always share and discuss the progress and gags.


In terms of calling it done, I gave myself the deadline of hopefully being able to screen it at the Chilemonos Animation Festival, thankfully I managed to make it and send it over just in time - and pretty glad I did! it had a pretty good response at the premiere-. I could have taken more time on details, but the deadline helped me to prioritize finishing it.


Dogs of the Planet was also my first 'serious' shot at going through a bit of a festival circuit, and for a first time, it was quite decent. It got 10+ selections in animation events, and a couple of awards! One of the most notable being "Ojo de Pescado", a Chilean festival focused on shorts for children, where it had an awesome response.




Q: Your art style is not only unique, but it's a style that you transition seamlessly to both movies and games. What differences do you approach in animating movie scenes versus gameplay?


A: One example is what happens with anticipation, one of the defined 12 principles of animation, with the idea that a character should show some build-up to each relevant action they take in order to make it stronger and more believable, for example if I animate a character jumping, it would normally go in a squat position before rising up. But if I'm working on a platformer game, when a protagonist jumps, the player commonly expects it to be jumping as soon as they press the button, so in that case, this anticipation is either reduced to a minimum, or completely skipped.


An opposite example in this case could be an enemy character, for example on an action game, while animating an enemy or boss, the way it moves should give some information to the player on how (and when) to react, so if a boss is about to throw a punch, it should be clear and telegraphed enough so that the player has a chance to move away. Meanwhile in a short film it would be all planned so there's only one defined outcome to that moment and the timing for these movements would instead be in service of a more engaging visual display.




Q: One thing I've noticed when interviewing so long is that those who go to school and come to Newgrounds learn from both. What are the differences in education from schooling and Newgrounds?


A: On my case, while I don't do much 'standard' design work, I did get a lot of takeaways from Design School, being there in person I practiced presenting projects and explaining design decisions, and also technical things like color and composition, and there's also the recurring highlight that you hopefully meet people with similar interests, in my case with my previously mentioned pal Moralo González who has made a lot of music for my animations.

But also in general the concrete learning is that you get what the school's program is focusing on. One unique thing about my school is that there was a good variety of classes you could choose from, for example I could have gotten more into industrial or textile design but that was faaar from my interests so I went more towards graphic design and even motion graphics when it was an option.


In comparison, in Newgrounds you normally participate voluntarily on what you personally want to try out, so the main different would be that the Newgrounds experience teaches you to be more proactive and try to solve problems even if they are out of your area, either by reaching out to collaborate, or just motivating yourself to explore and try out something different. In my case, most of what I've learned about sound editing -which may be quite basic, but decent enough for my animations- has been by making stuff for Newgrounds.


On that note I really like the concept of Newgrounds as an open school of some kind, where you participate in projects and learn stuff while sharing it with the community.




Q: BoMToons has collaborated with multiple members here and has expressed interest in collaborating on a point and click adventure game with you. Perhaps turn your latest work 'Klecc and the Marble of Time' into a game?


A: That's right we've yet to make a collaboration! should be fun for a jam or something of the like, I think one should always have a little extra time reserved for collabs.


The little loop of 'Klecc and the Marble of Time' took quite a while with the experimentation with a recorded moving background, but at the same time it makes me think of how much fun it would be to make a whole Point and click game with that aesthetic, I'll have to think about it!




Q: What can we expect from Butzbo in the future?


A: A few things, hopefully, the semi-recent experience of making an animated short from beginning to end (Dogs of the Planet) and attempting the 'festival circuit' for a while was a pretty satisfying one, even with the required effort and discipline.


So I have the plan of continuously working on shorts when I get the chance, I do have a few possibilities around which I hope to develop over time.


On the other hand, making art for games is also one area I'm pretty interested in. I'm currently working making artwork and animation for the indie game Bounce Castle, a mix of a strategy/skill game I'm working on with Robot Monkey Brain, hopefully we'll get to publish more updates soon, that's one area I'd definitely like to keep working on.




I first found out about Butzbo through his game 'DUCKS!' while doing The Tank Tribune. It was a Daily Feature win. After I looked through his other works, I chose him as a Featured Artist for The Tank Tribune. After that I put him on my list of potential interviewees. I offered an interview with The Interviewer as a prize for the Flash Forward Jam and he won! I got a chance to see all of the incredible works he has done. It is amazing that he was introduced to the site the same as I was. Through Randy Solem and "Rise of the Mushroom Kingdom". I am glad he was. His knowledge and art are greatly appreciated here on Newgrounds.




The Tank Tribune is a part of Dohn's Desk Productions

SUPPORT ON PATREON | SUPPORT NEWGROUNDS ]


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12

Posted by TheInterviewer - March 9th, 2022


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Lost Episode: 8/24/2007

Interviewed By: @The-Great-One


POST COMMENTARY

Talk about cringe. Looking back on this one I had quite the big head on my shoulders. I was one of the 06' users who signed up. We all thought we were hot shit. We knew everything there was to know about the site. Bullied anybody and everybody we came into contact with. Hoo boy. Let's just say this user has been scrubbed from the site and you're probably not gonna find that old thread anytime soon. I wanted someone as a highlight, going full tabloid. Here are the results.


Ladies and Gentlemen. I bring to you pure gold! I sent a very intellectual interview to theNGpro through a Myspace Message and his replies are hilarious! For those of you who don't know theNGpro he is the King of n00bs here on Newgrounds. I suggest you read his Photoshop thread first if you don't know him. Now then since he was not a very good contributor to Newgrounds I had to limit my questions to only five. If I get enough comments on here then I will post the Myspace Link here and on my Interviewer Thread in the General Forums. These statements are theNGpro's direct answers, and not made up in any way (these answers are so funny even I couldn't make them up). I hope you enjoy!




Q: Well apparently you have made yourself famous on Newgrounds as the biggest n00b of all time by posting this Photoshop Thread. Were your reactions really true or was this 100% fake?


A: go fuck ur self fag




Q: Do you have any advice for other n00bs about not doing what you have done? Or do you just have any basic advice for them?


A: Yea heres some advice fuck the admins and fuck em hard




Q: According to your Myspace blog entry "Retard Awards" you stated the following...


"Winner #1 this kid is about the biggest fucking douche you've ever met. He litterally started crying when he I insulted him after he called me a fag. The kid is a flaming homo sexual check his main pic, it looks like hes getting anal."


Apparently I see you as a hypocrite for saying something like this since in your thread you stated the following below.


"Guys fuck you all. You fucking made me cry YES CRY! Im not even joking. Im fucking leaving the BBS for ever you ass holes. Im fucking also telling my dad to report this site to the police for threats made against me and verbal abuse you can all go to jail. FUCK THE BBS!"


What do you have to say about these statements?


A: Uh fuck your self?




Q: In your Myspace blog you say that the mods have banned you "forever and ever" is this true?


A: No




Q: Even though you really did humiliated yourself on the Internet (not in a good way either) do you ever plan on returning to Newgrounds to try and redeem yourself?


A: Of corse i fucking am there 24/7 i just never post on the forums cuz everyones gay as fuck




The 3rd to be interviewed by The-Great-One.

Please Comment.




POST COMMENTARY

It didn't take me long to realize that these interviews were garbage. This is one of the biggest reasons why I wanted to relaunch The Interviewer and make it into something better. This is one I was personally ashamed of in 2009. The only reason I have dug up these old interviews is because everybody starts from somewhere. If you're afraid of making something that you will hate. Doesn't matter. Make it. Get it out of your system. Get it out into the world. You will learn from your past to make the future better. The past can hurt, learn from it though.




The Interviewer is a part of Dohn's Desk Productions

SUPPORT ON PATREON | SUPPORT NEWGROUNDS ]


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6

Posted by TheInterviewer - March 1st, 2022


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Interview No. 178

Interview By: @The-Great-One

Patreon Post Date: Feb 22, 2022


Today's guest is one of Newgrounds most amazing stories. Starting as a small game developer and musician here on the site, being a host of The Newgrounds Podcast, and a Supporter of Newgrounds in more ways than just a badge on his profile. I am most pleased to welcome @ninjamuffin99.




Q: Normally I start these interviews off with How did you find Newgrounds and why did you join? However, we know that you came here to share an animated loop which you posted to your Dumping Grounds. You forgot about the site for a while and came back to find music for a game you were working on. What game was it? What made you want to stick around?


A: The game I was working on at first was called “Terrible Game With Terrible Writing”. It was a Ren’py visual novel about my high school teacher in a high school of dipshit memes at the time. Very much inspired by “John Cena’s Sexy High School Adventure!”. Wanted background music and whatnot, somehow I found my way back to Newgrounds. I feel like I was adjacent to Newgrounds for a while. It wasn’t until I started both MAKING music in dinky FL Studio demo, and asking musicians for music for ANOTHER game I was working on “Bad Kitties: Psycho Kitties gonna be psycho”. One day I will make a follow up to this and post it to NG since I got the new version of RPG Maker with HTML5 export heheh.


I think as I was looking around for music, I initially logged back in so that I could save the music to my favs so I could come back to em later. If you look at most of my early people I followed, it’s a lot of musicians. I think as time goes on I naturally got more and more into the habit of using NG, until we got to the point where we’re at today!




Q: When and how did you become interested in music?


A: Relatively “recently”. Growing up I never really gave a shit about music. There was some stuff I’d like to listen to, but it wasn’t until 2015 or so, when I was 16 years old, when I really started feeling everything out. Listening to stuff on spotify, discovering musicians. Diggin thru the crates of Newgrounds musicians. I’m really open to listening to whatever type of music at all. Mostly I love hip-hop and rap, but just as much I love crazy ass hyperpop and general pop music. I really do lov music, and I feel bad that I don’t dig into it as much as I’d personally like to. I also feel bad that I don’t listen to as much NG music as I used to back when I was teen. All it takes though is a few REALLY good NG musicians that I’m addicted to.


Before FNF, kawaisprite was the musician i was addicted to and listened to every upload. I’ll use dis spot to shoutout NG music people I love right now. Shoutouts @tsuyunoshi lov their crazy ass music especially their collab wit kawaisprite, I love any rap that @maxxjamez is a part of, HOLY SHIT SHOUTOUT @THICCBURGER one of the most under rated musicians on NG. and love to @siximpala lov u katt and crew <3




Q: You started making music through Fruity Loops in 2016. What made you want to pursue music?


A: This one is a funny lil silly one. In late 2015 (when I started gettin into music stuff), Undertale had just come out. I didn’t even play the game, but I liked some of the music. In high school, I’d neglect my work and I’d boot up some web browser piano bullshit you could play with the keyboard, and I would play and practice MEGALOVANIA by looking at those Youtube Synthesia piano vids or whatever. I still know that first little section by heart. Then eventually my foster mom nabbed a piano, and I liked dabbling around on that, slowly teaching myself how music works. Eventually found my way to FL Stu, and dabbled around with that a lot.


Another piece of the puzzle is Stardew Valley. Even back then I wanted to be a indie game dev, and Stardew Valley was made by just one dude, ConcernedApe (Eric Barone). He did all the art, music, code, etc. That still is VERY inspirational to me. Thought piece by piece, over the years I could slowly become this jack of all trades like he is, and I still hope that to be possible. Missing piece right now is I need to get good at art!




Q: When did you become a part of A Couple of Crickets and later on The Newgrounds Podcast? What can you tell us about your experiences with both?


A: ACoCK I pulled up for the first live Discord podcast they did. Imma take credit, cuz NGP STILL does that format to this day. We was the pioneers. I found ACoCK cuz at the time I was listening to a LOT of podcasts, and I saw it on the frontpage or Tom mention it or something. It was relatively early on in it’s life. I listened to a bunch and I really was hooked. GoodL and littlbox were the tastemakers. Kawaisprite is incredibly talented, but I would have never found out about him as early as I did without ACoCK. I think it was GoodL that found him. So many Newgrounds goodies like that. PapaLegba was early on and i love all his stuff, they frequently shouted him out. He is VERY popular online nowadays, but it doesn’t feel too long ago when MeatCanyon was just a humble Newgrounds fella that they’d shoutout. Before he even had 1K on the site! ACoCK really was somethin powerful. Littlbox and GoodL also were very good pals, so I stuck around and helped out wit stuff. I made Discord bot to play Newgrounds music directly through discord for them!

NGP sorta came out of WillKMR wanting to do lil somethin different with GroundsPatrol, as well as ACoCK easing out as they reached their final episode, episode 50. For NGP I was there early on editin episodes and whatnot and hosting, and having various inputs. Over time (especially as I got busy with FNF) I slipped away and things changed and whatnot. But still lov and appreciate NGP it is interesting to see all the changes and different things it’s done. Maybe I just haven’t listened to it in a while though, I feel like there’s an aspect of both ACoCK and Grounds Patrol that NGP misses though. Maybe it’s just the nostalgia in me talking tho heheh. I still got respect




Q: You have also touched on animation, one thing to look at are the 12 Principles of Animation by Alan Becker. When and how did you come across the 12 Principles? When did you become interested in animation?


A: When I was 15, I started dabbling around in SOURCE FILMMAKER, and making dipshit little animations. Over that summer, I didn’t have access to a computer good enough to run the software, but I did have youtube, so I sorta “studied” and went through those videos by Alan Becker lolol. Those concepts to this day still has helped me out a lot in both animation stuff, and working with animators, etc. Then I went into this class in high school where it taught you how to use different software. I went with the one that taught me adobe flash, for no particular reason really. Then I was able to use the concepts in that flash course and I felt super cool heheh. Really though it was just making ball bounce, but with SQUASH AND STRETCH, and EASING and shit lol.




Q: How and when did you become interested in programming?


A: I really wanted to make video games, and I found out that to make video games, you sorta need someone to program! My mindset has always been that it’s good to learn as much as you can about the process, so that if/when you work with other people, it goes a LOT more smoothly, and the process and output quality increases because of it. I think naturally I’m good with numbers and computers, always been good at math class in school and whatnot. It was probably around high school, that 2015/2016 era when I started doing programming and making games. VERY close to when I started using Newgrounds. I like that aspect, where Newgrounds pretty much DID get me going with everything I do, and you can see my progress over the years in real time, people were able to watch me improve and become part of the community and whatnot.




Q: When making games you have recommended Stencyl in the past. Do you still recommend it to newcomers?


A: Probably not. Not anything against Stencyl, I think I’m just generally hesitant to recommend a single specific tool. I think it’s best if people try out as many different things as possible, until something feels like it sticks. Try Unity, Godot, Unreal Engine, Construct 3, Stencyl, HaxeFlixel, Phaser, etc. etc. The list goes on. Unlike animation where most people just roll with either something like Flash, or Toon Boom or somethin, Game development has a LOT of options, ESPECIALLY geared towards newcomers and people who have absolutely 0 experience with coding. So much that it can be overwhelming. If you are a newcomer to game development, get your hands on EVERYTHING you can. You will get frustrated with one, and give up. But then you can go onto the next one. You will eventually get frustrated and give up so many times, that you will eventually get frustrated at YOURSELF for giving up and being frustrated so often. And out of spite of your past self, you will continue on past that initial point of failure. At least that was my experience.




Q: When asked how to be a good programmer you offered this advice...


Learn how to be a good problem solver and don't give up early because you don't understand


Could you elaborate further? What hurdles have you had to come over?


A: I think very early on (and even far into having experience), it is VERY easy to give up on something when there’s absolutely no comprehension. It ALL feels very overwhelming. But part of that process to overcoming that is the excitement of LEARNING how and why you don’t comprehend things. When you’re just starting with something like coding, it’s tremendously difficult to even know how to LEARN. You see a line of code that you don’t understand. How do you figure it out? Well one aspect is to check the documentation. But then if you’ve never EVER read anything like programming documentation, how do you even find your way around THAT? In fact how do you even know that you should look at the documentation in the first place? There’s so many different aspects and considerations with stuff like that I feel. I think many people have this idea of what “talent” is. I feel most people are sorta under this understanding that no one is born with any particular magic brain powers that makes them more or less skilled in certain areas. I like the way that Satoru Iwata talks about it in his book. At first when you’re just starting something, you give it all of your energy. Labour, money, etc. Once you have a response to what you’ve done, and whatever feeling you experience, is your REWARD. When the reward feels like it’s greater than the energy you’ve expended, you don’t give up. If left to your own devices, naturally you will get better at things you feel you’re good at. When you know more about computers and programming, you will find the joy and reward of LEARNING more about computers much more fulfilling (same with art, music, ANYTHING). Then talent is just the ability to FIND rewards and fulfillment. If you are fulfilled when you make a new art piece, a new song, a new game. Even if it’s complete dogshit, you will continue to make those things. You won’t give up. THEN discipline comes in when you either fight past that small section where it feels like the reward isn’t worth the effort, or where you dig deep and MAKE that reward outweigh the effort INTERNALLY or whatev. This is all from Iwata’s book “Ask Iwata”, he is the one with the insightful words of wisdom!!!! Me explaining it was basically just nabbed from his book!! BUT NEVER GIVE UP EVER.


One of the VERY EARLY main hurdles was even just setting all the code stuff up. Code and programming can be complicated if you don’t know the procedure. What I gotta install from command line? How tf does the commandline work? I gotta use a package manager? What’s a package manager? Is that installed when I install the game development tools, or the programming tools? SO JUST KEEP BASHING YOUR HEAD AT THE WALL UNTIL SHIT WORKS LONG STORY SHORT




Q: What all can you tell us about 50 Shades of Pizza?


A: LMFAO these are sum deepcuts. As mentioned in this awesome ass thread, I thought it would be funny to share some of my dipshit high school assignments I worked on for English class. I think the topic of this one was to make a dialogue of some sort between two characters. The 50 Shades Of Gray movie was sorta the hot trendy thing around that time when I was going through high school, so I remember having an epiphany of just ripping the dialogue and replacing it with…. I guess these sentient pizza’s. Somethin about how it’s so absurd and silly and zany. I actually had to read this out to the entire class, and as far as I know they really loved it. Or they thought i was a psychopath. I do remember a lot of people laughing about it genuinely. I’m still just a shy socially anxious dipshit, I have no idea how I pulled that off. I NEVER talked in high school, I was basically mute, so I think it’s funny that the only things that people have heard from me is me having to read out this dumbass sexual tension between these two pizzas. It’s like the shit of the quiet kid is always the psychopath. That shit is true, I’m a maniac. Anyways one last little anecdote about that is I remember one of the cool girls recorded it and posted it to her snapchat (in a “good way”) and it found it’s way to my foster sister who is much more outgoing and popular than I was in high school. IDK somethin about that felt like two entirely different worlds colliding. Hard to describe.




Q: Your first game on Newgrounds is entitled The Disco CatYou made it for Kitty Krew Day, drawing inspiration from Cat Dance by everydaylouie. How much about the Kitty Krew did you know about at the time? How did you come across Cat Dance and what about it inspired The Disco Cat?


A: I was dipshit Newgrounds user looool. I didn’t really know or understand kitty crew. I just thought it was a cute day dedicated to cats!!! Now I got respect for Kitty Krew lore and culture. But I look back at that game and it makes me laugh at how I just made something that didn’t really understand the point of Kitty Krew lol


I think that one Cat Dance game I remember coming across it and being like “hey, I could probably make something like this!”, I believe I just randomly stumbled across it on itch.io when I was neglecting work in high school. I think it’s very cute game hehehe and everydaylouie does cool stuff




Q: You listened to Nina Freeman's GDC 2015 Indie Soapbox Talk that lead to Breathing Simulator. What can you tell about Nina's talk and the development of Breathing Simulator?


A: Nina Freeman is one of my heroes. A lot of her work has had a genuine profound impact on me. That talk in particular still speaks to me I think. It talks a lot about making games that are genuine and honest, games that felt REAL. Her games were about HER. Cibele being a game about an online relationship she had. How Do You Do It being this jam game about playing with dolls and pretending they were having sex. Very REAL experiences. I think all creatives put an aspect of themselves in the work they do, but I think there was something about it being RIGHT THERE that is still powerful. If you look at some of my games, they have had a certain aspect of being very personal. Decryption, OSO, IN-FAMOUS, Lost Connection, Sick Day, ninjamuffin99 twitter simulator, and yes, even Blacks/Whites Only. Those games are about ME. Different games obviously have different levels of connection depending on what you look at in them. But I put myself into that shit. I don’t think it’s some profound thing, I think a lot of creatives do that. But I think with a LOT of people there’s a hesitance towards it. It’s VERY hard to be vulnerable. It’s VERY hard to make a game about yourself, and be honest like that. People’s judgements of the game aren’t only about the game, they are about YOU. However it’s NOT just about you. It’s also about the person playing it. It’s about the person who relates to it on this deep personal level. About whatever shared experience you’ve both had, as PEOPLE. That’s why heart break albums are so powerful with people. Many people experience heart break in some form or another. But the ones that REALLY touch people are the albums where the creator put every last inch of their fuckin SOUL into it. Where they were incredibly vulnerable with the feelings they felt. PUPPET AND IFHY AND AWKWARD BY TYLER THE CREATOR!!! THINKIN BOUT YOU AND SELF CONTROL BY FRANK OCEAN!!!! ESSENTIALS IN THE PLAYLIST EVERYONE!!!!


Anyways, Breathing Simulator itself is a little less PROFOUND or whatever than all that bullshit lol. In Nina Freeman’s talk, she mentions a comment she got from a person who was upset with one of her games. It went something like, “you don’t see ME making a game about the mundane act of breathing!” or whatever. And I thought it would be funny to make a game about that. A game literally about breathing. I made the simple “mechanic” of it, and asked around for an artist, which BrandyBuizel stepped up to the plate. Pure development was just very light on and off work for a week or two heheh. I miss makin dinky lil games like that, I wanna hop back on that bullshit.




Q: What can you tell us about the thought process behind Whites Only and Blacks Only?


A: I wanted to make something that had some VERY edgy name, but have some twist to it that invalidated the edginess to an extent. I did a bit of a writeup about it after it came out I think. I have it here.


That writeup is generally what was going through my mind at the time as I was making it




Q: Alright, let's talk about FRIDAY NIGHT FUNKIN'. It started as a Ludum Dare. The team came from PhantomArcade who said you two should work on something together. You had already worked with KawaiSprite on Ritz. However you have stated that you didn't know evilsk8r until you started to work on FRIDAY NIGHT FUNKIN'. How did you come to meet evilsk8r?


A: Yeah me and PhantomArcade have been meaning to do some stuff together for a looooong ass time. Since 2017 or so. We worked on and off with each other on different games that all fall through from us getting distracted with other work/projects. Pretty much every time though I think we find each other easy to work with. When I worked with kawaisprite on Ritz, I found him easy to work with too. He can so easily whip together a track that just immediately matches the exact tone, personality, and style of a project, before the full project is even fully realized. I'll jack him off here, I think kawaisprite isn't just a pure musical genius, I think he's a creative genius as well. He knows aesthetics, knows how to make a cohesive project. His albums Chuckie Finster, and FSOST stand toe to toe with some of my favorite albums ever. Before FNF already I felt so grateful to have him as a close friend who very much inspired me. And now that same fact applies to the rest of the FNF team. I'm incredibly grateful to not only work with PhantomArcade, but become closer as PALS. I work harder when I see his work ethic. I worked as hard as I did on the original game jam prototype because I didn't want to disappoint him. I wanted to put in just as much work as I saw him put into the game, even if it was just a small little game jam at the time. Shit like that is the magic of COLLABORATION i think.


Evilsk8r I got put in touch with from kiddbrute (rest in peace may god bless his soul). KB I messaged because I really loved his style of that early 2000s ass cool shit. I think the vibe of the game itself came from that. Looked at his style and thought of “what is a cool ass game that would suit this style”, and then I messaged him. I think he was either busy, or uninterested, but he tossed me evilsk8r’s way, and asked him if he was down for a cute little weekend game project. I really loved his stuff too and his touch has definitely increased the coolness factor of FNF. At the time he was pretty fresh young 17 year old. He got the YOUTHFULNESS. It's very inspiring to have him on as a young lil lad. It will be very interestin to watch evilsk8r grow as CREATIVE over next few years. One thing is I hope FNF doesn't restrain him too much. lov dat boy




Q: How did the idea of FRIDAY NIGHT FUNKIN' come to fruition? Was it a singular idea that grew from input or a group brainstorm that became a hurricane?


A: The classic tale goes that before the Ludum Dare game jam even started, I wanted to make an early 2000s ass parappa style rhythm game. Simple and straightforward lil project. Asked PhantomArcade, evilsk8r, and kawaisprite if they all wanted in and they were all down. When talking to PhantomArcade about the game, he more or less came up with a bunch of the MEAT of the game concept. Boy rap battling the rockstar dad to get the girlfriend. That’s pretty much the LORE of game jam, it all came VERY naturally. I think it’s good to just go with the flow for shit like that. Let other people have input just as much as you want input on a project yourself. I don’t think we debated for a second whether or not to do a rhythm game, it was just the choice from the start. What we were INSPIRED to do.




Q: The game has become an Internet phenomenon. To the point where the Week 7 Update crashed Newgrounds. That is unbelievable. You made a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for a full release game with the goal of $60,000. It has amassed over $2,000,000. You have spoken on the appreciation and gratefulness to Newgrounds, the fans of FRIDAY NIGHT FUNKIN', and the Supporters of Newgrounds. Throughout this time period you have also become somewhat of an ambassador to newcomers on the site. How have you and the team reacted to all of this?


A: I think we all very much love the NG community and are very proud to be this SENSATION or whatever that is so closely tied to NG. If I didn’t make FNF, I can absolutely say that FNF would be my favourite game ever, just for the fact that it’s this internet influential game that is bringing people to Newgrounds and showing the creative and collaborative spirit of Newgrounds. FNF is a game that’s made by 4 different people from the sorta different sides of Newgrounds. Musician, artist, animator, programmer, all working together to make this cool ass project. It still just scratches the surface of NG tho, there's a crazy amount of talented voice actors, writers, stuff like that on Newgrounds. But at the end of the day I think FNF still has that pure collaborative spirit to it.


Me and PhantomArcade especially love Newgrounds, and we’ve been trying to push it forward long before FNF. We are just two of many. I think it’s good to let people know that Newgrounds isn’t some chump shit. More projects like FNF can happen. It’s just a matter of time. If you asked if a game from Newgrounds would come out and break the fuckin internet a month before FNF existed (September 2020), no one would believe you at all. No one would believe you if you said that there could EVER be a game that broke through and reached to be the most viewed submission of all time on the site. People make games, and if it’s successful, they just simply make a Steam or console version of it right? No one sticks around to keep Newgrounds culture thriving right? Nah, shit happens if you make it happen. If you truly care about Newgrounds, Newgrounds will care about you back. There will be a game that surpasses FNF. It’ll be like mf Avatar shit. Maybe it’ll come in 10 years, maybe it’ll come in 5 weeks. But when it does, it will 100% feel right. Going forward games like that will be a part of the newgrounds culture and history. It will be by people who care about Newgrounds just as much as we do, if not more. Web game culture isn’t what it was in the 2000s. If you are currently posting your stuff onto Newgrounds, it’s because you give a shit about Newgrounds, so ur already halfway there. If you want to be the thing that dethrones FNF, giving a shit about Newgrounds is the first step. We wouldn’t be where we are if we didn’t care about Newgrounds as much as we do.




Q: When it comes to game development you have branched out in a multitude of genres. When you decide to make a game, where does it begin and when do you know the game is completed?


A: I’ll answer the second part of the question first. For a long time I been very much adhering to DEADLINES. That’s why I roll with gamejams a lot. In Tina Fey’s book, she mentions working with Lorne Micheals on SNL. “SNL doesn’t go live because it’s ready, it goes live because it’s 11:30”. SNL has a lot of shit, but also, it has gold. That’s pretty much any creative medium or whatev. You need to be VERY picky about the projects you really put your time and passion into. Even with FNF, there have been MANY times we’ve released when WE thought things weren’t ready yet. Original gamejam version, the Newgrounds version, Pico Update, Mommy update, week 5, 6, 7…. Now that I think about it…. Pretty much none of the FNF updates have come out when they felt “ready”. But however it did feel RIGHT to post them when we did. A gut instinct between us that has come from both developing the game itself over time, as well as just creating things in general over the years. Knowing what’s “good enough” for an update, and knowing the workflow, and what comes from a “release”. Pros and cons and shit. Even though it’s no longer a gamejam version, we do have these self imposed deadlines of sorts. I think that keeps a lot of things on track.


Onto the first part of the Q, usually things begin on a WHIM for me. Make things when I feel like it. Wake up in the right mood, and I can just work all day on something completely new. I also like to do different new things. For each new genre, there’s different design considerations, different programming things to know. I think it expands my brain to work on different genres.




Q: What is in your opinion, the definition of video games?


A: I won’t say some profound thing or nothin, I think video game is jus lil digital thing put together that you can interact with in some way. Doesn’t even need to be a GAME per se. Just literally anything that can be put together digitally that you toy around with in some form or another. Although I do like the way Phil Fish put it in Indie Game The Movie, “video games are pretty much every creative medium, all wrapped into one, and thats why it’s awesome”. Not his exact quote, but I think thats somethin special about video games.




Q: One way you described yourself in the past was...


I'm bored and I make silly stuff like 3 star animations and games.


Do you still see yourself in this light?


A: I’m a lot less bored nowadays, and I think I’ve gotten better at making things where at least I will make stuff that is 3.5 stars I think. Yeah somethin like that. I still make silly stuff.




Q: What can we expect from ninjamuffin99 in the future?


A: I am going to prison. Keep this screenshot and post it to one of those “poorly aged tweets” twitter accounts or whatever in 5 years or so, whenever the "conspiracy" allegations come out.




ninjamuffin99 has been a long time reader and fan of The Interviewer. To see how he grew in success has made me proud to see the new faces he has brought to Newgrounds. New eyes on the site. As well as new creators. He has brought a resurgence to the site that has happened since the Tumblr exodus. All from a Ludum Dare game. Who knows what will come from him next. It is sure to be wonderful. That I am certain.




The Tank Tribune is a part of Dohn's Desk Productions

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37

Posted by TheInterviewer - February 23rd, 2022


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Interview Update

Interview By: @The-Great-One


Greetings Newgrounds Members! Greetings readers of The Interviewer! I am so happy to be back to doing interviews for The Interviewer. There is a change though. I have recently started a Patreon in hopes of making a little extra money and maybe one day do this full time to support myself. That is a pipe dream in the making though. As a perk for my patrons and as a way to keep me on track completely all future interviews will be posted a week before they come to Newgrounds.


Interview with ninjamuffin99


The latest interview is with the developer of FRIDAY NIGHT FUNKIN', @ninjamuffin99. He has been a reader and fan of The Interviewer for a long time and now one of its guests. As of right now this interview is available to ALL TIERS on my Patreon Dohn's Desk.


After this only those who are part of the Producer tier will be able to see these interviews ahead of their Newgrounds post date. Upcoming interviews will still be posted for all tiers. The research papers will still be posted for Supporter and higher.


So if you become a Patron for Dohn's Desk today this is what you will get for each tier today! An * means special event just this one time.


TIP JAR

  • *Exclusive Interview with ninjamuffin99
  • Upcoming List of guests for The Interviewer


SUPPORTER

  • *Exclusive Interview with ninjamuffin99
  • Upcoming List of guests for The Interviewer
  • Research Papers on upcoming guests for The Interviewer
  • Feature on the Wall of Appreciation


PRODUCER

  • *Exclusive Interview with ninjamuffin99
  • Upcoming List of guests for The Interviewer
  • Research Papers on upcoming guests for The Interviewer
  • Feature on the Producer Section of the Wall of Appreciation
  • Interviews ONE WEEK ahead of Newgrounds release date


If you can't afford to support me on Patreon, then don't despair. I honestly ask that you put money towards Supporting Newgrounds first and foremost. Without Newgrounds there is no The Interviewer. Thank you all for reading for over thirteen years now. It truly means a lot to me. I only hope these interviews are able to pass down some fun stories and lessons for the future creators of Newgrounds.


10

Posted by TheInterviewer - February 16th, 2022


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Interview No. 177

Interview By: @The-Great-One


Today's guest is an underrated gem here on Newgrounds. From his inspirations from the cirque with Quick Playtime. To his outspoken words in Black Lives Matter. His range is beyond anything imaginable here on Newgrounds and his knowledge of music is quite different than others we have had the fortune of speaking with. It is with great pleasure that I welcome, @ZipZipper.




Q: How did you find Newgrounds and why did you join?


A: I’d love to think many Millennials could trace some weird animation they once saw when they were 11 back to the notorious NG. It’s essentially how I found the website. If I had to specify, the Salad Fingers series from the illustrious phalanges of David Firth (@Doki) kept me coming back. I had a couple friends in high-school that would show me all the raunchy and strange content you had no choice but to at least smile at. And although I’d known about the site for years, it wasn’t until I started ZipZipper that I realized Newgrounds hosted musicians. So I joined just to share my content with others, and ended up getting a lot more than I thought. Mostly good stuff. I promise.




Q: You have stated that circus music, namely Cirque Du Soleil, is an influence in your own music. One in particular is the song entitled Jeux d'Enfants by Rene Dupere. There are many loves in this song that you equate toIt is ultimately a song that you listen to when you're feeling overwhelmed and confused. How did you become interested in circus music? How did it bring you to this piece?


A: Music never clicked with me until I heard Yann Tiersen’s soundtrack to the film Amélie (https://youtube.com/watch?v=AA4deEZjnBA). It’s brimming with quirk and playfulness; un jeux d’enfants à propos de la vie. The instrumentation ranges from solo accordion to full orchestra. It represents the spectrum of joy you can gather in the details and coincidences that happen every day if you care to pay attention, which is one of the main themes of the movie. I think it was through the quintessential French sound of valse-musette, or waltzing accordion music, that I took interest in Cirque du Soleil. I believe lots of people would associate that sound with a street performance circus, so that’s why I define circus music as such. My parents also noticed my interest and took me to see my first Cirque show, Quidam, when I was around 9 years old. That surreal experience hooked me even more, and I still keep an eye and two ears out for their discography to this day. But I dunno...I can’t coherently describe how the oom-pah-pah gets me every time. It’s a punchline that never gets old to me, and that piece Jeux d’Enfants embodies the concept perfectly.




Q: The hardest part about making music for you, you have this to say...


"It all seems such a blur to me that I can't really point out the hardest part. I think creating something new is always difficult because the inspiration is a big bang and then you have to play the part of God by organizing the stupendous disorder."


Could you elaborate on this point? With the song You Wanna Kill? as an example?


A: You tryin’ to kill me with homework prompts? Funny thing about that song is that it was at a time I knew nothing about jazz. But I always loved the cool cat sound of a walking baseline and piano sting chords. So in terms of that quote, that was the inspiration. But then, with no foundational knowledge of what to do with that sudden bang, I had to provide structure to the chaos, and the result was that tune.


This’s actually a great example of toughing out the music making process, especially when you have the desire to create. Because if you really wanna kill, you’ll finish the job. Otherwise, it’s not meant for you. I have A LOT more know-how about jazz styling, so listening to that song again is cringe. But y’know what? I think the actual hardest part about making music, or acting on one’s creativity at all, is finalizing and revealing the ultimate result. And that’s why I still have some of my old content available on here, to provide reminders that I’m brave enough to try.




Q: There are two different points when discussing music. The first one I want to talk about is music theory. When Phonometrologist was here he talked in great deal about music theory and its importance. You two would talk about this subject in detail on the forums using Philip Glass as an example. You tend to take a different approach to music theory than he does. How would you describe music theory? What importance can be placed on it? Can we ascertain a hard definition of music with or without it?


A: Laugh OUT loud. I forget I’ve taken rigorous stances on the importance of music theory, and I believe Phonometrologist (@Phonometrologist) places importance on emotionality and overall humanity more so? This answer will end evenly, but I’ll extrapolate on my side first.


I’m personally tired of the ‘yeah bruh feelings are dope' stance because it’s a no-brainer that we all have feelings, except for a statistical few. And I’ve typically found that guys swooning over vague truths every day can’t clean a table or fold a shirt at the same time. We can do better than the minimum requirements. And music theory provides us with the history of minimum requirements so that we can actually do better. Otherwise, you’re gonna embarrass yourself when your magnum opus is accused of being some renaissance composer’s symphony no. 8 out of 8,000 that they wrote before puberty. So theory is important if you want to take music seriously. It definitely doesn’t mean you have to analyze the purpose of every passing tone in every Buxtehude cantata while filling out a twelve-tone matrix, but I highly suggest taking an intro class because the formal environment itself will displace the studious from the stupid.


This leads me to the other side of the coin and the last question of your question. You can ascertain a hard definition of music with AND without theory. It just depends on your mood, or your blood sugar. When I started formally studying music at school, I found immense purpose with the calculated rules of the baroque period, the likes of Bach and Mozart. That required a lot of music theory. Then after I graduated, I studied Francis Poulenc on my own. He was a 20th century composer that incorporated some of those rules with a fanciful, threatening style that’s extremely unique. He’s now one of my biggest musical influences and his music tapped into my theory wellspring while also revealing to me what about music sparks my own emotions. Now I’m a more balanced artistic identity since going through several years of exploring both sides. The journey isn’t quite over, but I would have never gotten to this level of comfort without formal education, and my Associate of Arts isn’t even so taxing of an investment. Don’t do drugs, you stupid kids. You’ll forget who you are faster. Save those tears for after school. Whether it’s a classroom or a job, active learning can teach you how to utilize those tears effectively instead of wasting them on unsustainable tissue.




Q: The second point on discussing music is composition vs. production. The layman may be confused with these terms, and rightfully so with musicians debating on where they sit in terms of creating and listening. Could you break down these terms and how much weight you put to them? Perhaps use Jeux d'Enfants as an example?


A: Oh? More homework? Composition is the bare structure of a piece. What’s the speed of it? How long is it gonna take? How many instruments are there? What instruments are there? You gonna paint freely or use a coloring book? It’s like the composition of a recipe. You could stick to a certain stir fry or throw some rice in a pan and fold in some miscellany as you go.


Production is how you’re going to present that stir fry to your guests. You could all eat it out the pan while squatting on the floor like savages, or garnish it with celery on your finest chinaware in a dining room you can’t afford. Different audiences expect different presentations, but they all showed up for you to cook something so they’re probably gonna eat it either way.


Music production, to me, is a relatively new concept with the advent of the information age making music extremely accessible. In the old days, music production was basically the acoustics of the listening space, the position of the players, and the tuning of the instruments. I suppose you could add instrumentation as a factor, but that was basically it. For Jeux d’Enfants, that would be easy to follow in real life. But nowadays, you got speakers and headphones to worry about since music consumption is primarily through those outputs. For Jeux d’Enfants, they had to think heavily about the volume and frequency balance between all the performers. They ultimately chose a very balanced approach, but a manager could’ve stepped in and said nOT eNuFF tRiAnGLe! and added a triangle recorded through a walkie talkie blaring louder than the rest of the mix. That’s a production choice. Someone studying the effectiveness of walkie-talkies might like that production better. I might like it because I like being attacked by music.


But at the end of the day, I personally put more emphasis on compositional quality because melodic instrumental music engages me most. People more interested in pop or electronic music will need to have more emphasis on production quality because there’s a high standard, thanks to technology. Like how knowledge and feelings are one bread knot in the foundation of music, composition and production run a similar dual stream, the difference being the latter two gained prevalence only recently and are largely dependent on how you want your music to be perceived.




Q: At one point you ventured out to Los AngelesWhy Los Angeles?


A: Laziness. Clearly, there are many other routes I could’ve taken to properly get to the teenage dream of being a revered blockbuster composer, but instead I decided to go straight to the source because it’s about who you know not what you don’t know, right? The answer is an astute yes. My approach was old-fashioned and I largely ignored the disadvantage of my severe introversion and my lack of knowing any peers in the industry already.




Q: Things did not go well for you out in LA. You wrote about it in your article Giving Up So Soon. This was surprising to me seeing how your past self spoke about music.


"You have to be comfortable with your own way of doing things. Don't aspire to be just as good as your idols, because a big part of what makes them good is unique to them. Ergo, you literally won't ever be as good as them because you will never be them. Learn from them but don't craft yourself on who they are. Craft yourself on who you are. My personal view on music is that nothing is perfect anyways because that definition is so loose within the art culture in general. What's intolerable to you can be golden to someone else, kind of like how you said you did with writing in a different genre. Explore that, I suppose. Don't hype over the definitions that exist and instead formulate your own."


What happened between those six years that changed your outlook? What lessons did you take from Los Angeles? How are you feeling nowadays?


A: Nothing has changed about that outlook. I definitely shaped my musical identity to a strong level of self-confidence before I went to LA to try and start my own shelf on the wall of trophies. But, many other factors I largely disregarded made it more difficult for me personally, and I think there was bad timing in several regards. I guess I should’ve eaten my own words in that quote when it came to my impatience. But can you wholly blame me after almost 10 years of work in music? The ironic icing on that cake is in the advice I was given out there.


So here we go…


My excuse for physically relocating was to attend UCLA Extension in Film Scoring. Their extension school is for all their certificate programs. And here’s some of my own advice: when you look at certificate programs in other renowned schools, check what the actual university is best known for. Then, remember to pay attention in class! These certificates, especially those in creative fields, don’t mean much more than what you care to take away, whether it’s information or connections. I’m glad I had the maturity to understand this when going into the program because I almost allowed my apathy to plunge me through a scam school deeper in the heart of Hollywood not that long before. This is why the first class I took was in music business, and taking it there was even more impactful because my teacher knew lots of people relevant in the industry that he invited as guest speakers. Now here’s the sick irony:


My biggest takeaway? I was told many times that it takes approximately 10 years of actually doing work and promotion for others in the industry as an uncredited drone before someone eventually thinks ‘wait a minute…who was that uncredited drone again?’ and you might start getting work of your own. And once you’ve achieved that, you’re flooded with nearly impossible deadlines and have to orchestrate complex scores that directors with not a musical muscle in their body must approve of. This isn’t unique to the music hemisphere. It’s just the reality of today’s art world that I couldn’t fully accept until I tried it myself. I suppose I overestimated the value of my catalogue and underestimated the power of money.


Despite expecting these answers, I was still incredibly hurt. I’ve read through thousands of harsh criticisms online and learned to get over it, but I finally heard one directed at me in the classroom and was devastated. And when I told people close to me how alone and hurt I felt, some of their response was that I wasn’t trying hard enough. I became the most depressed I’ve ever been and discussed returning back to my hometown to heal. And once I did, COVID began. It’s truly incredible timing how everything has played out for me so far.


How am I feeling nowadays? Well for the past two years I’ve had such a high frequency of suicidal thoughts that I’ve accepted them as normal. Luckily for y’all, I’m so mentally lost and exhausted from all that experience that I don’t have the energy to formulate anything concrete. I’m also perversely adept at dissociating with myself, scared of doing it myself, and therefore would rather coast along living for the time being. So the only warning I have is that I can see myself suddenly acting on this end-it energy if a significant trigger arises; a first-time moment, like listening to harsh criticism for the first time in real life and then immediately being told by my friends that I’m a wimp. Sorry not sorry. That’s my own harsh truth that only I have the power to wrestle with.




Q: You once had an interest in attending Julliard. What made you not go? Have you thought about changing your mind?


A: Laziness. And discouragement by how much more passionate and effective true music lovers are. I actually don’t like music. It makes so much noise! It’s so annoying! The space I’d take up in a prestigious school is better spent on someone who vibes with their emotions bruh. And in all seriousness, I’ll likely go back to school, but probably not in music. And most definitely not in music to that level of focus. In fact, it’s the opposite; I wanna get better at Sign Language.




Q: What can you tell us about the Washington Metropolitan Gamer Symphony Orchestra?


A: Try saying that name 5x fast. Anyways, these people…they give me hope. The WMGSO is a nonprofit organization of amateur and professional musicians, located around the Maryland, Virginia, Washington D.C. area, that perform arrangements of VGM, usually written by members. I’m one of the arrangers of the group, as well as a vocalist and piano accompanist. The org tries to hold full orchestra performances biannually at local venues, which incidentally included MAGFest in 2018. We’ve also officially released an album and are in the works of creating a second one. WMGSO simply being an alignment of casual musicians with an aggregate of opportunities to write and perform has, and continues to be, an immense help with cultivating myself as a musician.


When I was damaged by my Hollywood experience, Hex-perience if you will, it was the GSO that gave me hope in not throwing away my involvement in music forever. Unfortunately, COVID appeared, but I’m still hanging on with them and we are trying to safely return to a state of regular events soon. Don’t fret, there’s other GSOs out there. I got a chance to see a performance of the one at UCLA actually. If you like video-game music, or just want a safe space to perform and practice in real life but don’t feel like you have much expertise, I very much suggest finding one. Or starting one! 




Q: The first song you have here on Newgrounds is entitled LugubriousIt means "looking or sounding sad and dismal". Would you care to elaborate more on this? Looking back on your first submission to where you are now, what are your takeaways?


A: Fun fact: I used to have my entire backlog of work hosted on a site that is now unfortunately defunct (http://icompositions.com). That track was one of the newest ones I had at the time I started the NG account. There also used to be another username on that other site that I went by before ZipZipper… 


But anyways, me elaborating…that title is sometimes what I look for in music. I like finding sadness or stories that invoke it, but I think my judgement on what characterizes art as such is different from most people, which is why I found some out-of-the-way synonym for sadness. In a similar way, that’s the descriptor I’d use when I think about my music back then compared to my music now. Ironically, my overall demeanor both in my sound and my personality has shifted from that of being lugubrious to being facetiously comedic. But, I also think most of my listeners stick with what I churned out during my emo phases. And now that my style is much more peppy and complex…I don’t have as much consistent or influenced feedback, which saddens me because I feel much more like myself with this developed sound. Oh well; c’est la vie. I have taken note of this and believe my next chapter involves learning how to incorporate the simplicity and empathy of when I began music.




Q: The first song I ever heard by you was when I was gathering songs for The Tank Tribune's Phonograph, called Quick Playtime. I fell head over heels for this song. I love the accordion waltz in it. I can certainly see your inspirations in it.


A: It’s the simplicity of songs I’ve done like this that I think I need to punch in more. I guess I should do more circus music! I just wish I wasn’t so sapped of energy from being an adult. 




Q: Jazza, Jabun, Troisnyx, MistyEntertainment, JohnnyGuy, Hania, and Cayler, are all singers that have joined us on The Interviewer. You are added to this list. When going over your works I have come across songs where you have lent your vocals, one being Make A Scene. At what age did you start singing? Using Make A Scene as an example, how do you prepare for a song where you have to sing or lyrics are to be incorporate?


A: Another homework prompt?! My earliest recollection of singing was in middle-school choir, so I was in my early teens. When I got my first keyboard around the beginning of high-school, I started writing my own short indie songs, since another one of my biggest musical influences is the immensely versatile Imogen Heap. Sometimes I’d take that keyboard to a nearby cafe for open mic nights and sing. But it wasn’t until many years later that I got whipped into much better singing shape, when I officially started majoring in music.


Not only did singing classical repertoire at school help me unlock my voice to its fullest potential, but I also learned to sing overtones around that time, which helped me a lot with my tuning and breathing. One of my hugely supportive friends that I met in school runs a different nonprofit group, Harmonic Introductions, that specializes in this technique; the ability to sing at least two pitches at once. We’re actually one of the only singing groups in the U.S. that exclusively does this. If you wanna have meditative droning at your next birthday party, I can hook you up.


So how do I prepare for a song that includes my voice? Having all that previous practice in various disciplines is the best preparation, and funnily enough I didn’t have any of that formal training before recording Make A Scene. I also try to sing a little bit regularly, whether that’s along with Imogen Heap in my car or overtone-ing in the elevator at work and scaring the pedestrian people trapped with me. Of course there’s the other normal stuff to do right before singing, like warming up, hydrating, taking breaks, but those are easy. The hard part is practicing. And school forces you to do that. Don’t do drugs, you stupid kids. They can irreversibly damage your voice.




Q: My absolute favorite by you is without a question Naptime Near The Forest Floor. It was made for a competition where the challenge was percussive instruments only with a jungle theme. You took your own turn on it though. What can you tell us about the competition and how the song evolved into the finished product?


A: Oh I loved the NG Music Triathlon! I think it’s the most complex music contest NG has ever held. There was a general theme and a certain limitation with each of the three rounds, and users involved voted on each track anonymously. It was a great challenge! When I went into that round, I assumed most others were gonna strictly focus on drums, which ended up being true of the entry pool. I, however, focused on vibes and string chops, making my entry unique in that it made the most use of melody. So much so that I originally had to make the strings entirely plucks and remove the main vocal line and animal sound effects you hear in it. But once that round had ended, I posted the song as I intended, which is definitely cooler. I’m glad you like that track! It’s also one of my faves.




Q: Black Lives MatterYou have spoken about the response and backlash the song has gotten. I'm not here to talk about your stance or beliefs in Black Lives Matter. It's not often songs for protests or movements are seen on Newgrounds. What made you want to take your stance and transfer it to song?


A: It’s gonna be very difficult not to dip into my beliefs with that question posed, but I will try my best. A grotesque amount of warnings were given before 2020, but the year 2020 has proven that we don’t have the collective maturity to keep filing our serious debts, our fears, and our prospective happiness in a cabinet for later review. It became a humongous fire hazard and it exploded. I come from one of the most ethnically diverse counties in the whole country, and after Los Angeles…I returned to it. One of my most incredible influences and closest friends is a self-made Black man that continues to experience the subtle problems this country unconditionally imposes on him with lasting effects. What made me take a stance was frustration…because the answer seems so obvious to me:


We all need to seriously take a stance and wear our feelings on our shoulders. We all need to take responsibility for ourselves individually and stop relying on fate to define our outcomes.


There has to be way more honest and open communication with each other. Music and entertainment are great forms of that because it’s actually through those outlets that our brains became twisted with rotten cultural ideas. And we can untwist them the same way…


If anything, as an adopted person, America is all that I’m familiar with. Might as well participate in its problems to some capacity. The social ones definitely have importance across the world as well, so I ask anyone reading this: are you participating? 




Q: You have answered this question in the past. With everything you have seen, heard, and experienced I must know. What is in your opinion, the definition of music?


A: Either the result of boredom or the result of fury. Music is the epitome of madness because it can cause people to willingly sit at a desk for 15 hours without eating or peeing. Think that’s crazy? Well sometimes it makes people so infatuated with someone else that they try killing them. Other times, a musician will accidentally let loose a weird fart and immediately be gifted $100,000. Why hasn’t music been outlawed?!




Q: What can we expect from ZipZipper in the future?


A: I’m not sure…


What ZipZipper wants is to get back to being involved with online music communities, especially Newgrounds. But, the internet’s getting too fast and hip for grandma Zipper not to dangerously wobble around with his walker, so she may very well keep to himself in the real world. Currently, I’m having trouble saving money with a semi-management job at a popular retail chain you’ve probably shopped at called ______. I’ve been thinking about a potential company program that funds college education to try moving up the corporate ladder a bit. I also mentioned I like Sign Language and might invest in becoming an interpreter. But no matter what I do, I’ll never completely stop making music…and sharing it eventually. 




ZipZipper I interviewed back in July so this interview is quite late, that's on me though. I happened to come across his music just browsing the Audio Portal. Wanted to know more and read he was giving up music. That just blew my mind and I wanted to know more about his story. I'm thankful that he was willing to share his story and his craft with us here today. Any aspiring musicians here on Newgrounds should take note of his story. Some helpful advice, lessons, and a bit of humor can be ascertained from here. I can't say for certain if ZipZipper will be one of the world's greatest composers, but I know for a fact he will be one of the music industry's greatest teachers.




The Interviewer is a part of Dohn's Desk Productions

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Posted by TheInterviewer - November 10th, 2021


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Interview No. 176

Interview By: @The-Great-One


Today's guest has been with Newgrounds for a long time. He is a Newgrounds household name. He is one of Newgrounds biggest fans, not only being a Supporter, but contributing to countless jams and contests here on the site. He has been seen about the forums longer than most people have been here. I am please to welcome one of Newgrounds most generous, peculiar, and funniest members. God Damn It it's @Wegra.




Q: Normally I ask how did you find Newgrounds and why did you join. It is noted though that you found Newgrounds when you were 11 through another person's account under the name wegra2. What is the full story behind that account and what would become Wegra?


A: So my friend had a Newgrounds account they werent very active. So I ended up inheriting it and the name Wegra. The friends of that account to this day are inactive on here so they dont really care. Anyway in 2006 I couldnt get into my account turns out my friend was getting spammed and changed the email to a fake email and apparently the password I dunno. So basically I had to restart from scratch. Looking at it now it was pretty easy to surpass my original account.




Q: What was life like at Manalapan High School?


A: Oh you know typical high school shit. Although I would say compared to other high school experience I got though it mostly unscathed. In other words less bullshit to deal with than the average student. I know some people absoultely loathed to be at school but I was more neutral. I had days where I liked being there and days that I didn't.




Q: When did you enroll Brookdale Community College? What did you study while there?


A: Art and Journalism. Of course they forced me to take some basic math class that was far from basic and had algebra and shit. Failed that one.




Q: When and how did you become interested in Mega Man? What do you consider are the Top 3 best Mega Man games?


A: I got the Gamecube Anniversary collection and started from 1 and worked my way up. Did the same for the X collection


Anyway my top 3 are


  • Mega Man 11
  • Mega Man 2
  • Mega Man 8



Q: When XwaynecoltX and Ericho were here we talked about their reviews and their styles. One of your earliest goals on Newgrounds was to write the most Newgrounds reviews. Why did you want to make this your goal at the time? You're still an avid reviewer here on the site. Is this still a current goal?


A: Well I think when I was young I thought reviewing equalled expeirenced even though it didnt but I was on such a roll I kept going and going and going and going. And now look at me 11,400+ reviews. And much like XwaynecoltX I kept active in each and every portal. Anyway I always see that reviews have more value then people give them credit for. I see it also as not just a token of proof you watched this piece of media but also let the author know you did and encourage them to keep making stufff




Q: Your went to your first Anime Convention around April 2010. You stated you're not a big anime guy and your friend really wanted you to go. You went and dressed as Luigi. Now we see that you go to conventions constantly and cosplay as multiple video characters including Ryu and Mega Man. What was your hesitation of going? What about it appealed to you when you went?


A: I dunno because truth be told I didn't really like the firend I was with and kinda got roped in but if it wasn't for him I probably wouldnt be so invested. I think it was just the people and friends you can meet and also the attention from other con goers




Q: Any tips on choosing a cosplay or putting one together that you might have for any convention goers?


A: Try to go for a more practical costume for a character you like. Try to also be knowledgable too




Q: One of your most beloved series here on Newgrounds would be entitled Here's something that makes no sense. Where did the inspiration for this come from? You have brought it back on occasion. Will we see it return in full one day?


A: I thought it was the Character select. But yeah I forgot how I came up with it but hey I will bring it back if thats what you want.




Q: One series that I have watched in its entirety from beginning to end. It is a series that I grew to love with each installment. At the same time though, I have to ask. What the fuck that all that is sacred is The Dot of Excellence? Where did this idea come from? Where did Episode 26 go? Will we see more of this series in the future?


A: Its just about a Dot and his girlfriend doing random shit of the week with video game and other music. I deleted 26 because it some Caramelldansen shit with friends I dont really see anymore and just uugh nah too cringey for me. I wish I could bring it back but sadly it gets removed from moderation each time. Maybe Youtube tho




Q: Help I'm on a cliff! is a story where you were hanging onto a cliff, precariously perched. The reactions of Newgrounds members offering to "help" have been both morbid and hilarious. It just grew and grew with each new addition until bigbadron stepped in to put a stop to it. This would later be turned into a movie of the same name. Where did the idea come from? What is your response to how big it grew? When will we see the novel?


A: I should bring it back as part of the anniversary. don't think it'll have the same appeal and nah the novel is long gone




Q: What is Wegra Funmail?


A: Wait huh?




Q: What made you want to join the Anime Club? Top 3 Favorite Anime?


A: Been pretty inactive actually. Sometimes I forget about the clubs and crews. I don't do top things though aside from the Mega Man one.




Q: You are quite the film buff here on Newgrounds. You have seen well over 100 movies. You started Wegra's Movie Reviews Collection. You stated that kisame put you up to it. You haven't done another entry like this since 2011. Will we see a return to the movie reviews?


A: Already am in fact I updated my list not long ago.




Q: You celebrated 10 years on Newgrounds back in 2013 and became a Supporter in 2014. How did it feel hitting that 10 year mark. What do you most reflect on after 10 years on the site? What made you want to become a Supporter?


A: I honestly felt proud being a part of here from childhood to adulthood. And as for a supporter I vote with my wallet and I want to support this site always!




Q: What is your favorite thing about Newgrounds?


A: Well it IS Everything by Everyone. There's just so much to do and see with no end in sight.




Q: If you could change anything about Newgrounds, what would it be and why?


A: Classic mode and Modern Mode . Basically choose an era of Newgrounds redesign you would like. Would have modernized features. Or just stick with the current design




Q: You've been with Newgrounds through multiple redesigns. How would you describe the growth Newgrounds has taken over the years?


A: Its amazing what it accomplished and still lives on despite Youtube overshadowing it. But yeah feture wise its amazing to see how convienient its become in a lot of ways than it was back then. I'm glad Tom is hard at work keeping up with things.




Q: What can we expect from Wegra in the future?


A: More quality Wegra postings. I hope I have made a positive impact for the BBS for these things. I like to hope I did.




Wegra has always been a constant joy to see here on the site for me. I love reading what he writes about the facets of Newgrounds, entertainment, and life itself. The inner thoughts of this man's mind is incredible. He is also kind and caring towards others and is a huge fan of Newgrounds. He is one person who if he left the site, it would certainly be missing something grand.




The Interviewer is a part of Dohn's Desk Productions

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Posted by TheInterviewer - June 2nd, 2021


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Interview No. 175

Interview By: @The-Great-One


Today's guest has been with us once before as part of The Review Request Club. He went by the name Corky52. He would change his name in years to come and during that time he would become not only one of Newgrounds most helpful members, most beloved members, and a dear friend to myself and many others. I am most honored to welcome back, The Father of Forums, @Fro.




Q: It has been over ten years since we last spoke here on The Interviewer. Back then you were Corky52. Back then you wanted to make a Review Request Club Flash. What changed for the Review Request Club over the years and you as a person here on Newgrounds?


A: We did end up making a Review Request "Flash" in 2010 called The RRC Awards. It followed the same format as one of Tom's submissions where he presented the 2nd Annual Tank Awards. The production value was low. The jokes were cheesy, but at the end of the day it turned out exactly like we had planned. The club was a lot different back then and my mentality about reviewing has changed.


The club was very structured, lists were kept of submissions that were posted, scores were kept for those who completed their reviews as a motivation system to review everything. I eventually got married and then divorced shortly after, life caught up to me, I didn't have a working computer for a long time, and basically just stopped visiting the website. Sometime between when I left the club and the site and when I returned, the club had basically died out as did a majority of the clubs in the forums. In my opinion it's now just a place where people post their submissions and in return get 1-2 reviews, if any. I had posted in the thread multiple times with my own submissions and received 0 reviews. I had even posted a couple of years ago and asked if anyone was interested in making it more structured like the old club. It only had negative responses. In return I figured it wasn't worth reviving.


I mentioned that I changed as a reviewer as well. I used to leave very detailed reviews, but it grew tiresome. If I didn't leave short reviews for friends submissions or a "hey I like this" review, I wouldn't review anything anymore. I still appreciate receiving detailed reviews, but at the end of the day I don't think it really matters. If you have the chance of helping someone improve with more information or criticism then go for it, but if you want to tell someone that you liked something and leave it at then it's ok too.


I started as someone who really wanted to be a moderator. I thought maybe the way to do that was to just be as helpful as possible. I really wanted to be a review mod, so I figured super helpful reviews would help me get there. I did end up modding for a few years and generally enjoyed it, but discovered that it was so distracting that I would let it eat into my work time or family time. I'd be eating dinner with my family and modding the forums instead of enjoying the 1 on 1 time with my family. I retired. I don't think I would do it again.




Q: You made some fun videos with your friends in the past, some of them being on Newgrounds. One I am interested in that's not on the site is entitled -Rawk-. It's about being friends with a rock. Could you elaborate more on this? Why was this one not posted on Newgrounds?


A: You can view this on youtube on a dead account that I use to post some videos on. This was well before I made videos with friends as a fun to do. I had a video technology class in high school and we went to a workshop about... video stuff? I don't remember it's quite a long time ago. There was a part where they asked us to go around and make a video and then allowed us to use any of the tools that they had. Their computers, cameras, editing software, etc... I went with a small group of friends who were also in the class. We couldn't think of anything to do and as time started to run out someone suggested we just make a video about... *picks up a rock* about a rock! We made a short video where we talked to the rock, named Rawk like it was just another person and put it into person like scenarios. I honestly can't remember too much of what we did as I haven't seen that video since the day we made it.


We had always talked about how funny it could be if we had more time to make it. A competition came up, the Rod Sterling Film Festival I want to say. We used this as a good reason to make the video.



Basically we did the same thing. Put it in normal human situations. We entered it in the competition and received a letter saying that we had won the best comedy. We were then brought to the event and got to stand up on stage to receive our award as they showed our video on live television. (PBS) It was a cool moment in life. It made me want to continue to create short stupid videos which I did for a long time. None of them as successful though. We had entered multiple other competitions, but as we grew our humor was never quite what they were looking for. We had changed as short movie makers, but the competitions weren't ready for what we were producing. That and they probably just weren't that funny outside of a small group of people.


It was a lot of work to post the videos on newgrounds and they were never well received. I think that's why I never went back and posted that submission. People would get angry and just talk about how they weren't flash. It would take a lot to get the quality decent enough to convert into a swf. file and the audio was usually a nightmare. It would be much easier to reupload remastered versions on the current newgrounds, but I just don't think they would be well received.




Q: When did you start playing football? What position did you play?


A: I can't remember exactly what year that I started. I was young though. I remember my parents being really surprised because I had never showed interest in sports. I honestly can't remember why I wanted to play. Perhaps because a few other friends were playing. I started with peewee and vividly remember a few plays and experiences. I remember never knowing what to do the first couple of years. I understood no concept of football. I had no clue what we were trying to do. There was no retention, there was only hit the person in front of me. I got a lot of playing time because I hit hard. I'm known as a pretty strong person, but I was small my entire life. I went into 7th grade weighing about 90 pounds. It wasn't until later that I got bigger.


I remember my last year of peewee football. I played along the offensive line and as a defensive end. While I was on defense I would completely destroy kids. It would get to the point where the opposing team would just run the ball to the side that I wasn't lined up. I don't remember much about offense until later on.


We learned quickly that I was better put in the middle of a defense. One game where the opposing team would just run the ball the opposite direction over and over coach decided to put me in at middle linebacker. He told me my responsibility was to just find the ball. I had well over 30 tackles that game. This started my career as a linebacker.


I remember Jr. High football. I was a tight end on offense and a linebacker on defense. I caught a few touchdown passes and caught quite a few passes overall on offense. Mostly I blocked. Defense, more of the same. Played linebacker and made tons of tackles. I still hit hard. Other players were always scared. After my Jr. High year I started to lift weights. I got very strong. I was lifting way more than everyone else at the gym. I gained a ton of weight, added a lot of muscle. I entered 7th grade as a 90 pound skinny kid and left 9th grade as a 200 pound "meathead".


We moved on to 9th grade, which would put most players on a "freshman" team or a JV team. I was able to play all 10 JV games and all Varsity games. Every single play, every single snap of all 20 games. Offense, defense, special teams, I never was off of the field. On the JV team I played as a linebacker and as a guard. The games were extremely easy. They were slow and easy to react to. I piled on huge numbers of tackles. In Varsity I didn't do so well. I got pushed around a lot. I remember not understanding the concepts and ideas again. I'd often find myself doing the wrong thing. The ideas got much more complex year to year and I wasn't quite ready to start as a freshman on the Varsity team. I did anyway.


After that year I joined the track team. The track coach convinced me that I would be faster for football. That sounded good. He was right. I got a lot faster and matched with the weight room and endless amounts of food my mother made me, I was getting huge. By the end of 10th grade I was around 220 pounds. Extremely fast. Extremely strong. I had broken all of the schools weight lifting records and brought home a lot of medals from competitions. For track I tried triple jump, high jump, long jump, 100 meters, 200 meters, shotput, discus, etc... You name it, I probably tried it. By the end of my track career I could compete at the district level in all of the sprints and shotput.


In 11th grade I got moved to runningback. I did well enough for my first year. Due to injuries on the team we needed me to move back to the line. I was pretty upset because if I were to have had the whole season as a runningback I think I would have been highly recruited at the position. I was large, 240ish pounds, and could run a 4.4 40 yard dash. (Faster than a lot of NFL players at that position and size)  


In 12th grade I was moved to fullback. This was close enough for me. I lead the team in receptions, rushed for quite a few touchdowns, and got to do one of my favorite things. Get a running start to block someone! I ended up on the All-State team as a fullback. I was recruited heavily as a linebacker to quite a few schools. Sadly during track season I tore both of my hamstrings and that was that. I lost 50-60 pounds of muscle, kind of went into a depression, and stopped lifting. I played a year or two of semi-pro football in college, but my heart wasn't quite in it anymore.


Now I get to coach both track and field and football at a local high school. I really enjoy it. I still get the urge to play every now and then. When Covid clears up I would definitely play for a semi-pro team locally. Especially since I started lifting again a few years back and I'm quite strong and fast again. (Much stronger and faster than I ever was as a kid)




Q: You attended Lock Haven University. Your decision was based on pricing as being the cheaper option. Would you have attended a different college if you the choice wasn't financial. What can you tell us about your time at Lock Haven?


A: It was the cheaper option for sure, but I also decided to do it for love. I was blind. It was closer to my high school sweetie who was a senior in high school my freshman year of college. I literally skipped over a lot of scholarships and other things to go to the school. If I were to do it again, I would do it the same. I would have never gotten married, never gotten divorced, never met my current spouse after the divorce, and never had my daughter. If you're telling me I would have still lead that path and still have my family the way it is then I would absolutely go to a different school. I would have went to one of the schools that wanted to pay me to play football.


That being said, college was one of the best times of my life. I had an extreme amount of fun and have a lot of stories that I've told. Ranging from ghost hunts, fun parties, nerf gun wars, dressing up like ninjas and fighting in public with other ninjas, making funny movies, making the Pyroscape series, etc... One of my best friends, Nick, ended up being my roommate and I don't think college would have been as amazing without him there with me.


College was interesting though. I don't think I'd go back. I almost failed out my first semester, but realized that I needed to get my act together. I ended up making the dean’s list every other semester and graduating overall with something like a 3.8, which was impressive because of the 2.0 that I started out with. I really like the town that the college was in. Super simple, small, but still just a 30 minute drive away from some bigger areas like State College. (Penn State University) I ended up living in Lock Haven for quite a while after graduating college too. Sadly when things heated up with the latest elections we discovered how dangerous the area actually was. It was no longer safe for my family. Mobs would surround my family to do harm, men in robes would drive their trucks with nooses hanging from the back. When my spouse got an offer to do her doctorates on the other coast we jumped on it without question. I'm happy we left the area behind.




Q: At first you were interested in history, but switched to teaching. What made you want to make the switch? Why did you decide to teach elementary?


A: So… My high school track and field coach was a History teacher and I really looked up to him. He was very intelligent, hardworking, and taught me a lot of stuff that my own father never did. I wasn’t aware that men were allowed to show emotion or cry until this man. I had raced really badly in a relay event and let down some other runners in a race. Some of them were seniors and this was our district championship where we could have gone to states. It was probably the first time that a sports failure had effected other people so negatively. I broke down and cried. My coach hugged me and cried with me. He had always been so supportive in every aspect of life. I wanted to be like him.


Sadly I found that I really wasn’t that interested in history at this level. I made a lot of decisions and switched majors a few times. I realized that I had signed up to be a History major. Not a history teacher major, but still wasn’t as interested as I thought I would be. I figured I worked well with kids and switched to social work. Realized the nightmare that would be for me emotionally and next semester switched to Elementary education.


It was hard. I had a hard time dealing with a classroom environment. I was a poor planner. The kids basically tore me apart. At this point I just wanted to finish college and get out of there. One placement with 1st graders went extremely poorly. Another placement with 5th graders went much better. I realized that the history teacher/high school environment was probably better for me, but there I was graduating with an elementary teaching degree.


Even though I never taught after that I still wouldn’t change anything. I believe it helped me get my first management position, helped me understand how people learn, and had a lot of influence on my coaching career. If I had to go back to college, which I really don’t want to, I would do something business related. Everything I’ve done work wise has been management and a business degree would have had some carry over. They do say education majors make some of the best managers. I do admit, that managing adults is almost exactly like managing children.




Q: You and I have something in common. We're both writers. At what age did you become interested in writing? What can you tell us about your writing?


A: In highschool my friend Nick and I would write a lot for our short films. I can’t remember exactly what grades. I want to say somewhere between my sophomore and Junior year is when I started. Almost everything I’ve written has been scripts.


There have been multiple times where I’ve attempted novels, but never finished. I once wrote well over 100 pages of a novel my freshman year of college. It was mediocre at best, but at least I was writing. Sadly, I never backed that file up and eventually lost it in a computer crash. (Damn limewire!)


So even today I write in script form for most of my work. I’ve written a collection of really mediocre shorts and have a thread here on Newgrounds.


I wrote a bunch of comedy scripts for the latest two voice acting collabs. I’ve discovered that my inability to make my ideas funny on the camera didn’t mean that they weren’t funny ideas, just that I was bad at producing the ideas. Once I got some great voice actors bringing my ideas to life it was obvious that I did have some merit as a writer. It was funny to just more than me!


I’m really proud of the Halloween contest entry that I submitted. I didn’t win any prizes like some of my older submissions to contests, but I do feel that this is probably my best writing to date.


It was full of emotion and real life fears/concerns. I’ve grown to write about things that are true to my heart now instead of cool Sci-fi stuff. That being said, I do have multiple ideas that I’m rolling around right now. 1 novel idea, 1 comic/episode type idea, and one B-Horror movie script idea. I really would like to get all 3 of these ideas out of my head and onto paper some day. Even if they never become anything.


Overall, I don’t know if I would call myself a writer. I feel like I can finally do that when I publish something and you can find it on a bookshelf. The chances of that ever happening for me are pretty rare right now. I’m content as just writing for fun when I have the rare motivation to do so.




Q: A collection of stories that I am fascinated with was Daily Diary of an Uber Driver. I suggested turning it into a book and you were quite keen on the idea. Is there still a book coming? If yes, when? If no, could you tell us what made you want to get into Uber in the first place? How did you find out about it?


A: This was one of my attempts of trying to write something small every day. It was a lot of fun while it lasted. I knew it would eventually get repetitive and that I would eventually need to cut out customers because of the repetitive nature of most of the rides. The reason I stopped writing was because I stopped driving. The reason I stopped driving was because I had reached a financial goal and it was starting to get stressful.


Basically I had taken up driving Uber as a second job to help pay for our moving expenses. We moved across country, east coast to west coast. It took quite a bit of my savings away and I needed help catching back up. So I drove Uber for a bit. I had forgot that there was a sign up bonus when I first started. You were guaranteed to make a certain amount in your first 100 trips. If you didn’t make that amount you got the difference in a lump sum after your 100th trip.


After a bad day of driving, a few short trips, not a lot of riders in the night, and witnessing multiple car accidents while driving I was basically an emotional wreck. I had just witnessed a man get hit while riding a motorcycle. The car that hit him sped off and the cars behind him literally beeped for the man to hurry up and get off of the ground out of their way.


It was very disturbing…


Then that lump sum hit. It was substantial. I think $700 give or take a little. I retired from driving Uber on the spot and went home. I don’t think I would do it again.




Q: How did The Dom and Fro Show come into existence? Will we see it return?


A: Simply, we thought we were funny and were trying to make funny videos. Video editing was a lot of work and they never quite turned out like we pictured in our minds. The cuts were choppy, the jokes fell flat, there were audio troubles, etc.. I moved away from Dom when we moved across coasts and there was always the conversation that we wanted to make more videos someday.


I don’t know whose idea it was first, but we came up with the bright idea of trying a podcast. We were thousands of miles away, our videos usually fell flat, and we still thought we were funny. Just because we couldn’t put our humor into production of a video skit, didn’t mean we couldn’t talk. 


So we tried it. It went surprisingly ok. Things hit hard at home with a big fire across California that dislodged me from my house for a long amount of time. It lead to other events and before I knew it coaching season was a go again. This left no extra time for the podcast.


Would I do it again? Absolutely, but only if I didn’t have to do any of the planning or editing. It was kind of a pandemic hobby that I lost interest in after normal things started to happen for me again. Dom talks about it a bit and I tell him every time that if he comes up with the show idea and does the editing that I’ll be there.


There are actually two episodes out there right now fully recorded that just need edited down. They’ll probably never see the light of day.




Q: What were your thoughts on The Fro Collab (or the Frollab, if you will)?


A: That was interesting. I loved it. I wish people would make more things about me. I very well know that I’m not popular enough for things to be made about me though. I was pretty excited when I saw the final product.


I had announced that I was going on vacation and that I wouldn’t be on the site at all minus depositing experience points. I stuck to it. I didn’t visit the site at all and when I came back to the forums I noticed an entire art collab made about me!


Link to playlist I made about it.


I remember showing Dom all the art and plot and he was just as pumped as I was to see “fan art”. Some of the art I used as icons and banners for quite a bit. Some of the art did a pretty good job at depicting a younger/more muscular version of myself.




Q: You are currently in the process of competing in a Strongman Competition. What piqued your interest in this competition? How well do you think you will do?


A: I’ll only mention it, but everyone says this when asked about Strongman, so I’ll just leave it as a mention. I use to love watching it as a kid. There, done. I gave the generic answer.


In reality I always considered myself kind of strong. I always wanted to compete again. That being said, I’m not necessarily the strongest in the normal powerlifting events. Squats, deadlift, and bench press. I am particularly good (top 1% in the world at my body weight) at pressing things above my head. The only strength sport that focuses on pressing strength above your head is strongman.


I checked out a video on how to sign up for your first strongman meet. It’s slightly more involved than finding a competition, signing up, and showing up. You have to pay for a yearly membership, pay for quite a few expenses including around $100 for every competition. I eventually found a local one and sent an email to the vendor about signing up for my first competition.


Big Tommy Burns, the man, the myth, the legend. He walked me through the process of signing up for his competition even though it had filled up. He then invited me to come train at his gym an hour away. I came out, he and others showed me the ropes on some of the more technical stuff, and I loved it so much that I kept going.


It’s one of the few competitive sports where the people you’re competing against want you to do well. It’s a, I want to win because I’m better than you at your very best mentality. They want you to bring your best when you compete. It’s extremely common to see someone cheering on another competitor who could very well beat them if they perform better in an event. It doesn’t matter. It’s completely about community and being the strongest person that you can be.


The first competition in May is a Novice competition. The weights are light and I’m only competing against other novice athletes. (First timers) I think that I will do extremely well, if not win that competition. My 2nd competition will be the light weight open division. I will be competing against some people at my skill level and some pretty elite athletes. This is where the true learning and experience will come in.




Q: You signed up in 2004. You've seen the site at an earlier process than others. I signed up in 2006 and we both would see the 2007 and 2012 redesigns. With both redesigns came new generations of members to the site. The 2012 redesign has slowly been smoothed out into a slicker feel. What can you tell us about growing with the different generations here. Seeing others who were teenagers and young adults becoming grown adults with lives and families of there own.


A: Most of the people that I spoke to no longer use the site. I wasn’t really active until my college years, so somewhere around the 2008 period. I’ve tried to catch up with a few people that I spoke to, but after the “hey what are you doing nowadays” conversation we didn’t have much to talk about.


The only person that I still talk to is the programmer that made my Pyroscape series. I still try and convince him to make games with me every now and then. I might peer pressure him in the near future.


Things were different. Maybe it was because I was an annoying kid and had a different attitude, but everyone seemed so uptight. People were always angry at me for posting spammy stuff or trying to be too helpful in the forums. Now the way that I use to post is the golden standard. It’s weird how the attitudes changed and everything got more relaxed.


At this point I just want newgrounds to thrive. I want the old people to come back to the site, the current users to want to stay on the site, and the new members to keep flowing. 




Q: Any users who have left that you miss or talk to outside of Newgrounds still?


A: I mentioned a bit about this above. I still talk to the Pyroscape programmer @MonoFlauto.


There was one user that I talked to quite a bit, @SonOfKirk. We were in the RRC together. He stopped coming to the site awhile back and I’ve tried to find social media accounts and stuff, but haven’t had any luck.


Will you guys find him for me?





Q: What can we expect from Fro in the future?


A: I hope to get a lot stronger and competiting. Even if I don’t ever win anything, it’s just so I can be the strongest Dad on newgrounds. I’ll fight @TomFulp for the title if I have to.


I hope to take part in writing a few funny things that hopefully get turned into something, whether it be audio, animation, game, or whatever.


The guaranteed thing is that I’ll get older and more dad like as the years pass.


Some bonus notes: I did decide to become a forum mod again. I think taking part in this interview had influenced it a bit.




Most forum users who are interviewed here are known more on the forums than elsewhere on the site. This is not the case for Fro. His name resonates with many creators on here. He has always been there to give a helping hand as one of the best moderators on the site. I am thankful to see him taking that role again. One of the best reviewers, and best members that Newgrounds could ever ask for. I am lucky enough as well as many others to call him friend. I am glad to grow up on this site alongside him.




The Interviewer is a part of Dohn's Desk Productions

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