Interview No. 144

Interview By: @The-Great-One

Today's guest is an underrated artist here on Newgrounds. Her works range from character creation one being The Stranger. However she is more of a teacher and mentor to other artists here on Newgrounds. I am most pleased to welcome, @Template88.

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

A: Newgrounds really found me more so than I found it. I remember being so young that I didn't have regular access to a computer, so it was mostly my friends that would show me the funny or gruesome stuff they found on Newgrounds as a way to pass the time when I was over at their house. This must've been when Newgrounds was actually new and exciting and home computers were not extremely common, back when AOL internet discs came in the mail and hamsterdance.com was a new thing. I remember seeing Madness, Pico, Neurotically yours and Retarded animal babies back then, though their order chronologically speaking probably doesn't make much sense as I likely saw some of these things way later. I remember being particularly attached to Neurotically Yours for some reason, but going back later and being kind of disappointed with it and having that same feeling about a lot of the older stuff I remember watching. I remember the animation and the writing for the things I liked being so much better than it actually was. There was only one video I really went back to and STILL thought it was pretty awesome, and it’s a kind of obscure video I was completely obsessed over at the time by @livingfruitvirus called A "Ball" Movie. While not perfect, I think this one still stands the test of time for both animation and writing. I joined Newgrounds back in 2008 because I wanted a chance to talk to these people making these flash animations and try to become friends with them. Alas nobody on Newgrounds actually uses the forums as far as I can tell or just about everybody has left if they ever did! The animation forum is one of the most dead forums on the site and it’s a real bummer. Livingfruitvirus come back and let’s make a sequel! I might have to make it myself, for myself at this point, I don’t think he is ever coming back.

Q: At what age did you become interested in drawing?

A: Some time during my sophomore year in high school I believe. I certainly was not somebody who ever thought of themselves as an artist or wanted to make art growing up as a younger child, it was only way after I graduated high school that I ever took it up seriously. You can pick up drawing at any point in your life!

Q: Toast-Tony, Fifty-50, CosmicDeath, and Cairos are all artists who have been here in the past and they all have made art threads to showcase their works in progress. You also have an art thread entitled Have art, will travel.. Why did you want to make your own art thread? How important would you say it is for a new artist to make an art thread when they join Newgrounds?

A: Making your own art thread is like saying 'hello' to the art community and it’s your contribution to making the site better. The forums are underused and it’s a good way to introduce yourself and get exposure while also having a casual place to get critique and dump your sketches. If you are an artist who only posts in the portal and never leaves reviews or interacts with anybody else, you are using this site wrong. People like that often wonder why they aren't getting any exposure or utility out of the site, it’s because they're using it in a superficial way without really making any kind of impact on the community. I honestly think the portal is less important to use than the actual forums for this reason. The flip side are people who only ever make one post in the forum, find that their thread isn’t going gangbusters, get discouraged and never post again. I call those one post wonders, and there are many of them. There needs to be some understanding that forums are not "fast", it may take some time for your thread to gain any momentum and to get a reply, and also unless you are posting something somewhat exceptional or out of the ordinary or are specifically asking for input, you might not get any for quite a while! I blame this on the severely outdated forum technology on this site and the resulting low forum user base. Why isn’t there a sticky thread explaining basic rules and warning against certain common problem behaviors for each specialized forum? Its 2016….hello?! The mods also seem to have almost no ability to interact with the forum to make it better. I remember when I was told I couldn’t change my thread name to have NSFW in the title and I thought how ridiculous that was.

Q: In your art thread you made quite the statement about art, criticism, and advice for new artists. Draw everyday is a bit of advice I hear from a lot of artists through The Interviewer. However when it comes to criticism you say that to improve you have to show your works to other artists. Shouldn't art be appreciated and evaluated by everyone? How subjective is art?

A: The short answer? Yes, but non-artists don't have the tools at their disposal to form an opinion that is useful for helping the artist improve. The longer answer? The non-artist is the likely target audience for artwork, so their collective opinion does matter a lot but they don't have the technical knowledge to form their opinion/critique in such a way that they can help the artist improve their work. A non-artist can say "That looks funny." "Her head is too small." "I don't like it, somethings off." "Would've been better if it wasn't so dark." "BIGGER BOOBS!" A more experienced artist can break down the entire image from the foundation, explain everything in the language that an artist understands that could be improved AND also draw over the mistakes and SHOW the artist how they could've done it better and what to improve for next time. Critiques in general are often extremely poor, and I want to change that, I promise you will see me around critiquing the artwork in the portal and giving general critique to those who ask for it and are ready. Good critique is the kindest thing you can offer another fellow artist, because it shows you care about their work on a much deeper level than just taking a brief moment to judge if their work is good or not and clicking 1 or 5 respectively. Even an artist that isn't more experienced has the advantage in being able to speak the language of the artist when giving critique and has a more experienced set of eyes for searching out details that may be missed by people who only superficially look at a drawing. There are of course exceptions, but they are not common. The most common comment is just “LOOKS GOOD” which while kind that somebody would take the time to comment, is more or less just white noise.

I think to answer the last part of your question I need to clarify what Art, art, and illustration are. I spend my time critiquing and attempting illustration and art. Capital 'A' Art is subjective. Capital 'A' Art can be anything the creator wishes it to be as long as he wishes it to be Art. A frozen pile of dog shit encased in a milk chocolate shell on a pop-sickle stick can be Art, that sort of thing can’t really be critiqued in a useful way, though it might be fun to try. People often associate the Old Masters’ artwork with Art but it is more akin to illustration because it has a set message or story to tell and has followed the rules to tell it in the most dramatic or efficient manner, while more abstract works that lack any clear message or story but still have a great presence or aesthetic are often Art or at least art. Old masters’ work practically wrote many of the rules for illustration. Illustration is practically a science and is not subjective; illustration follows rules to be better at expressing a message that everyone can easily understand and digest using a visual medium where there are wrong and right ways to do it. An under case 'a' artist is simply a somebody who enjoys drawing stuff and doesn’t think too hard about it, drawing something just for the sake of drawing can be art at the very foundation, it can always be more than mere art if the artist ever wishes it to be though. I am an illustrator, designer and an artist, but I certainly am not an Artist. A capital 'A' Artist is concerned with expressing themselves through their Art in any way they wish through any medium they wish and may not be concerned with expressing a message at all, or expressing it in an efficient manner that is easily digestible and understood, there are rules they could follow but they are not beholden to follow them for success. Artists may not need to follow any rules but they can still adopt some to be an Artist, an Illustrator or Designer, casual artist or any other kind of skillset they could want. It can all overlap and mix and some of the greatest examples of Art and illustration in history have mixed qualities of multiple fields or disciplines and approaches. I spend a lot of my time critiquing pornography because it’s purely Illustration and can objectively be made to be better, and often the mistakes made by beginners are very easy to see and point out and understand. Plus there are many mediocre pornographers that post here on this site. The worst is when pornographers think their pornography is Art and refuse to follow the basic rules, leading to terrible pornography and a stubborn attitude about improving.

Q: Improving your illustrations (Hell) I believe is a topic that should be immortalized or at the very least be a sticky thread on the Art Forum. It takes the beauty of being an artist and hits it with reality. What made you want to come out and say this?

A: There’s a lot of assumptions and misinformation out there that targets artists and illustrators that is assumed or proliferated by non-artists and beginner artists. I seek to mitigate this through education. One of the biggest myths is “talent”, the false idea that there is some magical spark inside your mind or soul that either makes it possible for you to be an artist or not. The truth is anybody can be an artist and that it’s a learned skill just like any other. I started out drawing stick figures when I was in high school, which evolved into noodle people, which evolved into bad anime people, which evolved into what I draw today. This sort of progression is pretty normal. For some people who are very clever in understanding the rules of drawing or find it something so interesting they think about it a lot or practice it more, they might skip some of those steps, that doesn’t mean they have some superior god given magical ability, it means they figured out one facet of drawing faster because it interested them more. My figures will keep evolving and becoming better because I keep drawing and trying to improve and figure out what I am doing wrong and that’s all anybody else ever needs to do. Anybody can do this, really, anybody (even shadman did it!). Another myth is that drawings appear instantaneously out of thin air, (it takes me several days to ink and color one of my figures) and that artists are just bored out of their minds waiting around for some non-artist to talk to them all day and give them their great new idea so they can draw it and have something GOOD to finally do. I see this sort of behavior from non-artists all the time, in the prices they expect to pay for art (WELL below minimum wage), and in their pitching ideas or requesting artwork for no monetary compensation at all! (DO ALL MY WORK FOR FREE, ALL THE RECOGNITION YOULL GET IF MY PROJECT DOESN’T BOMB IS ALMOST LIKE BEING PAID ISNT IT?!) There is little else you could do to an artist or illustrator that would be as rude as suggesting their work is not worth anything at all! Of course they don’t do this on purpose or with such a malevolent intent but they do it out of ignorance, and the only cure for ignorance is education, or death, but until I learn to manifest deadly bolts of arcane energy through the internet, education will have to do. There’s more education to be had, but I’d rather not fill up your interview with it.

Q: Looking through your art, you tend to draw more characters than anything else. It seems as though you take a stance of drawing your characters in geometrical shapes first then shaping them into beings. It's like you draw as if you're molding clay. Is this your approach or am I missing the mark entirely?

A: There are many methods used to construct a figure and I am still figuring out what’s best for me. You might be confused because in ‘Improving your Illustrations (hell)’ I was trying to express how one might deconstruct a figure and understand them better by replacing the complex shapes their eyes see with imaginary simple shapes when one attempts to draw a figure. I don’t say, take a sphere and then whittle it down to a human pelvis. I use something similar to what’s called a “mannikin frame” to lay down the gesture then build upon that with (somewhat) human anatomy. A mannikin frame is basically an advanced stick figure that is similar to those posable wooden puppets you find in art shops, only it’s a virtual mannequin frame that lives in my mind’s eye that I can draw easily in any position. It’s a very important mental tool for an artist to develop to draw from imagination!

Q: The one piece by you that made me want to see everything you've doen is entitled Belial-Abaddon. You stated that...

"Abaddon whispers hopeless truths to slay and corrupt the wise -- I know them well."

I love the imagery here with the two demons combined into this skull with amazing fire eyes. There seems to be a story behind this piece though. Would you care to share it?

A: Really the only story to be had here is that @JackDCurleo agreed to do an art trade with me and so far my process with art trades is “Draw one of my original characters and I’ll draw one of yours.” He had two choices for me to pick from and they both looked similar, so I figured I would just combine them into a new being. It seemed to work out. I actually have no idea what names his OC’s had so I just made some up and gave it a little lore. If he minded he didn’t really say anything to me about it.

Q: My favorite piece by you is entitled The Stranger. I love the idea of space being inside the character's cape. It all around just looks really cool! How did you come up with this design?

A: Honestly? Modified Morgan le’Fay from DC comics + Cool space cloak effect. I didn’t reference her directly or anything but she was totally what I was thinking about when I made this, I always thought she looked so cool. The character was supposed to be some dark void divinity thing and what shows dark “voidness” better than space? but she ended up looking too weak and human so The Stranger was born.

Q: When it comes to writing, we have all of these programs and computers that make writing easier. I've always stated though when the pen and paper are replaced will be the day that I am done as a writer. We would agree on this at some point because you believe that people should instead draw by hand on paper or on a tablet than draw using a program. I can understand why you would believe this, but could you explain to our readers why this is important?

A: I actually don’t understand this question at all lol. Drawing on paper or using a tablet to learn how to draw is the same as long as you are comfortable with them as a medium. When you use a tablet though you have to draw using a program….what program you pick is likely going to change the look of your art, so picking the right program for the kind of work you want to make is important. I never learned to draw using traditional media and I think it actually hurt me by making my understanding of depth and form slower, so for a beginner I would probably suggest they learn the fundamentals using pencil and paper unless they really want a head start being familiar with digital art programs and using a tablet. People who stick with traditional media and then try using a tablet later often hate it until they get used to it, and then they love it. So plan accordingly.

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

A: I defined that stuff in relative detail in a previous question. Basically though, it’s all bullshit. Illustration and animation is where it’s at, hey-o!

Q: When it comes to your art, where do you begin? How does the creative process start and when does the creation become finished?

A: It starts when there is interest, when you think of an idea and it ends when you are satisfied with it. It may never end. Such is drawing and design.

Q: What can we expect from Template88 in the future?

A: I’m trying to make the art forum and portal slightly better places for people to be, that I am sure I can do. I would like to make Newgrounds as a whole a better place in general but I am only one person and my contribution is a small drop of hard water in a sea of piss, blood and god knows what else.

You should expect more binary character drawings from me in the art portal, perhaps a couple of one shot comics, lots of art forum/general/newspost posts (on other people’s pages) and art critiques.

A goal this year is to make an animation describing what tropes to avoid as a beginning artist and some general starting out tips. Any art advice I typically give to only beginners/beginner intermediates as I don’t consider myself that good of a teacher or artist, but I have a lot of passion about art and mostly know what a person needs to do to make better illustrations! So if you think I can offer your gallery or a single piece a critique all you need to do is ask, but be ready for some harsh realities.

Out of all the artists I have come across, I must admit, Template88 has been one of the more interesting ones. She appears to be more of a teacher than an artist. This is not a passion of hers, but a skill, one she has adapted and refined over many years. I can honestly say if you're looking for a proper critique on your art, you should go to her immediately.

Interview No. 143

Interview By: @The-Great-One

Today's guest has been with us once before. When he was last with us he gave us works such as Dollar and Wii Are Sold Out. He has been on a bit of a hiatus, but he has continued his works and brought us American Politics and Donald 'n Gang. I am pleased to welcome back, @SardonicSamurai.

Q: The last time you were with us nearly seven years ago. We spoke about a movie called Stamper N' Johnny. You seemed to have disappeared for the remainder of that time and did not return until 2010. Why the long absence?

A: It was around this point in time that I graduated from college. I had an associates in Information Tech, and needed to look in to furthering my education. Unfortunately, I soon realized I could not get the financial assistance required to continue on to a Bachelor’s degree. I tried for a year to find a job that was NOT an unpaid internship, but to no avail. To be quite honest, I was pretty depressed at the time. You’re told that if you do well in school and in college you’ll find yourself in a decent paying job. I felt that I wasted several years of my life getting a degree that I couldn’t possibly progress further with financially. Not only that, but I was supposed to fly out to Pico Day around that time and had to cancel. Apparently, a girl I had been seeing at the time had Mono... I thought I had a very long winded flu, until the day of my flight, in which I got very sick trying to rush around to catch my flight. Funny note: the time I took off of work to go to Pico Day was the very first paid vacation I ever had. I ended up spending my vacation, and the following couple of weeks later, sick as a dog. My “return” to Newgrounds was never the same. Missing Pico Day was kind of the last straw. I felt like everything was against me at that point. I wasn’t nearly as motivated as I was, less active in the forums, and fell out of other forms of social media.

Q: Your return would be brought to us through a movie called IMMA BE(E). You said it was because you hate this song. Last you were here you stated that you enjoy venting through animation. What is the name of the song that has annoyed you? Would you say that you still vent through animation?

A: The song in question is “Imma Be” by the Black Eyed Peas. At the time I made the animation, the song was all over the radio, and I didn’t understand its popularity. Half of the song is just some guy saying “Imma Be”! During one of my drives to work it came on the radio, and I just pictured a bee rapping about himself. It’s really as simple as that! A lot of the animations I come up with are spur of the moment, not very well thought out catastrophes. I generally make the animations to entertain myself and to vent, but it always makes me happy to see that others enjoy them too!

Q: Gramma's Halloween is absolutely hilarious! How did you come up with this character and will we see more of her in the future?

A: Most of anything I create spawns from a voice I come up with. I spend an unhealthy amount of time talking to myself, seeing what kind of sounds and voices I can come up with. I believe the character was inspired by the grandma in Squidbillies. I love the idea of a slutty yet sex deprived, easily aggravated old woman, ha. I can actually talk like the Squidbillies grandma (at least I believe so), but I wanted to make her sound more soft and caring. Her visual and demeanor is more shared with Granny from the Looney Tunes, however. As far as seeing more of her? I never really thought about it actually. It was another one of those “spur of the moment” things. So planning to use her again kinda goes against that pattern? I can say maybe though!

Q: American Politics talks about political ads on television and how you don't like them. I honestly thought this movie would have expanded a bit further than it did. What can you tell us about politics that you don't like? Will we see anymore political satire from you in the future?

A: There were a lot of political ads on the radio and on television that annoyed me around that time. It was between John Kasich and Ted Strickland for Governor of Ohio. (Thus the last name “Kasland”, a combination of the two). From what I remember, both of the candidates ran smear campaigns against one another. That’s generally what politics is about. They barely ever talk about what they plan to do. They’re more interested in bashing their opponents, and I find it disgusting. Not to mention you can barely ever trust what any candidate is saying. It’s just tiring. I ended up stopping the toon because I felt my point was made. No matter what you do (in politics), anything you do will be caught, repurposed, and used against you. Even doing an animation ABOUT politics was tiring, so I doubt I’ll do more political cartoons… Scratch that… Trump is running isn’t he? He’s a damn gold mine for content. I’ve actually thought about doing something on him but I’m not sure!

Q: You would participate in a collab called Happy Birthday Joy!!, a birthday tribute to CosmicDeath. Unfortunately this came out after I had interviewed CosmicDeath. How did this collab come together? How do you know CosmicDeath? What did she think about it?

A: Oh man, it’s been so long! Most of everyone I knew from the old Paltalk days, where we would chat about newgrounds or whatever else we wanted! I honestly don’t remember how it came about! As you’re aware, I have a shit memory, so my guess is it was probably another spur of the moment thing! Regardless, it was very fun to be a part of!

Q: And now we come to the part of the interview where I have to say... that I hate you. Shape Up. The writing and voice acting for this was very good, it started off funny and slowly became pretty tense and serious. The part where I hate you is that it abruptly ended. Why did it just end?

A: Another shape cartoon! I never really made a shape cartoon until this one actually (since “Stamper ‘N Johnny wasn’t really about shapes after all) They’re surprisingly fun to make since you can only use basic shapes and colors to tell a story. I felt it was funnier to end it as abruptly as I did to be honest! The toon was at its grand climax: Green was potentially dying, Pink was on the verge of a mental break down, the police had no idea what to do, and then BOOM, end. Does green die? Will the brothers recover from this traumatic incident? Find out next time! Actually I just didn’t know how to continue making the toon funny and felt the ambulance showing up would ruin everything, so I just stopped, ha.

Q: When Sarkazm was here we talked about LUCKY DAY FOREVER. A movie that you contributed your voice to. How did you come to work on this movie? Can you tell us anything about working with Sarkazm?

A: This was the first time I really voiced in any kind of cartoon! I was so excited to work with him! I was the voice of the Television/ Announcer of Why We Love the Great Lottery! Sarkasm was looking for voice actors and asked the Newgrounds community for tryouts. I jumped on the opportunity and was very lucky to be chosen for the part! I still wish I did more voice acting, but even at that time it was VERY hard to do as I still lived at home and lived in a rather noisy environment. I now live by myself in my own studio so I hope that changes!

Q: When Jonnyethco was here we talked about Prostitute Mickey and when HeRetiK was here we talked about Sickey Mouse. You join these two for The Interviewer with your latest movie Donald 'n Gang. What made you want to make a Disney parody? Will we see more Disney stuff in the future?

A: I actually met Jonnyethco at Pico Day last year! I can’t say if he remembers talking with me, as it was brief. There were a few people outside the office talking about his animation, and so a couple people started doing their impressions as well (So obviously I joined in. I can’t help myself sometimes). People said I was pretty damn good at it, so I was obviously delighted! I’ve actually been told that a few times. Donald Duck was one of the very first voices I learned to do a looong time ago. When friends started watching my cartoons on Newgrounds, they would tell me that I needed to make something with Donald doing something vulgar. The conversations I had at Pico Day, and a few others motivated me to make a Disney themed cartoon!

Q: When last we spoke you were a Forum Moderator. You are a Forum Moderator no longer. Why?

A: Nothing juicy, sadly! Just inactivity! Moderating was exhausting at times anyway. Constant messages of “Why am I banned?”, “Mister Police man come save this thread!”, or anything else really would get annoying rather quickly. Not saying being a Moderator is a bad thing, but it’s just not my thing. But I guess I do it well? I tend to be given Moderator privileges for other things, ha!

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

A: I can’t say for sure. I’ve learned that life is unpredictable. No matter what I say or do, I’ll never know what the hell is going to happen. It can be a fun, albeit rough, ride. I PLAN to make more animations. I WANT to do more voice work. I’ve made friends with people that are rooting for me. I have started backgrounds on another animation, so hopefully I’ll have another toon out in the next few months! I’ll also be at Pico Day again this year (So I’ll be even MORE motivated!) Sorry if this isn’t a very clear answer, but it’s an honest one!

I was attracted to SardonicSamurai's animation when I saw him vent through his craft. However he has shown that he is still a wonderfully funny storyteller. Hopefully he has returned to Newgrounds to stay here for much longer and help us expand even further.

Interview No. 142

Interview By: @The-Great-One

Today's guest I have been listening to for quite sometime now and am just now getting around to interviewing. He is a musician from the Audio Portal who has bounced from genre to genre and mostly works with Vocaloid. His works have ranged Pleasure, to Steam's Wonderful Contraptions, and to Perfumer's Perfect Fumes. I am pleased to welcome @steampianist.

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

A: I find out about Newgrounds in 2008. I saw my brother playing a game called Pico School in Newgrounds and it was about shooting other students in a school and it looked so silly and funny and I found out there were animations too so I would just casually watch some flash animation using my brother’s account hehe. The first animation I saw was “There She Is”. I decided to make an account and join Newgrounds in 2012 because I was so sick of making videos just to upload my music in Youtube and Soundcloud is boring, so I decided I’d try Newgrounds plus you can play loops so to me that was really neat.

Q: One thing that is important to these interviews are people. People influence our creations in life. You have quite a few that I want to know about. Who is Arjen Lucassen and what about his music inspires you?

A: Arjen Lucassen is a multi-instrumentalist and mastermind behind Ayreon. When I first heard Ayreon it totally blew my mind because it was something totally different for me and I really love his instrumentation one example of his songs would be “Carried by the Wind” where it feature this really catchy theme and another would be “The First Man On Earth” which I may have quoted a melody in a certain vocaloid song of mine. But what really amazes me about Arjen Lucassen is that it’s all him, I mean the ideas, the composition, and arrangement, all him; he’s a genius and I guess that is how Arjen inspires me to compose. Another band would be Abney Park and Beats Antique where their aesthetic made me want to pursue steampunk but I wanted it to present it with sound rather than fashion and to name a few others, Edvard Grieg, Erik Sate, Rammstein, Iron Maiden’s Stever Harris, Korn, and Raymond Scott are my biggest inspiration in music as well.

Q: I know you've said that when you met morbid-morsel that it is a long and weird story. Would you please share with us who morbid-morsel is and how you two came to meet?

A: Well one thing to know about TravelBySheep or morbid-morsel is that she does not like sharing too much of her personal life ONLINE or in real life, so all I can say is we met when I moved into her town and strangely enough became friends, I say strangely because I don’t think she liked me very much at first hehe. As for the music thing well, one day, she told me about vocaloid and that she found this one vocaloid, Oliver, really cute and I proposed if she wanted I can make music for Oliver. She agreed and that’s how we started.

Q: You are called steampianist so naturally you create beautiful music with the piano, which we'll be getting to soon. At one point though you seem to have lost a bit of love for the piano. One person came along though that made you love the piano again and she was Amanda Palmer. What about the piano did you lose love for and what was it about Amanda Palmer's music that made you love the piano again?

A: Ah yeah… I did. I think this was somewhere in 1st year high school and I was a part of the “Abbey Band Club”. I just felt like the piano/keyboard was so old fashioned. I mean, I played a lot of classical and old standard jazz music but I felt like I wasn’t relevant in the band club. I mean sure there are electro bands at the time but I didn’t have a synthesizer and in the band club no one liked electro music anyway. They mostly played punk, OPM (Original Pinoy Music) and sappy ballads and some metalcore, which I’m not fond of. But in the end I just took my guitar and formed a punk band. It was fun. then one day my cousin told me about the cabaret punk duo “Dresden Dolls”, he thought I’d be interested in it cos I was in a punk band and played piano, so he told me it just consisted of Drums (Brian Viglione) and Piano (Amanda Palmer). So he lent me his bootleg copy of the Dresden Doll’s “Yes, Vigrinia” (I’m so sorry Amanda), and when the first track played, Sex Changes, That piano riff was just heavenly and the drums came in and it was all just epicness for me so naturally I wanted to play her songs and I was back on the piano with a renewed passion and became a fan of Dresden Dolls and Amanda Palmer but if you’re going to ask if I was inspired to form a drum and piano duo in the band club? Well no I wasn’t. I still played guitar in my band because no one knew who the Dresden Dolls were, singer can’t sing it, and I’m sure they don’t like it that much. It didn’t matter really I played piano again.

Q: What is Vocaloid?

A: It’s a vocal synthesizer where a 40 year old Japanese man records syllables and stuff and then the sound engineers tweaks it to sound like a 15 year old Japanese girl and my source of youtube revenues. I’m kidding. But it is a vocal synthesizer developed by Yamaha where voice actors/singers record their voice and is SYNTHESIZED into a vocaloid voice bank.

Q: Your first song on Newgrounds is entitled He Marches (to golgatha). You describe it as the feeling and experience of Jesus Christ carrying the cross, twistedly exaggerated. I can most certainly see this image, but is this the image you had while making this song? Also looking back on it today are you still proud of it? Are there any changes you would have made to it?

A: Well, actually, this was supposed to be for a visual novel that did not pull through. Initially I was imagining a world similar to Silent Hill because that was what the artists wanted. So I try to portray that image with sound and that time I didn’t have those Kontakt Libraries and shit. I had to use FL STUDIO’S stock samples and VST’s and listening to it again I think I did a good job with those stock samples haha. So I guess yes, I am proud of this old track. I’d probably replace some samples here with better sounding samples from Kontakt but I can’t because I lost the .flp file of this song along with other older songs.

Q: When I found out about you I was listening to your most recent stuff. While preparing for this interview I came across one of my top three favorite songs by and that is Pleasure. I must admit when I saw the genre tag as Jazz I was expecting just some smooth jazz with a little bit of industrial flair that you tend to have. I was surprised with something more Copacabana with just a hint of a mad scientist laboratory in a volcano. What was the process you took into bringing this to life? What made you want to tackle the Jazz genre?

A: Copacabana you say? Ah, well, I can’t really recall what was going through my head while composing but whenever I make jazz music I guess, it’s usually improvised and this was composed for a character theme and the artist wanted it… Slutty? And sexy? IDK. I think I did a very bad job at this hahaha, I’m actually not sure what would make for a sexy sound, so I thought SAX? Maybe. And some smooth jazz and I thought why not add some moaning samples for that “sluttiness”. Listening to this again I think this has to be my most random track. What made me want to tackle jazz you ask? Well I used to play in a showband/variety band where we play a lot of jazz standard, “Nearness of You”, “Ain’t Misbehavin’”, “The Way You Look Tonight”, “Spain”, “All Blues”, “Milestones” and a bunch of Bossa Nova music. I guess I picked up some jazz chords and decided I should try and compose some simple ones.

Q: Evokation I see brings a parallel of two worlds together. The ritual dances of the tribes and the club scenes of today. Where the youth are both dancing to music. It seems like tribal themes work very well for contemporary dance music of today. Where did you get the inspiration to take tribal ritual music and convert it to techno?

A: These are some old tracks… Well I was inspired by the occult idea where certain high frequency sounds can make you see certain astral beings. I guess you can say this is an attempt of that. Did you see any astral beings? Frustration also made me compose this track because at the time I wasn’t really good at making techno/trance music. I didn’t know how to achieve certain sounds or transitions so Instead of using the usual synth and samples that makes techno/trance I decided ill just use some choirs and some tribal drums and use some basic synths and that’s pretty much it.

Q: If anyone asked me the best way to describe what your music is like, I would instantly send them a link to Steam's Wonderful Contraptions. From what I've heard it seems to sum up a lot of what your music represents. Sometimes happy, sometimes sad, sometimes dark, sometimes weird, but all around in some way fun. There are so many components going on in this song that I had to listen to it multiple times to catch everything and I still don't think I have caught everything in it yet. What is everything that makes up this song?

A: I really like making music with erratic mood changes but recently I’ve gone simpler, I guess. I’m not sure what you mean by everything but if you’re asking about the instrumentals, well I was very specific in the arrangement. I wanted to include things that won’t usually fit with the other instruments and I wanted to avoid traditional percussion, with a few exemptions, and of course keeping the whole piece meshed well with each other. As for the Image I’m trying to portray, I wanted to give the listeners an impression that the music is being played by a huge contraption/machine. So I made sure every instrument or sample here is in constant motion. One instrument plays a melody, the other instruments plays another. Percussion and noise samples constantly playing in the background to really give the constant motion. As for the emotional aspect of this song, I admit it does not have any or at least I did not stay in one mood so it can give the impression that it does not convey any emotion. It was supposed to appeal to your imagination.

Q: Real Life Absurdities simply makes me laugh every time I hear it because the visual images are different for each listen. What were the inspirations behind this psychotic piece? I imagine the process in making this fast pace song would be difficult.

A: I love the music/score in cartoons great examples would be the old Fleischer cartoons, The Animaniacs Theme, The Tiny Toons intro and the compositions of Raymond Scott and Carl Stalling. These are all my inspiration for this piece and, no, it wasn’t hard. In fact it felt natural when composing this. Every Idea just clicked.

Q: My second favorite song by you is one that just puts a smile on my face and at one point a couple of months ago I needed a smile while pushing through this interview and that is The Umbrella Salesman. The lyrics, vocals, and music were all just absolutely wonderful to the ears. This would be a good time now to ask who is Oliver? morbid-morsel wrote the lyrics, did you have any input on her lyrics and did she have any input on your melody? Do you know the inspiration behind this song and its meaning?

A: Oliver is an choir type English voicebank for the vocaloid engine created by PowerFX. And, no, morb did not have any input, not because she can’t but because she would rather not because I think she trusts that I will compose something decent and I did not have any input in her lyrics because I trust her as well. I’m not sure what the inspiration behind the story is, but morb told me she just wanted a story with pretty umbrellas and that she just wanted to draw umbrellas and also she was inspired by the father in the movie Charlie and The Chocolate factory. She told me he looked sad and depressed and so I guess that’s what prompted her to write the umbrella salesman.

Q: You got to team up with ZipZipper when making three songs. They are Are You Afraid?, Rainfall, and The Mouse Went Up The Clock. How did you two meet up and what parts did you play in making these songs with him?

A: I found out about ZipZipper when I was participating in NGADM (Newgrounds Audio Death Match) Iwas pitted against him. So naturally I checked out who I’m up against and I just instantly loved his work so after NGADM I thought maybe I can collaborate with ZipZipper in next year’s NGADM which we did and made this 3 songs. For “Are you Afraid?” I did the main motif and we sort of split the song in sections where we exemplify ourselves and the ending is a combination of both our ideas and of course ZipZipper wrote and sang the lyrics. “Rainfall”, I think this time ZipZipper did the theme and I just added the bassline and a couple of embellishments and for the last track “The Mouse Went Up The Clock”, well, the first half was by ZipZipper and the other half by me and ZipZipper ended it with an atonal texture.

Q: Secrets of Wysteria is a very creepy song, listening to the lyrics it is no secret that there is a story here. You've stated that you and morbid-morsel have a fascination with serial killers and sociopaths. This is a theme I believe we have in common. What made you two want to write a song about one of them, one being Albert Fish?

A: Well it was mostly me who wanted to write a song about Albert Fish. I think morb was just going along with me and in my opinion I think Albert Fish is the Epitome of what a serial killer is. He was so horrendous to the point he just didn’t seem human at all I guess I just wanted to show my listener what a serial killer truly is and that is someone who has lost his/her humanity and became this horrible creature and so I thought this would make a great scary Halloween song and the best part is that he was real.

Q: My favorite song of all time by you absolutely without question is Perfumer's Perfect Fumes. It is amazing that this program can handle the Heavy Metal genre so well. If I'm not mistaken I sense a backing orchestration behind the heavy metal instrumentation in this song and it compliments extremely well. Tell me, every step that came into making this beautiful song. I want to know everything! In other words, what was the process you took into bringing this song together?

A: This was actually a collaboration with another Vocaloid Producer named Momocashew. Momocashew is one of the few who uses/tunes Oliver very well and her musical works with the voicebank is amazing so naturally when I first used Oliver I’d always end up listening to her works get some ideas and guess on how she was able to make Oliver sound that way. I recommend listening to her Pumpkin series if you’re curious about Oliver. Anyway she wrote the lyrics and tuned Oliver in this song. The song is based on “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer” thus the title. I’m not sure what made her want to write a song about Perfume, I guess she just likes the book. I composed the instrumental and got my band mate mark to play the guitar and Abe who played bass for me. This was actually my first metal track so for me mixing it was a bit of a challenge for me because the guitar was much much heavier and I found that the distortion guitar seem to drown out the bass and vocals doesn’t seem to sit well on the track but eventually with a couple of youtube videos and asking people here in Newgrounds helped me a lot in making finishing this track. For me this was a taxing song to make because before I got a guitarist I have asked a lot of guitarists to play for me but all seem to be either turned off by the idea of a vocaloid singing or the song was too hard. Fortunately my bandmate agreed and can play the song but he lived so far away from where I am living so recording took a week to finish because I remember he had gigs somewhere at around 6PM and I get there at around there 3PM in the afternoon and didn’t have a car so I had to commute with my recording equipment hahaha. It was the same thing for the bassist but the bassist only took 2 days to finish. Despite all this tiresome effort, I’m very proud of this track and I hope to make more metal music in the future.

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

A: I’ll keep my answer simple. Music can be defined in anyway. But for me personally it is the best form of self-expression and because I think I can connect with people better both on an emotional and intellectual level.

Q: You've been through a lot of different programs throughout your musical creation. For anyone looking to make music, what programs would you recommend they use? What equipment? Any advice you have for them?

A: Well it doesn’t really matter what program/DAW or equipment you use. What matter is how well you use them I personally prefer FL Studio simply because I find it easy to use and I think it’s a great DAW. Now I really can’t give any advice when it comes to recording because I still consider myself an amateur when it comes to recording and I’m not much of an audiophile either. I just have simple set up of a laptop a mixer and earphones. I can however give 4 rules I follow when it comes to mixing and mastering

1. When mixing, make sure your mixer level is at least half in level to avoid any clipping in mastering.

2. Always use a 20hz high cut off in all of the instruments in the mix to avoid any muddiness in the track.

3. Pan. Never put all your instrument in just the center your track can sound whole if you fill the audio spectrum.

4. Never overuse any effect, chorus, reverb, delay and flanger etc. unless you have a creative purpose for it.

Q: When it comes to writing your music without really much to inspire you, where does it start? Where does the first note come down and where does the song end?

A: Well usually when I’m not inspired or just not up to composing a piece of music I usually just don’t. But I am in a business where I compose for other people so when I’m uninspired and I’m required to compose I just sort of pull out this typical set of chord like a template and just improvise on it and just keep adding into it until I can’t think of anything to add or take away.

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

A: Well me and TravelBySheep are slowly working on a new vocaloid album and I notice I’m getting a lot of fans who play Geometry Dash maybe I can make something for them specifically for the level creators and upload it here in Newgrounds.

I've been listening to steampianist since about late 2013 early 2014. He is an absolutely amazing musician who I have put off on interviewing for too long. When I went through his full scope of music I was damned impressed. His skills are certainly wonderful and he is expanding further and further into his form. He reminds me of when Back-From-Purgatory was here, a traveling bard.

Interview No. 141

Interview By: @The-Great-One

Today's guest only has two movies here on Newgrounds, but his works have most certainly been recognized here, but outside of Newgrounds as well. Many of you here mainly know him for There's a Man in the Woods. Today I am privileged to welcome @JacobStreilein.

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

A: I knew about Newgrounds growing up. Seems like its always been pretty big as long as I’ve been on the internet. I actually didn’t join, though, until Tom Fulp emailed me about allowing a wider range of animated films into the site, which was right after I’d made Swelter.

Q: At what age did you become interested in drawing?

A: I’m not quite sure. I remember being excited about it in Kindergarten when we got to write and illustrate our own books, which our teacher helped actually bind for us. Seeing my drawings in a finished, well presented context definitely made me want to do more. The next big moment was probably in second grade when I did a drawing of a frog for a teacher and lots of my classmates complimented me on it. I think that was the first time I remember thinking I had done a “good” drawing, which was fun.

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

A: One of the upperclassmen was interested in animation when I got to high school, and I think I started looking into it just because I heard my teacher talking about it. My art teacher actually created a short film screening so that my classmate had a reason to learn storyboarding in preparation for college applications, and one of my good friends and I made this really dumb cartoon and submitted it. After that screening I started to find pencil tests and short films online and slowly built a real interest in it. I think the scales tipped towards wanting to actually study it my junior year of high school.

Q: Who would you say are your influences?

A: Oh man, so many. CalArts was the biggest introduction of foreign and exciting work that I’ve probably ever had, so my most direct influences are my classmates. Jason Reicher, Taylor Price, Dylan Forman, Ryan Matias, Vitaliy Strokous, Nelson Boles. I feel like this list could go on forever-- Ian Worrel, Romney Caswell, Phil Vose, Eddie West, Elle Michalka, Eliza Ivanova, Evan Spiridellis, Chris O’Hara, Tyler Chen.

And then kind of wider scope— I’ve kind of consumed a lot of work from Masaaki Yuasa, Euan Uglow, Egon Shiele, Paul Rand, Nas, Eminem, Outkast, Kendrick Lamar, Gary Larson, Bill Patterson, Paul Thomas Anderson, Guy Ritchie, Edgar Wright, Paul Felix.

This is a hard question haha, sorry.

Q: When and how did you become employed to Jib Jab?

A: I sort of started the Summer of 2012 in the internship program, and have worked for them on and off ever since, either through that same program, freelance work, or my current full-time position that I started in August of 2014. I met those guys when they came to Calart’s Portfolio day and I had an interview with them based on my work.

Q: Your first submission to Newgrounds is a little movie called Swelter. A story of a father and son looking for water in a post-apocalyptic world. What was the inspiration behind Swelter and do you feel you might expand on it in the future?

A: I think it was actually just an evolution of an idea about the summer in my hometown being obscenely hot, especially after a fairly temperate Californian school year. I originally had this idea that it was so hot outside that fire itself melted. It kind of took a different direction as I boarded through it. I don’t have any plans to expand on it in the future, no.

Q: Punctuwool I find to be a telling of appreciating the little things in a hilarious way. I loved the creativity behind this. Representing the clouds as curious sheep and a little man in a helicopter to guide them. How did you come up with such an idea?

A: I was trying to think of ideas when I was writing Swelter and I did this tiny drawing on a Post-It of a sheep cloud with lightning for legs just bouncing around. At the time I didn’t know how I wanted to expand it, but it came up again when I needed an idea for my third-year film at school.

The appreciation of little things was just in response to working too hard/ too much and not really having time to have fun, so naturally I worked too hard and had no fun while I made it. Just kidding it wasn’t quite that bad.

Q: My absolute favorite by you has to be Theres a Man in the Woods. You stated it was based off of a rumor that went around your own elementary school. Are there any parts of this movie that are true? What made you want to present it as a poem? What made you want to bring this story to animation?

A: The only part of the movie that is true is the section about his description. Batman ears, yellow eyes, a shotgun, and a lady’s leg. Those are the details I remember from 4th grade. We did have a honeysuckle bush, but nobody was hoarding the flowers and no parents or teachers actually ever got involved. I did have a friend who tried to convince us that a screwdriver in a Ziploc bag full of cherry Kool-Aid was actually the killer’s murder weapon in a bag of blood. He planted it on the playground and also found it— he was part of the inspiration of Sid. But that visual description of the killer just seemed fun to draw, so naturally I wanted to try and work it into an animated film.

I had been studying a lot of rap music, specifically Kendrick Lamar, Outkast, and Eminem, and reading a lot about rap flow the summer before that year. I hadn’t written anything for an actor before and was not super confident in my writing skills so I figured It might at least be interesting if I tried to write in rhyme, even if the writing wasn’t great.

Q: What advice would you have to give for artists looking to become animators?

A: Draw, watch films, make comics. Just keep drawing, mostly. I always feel like I can draw until I realize that I can’t again. Its a rough cycle. Keep drawing.

Q: What can we expect from Jacob Streilein in the future?

A: Oooh I don’t know. I’ve been doing a lot of stuff at Jib Jab that people will see soon. I’d like to make more shorts—I really like the format and I don’t know if I have the attention span for a long form project. Otherwise, I post most of my drawings on my blog here: jacobstreilein.tumblr.com.

Jacob is a brilliant animator and writer who has a lot to offer in terms of his animation. However I feel that he has a sense of there isn't enough time to truly make everything he wants to share with all of us. He is indeed absolutely brilliant though and I hope we see more of his works. Hopefully he'll enter next year's Newgrounds Annual Tournament of Animation on here.

Interview No. 140

Interview By: @The-Great-One

Today's guest is the winner of The 2015 Newgrounds Annual Tournament of Animation. He has graced us with works such as Ten Facts, Surviving the Future, The Ice Cream Man, and Little Snails. I am pleased to welcome, @TheSilleGuy.

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

A: As a child I would frequently watch flash animations on the internet because I already had a big interest in cartoons. Some of the first flash animations I remember watching was "There she is!", "I love death" and several episodes of Eddsworld. These flash animations were however embedded on several Swedish sites, and so I did not really visit Newgrounds that much. It wasn't until I seriously started getting into animation that I created an account in 2012.

Q: At what age did you become interested in drawing?

A: I have been interested in drawing for as long as I remember. I can recall sitting inside, alone in kindergarten drawing animals while the other kids where outside playing football. If you want an exact age then I was maybe 1 or 2 years old.

Q: Informative Man is about a man who goes around answering people's questions in a strange, but hilarious fashion. Whose idea was this and will we see more Informative Man in the future?

A: The original consept for Informative man was that he was supposed to be on some kind of infomercial on TV, but this evolved into a deranged kids show where he answers questions. I honestly think he is a very interesting character, and for a while I really wanted to make a sequel to the video. I really don't know when I'll have the time to make one though.

Q: DuckTales - Treasure Hunt is a parody of DuckTales. I love how the voices don't even come close to matching the original characters and the ending is priceless. When did you become introduced to DuckTales and what made you want to make a parody of it?

A: Oh man! Ducktales was one of my favorite shows as a kid! It was on every Saturday morning on TV and loved watching it. I wanted to make a parody because I thought it would be fun to do a weird little skit version of it. I thought it would be funny if the voices where super exaggerated or just not accurate at all to the original cartoon and I guess it payed off.

Q: One of the last times I asked this question was when I interviewed Sexual-Lobster. Your movie The Ice Cream Man... what the fuck did I just watch? Where did you get the idea for this and the song?

A: It's kind of a funny story. I wanted to do a cartoon and I was frustrated by the fact that I had no ideas. Then all of the sudden I remember randomly rapping to myself and I had a very weird ice cream man rap song out of nowhere. Then I just kind of wrote the rest of the sketch around the rap.

Q: You would contribute your voice to many entries for the Newgrounds Annual Tournament of Animation. However you would compete during the 2015 Newgrounds Annual Tournament of Animation and go on to win it. Why did you want to contribute to other animator's entries and compete yourself? How did it feel when you were announced as the winner of NATA 2015?

A: A friend of mine competed in NATA the year before and that inspired me to want to participate as well. I couldn't in 2014 because I was at that point already working on another animation, so I participated in 2015 instead. Since some fellow animator friends also participated I decided to help them out with voice acting. One of them, MCakeri, I've been friends with for a long time and we skyped together while working on our respective animations.

As for how I felt when I won: It's kind of indescribable. I had been working on Little snails, non stop for two weeks straight and I was stressed out of my mind. I was sure I was going to lose because I thought Dylans video was far superior to my own. You could guess how I felt when I won.

Q: Your first entry in NATA 2015 was entitled Telling the Truth. How did you come up with this idea for the Open Round Theme and how were you feeling about moving up the bracket?

A: At the beginning of NATA I wanted to do some more "meaningful" videos with kind of message to them, and I thought about how with the theme "10 amazing facts" reminded me of the internet and how there are so many inaccurate facts on it. I thought it would be interesting to have someone constantly telling lies and then have someone else not question them and this eventually would lead to the liar dying. It was not that popular though and I almost got left out of the competition. Because of that I felt like I was going to lose the next round.

Q: Surviving the Future would be your entry in the Novice Round. Could you tell our readers the theme for this round and how you came up with the idea for it?

A: The theme for the second round was "How I survived ______". Because of how my last video didn't turn out that well I wanted to do something completely different. Instead of doing something with a message of some sort I just wanted to do more of a cute adventure video. There's not much of a story to how I came up with the idea, I kind of just wanted to do a video about the future since the beginning of the round.

Q: My favorite animation by you is your entry in the Pro Round entitled Up in the Sky. The story for this was just absolutely beautiful. It actually made me a little teary eyed. What was the theme for this round and how did you come up with this beautiful story?

A: Haha, that's very nice of you to say! The third rounds theme was "A tragic misunderstanding" and very soon after I read the title I brainstormed an idea. I had recently read the Wikipedia article for the S. A. Andreés Arctic balloon expedition of 1897. Back in the late 1800s Norway and Denmark had explored most of the arctic. Sweden was left behind, and so a man named S. A. Andrée wanted to be the first person to reach the north pole by balloon. Andreé however ignored many of the problems with going to the north pole in a balloon, and so the mission failed and he and his two crew members died.

I thought the story was very interesting but I wanted to simplify it so it could fit into a NATA video. Originally it was going to be a man and his two crew members like what had happened, then it was a story about a man and his wife and eventually it was about two siblings. I really like how the story turned out and I really want to do more dramatic stuff like it in the future.

Q: Your entry for the final round is entitled Little Snails. I thought this was an endearing and funny movie. What was the theme for the final round? Also how did you come up with the creativity for backpacks being the snail shells?

A: "Against impossible odds" was the fourth and final theme for NATA. My video little snails went through A LOT of changes during the two days I wrote it. At first it was about humans and not snails at all, and it was going to end with the villain throwing the little girl of a cliff with her rising behind him as a giant glowing magic entity and destroying him. The "little-girl beats-the-bad-guy-to-protect-her-sister" theme was prevalent throughout the idea process but it was for a while only about humans.

It wasn't until later I sort of just spontaneously thought it could be about under water snails that it changed, and this was again changed to land snails in the final version. As for the shells as backpacks, it was just something i just thought about, it's not really any story to it, I just thought it was a cute design choice.

Q: You have one song on Newgrounds entitled Knights. It feels like being inside a techno castle with robotic knights. How come you haven't made any more music? Will we see more music from you?

A: I have actually been doing quite a bit of music since I made "Knights", though I don't think any of it is good enough to upload yet. I don't feel like I know enough about music or music theory yet. (I mostly ask people to make music for me.) That being said, I do have many ideas for songs and if I get more experience with it I will definitely upload some stuff. Otherwise it will mostly be crappy joke songs.

Q: What advice do you have to give to aspiring animators?

A: Try going outside your comfort zone! One thing I did for NATA was that I tried to do things I've never done before, and it payed off. If you don't take risks you won't evolve or get better.

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

A: I actually started work on an animation a couple days ago. It's pretty short so it will most likely be done in a month or two. I'm also developing a webcomic with two of my friends. Don't know when it will be up but hopefully soon. Finally I'm also working on a pretty big project, a short film. It will be my first animation with a budget and it will be pretty long. I have just started writing the script so it's gonna take a while to finish it.

TheSilleGuy seems to me to be another TomaMoto or RicePirate. Always willing to expand past his comfort zone. Always willing to give a helping hand, lend his voice to something, whatever he can do to help someone else's creation grow. I mostly focused on TheSilleGuy's works in this interview, but most of the other movies on his page is simply him helping others. Make no mistake though, when TheSilleGuy stands alone he is truly an animation force to be reckoned.

[ Index Page | Theme Song | Official Thread | Twitter | Google+ ]

Interview No. 139
Interview By: The-Great-One

Today's guest has been with us once before. He was here exactly one-hundred interviews before. When last we spoke we covered Pleasure Island and Angry Dog. Today we talk more about his roots in animation and the Manwhore series that has come to fruition. I am pleased to welcome back, Sexual-Lobster.

Q: It has been over five years since I interviewed you last. At the time of posting this interview it would have been exactly 100 interviews. I can safely say that when I interviewed you last I had just gotten into my own groove. Now I am firing on all cylinders. I would like to thank you for gracing me once again.

A: It's a pleasure to be here.

Q: When I started this I didn't really go through the journey an artist might take. Let's begin with yours. You have stated that once you were able to hold a crayon in your hand you began drawing. Do you know what age this might have been and what were your parents thoughts on this?

A: Directly after the phase that little people just want to put everything in their mouths. So probably 2 years old? I think they were proud and uncritical of my scrawlings. They probably still have them.

Q: When did you discover Dragonball Z and how much of an influence has Akira Toriyama had on your work?

A: When I was 16. At first I aped his style quite a lot, and it's obvious when you watch the first bunch of things I uploaded to Newgrounds. But over time, I think the thing about Dragonball Z that has had a lasting impact on me is the way the show is directed and the way action is paced. There's usually (but not always) just enough action to provide something for your eyes to look at. When I direct a scene I think about giving the audience enough fresh art and/or movement to keep them interested, but also ways and techniques to reuse animation and get the scene done in an achievable time frame. Dragonball Z provides good examples of how to tell a story on a budget, but it also fails quite often at pacing, so it provides plenty of examples of what not to do as well.

Q: At what school did you receive your Bachelor Degree in Animation from and what brought you to Griffith University?

A: The campus was the Queensland College of Art. It was the only university level course in the city at that time that had a 2D animation focus. I understand it has since become more about games and less about 2D animation, so I'm uncertain if I'd do it if I was considering a course now.

Q: You started drawing comics first, but then made the shift to animation. What made you decide to tackle animation? Do you have any advice for aspiring comic artists and artists who are interested in getting into animation?

A: I never thought it would be possible to make a cartoon by myself. But when I discovered Flash I realised I could, so I started doing it straight away. I discovered Flash pretty late because I'd been overseas on a working holiday for a few years and didn't have a computer, which is also why I was drawing a lot of comics. Animation has always been a preferable medium to me if you can manage it, so many more people are interested.

General advice...Start with small achievable projects. Draw lots, work on your anatomy. When people give you advice, think about where it's coming from and whether you need to follow it, because people love to make rules about what they do. The vast majority of rules are actually just guidelines. For more specific advice, I'd need to know more about the person.

Q: Who is Lord Zorgatron?

A: He's a dangerous, powerful, talented lizard in the 22nd century:

Q: When last we spoke we talked about your music video Dance of the Manwhore. Since then it has exploded into multiple sequels with Quest of the Manwhore, Milk of the Manwhore, Passion of the Manwhore, World's Greatest Manwhore, and World's Greatest Manwhore 2. How did all of this come to be?

A: Hmmmm I'm not sure how to answer that, it's so broad. Each project has it's own set of circumstances that causes it to be birthed. The most recent group of Fernando-centric projects is a series called Manwhore Industries, which was funded by a grant from Screen Australia and Google.

Q: One of my newly favorites by you has to be Harder, Tiffany, Harder!!. It was based on a comic jam. What comic jam was it and what made you want to bring it to animation?

A: This one I mean, just look at it. How could I not animate that? I thought it would be a really fun project and it was.  Not sure how fun it is to watch though.

Q: The last time I interviewed you the one animation that messed with me the most was Pleasure Island. Interviewing you this second time I have come across Babies. You would collaborate with TheWeebl on this animation. I only have two questions. Who wrote the song? What the fuck is wrong with you people?

A: With each collaboration with Weebl he'd send audio and I was responsible for the visuals, with occasional input from him. So all writing by him. Those projects I did for him were great practice.

Q: The Four Horsemen is a brilliant idea for a possible series with a lot of scenarios that they could fit into. Could be a commentary on different things around the world. I remember reviewing it and stating that it would be cool to see these guys meet Raptor Jesus. Will there be a series with these guys in the future? Will they meet Raptor Jesus?

A: My friends and I wrote quite a bit of material for the Four Horsemen using our comic jam writing method, and I have since tried to refine it and turn into a series concept. But for some reason no potential sequel has really stirred me to make it on my own steam. I do have a finished script where Famine must care for his young son, who he didn't know existed. I have pitched The Four Horsemen as a show concept on two occasions, no luck yet. No they won't meet Raptor Jesus.

Q: What can you tell us about the Raw Latex series?

A: It's a story about a young man coming to age in a world where everyone wears Latex forehead strap-ons. It's written by Jon Bellovin and animated by me. There's two more episodes needed to finish the series. I need a rest before doing another one.

Q: What can we expect from Sexual-Lobster in the future?

A: I'm not sure. I don't really want to talk about the financial aspect of making my animations so suffice to say that like most people I am a slave to capital and the opportunities that will arise will determine what I am able to produce. I've gained a measure of freedom by crowd funding using patreon but it doesn't look to be sustainable long term, so we'll see!

In the past I have said that Sexual-Lobster has a twisted sense of humor and a strange sense of creativity and I still stand by that. He has shown no signs of stopping since I interviewed over five years ago. I for one can only hope that he continues his works more in the future. We have seen Manwhore Industries grown throughout the years. Who knows which character will grow more in the future.

Interview No. 138

Interview By: @The-Great-One

A couple of years ago I interviewed some The Forum Regulars of Newgrounds. Two who went on to be moderators and one who still is to this day. Today we bring you some new regulars who have graced the forums. They are @Xenomit, @Bit, @KillerSkull, and @Outlaw88. They are The Forum Regulars of Newgrounds.

ANSWERS WILL BE POSTED BENEATH THE  A:  DUE TO TWO PEOPLE BEING INTERVIEWED PERSON ANSWERING WILL BE NOTED AS SO.

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

A:

Xenomit: I found newgrounds around 2008 when I was visiting with a friend. He was showing me a bunch of animations and shit and I thought they were hilarious. I occasionally visited newgrounds on and off for the next couple of years, and made my account in 2010. At the time I had no idea that I'd ever really do anything with my account, hence the uncreative and straight up plagiarized username. Xenomit is a rare mineral from a game called dark orbit that I played a lot at the time, and it was the first thing I thought of, so I went with it. I became forum active around fall of 2011, and from there newgrounds became my "home" on the internet. For the last 4 or so years, newgrounds has always been my default tab, and I always have the NG home in my leftmost tab regardless of whether or not I'm using it that day. My connection with newgrounds is more or less a compulsive habit that I don't feel like dropping.

KillerSkull: I found Newgrounds when I was real young, I can't remember how young but I remember it was shortly after I stated using the internet unsupervised. It was flash games that drew me here at first. I know I started visiting the forums in 2006 and finally made an account in 2008.

Bit: I was watching a flash parody on another site. At the end of the animation, there was a link that said "Watch the original on Newgrounds" and I thought that it would be cool to see where the original is from. I wasn't disappointed. I made an account months later. I'm not really sure why I made an account. I probably looked around the Newgrounds BBS and was pleased with what I saw.

Outlaw88: I was looking for funny things to watch and came upon the site at random. I remember the first cartoon from Newgrounds I saw was Headache. After that I found myself returning more and more. It hit me at the right time as I was still fairly new to the Internet due to not being able to afford a computer or an Internet subscription as early as my peers, so when I found something that I connected with I stuck with it. After a while I felt it was common sense for me to sign up for an account as I was visiting the site daily. A habit that I still maintain.

Q: What is it about Newgrounds that you like the most and why?

A:

Xenomit: I honestly don't know. "Xenomit" is just a character that I created in my early days on the BBS, and playing him is really, really fun. Yeah, most of the things I say are true about myself, but a lot of it is a vast exaggeration. Some of the older users know me for retardedly arguing with well received people, and some of those people know that I did that for my own pleasure. I mean yeah I know it made a lot of people think I was legitimately stupid but I had fun. I still get into them from time to time but most people know better than to bite my bait.

I guess that's what I enjoyed about newgrounds, I developed a character and had fun playing him. Now I just visit the forums every few days to make a couple posts. I think I might delete my account when I get to 20k posts.

KillerSkull: When I first signed up I really liked all the flash content on the site and I thought the community was great, even in the general BBS. Ultimately I'd say it was the BBS that pushed me to make an account and I'm glad because I started discovering other content such as the audio portal. To this day, the forums are still amusing though I don't post as much anymore, so I'd have to say the general forum is my favorite.

Bit: The open nature of Newgrounds is its best feature. Giving creators the ability to submit basically anything to The Portal has given them the creative flexibility to share some of the most ridiculous, high quality, and culture-influencing games and animations on the Internet. Even in an age where Youtube is a thing, nearly all of the best stuff is released here, which is usually the author's way of giving back to the community after getting their start here.

Outlaw88: I love that fact that there is new content every day. I'm a big fan of animation in general and being able to see some of the awesomely creative things people have made really does it for me. I also like that there are several creative outlets like the audio and art portals which really give the site a more welcoming feel for artists and viewers alike.

Q: What is it about Newgrounds that you dislike the most and why?

A:

Xenomit: It has a hard time living up to its reputation. The very first flash portal ever made, despite the title it hasn't held up over time. The fact that the BBS has been such a tight, small community for the last several years has been both a good and bad thing.

Honestly I tried to think of more to say but I couldn't think of anything else. There's not really anything that I truly dislike about newgrounds.

KillerSkull: I honestly can't say. There are various updates that I haven't liked, such as the new voting system. I'm upset that the forums aren't as active as they were when I signed up but that topic has been beaten to death so I won't go into it......

Bit: Unfortunately, the open nature of Newgrounds is falling by the wayside as Tom attempts to make the site more marketable (read: actually profitable). The consequence of making this site actually turn a profit is that controversial (and often very culturally-important) submissions are removed like the Anita Sarkeesian Game and the Sandyhook Game. I can't really fault Tom for wanting to make his site bigger, but that doesn't change the fact that it's my least favorite thing about Newgrounds.

Outlaw88: The fact that there is still an awful lot of garbage that gets passed though the voting process.

Q: What first drew you to the General Forum and why? What made you want to stay?

A:

Xenomit: It was the first non-game related forum that I joined. The first two were exclusively for two browser games, support and discussion and that sort of thing. I liked that it wasn't associated with any particular thing, the conversation freedom was great.

As for why I stayed, it made a lasting impression. I had a lot of fun, so I kept coming back, and after the fun levels started going down I stayed anyways because newgrounds had kinda become apart of me, and newgrounds actually led to a lot of really good changes in my personality.

KillerSkull: The general forum was the first forum that I actually started posting in. I don't know why but I could just have the most fun lurking and posting in the threads. I find the community to be fun to interact with and posting in a thread and then being able to come back to it an hour later and get back into the conversations going on in it is always a great luxury to enjoy.

Bit: I have always used Internet forums. My illustrious posting history is spread across many sites and thousands of posts. I am known by many names, but one thing that doesn't change is that, when I begin visiting a website, I become a regular poster in that site's forum. It was only natural that I should eventually begin using the Newgrounds BBS when I started visiting Newgrounds regularly. The reason I've stayed for so long is that, as someone who has used many, many different Internet forums, I know that the Newgrounds General Forum is actually full of relatively Intelligent users. And that's a scary thought.

Outlaw88: I liked being able to see what was going on with the NG community. I tend to lurk more these days though as I now only comment on things that I have an interest in. Its tough being an older member in that regard as its harder to relate to some of the topics that come up. Any least for me anyway.

Q: KillerSkull - When did you first become interested in Dungeons & Dragons? Do you still play today? Whatever your answer could you tell us why?

A: I got into D&D in high school, it was literally all my friends and I would do during lunch during my freshman and sophomore years. But I haven't played much since then. I play some JRPGs and Western RPG videogames though if that counts for something....

Q: Outlaw88 - You and I have something in common. We both love wrestling. At what age did you become interested in wrestling? Who is your favorite wrestler and what is your favorite match?

A: Sadly due to several factors (which would make this interview too long) I lost interest in the current product. I still have a love for it though and I do hope something comes along to spark that desire to watch it again.

I was in middle school when I first started to watch wrestling in the late 90's so I was maybe 13. In terms of overall character and heart: Mick Foley will always be a top pick. In terms of skill I'd say Chris Jericho. Favorite match.. Man there are so many good ones to pick.. The second TLC match from WM 2001 as it was the first PPV that I watched with a group of friends. That match captured the room in such a way that everyone reacted to what was going on made for a real experience.

Q: Bit - How did you come to join The Icon Mod Crew? What exactly was the purpose of this crew?

A: I was an icon mod for a while (no, it doesn't count as being a real mod) and my job was to create icons for submission in the new, larger, icon format. If I recall correctly, there was a thread where you could ask to be an icon mod (which is unusual in that asking to be a mod is pretty taboo) and I thought it would be interesting so I asked in the thread and Tom sent me a PM some time later telling me that I had been accepted. I made something like 100 or 200 icons during my time as an icon mod. This sounds like a lot, but some of the other mods made 1000+ icons so I probably just looked like a slacker.

Q: Xenomit - You would ask to join the Newgrounds Gay/bisexual Users Club on July 20th, 2011. You stated you weren't gay or bi unless you watched furry porn. One month later you would ask to join again this time as bisexual. Why the change -- were you merely in the closet? If so then why?

A: That's part of my character. One of the funniest tropes I can think of is a "straight guy" who looks and acts straight, but is attracted to feminine guys but swears to god that he's not gay. I'm attracted to feminine guys, but I'm well aware of and very comfortable with my sexuality. So, part of "xenomit" is that he has a lot of extremely homosexual thoughts, but he's adamant that he's not gay or even bi, and he justifies his homosexual thoughts with the fact that he's only attracted to really feminine looking guys.

In reality, I'm a bisexual top who likes nerdy girls, tomboyish looking girls, and girly guys.

Q: Would you like to be a Newgrounds Forum Moderator? Whatever your answer could you explain?

A:

Xenomit: I would, but I know I'd make a bad moderator. I don't take anything on the internet seriously, and I'd just straight up never ban anyone. Basically, if I did become a moderator for whatever reason, I wouldn't see it as any power, I'd see it as nothing more than an honorary title.

Plus, I've used the BBS a lot. I've has a lot of interactions with the mods, and I know what the average person thinks of mods; they're lame squares who ruin fun. I could see myself being a lot like the cops from superbad; not really corrupt, they just don't take their own authority seriously whatsoever, and end up breaking a lot of the laws that they're supposed to uphold just to be cool and show how they're not boring joykills.

KillerSkull: In the past I did want to be a forum moderator but now I'm not so sure. I lurk a lot these days and I'm not as involved with the forums as I once was so I think there are other users more suited to the task than me.

Bit: Sure. I would be OK with that. I was a moderator on a few other sites and I was pretty good at keeping them free of spam. On the BBS, I like to joke that I'm running for 'Mod 2016' as if it were an election, but I know that being a moderator is actually a pretty serious commitment. It's not something that you would want to do if you don't already spend a lot of time here.

Outlaw88: I think the golden rule is that if you want to be a Mod you shouldn't ask and lead by example. That being said if you had asked me this a few years ago I would have said yes in a heartbeat. Now that I'm not as active on the forum as I used to be it would be a wasted position. I feel I wouldn't do the job justice right now.

Q: Which forums do you mainly visit and which forums do you seldom visit?

A:

Xenomit: I'd estimate about 95% of my posts have been in general, 4% have been in video games, and the remaining 1% has been in clubs and crews. I've never posted on any of the other forums. I always intend to spend more time in video games, being I spend most of my free time playing them and enjoy talking about them, but I just never get around to doing it.

KillerSkull: I'm almost always in the General forum. I'll stop by the help forums and the video games forum from time to time as well but those are basically the only forums that I visit.

Bit: There are forums other than General?

Outlaw88: I used to just hang out in the clubs and crews section quite a bit but I mostly check out the general forum now. I never ever go to the politics area.

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

A:

Xenomit: I'd bring back chat, I'd get rid of all the pornographic content so that major corporations might start advertising to us, I'd find a way to bring back some of the more well known content creators, I'd allow webms to be posted on the BBS, I'd get rid of "word rules" that prevent you from saying certain words.

That's about all I can think of. Chat is obvious, real time conversations with people, getting rid of pornographic content could hopefully open the doors to larger advertisers which would mean more revenue, bringing back more well known content creators would obviously start returning popularity, allowing webms in the BBS would just be convenient for me personally and could enrich conversation, and getting rid of verbal censorship would just be for liberty.

KillerSkull: Bring back the chat. I just want traffic in the forums to increase again.

Bit: Newgrounds chat, user page headers, and a mobile app so that people will shut up about wanting a mobile app. I would also try to bring Newgrounds' 'edge' back by allowing offensive submissions again. Also a Literature Portal because it would be nice to have a portal which I can actually contribute to.

Outlaw88: That's a tough one.... I used to say "add an edit button" all the time and we now have one. I would bring back the NG chat. That was fun. I would also want to see NG try to compete with YouTube more but I'm not sure how to do that. I'm not an artist or an animator so the content I do create tends to be with video which really doesn't have a place here. I also am glad for that as I think having NG as the hub for animation is its strength.

Q: What can we expect from the forum regulars in the future?

A:

Xenomit: Not much, a lot of us are way less active than we used to be, and I can't see anything keeping us here other than habit. Like I said, I still post every few days, but I ALWAYS have newgrounds open. I'm actually at an all time low point in my NG BBS career. I used to know everyone who came through the BBS, now I have a hard time recognizing any names. My inbox used to fill up every several weeks from talking to people every day, now I get exited when I see an unread message, they rarely present themselves to me.

I used to get on every day to see that I've been quoted dozens of times since the last day, now I only get quoted if I directly quote someone and say just the right thing. I'm just not a popular topic like I used to be.

I'd like to say that I'd do a xenomit revival and make a total comeback, but I just don't really care to, I don't have the energy.

KillerSkull: Hopefully the regulars keep on posting and the forums get busy aain, that's what I would like to see. I'll still be lurking and occasionally posting for sure.

Bit: Dank memes, shitposting, and phallic jokes.

Outlaw88: For me I hope to be around and post more. As I said I tend to lurk and not interact as much. That's something i know i need to change.

It's always great to speak with the regular members of Newgrounds. The people who this grand site entertains day in and day out. Because like it or not. This site helps so many grow and contribute to it. We were all regular members. Even Tom Fulp himself when he made the site 20 years ago. Every person interviewed here was once a regular member of Newgrounds.

Interview No. 137

Interview By: @The-Great-One

Today's guest is a wonderful artist that I came across in the Art Forum. His artwork is most notable due to his beautiful drawings of women. As well as the detail he has given to the drawing of hands. His works range from Glasses, to Slash, and to Windshear Plains. He is an older member of Newgrounds, being here since 2004, and I am pleased to welcome, @Cairos.

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

A: I was introduced into Newgrounds a long time ago by my cousin when I was a younger Cairos back in 1999. While everyone was flipping their shit over Y2K our teenage minds were blown away and (un)fortunately corrupted by the Assassin Page and the cutting-edge quality games like Samurai Asshole and Pico's School. (Ultra violence and adult themes are always such a hit with kids. I guess that's why my nephews love the Walking Dead.)

Q: Before you ventured to Newgrounds you would first be on DeviantArt. Why the shift?

A: Yeah, I think I signed up on both sites roughly around the same time. I had a strong creative urge back then because I was heavily influenced by Zhu and Xiao Xiao No. 3. I don't recall actually creating anything at that time as I was just spinning ideas in my head and daydreaming rather than putting in the work. (If I had a time machine, hoo-boy would I kick my own ass into a productive state.) While I still use both sites, most of my activity is on good ol' (busted) NG. I guess it's the small tight-knit community feel it has. It's like a small town in the middle of nowhere filled with fairly friendly looking folks who vigorously keep pushing tourists to taste and drink their water... I was thirsty I guess.

Q: When and how did you become introduced to art and in what form?

A: I guess I got introduced into creating art when my parents got me and my brother a bunch of Play-doh. We'd make like the usual stuff kids make like rolled out spaghetti noodles and hotdogs, hamburgers and pancakes. Come to think of it we mostly made food out of that stuff... Anyway, our edible yet non-toxic masterpieces were created ontop of this small kid-sized white plastic table. This table still exists today right beside me and is still in use for resting actual food or when my niece and nephew make their own works of art on top of it.

Q: What first inspired you to create art?

A: The realization didn't hit me until I pondered about it a few years ago but I'd like to thank my 3rd grade teacher for this when I was a wee Cairos. At the time she influenced the class to create things. From posters on the wall, to classroom decorations and dioramas, all made by her students. I remember having a hand in creating a scene with construction paper when we were learning about oceans and marine life. Whenever there was a picture in a textbook she would first say, "The artist that drew this..." then explain what was going on in the image.

It was in her class I drew this bobcat from a picture. While I didn't exactly copy it, it still looked appealing and correct for some reason despite it not being in the same pose. It was when my teacher explained that I was using the picture for "reference" and I did a good job at it. That's when I found out I could understand how to draw but unfortunately I didn't see the purpose of it. Though I did feel quite accomplished when she pinned it up on the wall for everyone to see.

During Career Day she would invite all these newspaper cartoonists, graphic designers and illustrators for children's books. They would all draw on one of the whiteboards demonstrating their skill. The drawings were kept up for nearly two months because we loved them so much. Eventually they had to be erased, it was quite difficult to teach the class with only half of the whiteboard space.

None of this added up until one day I took a peek at her notebook. And to my wide-eyed surprise, she could draw. Each lesson plan was accompanied with a cute well executed illustration, no page was left without some sort of image. The kid me couldn't fathom the idea that one person could create so many images each day, how so much work can go unrecognized. I asked her about the drawings and all she said was, "Oh yeah, I can draw." ...That was it. She was an Artist.

When I pondered about this I figured being an Artist doesn't necessarily need to be a job it's just something you do if you can do it. I mean while being an elementary school teacher she didn't stop drawing despite that her colleagues all had careers catered to their craft. I guess she also valued art so much she wanted to show it in a unique way, opposed from the standard we see in today's schools as throwaway course.

I know this is a convoluted explanation of how I was "first inspired" but really it's just something I do and what we all can do.

Thanks Mrs. Frape.

Q: Toast-Tony, Fifty-50, Flowers10, Lucky, Morthagg, Luwano, ZaneZansorrow, and CosmicDeath, are all artists who have been here before. You have something in common with all of them and that is you have your very own art thread entitled Cairos' Sketchbook. This is how I found out about you. I ask this of all artists of this nature, but why did you make an art thread?

A: Honestly I never wanted to make a Sketchbook thread because I'm a super introvert, haha. I was a heavy lurker in the Art Forum for a very long while. Everyone was so comfortable posting scribbles and I get anxiety when I post stuff to the Art Portal (I still do). I was extremely hesitant but I eventually made one and I couldn't be more proud of myself. It was a good step forward out of my personal bubble.

Q: When CosmicDeath was here we talked about the beautiful way she drew eyes. For you it is the beautiful way you draw hands. You stated that you attribute it to looking at the expressive usage of hands in mannerist art. Could you go into a bit more detail about this? Surely you didn't come out of the gates drawing hands good enough to fit a glove did you?

A: I'm grateful that when I was younger I understood that hands were frikkin' complicated and did take some time to draw. I was able to draw hands in stock poses like fists and with any number of digits splayed out in silhouette. I understood how to draw solid hands but I didn't know how to use them properly. What helped me in creating appealing hands is when I started looking at Mannerist Art and realized how the hands were used as literal arrows to guide the viewer throughout the whole piece or towards the subject. May it be the fingers themselves or the gaps between them. The hands portrayed in these paintings and sculptures felt very much alive despite them being still.

Mannerism can be seen as gentle use of energy without exertion with minimal tension used. To help people understand this better... Outstretch your arm infront of you, relax your hand and fingers, bend your elbow upwards, and move your wrist up and down. Notice how your fingers open and close without you making them. That's at most how Mannerism should feel.

Q: Your first piece of art posted to the Art Portal is entitled Red Fighter Dude. You say it is just a simple character design. It does not seem so simple though. Did it start off simple and then some form of possession took over you?

A: Aw man, Red Fighter Dude. One of my first attempts at digital art and an original character. I love Beat 'Em Ups and Fighting Games and it's what he's influenced from. Today I wouldn't say simple design but rather "simple idea". Bad dude, never smiling, likes to fight. It's not a terrible thing as the concept of him kept on being revisited in future pieces with familiar results. First Date, RFD2 , and Double Date. His name would be Michael Grey by the way. As for what he's capable of... I'm not inclined to say yet.

Q: One piece that certainly captured my eye was Windshear Plains. There is a lot going on in this one picture it boggles the mind. The curious part of this is your description. You said it was a comic pitch that never got anywhere. What happened to rob us of this comic and is there any chance of it being made in the future?

A: I wanted to make something awesome with cowboys and dinosaurs and it was getting positive reaction but what was pointed out was the way how I portrayed the women here is a huge no-no. Sexualizing Aboriginals is insensitive to their culture. I didn't want to be part of a problem a whole race of people have been constantly fighting against, so I dropped the idea. As for this becoming a real comic in the future: I'm not gonna fully say no, but maybe if I were to have ninjas added to the mix...

Q: My two favorite things about drawings and paintings are colors and shadows. You combine both of these in one of my favorite pieces by you entitled Glasses. What was the process and inspiration behind this?

A: A process of Glasses can actually be seen in my Sketchbook Thread. I challenged myself to use a limited color palette and had an overwhelmingly positive response with the piece. Especially during conventions everyone just wants a print of her. To be honest I drew the glasses on for fun as I thought her hair already looked hipster, eventually it just stuck and I kept it. I liked henna designs and the way they were painted on the body but to prevent symbolism I just used lines.

Q: Slash. This is just absolutely beautiful, mainly because I can see where it started and where it ended and I love when a drawing leaves a breadcrumb trail of colors. Looking back at your other works you seem to do that with all of these. Would you say this is just your style or is this just a coincidence of a rainbow in the right place at the right time?

A: When it comes to color I like settling with whatever feels right but different. I love exploring what works and what doesn't and digital helps speed up the process with this thanks to the ability to fiddle around with sliders and such. I'm aware of popular techniques that get results, and the internet is filled with them, and it's totally cool when folks use them but they just don't fit with me as an individual. Personally what I want out of my art is to not be new hip style that everyone should be, I just wanna be different.

Q: Your style is beautiful to behold. Have you ever thought about stretching your powers to that of animation? If not then why?

A: I have thought about it but I think I'll have to say maybe. I do want to make one short animation in my life but I don't think I'll make any more than that. I don't want to say much more on this matter.

Q: You've been on Newgrounds since 2004 and before that on DeviantArt. While at DeviantArt you made on journal entry describing yourself as an Invisible Man. Do you still feel you are invisible? Whatever your answer could you tell us why?

A: I'm not much of a social butterfly. I never really wanted to be noticed, but I guess it's inevitable as it comes with the territory with being an artist. I tend to be indecisive about my self- worth but it's proven time and time again that I am capable to inspire other individuals. I never wanted to do this interview but here I am because I think some folks deserve to know a bit more about me.

I'll never know what I want, but I know what I can do. I do what I can.

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

A: art.

Q: When it comes to your art, where do you begin? How does the creative process start and when does the creation become finished?

A: My work is very feminine so ideas I want to use are influenced by glamour and fashion. I have a large collection of images that I browse through once in a while to help keep those creative juices flowing. Then I just sketch. A lot. A majority of the time sketches will be set on the backburner and may become revisited again sometime. A piece is completed when I feel that I've dropped enough lines down to get the idea across. Sometimes I wait a few days before looking at the image again to see if it gives me some sort of impactful feel. Once I'm satisfied I release it into the interwebs for folks to see.

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

A: As stated my work is feminine and I wish to explore more masculine looking things. Hopefully I can portray that in newer work.

Until then. Take care and have a nice day.

Cairos is a great example of what you can find. Here's a guy who has been here since 2004, and it wasn't until the Art Forum was brought into existence that he could truly shine. I shows what you can find if you just take a browse through Newgrounds. I still can't get over how he can masterfully draw hands and the shadows and colors in his works. It truly feels like his works can come out of the screen towards you. If he ever decides to animate, and let us all hope he does. I for one will be eager to see his imagination move with true fluidity.

Interview No. 136

Interview By: @The-Great-One

Today's guest has been an avid fan of those we have interviewed on here before from the small brewstew, to the big named TmsT. He has delighted us all with works such as Wool E, Zelda: Flying Fairy, Mine Mine MInecraft!!, and Sex Hair. We are most proud to welcome one of our own fans, @WooleyWorld.

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

A: Well, I used to make "animations" using MS Paint and Windows Movie Maker on YouTube. That was way back in '07. Right around '08 or '09 I start playing with Flash. I made an official transition to Flash in late '09 and I needed a place to put up the animations in their SWF format. I had stumbled on NewGrounds a couple of times and knew it existed so I sort migrated over and made an account. We used to watch the old classic flashes on NG and ABS way back in the day so I became familiar with the site. Been there ever since.

Q: What age did you become interested in animation?

A: Like most animators, I used to play around with old flipbooks and such. That used to spark my interest. Though I didn't really become hooked until the early 2000s when my cousin showed me the old Miyazaki film "Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro". Talk about a classic. I recommend it to any animators out there. Such a lovely film. It is my favourite animated film and among my top 5 films ever. That film made me want to animate. I know my animations are not even in the same ballpark, but that is what I strive for these days... a animation like that.... oh but to actually answer that question. I must have been about 10 maybe? Majora's Mask was still popular so that gives you a timeframe...

Q: Who is Tristan Weihmann?

A: Tristan is an old friend I used to go to elementary school with. It is funny because I didn't talk to Tristan when he first transferred to my school. I remember he started talking about some animation he watched (Which I came to find out as TMSTs "Bad Idea"). I did not know what he was talking about and thought he was weird. After I stumbled upon the animation myself on ABS, I called him on the spot and we had a laugh that that was what he was talking about. We became good friends and all that, you know how it goes. We used to watch old TMST animations and talk about stuff like that. We would fuel a lot of creative thought between the two of us. I usually write something and bring it to Tristan, and we can tear through it and see what works and what does not. Nowadays he usually does the little 3D elements that can be found in my animations. He keeps me grounded when my ideas get too wild. Haha.

Q: One of my favorite guests here on The Interviewer was a user by the name of TmsT, which is short for Too Much Spare Time. You and many others know him better as Andrew Kepple. When and how did you meet Andrew; was it on Albino Blacksheep?

A: TMST? Andrew Kepple? Never heard of it. Is it a piece of furniture? ... I'm lying. We did end up meeting on ABS during one of the TOFA tournaments. I think it was either 2011 or 2012. I do not remember. But yes, he was a judge and I was an animator still fresh to the animating scene. I shot him a message and he shot one back. Bip bap, all that. Andrew is among my favourite animators and is part of the reason I animate like I do. We used to watch his stuff _all_the_time_. The way he added buttons on his flashes so you can see his actual frame by frame work was glorious. I learned a lot of animating from his work and when we started talking I fangirled on him. He's still immensely helpful if I'm having Flash issues or have a question on something.That and the guy loves Flash with an almost sexual passion. So. He's got that going for him

Q: Your first movie submitted to Newgrounds was submitted twice. Once as Our Fore Fathers and again as Our Fore Fathers. They were subsequently blammed. Could you tell us what they were about and why you think they were blammed?

A: Ohh my. That one.

First off, they were the same thing. I did not know much about the submitting system and I submitted it twice. Both got so badly blammed that my Macromedia 8 still cannot walk correctly. Looking back now I, of course, think the animation is trash. All it consisted of was my character standing there and he spewed some unfunny line with a bad sex joke accompanied by some truly horrendous art. ... So it's basically like what I've been doing for the past six years. No really though. That animation was such garbage. It did it's job though. It gave me a taste of what I could do with animation, got me a little more familiar with the program (Macromedia Flash 8 at the time) and it also gave me a sample of the NG community.. The decently fair community with good, supporting people laced with ball-busting, zero-bombers around ever corner. But yes, that's my thinking around that entire slideshow-reject animation. Haha. Live and learn, I reckon.

Q: I tend to ask each person I invite on here about their first work, post, or thing they have done on Newgrounds, you are no exception. Your second submission which is now on your page as your first would be Space Bear!. What can you tell us about this movie and looking back on it how do you feel you've grown in terms of skill?

A: Oh God. Tristan and I watched that little number the other day... That animation was conceived between a highschool classmate and myself back in early 2010. It was just a silly little thing that I'm sure we were all killing ourselves laughing at the time. Looking back on the thing, it is clear I've come a long way. The entire piece is just cringe worthy. We are talking baby picture cringe worthy. I've advanced away from that style of animating. It is a style of people just standing around and delivering lines without much animation at all. It is something I try to get away from these days with the use of hand movement and body language matched with facial expressions and dynamic movement. That and I clearly did not understand layering and working with symbols back in those days because some of the things like the mouth on Ash at the end and the bullets going behind the character.. Simply horrific. Having said that, I find I have made great strides since then. Clearly. I try to keep my animations more lively and keep characters interesting. When I cannot keep characters moving, I want to make sure the background is also alive so that nothing stagnates. The last thing I want to do it have a break in the animation and the viewer is just sitting there and nothing is happening. It really breaks them away and it makes me look like trash. I have learned that since then and I try to impliment it when I can. I like to keep this little thought in mind when I am animating: "If I am not telling a joke or setting up to tell a joke, I had better be moving the story or letting the characters and environment breathe."

Also I have learned to take your time on your projects. Space Bear! is this silly little thing I blew out in probably a few hours. This current project I am working on is about three months in the making. I want to make sure this animation is following my own little rules so I can keep it as appealing as possible. If I cannot put the love and care into the animation, how can I expect people to care about it? Hence, I keep things moving, lively, and breathing so I can make people want to watch and see the world I am putting in front of them. I know I am making silly little game parodies sometimes and Sex Hair other times, but i always want to present the animation in a world the viewer wants to engage in. This I do by keeping it interesting and taking my time. Simple little things like making the clouds move or adding good background sound effects can really help an animation jump to the next level.

Wow that was long-winded.

Q: Your first video game parody comes to us with Fable III Basically. At what age did you become interested in video games? What made you want to parody Fable III?

A: I became a fan way back in the day with the Nintendo64 in the late 90s.We used to play that game system all the time. Fast forward a few years, I was fresh off of video game parody animations and I figured I could make one. I chose a popular game that I enjoyed. It just so happened that I was a very bad animator at that time and an even worse writer... If I was given the chance to animate a Fable parody these days, I would pass.

Q: Venezuela I feel is in my top 3 of your best written movies. Seems there was a lot of love and hate put into this. You gave a brief description about the issues you had in making this, care to expand?

A: Let me start this answer with my opinion on the animation. It is a nice little animation that I did when I was new to animating. Having said that, the animation itself is clearly me seeing I can do with Flash and also trying to make a complete story. The animation itself certainly is not anything to phone home about, and the writing is just a string of joke after joke. I like that I was ambitious enough to try and tackle a larger project (it being about six or seven minutes I recall?), and that I was trying to take on better animating techniques with tweening and frame by framing.

However, after a few months, the audio was giving me a load of trouble and kept lagging. This is what held the animation from release for about six months if I recall correctly. Of course I went on to find out, thanks to Andrew Kepple and a helpful google search, that the audio begins to lag with longer projects and that the frames need to be tweaked to make up for this lag. I wish I could have told 2010-Grant that and saved him all that time... Well. Lesson learned, knowledge earned. All that jive.

Q: One of my favorite Disney songs is the villain song in Pocahontas entitled "Mine Mine Mine". You would combine this in the wonderful world of Minecraft with your movie Mine Mine Minecraft!!. This movie is simply hilarious! Where did the idea come from for this? The backgrounds you used came from Minecraft, what was the process you took in integrating them into your animation?

A: So this one time in computer class Senior year in highschool I was really bored, because I was far ahead in my animating course and was sitting with nothing to do. It was at this point that we were in full gear and playing Minecraft. I had just heard the song from Pocahontas, and it just seemed like it went together perfectly. This song is about greedy mining... Which is like my existence in Minecraft (Ask Tristan).

So from that I started playing with a new lineless style which made the animating a little easier. The animation was pretty poorly received (story of my life), but I still enjoyed it. With regards to the backgrounds, They were all done the same way except for the moving backgrounds. We set up the shot we wanted based from a storyboard. We then got a shot of it and we could just drag the things into Flash. By that point I was using Adobe CS3. They were not the finest quality, but we did not have the space to have fine quality shots. The moving backgrounds were just video files that we captured using FRAPS at the time. From there I just animated on top of the shots based off the animatics. It was a different process, and I would like to do something else like that nowadays now that I have improved. However, I simply do not have a good enough idea for that kind of approach at this time.

Q: When brewstew was here we talked about his movies where he sheds light on his past or things that happen to him in society. He used animation to share these stories with us with some exaggeration. With that in mind what is the full story behind Sex Hair and what made you want to share it wish us in such glorious fashion?

A: Ah. BrewStew is a nice fellow. Right proper storyteller as well. He and I have some of the same kind of humour. But yes. Sex Hair. I was wondering when that one was going to come up. Much like BrewStews works, Sex Hair was based off of an actual situation from my first day in my Freshman drawing class. The drawing professor had asked the students what we enjoyed drawing so we could get to know each other. People were going off about what they like. Some girl said she liked mushrooms (what?) And another said she liked to draw trees (alright.) but this one girl right next to me goes "I like to draw things with fur, you know.. hairy things" And my mind just started ticking. In my mind I ripped open my shirt, dropped down on the drawing table, and went "I've got something hairy for you to draw". My mind works when I am not. I thought it would make a funny little animation short.A few months later, I told Tristan I wanted to start putting more 3D in animations and he said he could do that now so I started looking through ideas I had written down and there was Sex Hair. We thought it would be funny to stick a 3D statue in the background of one of the shots. It's funny because nobody probably ever noticed that little gag over the fact that the main animation was pretty funny and stuck in peoples minds. I am pretty known for that animation over all my others, and I get messages all the time asking where the third one is... It is funny because the animation almost did not make it through the wheel house and died in the back pages of a sketchbook. It only made it to the realm of the living because we wanted to mess around with 3D... 3D nobody even noticed. Haha. Funny how that works sometimes, hm?

Fun Fact: I'm looking at the original sheet right now that I dug up from the grave. Sex Hair was almost named "HappyTrails" .. because hair.. happy trails.. ha. I'm funny I swear. Please don't go.

Q: Going through your history you struggled quite a bit in your skills as an animator, but you have grown exponentially over time. What advice do you have to give to those who are just starting out themselves?

A: Oh man. I will just pretend I am speaking to 2010-Grant.

I just want to start off saying that you should get drawing. Practice drawing. Get good at it, because you are going to need it. I sucked so bad when I started and I have still got such a ways to go. The thing about that though is that I am still reading up and drawing and trying harder every time. You always want to push it to do the best work you can produce. You don't need to worry about what other animators are doing. You can keep up and learn from them, sure.. but you don't need to compare yourself to other animators. You just keep your skill sharp and your writing sharper. Keep your chin up and your head down. All that jive. Life Drawing classes are a _life saver_.

I want to tell the younger guys and gals to give their stories a try and push their own characters. They may not take off initially, but people become interested if you are interested. Your favourite characters and stories that you parody now used to be just like you and getting out there. So go for it and don't care about what people think. The right people will dig your groove.

A good piece of advice I got once was to keep drawing. Every day. And make sure you do it every day, because there are a million and four other Joes out there gunning for your job. And if you are not drawing, they sure are and they're getting better than you. It is your job to keep yourself trucking and improving. You can sit there and mope about how so and so is better than you and how such and such is a better animation, but it is not going to get you any better. If you want to be better, you need to _want_ to be better...

Oh God I sucked for so, so long... Just keep going. Don't stop. Ever.

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

A: Well well. You can expect fewer animations, I am not going to lie. I am taking my time with them these days and putting more love into them. Like I said, this current one is three months in the making. I want to focus more on story and characters and good, solid jokes. To make animations that are worthwhile and you won't forget before tomorrows breakfast.

Push my animation like I've not done prior. Make people wonder "How did he do that?" Make them try it for themselves. Push new angles and new framework. I am just begginning to get good with my animating and I am at the point where I can do whatever I like. In the past, I would have to cut corners based on artistic handicaps. Now I am a solid animator, and I can achieve the shots and angles and frames I have in my head without being hindered. I have so many projects on my mind, hope I can live long enough to get them out. Haha. I just like to imagine I'm sitting there rubbing my hands together going to myself, "You fellows just sit tight wait what's coming up next...".

This interview like my past two have been on the back burner for a while. I found out about WooleyWorld due to his comment on the interview I had done with brewstew. He was interested in being interviewed. I looked over his works and thought, 'why not?'. So here we are today and I most certainly don't regret this encounter... especially when Sex Hair is involved.

Interview No. 135

Interview By: @The-Great-One

[ PART 1 | PART 2 ]

Q: In the thread NG CD Featuring NG Musicians! Join! you decided to contribute towards it. It ended up being a project to raise money for charity. What can you tell us about your involvement in the project?

A: It started with an audition of sorts by @FatKidwitaJetPak, calling for people to submit their works to this CD project, and the best 20 or so would make it into this CD, it would be sold on the Newgrounds store and iTunes (I don’t think Bandcamp was a thing then), and the proceeds would go to a charity of our choice. I decided to enter along with Kingdom of Herts and we put up our first song, Juventud, in my NG account. It wasn’t great, I’ll admit, and I didn’t make it in.

When the songs were all compiled together, FatKidwitaJetPak called for artists to design CD covers, and T-shirts for participants. @ForgottenDawn (who at the time was going under the name @KKSlider60) submitted a design, and so did I. Mine was chosen as the final T-shirt design.

However, the project fell apart because CD suppliers were just not cooperating with us, and there were just too many CDs to make. I don’t know what else led to the project falling apart, though I’m sure the organiser has said something about it. It was a sad end to a project with a lot of promise, and I do not doubt that there are many who would have loved to see the CD in their hands.

Q: Happy Sunday Morning! is a really fun 8-Bit song that reminds me a lot of Kirby. Do you have a fondness for 8-Bit music. If so... and this might be a silly question, then where did it stem from?

A: I do have a fondness for 8-bit music, yes, and this stemmed from my years playing on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Up till 2002, I played NES games… a lot of NES games, and my interest in these games has recently resurged and I’ve taken to reacquiring an NES and a few games for it. My favourite NES game to date is Kirby’s Adventure, and I especially remember its music, its chords… I borrowed inspiration from Kirby.

When making Happy Sunday Morning I was asked to borrow inspiration from Mega Man, which I had never played before. I decided to listen to the music of that game, and then combine it with what 8-bit influences I knew.

Q: The Overthere Shrine is an underrated piece of video game music. I am not a religious person myself so I can't make the emotional connections that others do with this song. I will not deny that it is a beautiful song. Your remix is quite spectacular and it hits on a lot of different levels with you. Would you care to share?

A: It all started when Chuggaaconroy, a video game commentator whom I watch on YouTube, asked if anyone could remix or cover The Overthere Shrine, a theme from Super Paper Mario. It was so angelic, so calming, that I decided to undertake it.

This was in 2012, and I was grappling with news that my father and a friend of mine had both lost their faiths. I try not to be sad, and I respect them in every way I can muster, but I cannot help but cry for them as if I cry for a lost one. I poured these emotions into my cover of The Overthere Shrine. I also mentioned in the description of that piece that it brought to mind a desire to go home and set things right – I know this is not possible now. Right now, when I listen to my version of The Overthere Shrine, I find peace, and I ask for the grace to accept the present moment, and not rant about what could be or what could have been.

I have a deep desire to be at peace with God and neighbour, however hard this may be. I poured this into the cover, too. These days, I don’t think I’m doing a particularly good job in being at peace with God and neighbour. But then again, we are our own worst judges. The people around us see in us many good qualities and things that we ourselves don’t see. I’ve learnt that ever since.

Q: Proper Te is quite the awesome French rock ballad you present to us. You state that is was an entry in the 2012 Newgrounds Audio Death Match and it got you to Round 2, but it took a lot of you out in the process. Was this unfamiliar territory for you or by critiquing yourself were you pushing yourself into the shadows?

A: It was a bit of both. I knew how rock pieces went, especially progressive rock pieces, and I had an idea of how it would sound in my head. But not only did I critique myself, others were bound to critique me. It’s natural, and only right and just for such a competition. I’d been pushing myself into the shadows thinking that it lacked the power that I had imagined – and now, when I come back and listen to it, I cannot help but think the same. It still lacks the power that I had imagined for it. I hope to remake this song one day, as it was intended to sound.

My fiancé says that it’s his favourite piece coming from me, and that it would make a good Bond theme. Seriously now, would you honestly imagine something like that in Bond opening credits??

Q: Quite possibly your best song out of all of your works I can strongly say is Supplication. It has been a while since a song has made me cry, but this got me to bawl like a baby. And yet... this is a beautiful song from beginning to end and one I listened to multiple times. It is just one of those perfect songs. I honestly don't have a question here, I just wanted to make this comment to you. You do talk about your family though. What can you tell us about your parents and their influence on you?

A: My family certainly wasn’t perfect. My immediate family consisted of just my parents and me; I’m an only child. A lot of traditional Indian families grew up with the concept of matha, pitha, devam – “mother, father, God,” as the order in which these people should be reverenced or worshipped. I hated that ideal. I knew my parents were not perfect. They were bound to make mistakes, and certainly would not deserve reverence for such mistakes. But this ideal was forced onto me. On the surface, my parents were Catholic; in practice, it does make me wonder how much they adhered to Catholic belief, the way they forced this ideal onto me…….

If I disagreed with it, or anything they did for that matter, I would be beaten up… very badly. Call out your parents’ mistakes? Get beaten. Insist on writing and performing music? Get beaten, and possibly see your sheet music torn up. Get any grade lower than an A+ in exams? Get beaten. Even for the most frivolous things I was beaten, and no apology was given. No, my parents could not possibly be wrong. And their influence on me was frighteningly great. I was often scared for my life. What if I got beaten again? What would happen to me? I often tried to run to the front gate and open the lock silently, in a desperate attempt to run away from home. But where would I go? In whom could I confide? My only confidante was God, to whom I cried in the silence of my room.

And on the subject of being beaten badly, I remember it happening a lot of times. It pains me to say that my earliest memory is of being beaten until I blacked out, when I was 2 years old. My paternal grandmother, who had witnessed everything, said that I nearly died. She couldn’t be far wrong…

I also remember being beaten after a teacher spread lies about me being involved in the occult. She was so persuasive that my parents believed her, and not me, and decided to abuse me. The next day, the truth came out. I was in the clear. But my parents and this teacher did not apologise one bit. I remember many, many occurrences like these…

All these abuses make it hard for me to remember that in spite of everything, my parents did try to love each other, and love me. My mother and father were faithful to each other until the end, when my mother died in 2008. I try to remember the good times, believe me. I try very hard.

Yes, some good memories come back, like when my mother first played the drum for me to show me what it sounded like. I remember our Uno and Scrabble games together. I remember decorating the house with them on the first Sunday of Advent each year, in preparation for Christmas. I remember the house smelling of cookies and fruitcake in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Or, at times, the house smelling of pepper because my mother put in a LOT of pepper in a certain dish she was making… and the sneezes I made thereafter.

But in hindsight, the family home was not a safe haven for me. I wanted to call an abuse helpline so many times… but I hesitated because if it transpired that I did, I would risk being killed through beatings. I couldn’t even go see counsellors about this, because any notes that I wrote that I wanted to pass on to counsellors got intercepted, and I was beaten badly. I cannot help but think that all the frustration, hurt and anger my parents had suffered under their parents, they were now directing it to me. This knowledge came to me from the way my mother spoke to her mother once – my grandmother did not want my mother to beat me up. My mother pretty much told her to go and fuck off.

In spite of all this, I wrote Supplication. Even if the good things I could glean from my family were vastly overshadowed by all the hurt and abuse I’d been through, I wanted there to be something good, something which I hoped my mother and father would be proud of.

Q: We cannot talk about these next two songs separately. To do so would be criminal. Through the Woods I and Through the Woods II are pretty much representations of day and night - light and dark. Truth be told a lot of your songs as I listen to them like to play in that spectral realm of the twilight and play with our emotions. Why the sense to teeter-totter at times? Or again am I missing something?

A: I teeter in between light and dark quite frequently in my music, because in daily life, we do teeter between light and dark whether we realise it or not. I try to reflect this in the pieces I write. The things we do, how we feel, or even what we say – all of it is a representation of the struggle between light and dark. Through the Woods I and Through the Woods II were written to represent the conflict between innocent childhood and frightening adulthood, day and night, dawn and dusk. The game for which these were written, The Hut in Ayre Forest, plays with these same themes. These are themes which tell us just how complex of a struggle human life is.

Q: We now come to Bataille Royale EXTENDED. Where did the inspiration come from to remix your remix of a remix of a remix of this already beautiful song?

A: Actually I would call it a remix of a remix. ^_^' This is only take three of Bataille Royale, not take five. All I wanted to do was hear this piece in full instrumental glory, beyond what Mario Paint Composer could do.

Q: Whenever I interview someone here, I usually find something that they have done that is my all-time personal favorite. For you though there are two songs that I just could not choose from. We will talk about them both, the first being A Night in the Attic. I don't think I have felt such a haunting nostalgia since I watched Bear Bear here on Newgrounds. I love the inspiration and the story you tell behind it, but the atmosphere you built once again plays in this twilight realm. What is it that you see in this song?

A: I see lots of things… firstly, I am reminded of my fiancé’s big chest of model trains, which is the main source of inspiration for A Night in the Attic. This chest made me imagine a roomful of toys that came to life.

This piece is something rather ambitious for me; it was my first attempt at cinematic music since Westminster Tune, and also my first attempt at recording another instrument besides drums, piano and voice. I chose to record glockenspiel, because I have one, and because I thought its sound would be very toy-like. Here, I also chose to experiment with sound effects; I toyed around with a kitchen timer and the plastic cover of my glockenspiel to imitate the sounds of toys click-clacking on the floor.

Emotionally speaking, the piece is meant to convey fear of being judged, and subsequent relief at being shown approval, mercy and love. The story that I had imagined for this piece is that, you walk into a roomful of your old, abandoned toys. You’d heard stories of people being flayed alive or tortured by their old toys, as punishment for treating them badly as a child. You fear that the same thing might just happen to you. And as you hear the clicking of toys behind you, you fear the worst. But they come out as if to greet you, fill you with joy, and they come and rest on your lap and in your arms.

I have an inane fear of being judged, and based on my previous responses, you can probably guess why. I yearn to be loved, to be approved of, to be cherished.

This piece also represents failure, disillusionment and betrayal to me, because I had given my absolute all in writing this piece, spending a good three weeks, toiling day and night, through fears and panic attacks, until this was done and my mixing had been improved on. My fiancé had to come in and check on me and tell me to go to bed, many times during that three-week period. The opponent’s song was done only in two days. Nearly every one of my followers just went gaga for his piece and abandoned mine when I was most in need of encouragement and support. And the opponent won.

To say nothing about his piece, I felt like I was a thing to be trampled on and thrown away, because I had poured myself into it so much, only to be forgotten. Comments and reviews began to flow in, weeks after the results for that round had been released, and I began to ask, where were you when I needed you the most? I felt betrayed. Disillusioned, I decided to stay completely away from the Audio Deathmatch. I don’t even dare approach that song now (or even my opponent’s song), because all the hurt associated with it just comes flowing back. Objectively speaking, everyone thinks both songs are good. I think my opponent’s song is technically sound. But I have to be honest about the hurt that I’ve faced.

This whole experience has made me lean towards seeing that I am an inferior composer, and that any hope of succeeding is gone. My fiancé tries to talk me out of this state of mind, and sometimes, my friends try to do so as well. But the hurt from this, as well as from very many other things associated with my passion for music, has marked me indelibly. I only hope and pray that one day, I may be able to look upon this song and the experience I had creating it, without flinching anymore.

Q: The second song that is tied with my favorite by you starts with As Stars that Shine - Teaser. Afterwords we get hit by the full version As Stars that Shine (FULL). When a musician releases a teaser are they simply looking for feedback or are they simply stuck? Also what was the full inspiration and process you brought into evolving this song to where it is now? Also why is the teaser available for download, but not the full version?

A: The way I understand it, when musicians release teasers, they are either looking for feedback, stuck, or unwilling to share the full version of a track that is going to bring them earnings as the result of its use in a game. Or, shall we say, unwilling to spoil the fun. It keeps listeners anticipating more. At the time of me releasing the full version of As Stars that Shine, I had no choice but to release the full version since I did not want to risk another unfortunate hard drive failure or great file loss, and this was the only full track that I had salvaged from this great file loss that I had earlier this year.

The teaser is available for download, but not the full version, because of its intended use in @CartoonCoffee’s upcoming Eden game. I figured that, since it would be used for the purposes of the game, I did not make the full track downloadable.

I wanted to combine electronic sounds and Celtic melodies… this is something I’ve noticed about my recent style. To me, both nature and machine can go hand-in-hand. Eden has graphics that are colourful and resemble vast caves with immense amounts of foliage, and also has a reference to the Tree of Knowledge in the book of Genesis. However, the mechanics and costumes worn by some of the characters in this game are very reminiscent of Tron and Tron Legacy. I’m talking, of course, about the blue colour, the lines that resemble circuitry, and the visors and gauntlets worn by some characters in this game. This is also a reflection of the instruments I have. I have a lot of acoustic instruments, and I’m especially thrilled about my harp and my bodhráns, but I also own a Stylophone (which is a 1960s synthesiser), and I like 8-bit music and I use a digital audio workstation. It’s a reconciliation of differences, a combination of two schools of thought (acoustic music, and electronic music) which would otherwise be constantly bickering and debating with each other.

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

A: The inner resonance of its creator’s heart (or the hearts of the community it is associated with). It is indispensable to our lives. And the way I see it, it is a gift from God. Done well, it is a relic that can be passed on to future generations. Done badly… well……. um. What do we do if we find a piece of music that has historically been trash? I guess each person has their understanding of what is trash and what isn’t.

Q: When you were at the University of Hertfordshire you wrote for the Students' Union blogging project called Soapbox. What can you tell us about Soapbox and what was the experience like?

A: Soapbox was a project run by the media division of the University of Hertfordshire Students’ Union (HERTSSU) beginning in the academic year of 2010-2011, where a set number of bloggers would write about their student life, their joys and sorrows, the problems they face, and the events in which they take part. To my knowledge, I don’t think HERTSSU runs this project anymore. Only two of us who were chosen for the project were avid writers, and updated regularly, which I think is the main motivation for HERTSSU to discontinue it.

I found it a bit of a mixed bag. As a member of the Soapbox team, I had VIP access to a lot of HERTSSU functions, like the Summer Ball at the end of the academic year. The Summer Ball was something I really enjoyed – rides, concerts (in my case, I attended those of Feeder and Ellie Goulding), and free drinks and a party atmosphere throughout the university grounds. I guess in most cases, it was fun – I enjoy taking pictures, recording stuff and writing; I enjoy creating in general, and this felt like a nice side project to undertake while I was not going through the drudgery of my law studies. I covered Freshers’ Fairs, where various clubs and societies would put up booths to attract students. I covered some Students’ Union meetings, which were quite dreary and overly riddled with legal jargon and made me aware that a lot of people didn’t even know what changes they were voting in. And I spoke about my life as a law student, and as an aspiring musician.

Some events which I covered were a bit underwhelming. For instance, Student Elections took place in March each year and covered positions for student representatives and Students’ Union members (i.e. who became chairman, who became media manager, who became manager of clubs and societies…). I often had to deal with the childish behaviour of the people running for office, and the people who voted, because I recorded footage of the Student Election Results, which took place in the university’s pub called the Elehouse. The Elehouse would be packed full with people, a lot of whom were drunk or slightly tipsy. It was alright, I guess, if I could make a quick quip about it, but after a while, anyone would get fed up of that sort of atmosphere. Tensions around me were high and patience was low.

Another example, and a unique example at that, would be Question Time with Uni Hertfordshire’s newly-appointed Vice Chancellor in 2012, who at the time was Professor Quintin McKellar. This was meant to be done almost in the fashion of Parliamentary question time, where questions would be asked about things that matter, and the person would have to reply on the spot. Professor McKellar was doing his absolute best to respond to people, and to remain level-headed at the same time. But how would people react when dealing with a bunch of annoyed teens? I think he tried his best to be compassionate to everyone. I wanted to record some footage then. I think I did. I don’t really remember much. But then I grew tired of people demanding things that just couldn’t be done within his power, like the abolition of tuition fees. There were some good questions, but a lot of them got overshadowed by the impatience of a lot of the audience. This event was followed by refreshments after, granted, but it drained all the positivity out of me.

Q: You are not only a musician and a writer, but you are also an artist. What inspired you to take up art alongside music?

A: I think, quite simply, because I felt I could! When I was 6 or 7, I did my first visual copy of a Looney Tunes screenshot (it was a Speedy Gonzales screen). I coloured it, and it made me positive that I could draw things on my own instead of having to copy them. I’m always intrigued by colours, and sometimes, I draw because I want to give my colours form.

When I was younger, I drew for school assignments – “Draw a sunset scene,” “draw a ‘Say No to Drugs’ poster,” (what is this, the NES game Raid 2020?), “draw a highway safety poster,” the list goes on. These tasks were quite generic and didn’t really encourage creativity, and now when I look at my art, I don’t think that I have the makings of a good artist – my art’s always picked upon for being disproportionate, lacking in perspective… But I still want to draw. Sometimes, I can express my thoughts best in pictures, and I’d rather use this ability than waste it.

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

A: Either lots of works, or nothing at all, depending on the outcome of events that are soon to take place. I ask for your prayers and good thoughts.

Troisnyx, as I said at the start of this interview, I have had my eye on for quite sometime. A couple of months to be precise. A link to her profile just sat in a folder in my browser for a long time. I would look through her stuff from time to time, but never got around to sending her an invitation. Once I heard her new song As Stars that Shine (FULL), I knew it was time. She is a very skilled musician who decides to constantly keep learning and share the fruits of her labor with all of us. We are most lucky.

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