Interview No. 107

Interview By: @The-Great-One

Today's guest, is the seer into your eyes. She is known for doing the wall background for the Newgrounds Shop Page. She has also done portraits of the different Newgrounds members here, worked with other artists in collaborations, and has been helpful in showing new artists the ropes not only here on Newgrounds, but in the real world as well. Her kindness knows no bounds and her art has no limits. I am pleased to welcome... @CosmicDeath.

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

A: My boyfriend at the time, Sean, introduced me to NG to keep me busy instead of dancing around him while he tried to code games. He had noticed an art contest that Poxpower was running in the Art Forum and sent me the link. I was really impressed and it brought me out of an art slump.

Q: When and how did you get into art and animation?

A: I got into drawing as a child. I had friends, but I never felt like I interacted with them as well as they did with each other - so I just focused on stuff I could do on my own. Sadly, I can't animate worth a DAMN. I think I made something in a flash class at college once, but it sucked a big bag of dicks.

Q: Did you study art at Northolt High School?

A: I took standard art classes set as part of the curriculum, but I actually didn't show up to school very much aside from those art classes. Northolt is a dive. If you're traveling through NW Greater London, don't get off the tube at Northolt station because you'll get your shit pushed in.

Q: When did you enter Lincoln College? What did you learn there?

A: I attended Lincoln College from 2005-2006 on a condensed foundation course, and I had some awesome tutors. But one in particular was Roy, a Fine Artist that graduated from the Royal College of Arts in London. He taught us much more refined life drawing techniques than I'd experienced before. And he was hella strict. I have fond memories of a couple shed tears by milder-mannered students.

Roy: You helped ignite a desire for excellence in myself, and though I haven't achieved what I want yet - and may never achieve it - I will continue to strive for it because people like you have opened my eyes and my imagination. But best of all, you've taught me skills to depict the future I want for myself. Now it's down to me.

Q: What drew you to learn Fine Art at the University of Lincoln?

A: After Lincoln College, where I'd completed two years worth of coursework in a single year, I felt I was ready for a University level course. I worked on a joint honours BA in Fine Art & Illustration at the University of Lincoln, but Fine Art started seeming more and more like a big pile of bullwinkle. I guess I'd grown less tolerant of the conceptual side of art and was surrounded by people who were very good at talking-the-talk, when all I wanted to do was paint stuff that looked awesome. So I dropped Fine Art and concentrated on Illustration. Huzzah!

Q: You were a co-founder of a group of Lincoln art students. What was this group called and how did it form? Also would you say that this group helped you in working with different Newgrounds Collaborations?

A: It was called StArt. There were many co-founders; the main person that brought us together was Lauren, a graduate art student that put up flyers to gain interest at local art campuses. It drew the rest of us in while we were in college and university. The experience of it was way different from the experience of collaborations though NG, online. In person there are a lot of high-fives, umming and ahhing, and awkward pauses where people wait for you to give in to their ideas whilst politely resisting the ideas you've laid out in turn. Online, you can just assume that the pauses between IMs is the other person peeing or getting a delicious sandwich.

Q: What can you tell us about your relationship with Newgrounds member Timmy?

A: *whisper sputters* It's a secrets *sputters spittle* pss pspspgkll;

Q: What brought you from the United Kingdom to the United States?

A: I moved to Texas for Sean (aka Weasel). He's a great guy, and we were together for about three years, but unfortunately we wanted different things in life. People have asked me if I regret moving for a relationship that didn't pan out, and my answer is no. I don't know if I'm trying to rationalize it, but I look back on the highs and lows of my life and feel grateful to have experienced it all and be who and where I am now. I would probably make some changes here and there, some minor tweaks, but not at the cost of any heartache in case it made me less compassionate. And I seriously can't afford to go losing compassion, I'm pretty sure I didn't start out with a deep bucket of it.

Q: One of your favorite books is Clive Barker's "Imajica". What can you tell us about this book and why do you like it? Also would you say this book has any subconscious inspirations in your artwork?

A: Haha, yesss! Imajica is absolutely my favourite story; shortly followed by Weaveworld, also by Clive Barker. In my observation, there are several stories Barker has written where the main characters hold greater potential or power than they are immediately aware of in the beginning of their journey. They have pasts unknown to them, or secrets that are buried to save themselves from the dangerous burden of knowledge. I am in love with this character concept. It inspires me, and makes me dream of a life where anyone could be walking around, a stranger to themselves - lost and wandering through life with the wings of backstory waiting impatiently to unfurl, but living in agony through backbreaking ignorance. It is so exciting during character development as they are awakened to their true selves with painful consequences.

It's not just the characters, it is also the world around them/us. The realities we can't see, but which are hinted at by the superstitious, feared and exalted by the religious, misunderstood or ignored by the masses... It's similar to many of Neil Gaiman's premisses. I strongly encourage you to go check these guys out. BAD ASS.

Oh yeah, and it inspires my dreams/daydreams more than my art - to answer your question, haha.

Q: What is The Future Fire?

A: FutureFire.net is a sci-fi e-zine where authors can post their new, previously unpublished science fiction short stories to share with others. There are artists that illustrate images to accompany many of the stories, as which I've participated twice. I'd like to see more artists contribute, and for the site to grow, but personally, I think I'm more a fantasy than a sci-fi fiend.

Q: What was the Art Contest: Heavy Metal mag cover? What can you tell us about your entry?

A: That was the first contest I ever entered, and the thing that brought me to Newgrounds! I am a sucker for drawing nekkid ladies, but I was timid when I joined in case I drew anything that would get me banned from the site. I was new and didn't realise that there is a constant flow of phalluses coursing through NG's veins. Also, I traced most of that drawing from a photo I took of myself, taking care to enhance the breasts to a nice backache-inducing size. I was swiftly corrected on the rules of tracing (even from your own source images) and haven't done it since. My submission was nothing to write home about, but I'm glad I took part 'cause I wouldn't be sitting here talking with you otherwise. Go NG!

Q: While browsing the Art Forum it appears you have had a run in with different art thieves over time. What can you tell us about these thieves and what should other artists be on the lookout for if they suspect a thief?

A: That must have been a while ago, 'cause I can't really remember. But I'd say, if you see differences in drawing style, lineweight, and general colour palette/colouring style between submissions, be cautious. Also, it seems like people who steal artwork and post it as their own, don't seem to understand that WE HAVE THE INTERNET TOO - they often post really epic artwork for the thrill of getting lots of attention, but that only makes it easier to track down the artist who actually created it.

Q: The Eye Topic is a thread where people posted their pictures of eyes. I like your piece quite a lot. You have a way of capturing eyes in your art. You state...

"When I was younger, I used to draw a lot of eyes - they are fascinating and so important to render well giving a face life and emotion. The gateway to the soul and all that jazz."

You still tend to focus on eyes a lot. What is it about a creature's eyes that you find fascinating. In other words could you give us more elaboration on this subject?

A: I think realistic emotion or feeling is one of the hardest things to depict and replicate in drawn characters, and a lot of that is in the eyes. The behavioural aspect of oculesics gives more insight into why and how this is so important. But for now let's just say that eyes create an emotional link to the viewer, even when they aren't attempting eye contact.

Q: The Art Portal was released on June 3rd, 2009. What were your first impressions of it and what do you think of the Art Portal overall? Is there anything you would change or improve?

A: Whelp, I thought it was just dandy. Sadly I don't get a lot of time to check out submissions unless they are Front Paged. Tell you what, though - I'm glad we have good Art Portal mods. It can be tricky navigating the Art Portal, but they manage to weed out the shifty crap that could land NG in bother. Thanks guys!

Q: You like many artists on here would have an art thread. Yours is entitled CosmicDeath's Digi-sketchbook. What do you believe the purpose of an art thread to be? Should Newgrounds artists have one?

A: Damn, I forgot I had that thread. Looking back on it, it seems the purpose would be to post cocks. Lots and lots of cocks. Maybe we artists should save the Art Forum for general art discussions rather than as a showcase arena. Isn't that what the Art Portal is for? *me-no-know*

Q: When GoryBlizzard was here, we talked about the Newgrounds Stickam Chat. He didn't really have much to say about it, but perhaps you can tell us about it. What was the experiences like in Stickam?

A: Stickam is where I spoke to a lot of Newgrounders for the very first time. It was a slaughterhouse for anyone foolish enough to disclose their feelings, haha! There are a lot of people from NG that I would never have met in person if it hadn't been for NG's Stickam Chat. I first spoke to Timmy there, for example.

Q: Your first submission to the Art Portal would be Blue Brain (poster). Who was this poster for and what can you tell us about the process in making it?

A: I was just dicking about to make something for a Planet-K advertisement poster, but ended up having technical issues with no one wanting to shell out for the commercial use of the poster's font. So I took the graphics I'd made and put them on a funky background and submitted it to the Art Portal. The graphics were remade from open-source medical stock images that I reshaped, drew over, and then put through a process of PS filters to get the desired style. Someone lovely put it on a mousepad for me.

Q: You are one of the few artists I see step out of their comfort zones in a way. You have made two wristbands in time, one being an Edgey Band and the other being a Tribal Band. Why wristbands?

A: I like thick leather cuffs, haha. I also do other stuff; check out my crafts and humble photography at http://jemacmillan.carbonmade.com/projects/32605 84#1

Q: You have done a number of portraits for Newgrounds members. They include Timmy, FBIpolux, jmalouin7, Captain-Ben, and cast. How did you come about drawing these gentlemen?

A: I've drawn some other people too, like Poxpower and Jazza. I guess I just didn't post them on the Art Portal. It started with me wanting to get better at drawing faces, so I asked people I liked if I could draw them. Now people are asking me to draw them, but I took up full time employment and can't seem to get into anything that requires that much attention and care for the time being.

Q: How did you come to be a part of the Newgrounds Art Forum Memory Collab? What was the experience like and are you happy with the final product Memory Game Collab?

A: It was a neat project, and ran through really quickly. My contribution was relatively small; I just wanted to draw boobs and zombies!

Q: I thought I'd seen it all, and then came The Cupcake Collab thread which would lead to the movie of the same name The Cupcake Collab. What drew you to this thread and what drew you to make an undead cupcake named Cupcakey?

A: I wanted to support Renaenae and the collaborations she was pulling together in the Art Forum. I was staring (drooling) at picture of cupcakes for inspiration (orgasm), and I noticed how the folded edge of the baking sleeve kinda looked like teeth. Teeth biting, cupcakes biting back, etc etc. Cupcakes are delicious.

Q: What is the Operation Holiday Flood?

A: It was another collaboration led by Renaenae. She's a legend at rounding up artists and forming a decent, fun project. People were paired with one another and made efforts to work together to create images to accompany "12 Days of Christmas". They were posted one at a time, in the correct order, over 12 days leading up to Christmas; and the thumbnails, when viewed together on searching for the shared tag word brought up a complete image with the artists' signatures and a theme background including the title of the project. It was a bit of a complicated effort but totally worth it.

Q: At the time of this interview, you're art can be seen as the wall background for the Newgrounds Shop page. I have to say it is quite possibly my absolute favorite by you. It can be seen when a Newgrounds Holiday background isn't up. When keepwalking was here he said Tom contacted him and told him what he wanted. Did Tom contact you as well and what were his descriptions for what he wanted?

A: Bob contacted me and asked if I'd like to create one of the skins for the redesign. Most of the colours were already picked by other artists, but thankfully grey was still available (I lubbs me some grey). As for it being your favourite, that's probably because it was touched up by the magical hands of Stamper. It didn't have nearly as many beautiful starbursts or cosmic swirls when I sent it in, but I think he went and did a few tweaks here and there to make things work better with the feel of the site. My first skin attempt was rejected because it was too distracting from site content and bordering on being too mature, so I dialled it back. Maybe I dialled it back too much? Haha, I dunno. Thanks though!

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

A: Ooph... Lemme knock back a few drinks and ask me again later. When I'm passed out.

Q: What advice would you have to give to those who are looking to go from doodling to masterpieces?

A: I used to just scream, "Practice!" Now I make the assertion that I was wrong for thinking that everyone can paint the Mona fuckin' Lisa if they just try hard enough. Not everyone can be a brilliant artist. Hell, I'm not even a brilliant artist. But I think there are varying degrees from which innate visual talents can blossom. I think some of it is simply having an eye and imagination for it, and the ability to problem solve that communication between your imagination and a platform through which you display what you see in your head to others. Practice just seems to work to hone and expand your methods of communication.

It isn't all doom and gloom though. If you want to start anywhere, start with your drawing and perception skills. Draw any and everything around you and then put it away and don't look at it for a few weeks. Keep drawing things in the meantime. You should spend at least 85% of your time actually looking at the thing you're trying to copy. Be productive and don't slack off. By the time you come back, you should notice an improvement from those older drawings - the key is noticing HOW you've improved. Look at what you are doing better. Look at what you see wrong with your old drawings and steer even further away from those same mistakes. Strive for perfection in capturing the things around you in real life. The more you can capture what you see with your eyes, the easier it will be to depict things from your imagination. If you don't notice an improvement from your old drawings, maybe you are just not concentrating enough, or maybe you should keep your day job, or maybe I'm an asshole.

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

A: You can expect I'll be making a sandwich after this interview.

CosmicDeath is not only a fantastic artist, but one of the nicest people I have gotten the chance to speak with. The way she draws eyes has appealed to me. From the Newgrounds Shop Wall to her own pieces. Even how she draws different Newgrounds members eyes, as if she is truly capturing their souls into a painting. Nothing short of just beautiful.

Interview No. 106

Interview By: @The-Great-One

Today's guest has been long overdue. As a professional animator he has done works for The Ricky Gervais Show, The Incredible Hulk, and Alvin and the Chipmunks. As a Newgrounds member he has brought classics such as The Liar, Liar 2, and Liar 3, Karo and Abo, and Neenja: Way Of The Harut, which was nominated for a Newgrounds Tank Award for Best Movies. He has received multiple awards here on Newgrounds with his works and he continues to make many people here laugh to this day, he is @Sykohyko.

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

A: I had just finished my first short called "Sweet Mother Of Vartan" and was emailing it to friends. One of my friends replied to my email telling me I should upload it to newgrounds. I uploaded it and went to sleep expecting to see a few views and comments in the morning. I woke up to over 50,000 views and hundreds of comments. I instantly fell in love with the idea of reaching such a wide audience from my computer.

Q: When did you get into art and animation?

A: I started drawing when I was 2 and my parents could tell from my drawings that I was going to be an artist. They enrolled me in my first art class at age 8 and I've been learning and improving ever since.

Q: You're first movie on Newgrounds would be entitled Sweet Mother of Vartan. A boxing story with some comedy and drama tied to it. What inspired you to make this and how did you go about making it?

A: After working professionally for a few years I started wanting to do my own thing. After all as an artist you want to express your creativity in your own way. So I started trying to come up with ideas. I had been drawing these characters for a while in my sketchbook, but I needed a setting. Since I love boxing I decided to go with that as the setting. Every night after work I would meet up with 2 friends of mine George Kaprelian and Angelo Vilar, and we would board and design the characters. After we finished all that, I began animating in flash and took it to completion.

Q: Vyron would be a trailer for an upcoming project. However we haven't any of Vyron on Newgrounds except for that trailer. Why is that? Will we see Vyron in the future?

A: Vyron was just a "test trailer" I did just to test myself and see if I could pull off an epic looking feature quality animation in flash. Even that short teaser took me months to do so doing anything more wouldn't be realistic for one person to pull off. It could be something to attempt in the future if I can get to a level where I have a crew or something.

Q: The Liar, Liar 2, and Liar 3, I believe to be your best works in terms of animation and storytelling. Where did this story come from and what was the process in bringing it to life?

A: The Liar is based on an old Armenian story. I've always loved epics, fables and fantasy worlds and Armenia is full of them. I know I mostly do comedy, but I'm more into that stuff. It's just harder to achieve the kind of quality those stories deserve. Even the Liar is disappointing to me as far as quality goes. Again something I plan to attempt in the future.

Q: You introduce us to Karo and Abo in the movie Smugheads. Are these characters inspired by anything from your own life? If not then what inspired you to make these two?

A: Yes definitely. Abo is a mix of a lot of people I know both personally and through social websites. If some one has an opinion that I find funny I will use it through Abo, and I'll use Karo to voice my own opinion. Visually they are both based on family and friends.

Q: Neenja: Way Of The Harut, Neenja 2, Neenja 3, and Neenja 4. Would all be nominated together for The Newgrounds Tank Award for Best Movie of 2010. For those who don't know, who is Harut? Why make him a ninja? How did you write this series?

A: Neenja started with a funny drawing I did of Harut wearing a Ninja mask with his nose sticking out. Since I wanted to do something Epic, Neenja was perfect for it. My writing process for Neenja was more of an outline of where I wanted the story to go, and then the details would be worked out in the story boarding. I still have Neenja 5 and 6 I would like to complete, but again its hard to squeeze that kind of quality into a schedule that includes full time work.

Q: Abo's Facebook Adventure is a fun little parody on Facebook using Karo and Abo. Where did the inspiration for this come from and what was the process in animating it?

A: I just found it funny to see how much info people were putting on facebook from everything they eat, drink, think. So I thought it would be funny to have Abo did the same and kept going even after passing out. Karo again would be my voice on the topic.

Q: Thought I'd Seen It All is quite possibly one of the funniest Karo and Abo shorts I've seen of your works. The pacing, timing, and dialogue are all done wonderfully. How did this family end up on vacation and what made you want to show a witness instead of what all was happening to the family throughout it?

A: I wanted to introduce the parrot into the series, so I had the family take a trip to Hawaii where Harut was able to find one. The scene at the end was more about Abo breaking through the wall and running for freedom. I thought it would be funny if the guy settling into the room next door had just witness the family downstairs. Originally he was just suppose to be settling in talking business on his phone.

Q: MOOLT-The Facebook Effect would be another step in parodying Facebook, although it seemed to shoot for more just straight up comedy than really Facebook. What was the process in creating this?

A: Well every short I do is always based on an idea I get from my surroundings. A few times the lights went out in our neigborhood and my sister would have a mental breakdown without access to facebook. So I let the idea cook in my head for a few days until I had a rough idea of where I wanted to go with it. Then I boarded it, recorded dialogue, and animated.

Q: The Abo Theory has been your latest upload to Newgrounds, being almost a year old. Where did the idea for The Abo Theory come from and why the sudden drop from Newgrounds?

A: The Abo theory is based on a joke my dad keeps telling over and over and over again. I thought it was perfect for Abo. I actually started attending Animation Mentor about a year and a half ago, so all of my personal work was put on hold. I finished school this week so I'll be getting back into it soon.

Q: At one point you had a video entitled Genocide. It was a memorial video for the 1.5 million Armenians who were murdered in 1915 when the Ottoman Empire tried to exterminate the Armenians. It was also dedicated to your grandfathers. What all can you tell us about this movie? Your Armenian background and why you decided to take it down?

A: I actually didn't take it down. The music I had used was a Peter Gabriel song, and youtube took down the video because of copyright issues. The genocide affected both of my grandfathers. Both of them lost there entire families and grew up orphans. My last name is actually Manukyan because my Grandfather from my dads side was later adopted by a man name Michael Manukyan. That video was a special one I spent a lot of time on so I'm pretty upset that it was taken down.

Q: You have also done animation for big movies and TV shows such as Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Incredible Hulk, and The Ricky Gervais Show. Am I correct on this? If so then could you please tell us how you got to do work on these and what the experience was like?

A: I've worked professionally since 2000 after graduating from high school. Most of my work has been on 2d tv shows, but I've always strived to get into full feature animation and in 2007 I found out Rhythm and Hues was starting a training program. I sent them my reel of my 2d work and some 3d work I had done at home and got accepted into the program. After the program I was hired as a Jr. Animator on Alvin and The Chipmunks and then again as a Animator on The Hulk.

Q: For those getting into animation. What advice would you have to give them?

A: Whether your just getting into it or have been at it for a while, keep finding ways to improve. Never get comfortable no matter how good get. I had been animating for over ten years when I decided to go back to school and relearn from the bottom up. It was probably one of the best decisions I made.

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

A: I'm planning on developing the Abo and Karo family and pushing the characters. I have a few ideas of where I'd like to take them but you'll have to wait and see.

Sykohyko is one of those rare animators, who comes along and puts their heart and soul into their creations. Not to say others don't put in effort, all do, but Sykohyko is one of the few who I have seen to truly branch his characters and storylines to unprecedented levels. Each animation flows smoothly and has wonderful timing and pacing. It truly was a treat to interview him and maybe one day we'll see a full-length feature from him.

Interview No. 105

Interview By: @The-Great-One

Today's guest is known far and wide throughout Newgrounds as well as the rest of the Internet. His video game parodies have achieved him critical acclaim with his works with Metal Gear Awesome, PSP Squirrels, and Girlchan in Paradise. His other works include his voice acting ranging from Gameoverse, to the Press Start series, and to the video game Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. He is well recognized on YouTube for his two series being Sequelitis and Game Grumps. Today we welcome with open arms, @Egoraptor.

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

A: I don't even remember how I found it, but I've been around since The Teletubbies assassin stuff. Before the portal. It was all strange and unlike television, like it felt subversive, and fresh. Like you couldn't get anything like this anywhere else. I think once the Portal existed I joined 'cause I wanted to review stuff, but secretly because I wanted to submit stuff. It took a while for me to finally do it, but I did!

Q: When did you get into animation?

A: I guess I was always into it... I made flipbooks when I was in my single digits. I think my first flipbook was from a cereal box, and I was just fucking amazed that you could do the stuff I saw on TV in this little booklet. I immediately grabbed a stack of post-it notes and flipbooked everywhere. Even in my text books... some of my sketchbooks have a flipbook in the corner. It was nuts.

Q: At what age were you introduced to video games and what video game inducted you so to speak?

A: I had video games since as long as I can remember. My Dad had an NES he got from buying a car and I used to ask him to beat the hard parts for me in Mario. He had a dingy basement we'd play Dr. Mario in all the time. I guess my whole life I just grew up playing them, but really, it wasn't until I saw a cosplay group of Jet Grind Radio where I was like "Woah." Like, this is a thing. This isn't just something my friends and I talked about. Something inside me clicked and I saved my money and bought a Dreamcast at a pawn shop, and Jet Grind Radio at Target. It was coincidentally the only Dreamcast game they had left. I was convinced it was destiny, or something. Once I started playing it, I just felt like something was right. I started thinking more and more about video games from that point on and didn't really look back.

Q: Your first movie would be the start of a groundbreaking series on the Internet and that would be Metal Gear Awesome. Where did the inspiration come for this and what all can you tell me about the process of bringing it together?

A: Well when I was younger I had a lot of self confidence issues (still do), but I always thought the thing I liked to do wasn't what I could make a living out of. I built up enough courage to say, you know what, I think I can make it at this voice acting thing, so I started practicing and doing lines for peoples' cartoons on Newgrounds. I got really addicted to doing a (really bad) Snake impression and I did it for a handful of movies, but then it "dried up" so to speak and I didn't get anymore roles. But I wanted more roles, so I wrote my own script. I wrote it in about 4 or 5 minutes, just banging on the keyboard a bunch of nonsense of how I remember the first hour or so of the game went. I did all the voices and felt satisfied, but for some reason got Kira Buckland to do the voice of Meryl... I guess I just really wanted her to sound feminine and didn't want to use my own voice for her. I think having had her do the voices for me drove me to want to make something out of it, so I mixed it together and trudged through Flash since all my friends were using it. I had no fucking clue what I was doing, but I managed, I guess. I just drew it all bad on purpose 'cause I guess that was the "style" of it, or something. I took a lot of inspiration from Homestar Runner's "The Yellow Dello" because it had a lot of off-model stuff, and I liked that. I thought it was funny. It took me a long time to finish because I kept putting it off, but once I finished it, all my friends urged me to release it on Newgrounds. I was really against it, I thought it would get blammed. It didn't really stack up to any other work on the site I liked, and I thought my humor was a little bit esoteric. Like who the fuck else would think this is funny but me and maybe a handful of other people? But the next day I got an IM, I think it was from Anigen, who told me it was on frontpage, and I was like, uh, what?

Q: Most of your movies are parodies, with the awesome tag. Thus adding your bizarre sense of humor. The pacing is fast and the timing is perfect. When it comes to writing a script for your Awesome Parodies, where do you begin and when do you know where to stop?

A: It's just a mess. I just think of something that makes me laugh and I just go. I stop when I feel like I delivered the joke enough. Metal Gear Awesome is special because it's just a timeline of the game, so it's not just a one-off joke. Sometimes I'll come up with an idea playing the game, or driving somewhere, or in the shower, I dunno. I just have to write it down right when I come up with it or else I'll forget it. lol I guess the ultimate answer is that I feel it out. It it seems like it works, I just do it, and see if it works.

Q: When did you meet Ed Glaser and how did you become a part of the Press Start series?

A: I don't remember exactly how our friendship started. I think he e-mailed me and asked me to be a voice for his film as the talking tree. I thought I did a good job but looking back it's atrocious. I couldn't pull off a deep voice to save my life. I guess he liked something about me 'cause he asked me again and again to do voices for his cartoons, and they're really pretty well written, so I kept doing it. I think what I like most about working on them is that he gives me a lot of freedom and often gives me different characters each time, so I don't stagnate. A lot of my favorite voices I have, I used in Press Start Adventures.

Q: Out of all your video game parodies, one of my all-time favorites has to be PSP Squirrels. Where did the inspiration for this come from? Also do you believe that emotions play a big role in making a parody?

A: Thanks man, I like that one too. When I was younger I wanted to ad-lib and practice voice acting to crack up my friends or whatever. AIM let you hit like, F9 or something, and then record a 10 second audio clip and send it in the chat window. I'm so sad they got rid of it because it was so amazingly fun. Anyway, sometimes I had some idea I wanted to run with that'd last longer than 10 seconds, so I'd open up a program and just run with it. PSP Squirrels was one of the billion of those I did, and I thought it was one of the best. Something about it called for me to put visuals to it, probably because it was based on such a visually memorable commercial. As far as emotions affecting me... I guess maybe. I don't consciously think about that stuff, like, when I hear an artist like "I tried to personify my anger in this piece" I don't really understand that. Whenever I try that it feels forced, because when I draw I don't really remain angry, or anything. lol. I start out angry and then I kinda forget about it and focus on drawing. I guess to me it's more about vision. There's something I want to convey, and I strive to do it.

Q: Girlchan in Paradise is in my opinion a very interesting parody on anime while at the same time being something cleverly written to still be an engaging little story. There was a lot that has gone into this series. Where did the idea come from? How did you form this team and what was the process all of you took into working on this series?

A: Girlchan stemmed from a skype conference in which we totally just made fun of anime. The first episode was pretty much verbatim the conversation.

Q: Out of all your works, one of my all-time favorites has to be 3rd Grade Transformers. The writing, the pacing, the characters, the dialogue, the animation, everything about it is perfect. It is one of the funniest movies I have ever seen on Newgrounds. What is your history with Transformers and your thoughts on the Michael Bay movies? How did the writing start for this? What was the process you took in animating it?

A: Hahaha wow, that's literally the first time I've ever heard that. Thanks man. I grew up watching Beast Wars and that's really my only childhood interaction with them, but I LOVED Beast Wars and I had a lot of toys from it. Whenever I visited the Newgrounds office Mindchamber's desk was covered in Transformers and it brought back a warm feeling in me, like it was so much fun to look at them and play with them and transform them. We all saw Transformers Revenge of the Fallen together at the office and afterwards we decided to do another Blamformers collab in-office. Most of them got canned but mine and Johnny Utah's were some of the only survivors. I just like, watched that movie and was like, wow, this is written by a 5 year old. The idea was instantaneous. HappyHarry really made it shine. I came up to his desk and said "I need like a school play old lady piano version of the transformers theme for my collab part" and in like 10 minutes, he barfed up these amazing like 5 or 6 different renditions of it, complete with flubs and crescendos and I was like... this is better than I could've ever imagined. Animating it was easy, because there was only one background. When I cut to the audience members, I had gotten so used to not doing backgrounds that I just made it black. Like I did NOT want to draw another background.

Q: Gameoverse is an interesting series you would be giving your contributions to. What can you tell me about working with RubberNinja. Also what input did you have in this series?

A: I love Game O Verse and I still say it's some of my best voicework ever. Ross has an uncanny talent at picking the best lines out of a bunch of takes. Like, without fail. He bounces scripts back and forth with me to tell him if I like them or not, but I always respect that it's his project and my advice is just that, advice.

Q: You would get to work with Ed Gould on his movie WTFuture. How did it feel getting to work with Ed and what are your thoughts on his passing?

A: Yeah Edd dying was a big bummer, he was a really cool dude and I think his situation humbled him to superhuman levels. He just asked me to do a voice and I did it, 'cause I really dug his comedy. We didn't talk much, but you can imagine I wish that went a little differently all things considered.

Q: Open Letter to Game Devs is an interesting and fast parody. Would this parody soon lead to the hilarious yet informative video game show Sequelitis? Also what all can you tell us about Sequelitis?

A: A little bit maybe, I like being critical of games in a subversive way. People seem to always just be like "ohh this game has bad graphics" or "they took out item mapping" or some shit but nobody is critical of the stuff that really makes a game bad.

Q: When AlmightyHans was here we talked about a collaboration entitled Contact. How did you get involved in this project and how did it feel working with these other artists?

A: It was just something silly Hans put together while we were all visiting the Newgrounds Office. I don't remember who wrote it aside from Hans but it was mostly just me doing a voice for it and laughing at the results. It really was funny.

Q: Alright, let me see if I got this. Egorapture is a movie telling people to stop bitching about others supposedly copying you? If not then could you give us some more background on this movie?

A: Hahaha well I think Spazkid was a bit tired of people telling him he was copying me. I think his style is really distinct and I thought his concept for the cartoon was funny since I've seen it happen a lot of times for other artists as well. I really don't get it sometimes. I didn't invent funny faces and yelling.

Q: How did you become involved in Ed Glaser's Space Ninja series?

A: Ed just asks me to do voices all the time. I like him so I have no problem saying yes, haha.

Q: As a voice actor what tips do you have to give to those who are looking to share their voices with the world?

A: Just do it, get it out there, record a demo, send it to folk. If you have nothing to show, nobody's going to care that you can do a great impression of Peter Griffin.

Q: You would be the voice of Dr. Bruce Banner in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. For those who don't know who Dr. Banner is, could you please tell them, also how did you come across getting this voice and what was it like to do it?

A: Banner is the alter ego of The Hulk. I got the role from entering an online voice contest they were having. I almost deleted the congratulations email... "You won!" How many times do you get that emailed to you a day in the form of spam? It was interesting, they flew me out to LA for the first time in my life and I got to record in a studio for the first time. I'm sure I was a wreck, they sent me the disc with all of my assets on it and I refuse to listen to it.

Q: You have also did voice work for the video game remake of Death Rally, as the character John Gore. How did you get this opportunity and what was it like working with these people? Also who is John Gore and how did you find the voice for him?

A: John Gore is a nice little piece of my voice past. These dudes over at Mountain Sheep were swell enough to ask me if I'd like to voice their surly main character. I totally said yes, I mean look at that game, it's beautiful, and it's an iPhone game! Finding the voice was easy. They wanted some kind of variant of my Awesome Snake voice, and that's one of my favorites to do. Funny story, doing Minigore was the first time I ever completely lost my voice. I went to bed that night and looked in the mirror, opened my mouth and nothing came out. I was pretty scared.

Q: When did you meet Doug Walker, also known as the Nostalgia Critic?

A: I met him at Shadocon in Tampa, Florida. Good times we've had that Doug and I. Good times.

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

A: Lots of cartoons and definitely more Game Grumps, that's for sure. Sequelitis galore... and hopefully some new long-form animations if I can ever muster up the courage to tackle those.

Despite this funny face yelling man's bizarre sense of humor, his animating, his timing, his pacing, all of these are perfect in many ways. His voice acting is quite top notch as well. Egoraptor like all who have crossed paths with The Interviewer was interesting to interview, but at the same time he comes off as just very plain. He is just like you or me. Yeah many others who have been interviewed have shown us their human sides, but Egoraptor seems to have two sides to him... one we see here and one we see through his works.

Interview No. 104

Interview By: @The-Great-One

Today's guest has been with us once before. Truthfully he was here when The Interviewer was just starting out. Since his last time here he has composed songs such as Winter at the Castle, The American Child, and has participated in the Represent A Country 7 [Contest] with his entry I'm Saving Her Life. He has also composed music for the Newgrounds collaboration entitled Redhand. Within this time he has been working on his project "Quest of Eve". He is once again @Bosa.

Q: We spoke about your musical creations. One thing we did not talk about though is how you discovered music and what inspired you to make it?

A: When I was three years old, I had a toy piano which I played with constantly every day. I so much enjoyed it that when I turned seven, I started playing on a larger keyboard and playing music that sounded good to me. I also seen a film about a blind boy who learned how to play piano and later became one of the leading pianists in the nation. That movie is what inspired me to really begin playing deeper into music.

Q: One song that I did not bring up would be entitled The Cottage. You said it was based off a book you wrote. What can you tell us about the book and how the song correlates with it?

A: Going back in time, aren't we? Well, it wasn't much of a book. It was more of a short story depicting a young woodcutter who lived out near the forest. He soon encounters a witch and must soon defeat her with the help of an imprisoned fairy. I focused the story towards a children audience. I actually vaguely remember expanding on the song a long time ago, but it's been so long that I've forgotten most of my innovative composition ideas from years ago.

Q: What was the Wise Words Competition?

A: It was an attempt to express the intellect and creative minds of Newgrounds by seeing who could come up with their own most profound and original quote. It was quite extraordinary to see what people came up with off the top of their heads, but the contest itself didn't expand quite as much as I would have liked. Still, I wouldn't mind hosting such a contest again in the future.

Q: When I speak with different musicians, one question I have for them is "what is in your opinion the definition of music". You had an interesting way of describing music. When asking for musicians for Quest of Eve you stated...

"When it comes time to create music, we intend to look beyond what we are expecting; to break through to the other side or to simply outdo what we first had in mind. What I've come to realize over this new age of music is that when we create a story, the music we choose will captivate the listeners and instill the inner beauty of our creations."

Do you still agree with this statement? Whatever your answer could you expand on it?

A: Yes. Basically, to put what I said in layman's terms: our goal as musicians should be to go beyond our own talent, or what we believe are our limitations. We must not restrict ourselves to what resources we possess or compositional ideas we have, instead we must take what we got and go beyond what we expect to accomplish. If you have a plan in mind for a song, and when you go to create that song, you should go way beyond your original plan and create something that instills your inimitable creations into the hearts of your listeners.

Q: When looking through your works, I never brought up your bluegrass works. The Babb Boys and The Working Man are two of them. How did you acquire the fascination with bluegrass?

A: I live in Tennessee. I grew up with bluegrass gospel, and I still love it. 'Nuff said.

Q: You also have a taste for the Celtic music as well. With Cronnin's Hornpipe, Miss Dumphy's Hornpipe, and one of my favorites by you, Rolling Waves. When were you introduced to the Celtic music and what about it appeals to you?

A: Where I live, we have a celtic festival once a year. I've only been to it once in my whole life, but the music and instruments that I was subjected to astounded me. The armor and weapons were cool, but the instruments (this is where I first witnessed someone playing a dulcimer in front of me) amazed me. The reason I was able to easily replicate the celtic instruments in my songs was because of that festival.

Q: The Beanstalk is truly an epic and serene piece. Where did the inspiration for this come from and what was the process in writing it?

A: I honestly don't remember much. I kinda wish I kept some documents or wrote down my creative thoughts back then; it's hard for me to remember things from so long ago. However, based on what little I do remember, I think I was inspired by King's Quest. In the game, you get to a point to where you must climb a beanstalk and slay a giant with a sling and stone (like David and Goliath). On the other hand, I may have been inspired by a story I used to read as a child called 'Jack and the Beanstalk.' I believe the latter is what I was inspired by the most, but my memory fails me these days unfortunately.

Q: We now come to a song that is a bit touchy and if you do not wish to answer I can understand. Pure of Heart. Who is Rachel, what can you tell us about her, and what came to be of this song?

A: I can't say much about Rachel, but this song was written for her. I can say that she loved it however. I've been told that 'Pure of Heart' and 'Your Prelude' are two of my most adored songs. It seems that when my songs are based upon real love, I get a better response. Quite intriguing.

Q: Winter at the Castle would be a new style for you. What new things did you experiment here that you haven't done in the past?

A: Angelic choir and disney-like music. I sorta introduced a medieval style in 'Princess Marion,' and in 'Winter at the Castle,' I expanded on that style. I really experimented on harp effects and boys choir, not to mention what more I could do with bells and metals. In 'A Young Mind,' you might say that I was experimenting heavily on bells, so I suppose I used that experimentation in this song as well.

Q: An uplifting fanfare of birth and life. We come to The American Child. I have reviewed it once already giving my thoughts and stating that it had hints to another song of yours The Last Game. What can you tell me about both of these songs? Am I seeing a subconscious correlation or am I imagining things. If so can you fill in the blanks?

A: Again, we go back in time. I actually didn't notice the similarities at first. I suppose that there is a subconscious memory of my past creations that may reappear from time to time in my more recent productions. I based 'American Child' on the feelings of a new life joining us in America. There is nothing more beautiful to me than knowing that life still continues to be born in a world that hates life. I do know for a fact what I based 'The Last Game' on however. I based that song on the NFL Superbowl I was watching (the same with Casted Life). Sorry if I disappointed you with such elementary inspiration.

Q: What is Represent A Country 7 [Contest] and what can you tell us about your entry I'm Saving Her Life?

A: It's a contest where you must represent a country of your choice and win by popular vote. You must create a song that will define the brilliance and intellectual superiority of your country. I chose the USA for obvious reasons, but also because I wanted to present the best country with the best music, haha. I based the song I made on some contemporary movies and video games that youth enjoy. Games like Mass Effect and Call of Duty, movies like Star Trek and Black Hawk Down both played a heavy role in its creation.

Q: You are one who got to participate with a lot of creative people of Newgrounds in the movie Redhand. How did you come across this project and what was it like working on it?

A: With Quest of Eve, I was able to meet a lot of talented flash artists. One of them began working on their own project and of course my music for Quest of Eve was well known by the team. It was a matter of time before I began helping others on their own projects. I don't remember much, but I can say that 'Redhand' was a remarkable flash production and I truly enjoyed working on it.

Q: When we last spoke, Boutista Entertainment was just born and Quest of Eve was just getting on its feet. Where are both of these now?

A: I know you understand that I'm not saying anything about Quest of Eve at this moment, but I am entitled to say that Boutista Entertainment will be known as Kingdom Crown Entertainment in the future.

Q: Not all of your music can be found here on Newgrounds. Some of it is on Reverbnation. What can you tell us about Reverbnation?

A: I don't spend a lot of time on the site, so I'm not too familiar with the more recent features. But back in the day, I remember joining up simply because I may have been able to gain a profit from it. Also, me and MaestroRage were pretty tight back then and we both shared our own ideas -- Reverbnation was suggested to me by him.

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

A: You're definitely going to see more cinematic music. A lot of my future titles may be moving away from my style from long ago, but I hope that I'll make some good decisions when it comes to music. I may change it up from time to time, but Neo-Orchestral is going to be my more prominent genre.

Bosa was one of the musicians who introduced me to Newgrounds. With the varieties of his works he is certainly a fascinating fellow with a story to tell. He chooses to tell his stories through music and bears that you listen a while to the notes that he has brought to you. It was a pleasure to interview him again and to see him still hard at work on his creations truly does inspire me, and I hope it inspires the other creators here as well.

Interview No. 103

Interview By: @The-Great-One

Today's guest is an interesting fellow. He been with Newgrounds for over 8 Years now and throughout that time he has become a forum regular and a regular of many chat services that Newgrounds has participated in. With the release of the Newgrounds Chat, he has become a Chat Moderator. He has an interesting story to tell of his experiences and life, he is @GoryBlizzard.

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

A: I found NG through a friend at school and checked it out in March 2000--I was only in 4th grade back then. I would find myself back here on and off over the next 3 years to watch an occasional movie or play the occasional game, and this wasn't all that often. In October 2003, I started to develop a real addiction here and I started to actively seek out more games and movies on NG like a lot of other people in my school. I lurked the BBS for a while, and on November 21, 2003, I made a decision to join NG with QueerThugSmasher as my username. That didn't last long though, because I signed back in on December 24, 2003 and decided to change my username to GoryBlizzard instead. I have no plans to change my name ever again since GoryBlizzard has been my main online alias for a while.

Q: Your first post to the Newgrounds forum would be within the thread Morons should be Shot. What drew you to that thread?

A: Nothing significant. At the time, I was just 13, and on that day, I felt exhausted and even highly inebriated because I had a few drinks right after coming home from school. I was in the middle of writing a diary entry on Diaryland and I was googling images of guns to use in that post because I was in one of those moods where I felt like shooting someone. Anything even remotely shooting-related would have caught my attention at the time, and it just happened to be that thread. I posted that same image to the blog that I posted in the thread. Looking back at it now, I feel no pride--just regret. That first post should remain nothing more than a distant memory.

Q: When did you start drinking and why?

A: Time to go 17 years back in time all the way to 1995. I started drinking alcohol when I was 5 at a barbecue in my grandparents' backyard and only out of curiosity, with plenty of adults around. In my then-childish mind, I thought that if all the big old people around me are drinking beer, maybe if I had some, they would treat me with more respect. I asked my dad to open a can of Budweiser for me, and he did. Now, you'd think that at least one person would have a problem with a 5-year-old kid drinking a can of beer, but astonishingly, nobody came up to try to take my beer away. I vaguely remember this blonde lady talking about how cute it was to see me drinking, but that's it. I felt like I could handle the taste just fine.

For the rest of my childhood, I would have an occasional beer with my lunch or dinner whenever my parents bought a pack, and on some days I drank way too much. I started to become curious about liquor at one point, and when I was 8, I asked my mom if it was okay to have a little bit of their Stolichnaya vodka. Well, she did give me a little bit--not even a shot, and my palate just couldn't tolerate it well, but I continued to drink beer. I was 11 when I gave vodka another chance and my experience then wasn't as bad as last time, and later on I just started to drink it more and more. Eventually I started to drink different types of whiskey and rum as well. Before I knew it, I had a real drinking problem, and at such a young age too.

Most of the liquor I've drank throughout my life was around 80 to 101 proof, on average. I was never really into extremely high-proof liquor such as Bacardi 151, Devil's Springs vodka or higher. I'm also not big into absinthe or Sambuca. Starting to drink at an early age really sucks, because I'm paying the price with the way my health is now--just being constantly afraid of seizures and taking levetiracetam ER every 12 hours to suppress them. I hope to eventually be off my medication so that I can start drinking booze again, but that may take a long time--at least 7 years. I don't want my drinking days to be over permanently, but when I drink again, I'm only going to do it in extreme moderation.

Q: When Newgrounds member Livecorpse committed suicide Tom announced it in the thread LiveCorpse Suicide. You commented on this matter. I want to go through each thing one by one, first off how well did you know Livecorpse?

A: On a personal level, I didn't get to know Livecorpse very well. I talked to him on AIM a few times to give him some movie ideas, and he wasn't all that nice to me. The very first post I ever made was in one of his threads, and like everyone else, I had no idea what would eventually happen to him. The whole incident was tragic all around, and it happened less than a month after thecerealkiller died. I remember that being a big deal too at the time.

Q: This is a bit touchy to talk about so if you don't wish to answer then that's fine. In your post about Livecorpse's suicide attempt, you to spoke of your own suicide attempts. It's not an easy thing to think about or even to attempt, it can be a scary ordeal. How many times did you try to take your own life and why? Also what made you decide not to?

A: My previous suicide attempts are too touchy to even think about, let alone talk about. I wish I could go back in time, knowing everything that I know now, and undo the damage I did to myself.

Q: Still in the same thread you state that "there's no such thing as Heaven or Hell. It doesn't matter how you die when the fact of the matter is, in the end, you're dead." Where is your stance on religion? Are you an atheist, agnostic? Were you raised in a religious household and how did you come to drop your faith so to speak?

A: I'm an atheist, much to the chagrin of many of my extended family members. A few months after I was born, I was baptized as a Catholic, but that was my paternal grandmother's idea--she's still alive as of this writing and has always been highly religious. My parents were both raised in religious households, hated it and did me the favor of not raising me like their own parents did. So in short, no, I wasn't raised in a religious household. Just like a lot of other people, there were plenty of hardships in my life, but at least I can say that I never had to worry about waking up early every Sunday morning to go to church, being told to say prayers every night and so on. There's simply no empirical evidence that any higher being exists and until I'm proven wrong, I will stick to that. I consider myself highly tolerant of people with different religious backgrounds--in general, religion isn't really a big deal for me.

Q: You've been on Newgrounds since 2003. So you were around during a lot of interesting things happening on Newgrounds. Going through multiple redesigns and tweaks. What do you think of this redesign compared to the past redesigns?

A: I like this redesign quite a bit. I'm not sure why, but it's easy enough to navigate and I like that brown appears to be the main color (a departure from the preceding designs--all of which were black). Anything that is shit or reminds me of shit is good. I will say though that I miss the design from late 2004 to very early January 2006, before they replaced the header--that was my favorite one, and it looked especially good when the header was Halloween-themed. The 2007 redesign was also very good and it lasted much longer than I expected. As much as I like the current design, I'm not sure enough people are on the same page. A total redesign may have been too much to absorb too quickly for a lot of people. Stuff on the previous design could have been changed to reflect changing times and features could have been added without completely changing the basic layout.

Q: You were around during a time when the flash sites were practically at war with one another. AlbinoBlackSheep and Ebaumsworld being two. What can you tell us about this little historical nugget from your perspective?

A: Ebaumsworld was the site a lot of people here loved to hate (mainly for their content theft + watermarking), and I'll admit that I was no different. ABS wasn't well-regarded either, and in fact they stole a lot of NG's bandwidth at the time, which riled up the admins here. I never supported either of those sites to begin with, and of course I'm not going to start now. The YTMND raid on Ebaumsworld over that Lindsay Lohan pic in January 2006 sticks out in my mind because it was a good example of how pissed off people can get over stolen content. I never partook in the raid, but I watched from the sidelines.

Q: You are a member of the club here on Newgrounds for fans of Heavy Metal music, aptly named Metal Hell. When were you introduced to the Metal genre? How did you come to join this club?

A: I actually grew up mainly listening to classical music, but I liked some of the more popular metal bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath and Rush. Since my early childhood, I was a casual metal listener, but I never fully got into the genre until July 2004 when someone else on another forum posted a long list of recommended power metal bands, which I then thought I'd check out. I looked up Sonata Arctica and Rhapsody (later and now known as Rhapsody of Fire), and that pretty much changed the rest of my musical life. From there, I went on to explore the rest of power metal, as well as death metal, black metal, progressive metal, doom metal and so on. I was 14 back then, 22 now and it's nothing short of startling that my musical taste has changed so little over so long. Much of what I enjoyed listening to back then, I still love now, even as I continue to discover new bands. Just metal itself is a never-ending journey for me. It's not the only genre I listen to (I still love classical, plus prog rock, some guilty pleasures here and there), but frankly I rarely listen to much else. I gave nu-metal/aggressive rock/mallcore a chance, but none of it ever appealed to me for the most part.

I lurked Metal Hell for a while just to familiarize myself with the people that post there. I officially joined it on January 12, 2005 when I was still 14, almost 15. I haven't posted there much in a long time, and have taken long breaks in between posting from the very beginning, but that's because I'm busy with a lot of other things and haven't seen all that many breathtaking developments in the metal world lately. Since that time, I've met a lot of my favorite musicians (Ken Owen from Carcass, Muhammed Suicmez from Necrophagist and all of Suffocation to name some examples), went to some amazing shows, and frankly, it's a shame that I can't afford to go to more. I still treasure a lot of my memories from the shows I've already been to, and sometimes take out my old tickets to remind myself, "Fuck, that was such an amazing night." On top of that, I've also increased my metal T-shirt and CD collection. As I'm writing this, I'm listening to Hyperdrive by Devin Townsend. If anyone reading this is looking for a good song to have sex to, there you go.

Q: First off, who is this person? Second, many Newgrounds members are afraid to show their faces or would rather hold a bit of mystery to themselves, but not you. What makes you fearless to show yourself?

A: Wow...well, yeah, that's me all right. 2007 me though, not the 2012 me that almost everyone here is accustomed to by now. I was 17 back then and in the beginning stages of growing my hair long. Earlier that same month, I made the decision that I wanted to have long hair and was fucking sick of short hair, period. As time went by, my wish came true. Now I don't really look anything like I did during that time--I have much longer hair and a goatee now, plus sunglasses obviously, but lately I've been thinking about having another haircut since the way I look now turns off a lot of prospective employers. I just can't rule that out.

Also, I was indeed afraid to show myself on NG for a long time--I certainly didn't even consider doing it until March 2006. As time went on, I became more comfortable showing myself, but almost always in sunglasses which I wear most of the time IRL anyway (except when I'm asleep, in the shower or at a job interview). People often ask me why I wear sunglasses all the time, and the fact is because my eyes hurt and feel more sensitive when they're not on. Wearing sunglasses constantly greatly facilitates my ability to get things done. I don't care that I look like Neo, Slash, Howard Stern, MJ or whatever...I hear that a lot too.

Q: The Newgrounds Stickam Group Chat! would become a regular place for you to be at. A lot of drama and fun stories has been said to go on through there. What can you share with us from there?

A: We don't do much in Stickam except sit around for hours at a time, waiting for random people to come in and do flips.

I know this answer is going to disappoint a lot of people, but it's just the way it is. Sorry.

Q: One thing that happened in Stickam was that you shared some pictures with them. They would later be used in the thread rate my room newgrounds by GiantDouche. Why did you decide to take pictures of yourself naked and share them with Stickam? Also what are your thoughts on this thread?

A: I regret everything about that whole period of time. I regret taking those pics of myself to begin with and I regret sharing them. Back when I used to get drunk a lot, I would often take many more naked pictures of myself than I usually would. Now I no longer drink at all, so there you go.

Q: The Newgrounds Chat has been out for a good long time now. How did you become a Chat Moderator and what can you tell us about the job?

A: The chat was originally launched on April 1st. At first, I thought it would disappear right after April Fool's Day, and was surprised to still see it on the site on April 2nd. Since Stickam had already pretty much died by that point, I figured I'd start going to the NG Chat with more regularity during the day. Asandir and Bahamut were the most active mods back then. Both of them and the rest of the mods seemed competent, but they also missed a lot and I frequently found myself quietly working behind the scenes getting people banned or deleted based on chat conduct.

On May 23rd, Wade made a rare appearance in the room and announced to the room that he made me a chat mod. After talking to Wade briefly on AIM, the first thing I did was look over the ban list, which looked big at the time, and now it's more than twice as big as it was back then thanks to new troublemakers, and a large number of people circumventing their bans with alts. Since being modded, I've put a lot of time into cleaning up the chat as much as humanly possible--disrupting spammers, chronic RPers, underage users and generally disruptive idiots. Every day brings new challenges, but overall, I like to think that the chat is cleaner and more welcoming.

A lot of people have indicated since the chat's inception that they would love to become chat mods themselves. So for future mods, know this: there's a lot more to modding than you may realize. The two most important traits in chat mods (and all other mods) are level-headedness and reasonable intelligence. I'm not saying that most chat users are stupid (frankly, many are, but the same can be said for a lot of BBS users too), but many just don't have the right balance of these traits. As a chat mod, I've already dealt with just about everything. There are days when I don't have to ban anyone and others when I have to deal with a large number of lowlives. It is what it is and I'm constantly prepared for just about situation to come up. I've seen people devote 20+ accounts in a single day just for spamming the chat, and users as young as 6 or 7 in there. Once in a while, I have no problem recommending certain users for modship, but the number of people I've recommended to date remains very, very small.

There's no doubt that many people think I'm a strict mod, but overall I'm fair, and much more approachable than many people seem to think. If there's anything I want people to know, just don't fear me for no reason. Every time I ban someone, I take a screenshot or keep a relevant chat log for reference in case I need to spit it back at them, or if other mods or admins are interested in seeing them. People that PM me regarding their bans, acknowledging their wrongdoing and asking for second chances usually get them. My main objective is to make sure that people that come into the chat can have a decent or intelligent conversation without worrying about too much spam or clutter--that's not too much to ask, right? It doesn't matter if you're new or old. Usually when people try to have fun by way of RPing or just too much fucking around, the flow of the conversation gets ruined for everyone else discussing something serious. One thing I hear a lot is that I don't let people have fun...well, that's not really true. I only destroy your fun if it clearly gets in the way of other people's fun, and while you may not be aware of the serious collateral effects of what you're doing, I certainly am. If discussion isn't fun to you, and spam, RPing, randomness and general nonsense is fun, you're in the wrong place.

Q: You and I were talking before this interview and you brought up that you have epilepsy. For those who don't know what that is, could you tell them what it is and how you have coped with it these years?

A: A lot of people probably already know that epilepsy is associated with seizures. That's absolutely true.

There are many different types of epilepsy out there. Usually if you have at least two unprovoked seizures of any type, that's how you know you have some form of epilepsy. The type I have is Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy, or JME for short. I've had it since I was 14, but I didn't get the formal diagnosis until I was 22. JME is characterized by myoclonic seizures (basically when your body shakes involuntarily--it tends to happen a lot in the morning for many people) and tonic-clonic/grand mal seizures. A tonic-clonic seizure is exactly what most people think of when they hear the word "seizure": groaning, convulsing and going into unconsciousness for a while. I've had 9 tonic-clonic seizures so far. Every time I emerge from my postictal state, I feel confused with temporary amnesia, a fever that lasts less than an hour, a sore/bloody tongue as a result of biting it during the seizure, and petechiae (red/purple spots as a result of bursting capillaries) all over my face. It's really no fun at all waking up from a seizure.

I've had myoclonic seizures since I was 14. Often times, while I was in the shower or about to get up, my body would shake involuntarily, but my consciousness wouldn't be affected in any way. If I happened to be holding something during a myoclonic seizure, chances are high that I would probably drop it. This has happened a ton of times, with drinks, my phone and numerous other things...and like I said, mainly during the morning. I was also highly susceptible to myoclonic seizures after drinking way too fucking much. I even had one once while having sex...yeah, that's probably too much information for some people, but it's the truth. Over so many years, I never thought myoclonic seizures were that big of a deal, and didn't even mention them to my doctor. I didn't even recognize them as actual seizures for so long. I now know it was stupid of me to just ignore them.

The first time I ever had a tonic-clonic seizure was on the afternoon of July 25, 2010. I just remember getting swiped into the subway system, coming on the train, then I woke up lying down on a stretcher inside an ambulance all fucking confused. I really thought I was dreaming at the time, so I looked at my watch and reality started to sink in: this was no dream--this is really fucking happening. I started to think right then and there that I must have had a seizure, but why? Shortly after I was wheeled into the extremely crowded emergency room, after the nurse put the IV in, the doctor introduced herself and asked me, "Do you know why you're here?" I said, "Well, I'm guessing I had a seizure on the train," which she then said was right. She tried to convince me to get a lumbar puncture, and that seemed highly unnecessary...just a way to get more money off me. I was discharged from the hospital in the evening and spent a lot of time at home reflecting on the day's events, such as when will my next seizure be?

Well, I got my answer on December 5, 2010. That's right--I had another tonic-clonic seizure after drinking heavily and tripping on shrooms the night before. My brother was the only other one home and he called 911 to get me help. The cops and paramedics came into my apartment and I refused to be taken to the hospital, not wanting to deal with another high bill. The lead paramedic there tried to scare me into going to the hospital asking me to choose between a high hospital bill, or a $10,000 funeral bill. Yeah, that still didn't work. I remained firm in my decision and lucky me, because I didn't have another tonic-clonic seizure again for the entire year of 2011. However, on February 15, 2012, just 3 days after my 22nd birthday, I had another one. I saw a neurologist the day after my first seizure in July 2010 and went back to him after this most recent one. I also had a brain MRI without contrast in July 2010, which came back as normal with the only abnormality being a small arachnoid cyst. After this latest seizure, and given my medical history, he decided that it was time for me to be put on anticonvulsants, and he chose Keppra (levetiracetam) for me. It's generally well-tolerated and he started me off with 1,000 mg/day (each pill was 500 mg).

Despite now being on levetiracetam, I had a breakthrough tonic-clonic seizure on March 3rd and another on March 13th...which prompted him to increase my dose to 1,500 mg/day. My next one after that didn't happen until exactly 2 months later, on May 13th, then another on May 21st. I switched to another neurologist, who increased my daily dose to 2,000 mg/day. I'll skip through all of the others. My most recent seizure was on August 3rd and since then, I've been on 3,000 mg/day of levetiracetam ER. So far, so good. I'm just hoping I won't have to take Depakote (valproic acid) in the future, because although it's highly effective for my type of epilepsy, the side effects include weight gain, tremors, drowsiness and headaches. It's not nearly as well tolerated as levetiracetam.

I know not a lot of people here can relate to having any form of epilepsy, but I think it's important to educate people about it, and to show support for people that have it. It's really not easy to deal with, especially if you're young. I quit drinking alcohol because of it, and most people know how much people around my age love to drink. Epilepsy is always at the front of my mind, and why wouldn't it be? I have to take my meds once every 12 hours, and I can't put myself in situations that would be deadly in the event that I have a seizure.

Q: What parts of Newgrounds do you like the most and why? What parts of Newgrounds do you dislike the most and why?

A: The community represents both the best and worst parts of NG for me. There are some really cool people here that I love talking to now, and a lot of previously cool people I used to talk to a long time ago that I now miss. There are also a lot of people here that are nothing but trouble, and they don't deserve any attention from me.

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

A: I would make sure that chat mods, like almost all other mods, have gold auras and the natural perks that come with them. I would also see to it that unverified users can't use the chat, and for the store to accept PayPal. There's more, but that's all I feel like saying for now.

Q: You have been here for nearly 9 years now. What experiences have you had since you've been here? What friends have you made? What have you learned?

A: I've seen a lot both good and bad, and I try to learn something new here every day. I started hosting and assisting with NYC meets annually beginning in 2010 (with initial planning in late 2009), and I hang out with certain NGers either individually or in small groups on occasion throughout every year. I've also attended meets both big and small in Chicago, Boston, Baltimore and Point Pleasant Beach. I've been previously invited to the NG office for Pico Day, and while I've been unable to make it so far, I definitely plan on going at some point in the future. All of my friends know who they are, especially if I talk to them on AIM, Facebook or Skype a lot, and the same can be said for a good number of people on Stickam and G+ too.

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

A: I'll continue to be a noticeable presence well into the foreseeable future. On the creative end, you may end up seeing some quality written work from me once the Writing Portal comes out. I'll start off by uploading some old stories and poetry I wrote a long time ago--completely unedited, just to remind myself how I've changed over the course of many years. Since I'm continuing to suffer from artistic regression, you probably won't see any future animations or art from me--the last time I even tried producing either was many years ago. I won't completely rule out future attempts, but don't count on it...I'm fucking old already. It's hard for older people to learn art if they didn't already pick up the talent when they were younger. I'm also thinking about hosting meets in other parts of NY and possibly other states, but that all depends on to what extent my financial situation improves.

GoryBlizzard is an interesting individual, there is no doubting this whatsoever. From his adolescence to where he is today, he has certainly shown what effect this site has on people. What this connection can do for one another. All I know is from research to posting, GoryBlizzard is not only a smart person, but a friend to many here - and it is easy to see why.

Interview No. 102

Interview By: @The-Great-One

Today's guest has gifted us with some beautiful scenes of cities and futuristic wonders. From Central Park, to River Bridge, and COTT: Tower. He has also shown his talents in animation with The Last Fight and The Last Fight: Final Ep. He is also responsible for the site's background that you are currently seeing at this time. He is @keepwalking.

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

A: Well, I can say I found Newgrounds by accident. I was watching one particular flash animation "Shoo Fly" on another website, but it didn't have any music so the author included a link to the full version hosted here at Newgrounds. Then my curiosity did the rest. The main reason I joined was because I found, and still find Newgrounds one of the few websites that is so much dedicated to animation and games(and now illustration). It's truly one of the best websites to showcase your work, even if you are a begginer, or a profesional.

So having that in mind I decided to share with the community some bits of my humble flash animations, and even if some of the comments were harsh at the beggining, others were very supportive. It is a great place to get good feedback, and learn from your mistakes.

Q: When did you become introduced to art and what inspired you to create art?

A: I remember I started drawing as a hobby when I was 12 years old and started making war ships such as frigates and galleons. I can say that many of the problems I had back in my childhood pushed me to draw almost every day so this way I could keep myself away from bad stuff. Year by year I seeked more and more for my own charachters, landscapes, and stories. Eventually I healed up those injures and found inspiration in better things.

Q: Your first steps into the Art Forum would be with a thread entitled My new comic. What was your story here and why did you just stop working on it?

A: I was really curious about how people would react to one of my drawings here at Newgrounds, so I picked 2 comic sheets that were already inked and edited. The response from the users was great so that gave me a little more support to continue it. I stopped working on it becuase I found out comic wasn't my strongest style.

Q: XeNt - Anger and Xent - Love would be your first two movies here on Newgrounds. What can you tell me about the inspiration for both of these and what it was like to work on them?

A: Oh god!, not those movies haha!. On the first place those were done the same week I broke up with my girlfriend so I decided to portray a mixture of feelings on different short movies, the result was terrible in my opinion haha!, but at that moment I was really enjoying making them. I'm still surprised by the score and the amount of views they have...

Q: We now come to another duo by you, The Last Fight and The Last Fight: Final Ep. This mini-series would begin with a thread. How did we go from there to here?

A: I was exited about making a fight animation, so I decided to spend some time studying some fight scenes from different sources, I also wanted to add a strong plot to the hole series, didnt want to throw some random punches here and there.

Those movies took many months of hard work and concentration, specially the first one, since it was drawn with pencil frame by frame and then each frame edited in flash. I ended up making a semi-animated comic instead of a full animated movie. I concentrated so much on the story and the edition that I forgot to animate properly. Still proud of both works.

Q: We now come to what I believe is your best work, Luminiscense. We have a love story, that is to be continued. You said a lot of work went into this and it shows. Where did the idea for this movie come from and when can we expect to see the next part?

A: Luminicesne is indeed one of my best works. My idea here was to show how fragile things are in this world, and how can some events change our lives in a matter of seconds. I wanted to focus more in the final result of this movie, and make something unique even if it took me 1 year to finish it.

It was a great project that gave me the chance to learn how to tell a story with suspense and drama at the same time. Even if I still discover some mistakes(wich some of them were pointed out 1000 times by you guys), I am really happy of the final result. Seting up the style of the drawings, the enviorments, and the general esthetic of the movie were some of the things I most enjoyed, aswell as working with Chris and Jessi for the charachter voices.

The story is to be continued but I have posponed indefinetly due to my new work, wich is consuming most the time I had for animation. Hopefully I will find a way to have more time and make the next chapter.

Q: We now come to your artwork. The first piece I want to talk about is Central Park. You have an interesting style of showing off different structures and cities. As if we are in a perpetual sunset. You seem to enjoy playing with lighting and lights more than anything else. Would you agree to this or can you define your style or expand on this?

A: Central park was the second of a series of speedpaintings I was creating back in 2009 when I bought my first wacom tablet. I was just experimenting with light values and perspective more than anything else, imagine using a pencil or a pen for your entire life, and then having to transit to this device wich shows the result on a screen, I had to test lots of things before making full illustrations, and those speedpaintings were the result.

I also choosed to make cities because I used to make lots of them when I was a little kid, so why not bring some good memories. You got me there with the "Sunset" thing hehe, I have a weakness for sunsets, and I tend to avoid them in my works but I end up using them most of the time. The final impression is something I really value when I work, you will notice this in most of my paintings...

Q: Looking at minerva and DRONE42 you have two different ways of drawing people. What can you tell us about drawing humans and these two different approaches?

A: Minerva was like a second chance I gave to my comic/manga style, I didn't make more of these for the same reason I stoped making comic drawings a couple of years ago, I wasn't satisfied with the final result.

On the other hand Drone 42 was the first charachter work I made with my strongest style, that look good in most of the aspects. I figured out that painting was working better than drawing, and that Drone 42 showed much more original results than Minerva. Maybe in the future I will give a third chance to my comic style again...

Q: When the Newgrounds redesign came, we got fancy wall backgrounds for the different pages. The original basic wall was Tank Girl by Egoraptor. It would soon be changed to a bustling orange city. How were you approached to do the wall for Newgrounds? Also why did you go with this look?

A: When Tom told me what he wanted for the main wall of the site he showed me a picture of a city shown from a birds eye point of view. I liked his idea of a futuristic city and the point of view of the reference picture was pretty accurate, but I decided to make the city from a lower perspective mainly because it was going resmble better the old banner of the website and keep the identity of the comunity at the same time.

The color scheme was also a decition of Tom, and I completly agreed with him. The city, if you take a closer look, has a mixture of old, modern, and industrial looking buildings, some of them even have a military look aswell.

Q: In your own opinion, what would you say is the definition of art?

A: Art is the language of your soul.

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

A: Many many more artwork and publishing coming!

keepwalking is truly a wonderful artist who has given us beautiful paintings and told us wonderful stories over time. I can only hope that he will continue to do more in the future. His background wall does seem to reflect Newgrounds old slogan which is "The Problems of the Future - Today!" in which case that is certainly quite kick ass.

Interview No. 101

Interview By: @The-Great-One

[ PART 1 | PART 2 ]

Q: One of my favorites by you has to be When in Doubt. You said it was something to show your band mates. What was the process in writing and making this song? Also what did your band mates think of it?

A: The writing process for When In Doubt was actually quite a bit different for me than it was previously, as it's really the first metal/rock song that I included drums in. The drum track, as is blatantly obvious, was basically nothing more than a click track, as I was using a drum preset on the pedal I was using at the time (Digitech GNX3000, which is now deceased unfortunately... RIP), but it helped to fill in the song a little bit, which allowed me to give the song a bit more of a consistent theme.

In this case, I was shooting for some what of a eerie/suspenseful sound, which was something new for me, and personally, I think it turned out pretty well... save the boring drums.

And my band mates at the time, well, really, it ended up only being a drummer, because the other people who were going to be involved ended up bailing out... Well, the drummer loved it. I've jammed on and off with him for a couple years, and I'm generally the creative force behind the jams, I write music, bring it over, and we record or jam on top of it. I have 2 songs up currently that I wrote with him on the spot, being "The Unknown" and "Dreamcatcher".

I've actually been through a lot of potential band mates, none of them ever seem to work out, so I generally just do things solo now, save a collab here and there.

Q: Your first Classical piece to be submitted would be Castle. Why the urge to play around in Classical a bit?

A: Well, as mentioned before, I really do enjoy a lot of different types/styles of music, and classical is a big one for me, I love classic Beethoven, Bach, Chopin. I have an entire section in my personal playlist dedicated to classical piano pieces. So I guess it was inevitable that I'd eventually try write my own.

I'm also extremely fond of the piano as an instrument, I love the sounds it makes, I love how it makes them, and I love how diverse it can be. It's a beautiful instrument, and really the only reason I didn't learn piano growing up is because my family didn't have one that I could learn on. However, I now practice piano nearly every day in hopes that I can write better and better classical pieces and maybe even work my way up to play some of my favorite classics.

I also tend to include piano and orchestral elements in nearly everything I do, part of that could be my love for classical music, and I guess part of it could be due to my time in an orchestra in the past. Either way, I think classical instruments go well with pretty much everything. So it would only benefit me to learn to use them properly on their own as well.

Q: Who is your friend Abi? What was it like working with her in some cover songs?

A: Abi is actually a friend I met through another friend who I met in Highschool. The two are recently engaged and I spend nearly every Friday over at their place now for a retro gaming night, playing board games and oldschool video games.

Abi is actually classically trained on both the piano and vocals, and she was interested in doing the covers you mentioned, and I figured why not. For me, it was a bit of a break from my usual style, as none of the songs we covered are anything alike what I usually write, so it was a new experience for me. And despite her training, she has never actually written a song, or recorded before, so when I had her over to record the vocal parts (She also played the piano for "Into The West"), it was a new experience for her as well, as I had to coach her through the actual recording process. And as you can probably hear, she was quite nervous, as any first time recorder is.

In the end, it was a lot of fun, I got some experience out of my norm, and she recorded for the very first time.

Q: You seem to me as a drifting bard. For you would now jump into Trance with your song -Wait-. A fun little song and quite good for your first step into Trance. Why make this jump next?

A: Yes, yes I am. Really, it was only natural, as I've mentioned time and time again, I listen to practically everything, trance is no exception.

Really, I just like to keep things interesting, I don't like the notion of being a "one trick pony" so to speak. I may not be amazing in any one genre of music, but I like to think I'm pretty decent at a bunch instead. While metal/punk/rock was where I started, now, I don't think I'd say I'm specifically a metal artist, I try to divide my time between all sorts of different genres, just because it's what makes me happy, constantly trying new things, being able to come up with a song in multiple genres.

I really enjoy being able to sit down and think, "I'd like to write an upbeat trance tune" or, "Today sucked, I'm gonna write an angry metal song", and just.. go. It gives me countless ways to express myself, and really, that's what music is all about, is expression.

I've also recently taken a liking to what I call "Melodic Dubstep", I don't know if there's an official term for it or not, but either way, sometime in the near future, after I'm finished my album, I hope to start putting up songs along that line as well.

Q: Darker Than Black is an anime you would draw inspiration from for the song -Yin-. What about this scene and show brought out this song from you?

A: Darker Than Black was something my sister originally introduced me to, and for whatever reason, I have a great fondness for stoic characters, and Yin was such a character.

So not long after watching both seasons of the anime, I decided to try writing a song to a picture, extract the emotions I felt from the picture and make them audible. And seeing as it was fresh in my mind, I chose to write a song based on the picture of Yin, leaning on a piano in a seemingly empty (Save the piano) and darkened room.

Really, the picture really captured Yin's character perfectly to me, a blind girl, somewhere between human and artificial being, with a fairly depressing past. I don't want to spoil the show for those who have yet to watch it (Because you should... go watch it), so I won't go into much more detail... But the picture screamed all kinds of melancholy to me, which fit just perfectly with her character in the show. The piano was a bonus, in fact, the song she plays in the anime I am currently learning to play on my own piano.

But I digress, the feeling really was that of a lost soul struggling to find her place in the world, and most expressive form she had, was a song she played on a piano, and this really struck a chord with me. And personally, "Yin" is one of the songs I am most proud of, not only because it, to me, captures the feeling of the picture, but because it really does tell a story. Close your eyes, give it a listen, and write your story.

And to this day, Yin remains one of my favorite characters, and you'll often see me sporting her in my avatar/icon/signature on the Newgrounds forums.

Q: -This Is Why We're Here- is a small return to Heavy Metal. What can you tell us about this song and how you went about writing and playing it?

A: Yeah, "This Is Why We're Here" was my first time using EZDrummer, and as a result, in my opinion, is where my metal music started to really take off in terms of quality.

I can't stress enough how much drums influence and form a song, especially when speaking about metal, it's the driving force, and used properly, it can turn a below average song into and above average one. This song was the first time I had used this to my advantage. Not to say that I think the song without the drums would be awful, but it wouldn't be what it is without the more active drums keeping the track flowing.

This was also one of the songs that came as the result of the many jam sessions I had with the drummer I spoke of earlier. The version on Newgrounds has my version of the drums on it, not his, but the song itself was a direct result of my jams with him.

It is also one of the first (If not the first) metal songs in which I utilize a key change. It's something I've been trying to do more often, as it can really add to a song when done right.

Q: As a drifting bard you tend to have trouble staying in one spot for long, because we now move to Drum N Bass with the song -Dropped It, Sorry-. You said you were looking to make something more gritty and you certainly succeeded at that. Why go into Drum N Bass though when you could have done this with Heavy Metal?

A: Around the time that I uploaded "Dropped It, Sorry", I was actually struggling with my identity as a musician, I was disheartened that my metal songs were getting very little attention while my covers (28 Days Later in particular) and non metal songs seemed to experience so much more traffic. I actually went through a phase where I decided I would not bother writing metal anymore, it was so bad that at one point, I was so down that I nearly sold my guitars.

I did get over it, fortunately, I got it through my head that I shouldn't worry about the stats and just do what I want to do, and that ended up working a lot better for me in the end. I had also decided that my album, instead of only featuring a single genre like most artists, would feature 3 different genres, and possibly a couple that were mixed.

Now, I generally just write what I feel like writing in the genre I feel like writing it, and try not to over think how people will receive it, instead worrying about what I think of it. It's a lot less stressful when you write music for yourself and damn the consequences. And I think a lot of people would prefer musicians write for themselves anyways, instead of trying to cater to a crowd that will always have haters in it no matter how hard you try. Write for yourself, bring it out from your very soul, and someone somewhere will inevitably enjoy it.

Q: What can you tell me about K-ON?

A: K-ON... Oh, K-ON... It's a great show, and even more so if you happen to be a musician. It's a slice of life style anime centered around a group of highschool girls who form a "light music club". There's no big dramatic plot line, not overarching conflict. It's just them enjoying highschool life while they can and working towards playing the big stage.

Aside from the show being horrendously adorable and quite funny at times, the struggle to move forward as musicians really struck a chord with me (Hur hur). Mostly because they started from nothing, you watched them grow and develop their skills, it wasn't one of those shows where you tune in and find everyone is already a pro. Being able to watch them grow as musicians and experience a lot of the kinds of mishaps and excitement that real musicians do made it greatly entertaining for me.

So much so, that I ended up covering 3 of the songs from the show: "Touched By An Angel", "Don't Say Lazy", and "No Thank You".

I'm a real sucker for pretty much anything that's more or less a motivational musician story, which I guess shouldn't come as a surprise.

Q: Your best work in Heavy Metal has to be -Stay Thy Hand-. You said a lot of time was spent on this song, so tell us the process from beginning to end.

A: "Stay Thy Hand" was the first time I had really put a lot of time into the drums for a metal song. While "When In Doubt" was the first time I had really started working on drums, "Stay Thy Hand" was the first time I had worked on drums, but then gone the extra mile to really seat them in the song.

I had also made a conscious decision with "Stay Thy Hand" to include a somewhat out of character break in the song, as well as utilize typical metal chugging, not as the breakdown, but as a main feature of the chorus.

On top of that, I had for the first time made use of "selective chugging" to give the breakdown a bit more kick. If you notice at 2:02 when the breakdown starts, it doesn't really sound all that powerful, there are a couple reasons for this, the first being that I'm only chugging on the octave, there is essentially only 1 note (In two different octaves) being hit on the guitar. The bass is using a broken up rhythm, and the drums are hitting a china. As opposed to 2:14, after the quick break, it sounds quite a bit heavier. The guitar is now hitting the same note as before as well as a 7th on the scale, the bass is now a steady consistent rhythm following the guitar, and the drums are now hitting a crash instead of a china.

It's small things like that-that I've been trying more and more to incorporate into my music. While by themselves, they seem insignificant, in the greater scheme of things, when all put together, it can make quite an impact.

On top of that, "Stay Thy Hand" is the first song where I've ever given the bass guitar the spot light, as you'll notice at 2:26, the melody is coming from the bass, not the guitar. That's also something I wish to do more of, is letting other instruments shine through instead of relying on the guitar at all times.

And while it's probably not noticeable at all, the "verse" (The first thing you hear after the acoustic intro), as I'll call it, makes use of a 5/4 time signature, which was also a first for me. This was not a conscious decision, oddly enough, I had just played the riff before recording, and thought it sounded cool... So I had tried to record it, and just couldn't get it to fit right. Which I later found out is because it wasn't in 4/4 time, but instead... 5/4. The rest of the song however, is in 4/4.

Q: Your best work in Trance has to be -Tick Tock-. Where did the inspiration come for this and what was the process in making it?

A: As implied by the name of the track, "Tick Tock" was actually inspired by a clock.

To be more exact, and more in depth, it was inspired by a song I had played on Osu!, which is a rhythm based music game, free for download on PC. I had been playing the game, and when people create beatmaps for the game, they are given the option to add custom sounds to the notes you hit while playing the game. The particular beatmap I was playing had the beginning of the song playing a "tick tock" type sound whenever you hit a note to the rhythm of the song. And I thought that sounded really cool, and wanted to try it for myself.

So.. I opened up FL Studio and started searching for a way to make my own "Tick Tock", and settled on using a side stick sample that comes with FL Studio, and pitch shifting it a bit to give it a tick tock sort of sound. And of course I couldn't just leave it at that, so I started mucking around on my keyboard to come up with a trance song to put around it, that would hopefully compliment the theme.

To go further, I also decided to, for the first time, actually include an arpeggio that plays through the majority of the song in the form of a sort of bell, which I had hand crafted in the Native Instruments VST Massive.

I also decided to break up the traditional template I had been using for trance and include a section where the bass took the spotlight, much as I did with "Stay Thy Hand". And it turns out this was a good decision, as people really seemed to love that section, and I've even had people ask me how I made the bass (Which I had also hand crafted in Massive).

Overall, I did a lot of new things with "Tick Tock" that I hadn't done before, and it helped me learn a bit about how to really push my music forward. Although I guess every song in the end is a learning experience, just depends on how far forward I push into new territory and ideas.

Q: When I interviewed the Audio Portal. You answered some of my questions in the open thread. Do you wish to expand on your answers?

A: Ha! I wasn't very informative back then, was I?

In any case, I'd just add that my definition of music is more an expression of your soul and experiences through life, you can't have music without emotion in my opinion. It's the same as any other form of art, you can't really do it and do well unless you're passionate about it. The best music comes from people who are willing to let it all out for the world to see.

And how I write music when I don't really have anything to inspire me... My answer there really isn't too far off. I generally just don't bother writing when I don't have any inspiration, but when I really want to get something down regardless of inspiration, what I do really isn't too far off from just mashing my face on my keyboard/fretboard until something nice comes out, and then I go from there.

Sometimes inspiration can strike when you hit a certain sequence of notes at random.

Q: When asked if musicians listen to their own music you had this to say...

"That said... I do listen to my own stuff every once in a while, but the majority of the time I do, it's generally because I want to come back to it and see what I could change to make it better"

What is it about each song that seems unfinished to you?

A: I'm a perfectionist, and my own worst critic, as many musicians are. It's pretty rare that I listen to my own music to enjoy it, because most of the time when I'm listening to my own music, all I can think about is what I could've done better or different.

Sometimes it'll be a certain sequence of notes, I'll hear fret noise, I'll hear a note I missed, or a slight hiccup in the timing, or I'll think something is too loud or not loud enough. I've noticed that I worry over a lot of things that no one else ever notices in my music, but that doesn't stop me from re-recording it until I'm satisfied... and if I notice something else later, I'll worry over that too, even if no one else even heard it.

There was one time, where I re-uploaded a song to newgrounds just because I wanted to fix the velocity of a single note.

In my mind, no song is ever finished, it can always be improved, which I guess is both a blessing and a curse.

Q: What can we expect from Back-From-Purgatory in the future?

A: Well, my album, "To The End Of The World" will be out later this year, and aside from that, as you mentioned, I'm kind of a drifting bard, so I can't really say what could happen in the future, as I'll likely just do whatever strikes my fancy at the time.

Hopefully though, it'll be more music that people can really enjoy!

Throughout this interview I reference Back-From-Purgatory as a drifting bard, and I stand by this statement. He simply drifts from one genre to the next, rarely ever staying in one spot. His range in his talents are both fun and diverse, with each song offering something new to it. He is truly an underrated musician here on Newgrounds and one who has had a lot to offer to us during his time here and hopefully a lot more to offer in the future. If you one day see Hip Hop and Jazz appear within his repertoire, don't be surprised, just embrace the delight your ears are about to receive.

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Interview No. 101

Interview By: @The-Great-One

Today's guest is an underrated musician here on Newgrounds. From his works in the Heavy Metal genre with -Stay Thy Hand-, to Trance with -Tick Tock-, and even Drum N Bass with -Dropped It, Sorry-. He has defined himself in many different genres and continues to do so to this day. He is none other than @Back-From-Purgatory.

[ PART 1 | PART 2 ]

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

A: I actually first found Newgrounds way back in Junior High School back around 2000-2002, somewhere in that time frame. Back then, it was cool to go on sites the teachers frowned upon, and back then Newgrounds was still more or less adult oriented. So naturally, I found out about the site through my friends who would bring up the site in on the PCs in the library of the school and they'd play a hentai game or something with the speakers turned up to see how fast a teacher would come shut them down. That's how I was introduced to the site.

As for why I joined, I actually can't recall the year I had first joined, but it was around the same time I found out about the site, and I think in the end, I joined up because I was just another angsty teenager and Newgrounds had a lot of outlets for rage in for forms of flash movies/games. I honestly don't remember when my first account was made, or what my username was back then... But I later signed up as my current alias of Back-From-Purgatory in 2004 to start submitting my music shortly after, as it was around this time that I really started to get into writing my own music, as terrible as it was, as it is with most starting musicians.

Q: How did you discover music and what inspired you to make music?

A: I've been around music my entire life, I had literally be introduced to music before I ever left my mothers stomach, as my dad used to play bass for a rock/country band. So naturally, when I started school, they had an option to sign up for band class in grade 5, so, that's exactly what I did. I started out playing the clarinet, and a year later moved onto tenor saxophone, and a year after that, I was tutoring people.

Unfortunately, in grade 8, my family up and moved, and the band program in my new school was extremely elementary compared to the national award winning orchestra I was playing in before. I was more experienced in music than the teacher was... So after a year of frustration there, I dropped band class and instead picked up my dads old bass guitar and started to teach myself bass, because my family couldn't afford to keep my tenor sax.

As for inspiration, it really came from a lot of places... I was fascinated by watching my dad play live, as much as I wasn't fond of the music he was playing, the idea of playing in front of an audience like that, sharing your soul, so to speak, was just something I wanted to experience for myself. And I had gotten a taste of this while playing in the orchestra, as we had played for national competitions in front of theaters full of people. It was exhilarating being able to share something that a group of people had put together, as well as play our own rendition of famous songs from movies or composers.

Q: When did you first pick up the guitar and how long have you been playing?

A: As mentioned above, I first picked up a bass guitar when I quit band class back when I started grade 9. I guess I would've been 15-16 at the time. In any case, I was in my rebellious stage as all teens go through, so I had picked up a bass guitar and started to teach myself to play rock/punk music. Stuff like AFI, Sum 41, Linkin Park, etc... A year after I started playing bass, I got kind of bored of playing a "support instrument" and opted to switch to a 6 string guitar, which I had got as a hand me down from my dad.

I then started the learning all over again, relearning songs I had learned on bass now on an electric guitar. I never took lessons, but I had the advantage of understanding music and rhythm from my time in the orchestra. And I've been playing and teaching myself guitar ever since, which would be somewhere in the ballpark of 10-11 years.

In the later part of those 10-11 years, I had actually started taking guitar lessons to try speed up my learning, and had intended to use it as a way to force myself to learn music theory as well so I could audition for a music course in college. However, I ended up being a better guitarist than my teacher, so I dropped the lessons a week or two later, and continued to just teach myself as best I could.

As a fun side note, the guitar I got as a hand me down from my dad 10-11 years ago... I still use that same guitar for most of my metal songs. I also now own a 7-string Ibanez, but most of my songs are written and performed on the 6 string that my dad gave me a decade ago.

Q: If I'm not mistaken you have a liking for Opera do you not?

A: I wouldn't say it's a genre I listen to a lot, but I do have a certain respect for it, yes. I'm very open to music, there's very little that I simply don't enjoy (Country being the one genre I simply can't stand).

But Opera music, you find a lot of unique story telling elements and themes that you don't generally find in most other styles of music, and listening to it from time to time helps to inspire me to find new ways of writing my own music.

Q: Discovering Electronic Music is a 1983 documentary, following how electronics influenced music creation. You stated in a thread the following...

"Is it wrong that I now understand how synth sounds are made better than I did before?"

What did you mean by saying that? What did you learn from this documentary that you didn't know or thought you knew?

A: Back then, I literally knew nothing about how electronic music was made, as it wasn't until around 2009 that I even attempted to make my own electronic music outside of short little songs I randomly threw together in my very early years. That video, while old, it clued me in on a lot of things I didn't realize before, like how oscillators work, or how certain wave forms emit certain types of sounds.

Really, I still can't say I'm all that knowledgeable of the more in dept workings of electronic music, but that post, that video triggered a few light bulbs in my head when thinking about electronic music. When I looked at my own synths after watching that, I started to understand how each knob would influence the sound that would come out when I hit a key on my keyboard.

There's really so much to learn about how synthesizers work, creating sounds from practically nothing, from a plain flat sine wave, into a fully fleshed out lead, bass, pad, or ambient texture. The possibilities really are endless, you're given a canvas of which to project sound and you can twist and shape that into practically anything you can imagine if you have the knowledge to do so.

Q: What was The Metal Collab?

A: One of the attempts for the metal artists of the Newgrounds Audio Portal to bring their talents together to create something worthy of notice. It's no secret that metal on newgrounds is largely overshadowed by other genres, and it wasn't any better back in 2009. It's actually something I'd love to see people do more often, as it gives metal artists a chance to shine, to steal the spotlight away from all the electronic music that usually dominates the charts.

Unfortunately, the collab never did actually finish, and just sort of slowly faded into the abyss, as a lot of collab attempts seem to do when involving so many people.

Recently, I had hosted the Metal Themed MAC (Monthly Audio Contest), with prizes provided by Mr. Tom Fulp himself. While certainly not the most active contest ever, it brought out some great talent, and those that won were featured on the front page of Newgrounds for a week as a result, which I hope inspired more metal artists to up their game and let people know they're there.

As a metal artist myself, I'd really love to see people who write metal really get some more exposure. Not just on Newgrounds, but everywhere. I find a lot of artists writing really great stuff are often overshadowed by generic garbage that you often hear on the radio.

Q: You talk a lot about different programs for making music. What programs would you recommend and not recommend and what do you use?

A: People do ask a lot about how they should get started with music, and often my first suggestion will be FL Studio, as it is arguably the easiest full featured DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) to pick up and learn. I find people often underestimate the program because of it's colorful and simple appearance. Honestly, it always has, and always will be my first suggestion for people looking to get into electronic music. It's a great program.

FL Studio is also my go to DAW for electronic and orchestral music, and I will often program MIDI parts for orchestral or electronic parts in FL Studio and later transfer them over to Reaper to record the guitar parts over top.

Alternatively, I have spent a little bit of time with Reason, which I would also recommend, although to more experienced artists, as it is a little less newbie friendly. Once used to it however, there's a lot of great stuff you can do with Reason, and the automation process in the program I find is leagues better than FL Studio.

In terms of recording, you'll often hear me throwing the name Reaper around, which in reality is also a full featured DAW, but personally, I prefer using it solely for the purpose of recording live instruments, as I find the MIDI interface to be fairly clunky and hard to use, so when I can, I try to avoid writing orchestral/electronic parts in Reaper.

Reaper is where I record pretty much anything that involves live instruments (I.E. Guitar, bass, vocals). The interface is sleek, and when not trying to fight with the MIDI interface, it works great for putting out metal I find. It also allows me to use my Line 6 POD X3 Live as a soundcard with puts a little less strain on my PC while recording.

People also often ask about free programs, to which my usual suggestions are LMMS (Linux MultiMedia Studio) for electronic music. It is MIDI based, so you can't expect any truly amazing sounds out of the program, and I personally found it a little hard to work with in comparison to FL Studio or Reason. But it is completely free, and it's a compromise like anything else.

I would also suggest Audacity for recording artists, it is what I used in my early years when recording my guitar. It has quite a few built in effects, including a nifty tempo changing effect that gives you the option to maintain the original pitch. Which I have made great use of while learning songs or trying to figure out notes while transcribing or working on a cover of a song.

Q: What can you tell me about the Underrated Audio Collab? Apparently a little drama was stirred up in there.

A: Yeah, that was one guys attempt to help get some underrated audio artists more exposure, and unfortunately, the very nature of the collab invited conflict of the "You're not underrated" variety. You see this sort of arguing on the forums all the time, people say someone is underrated then someone else gets upset and says they're not but "these guys are" or "I am".

It's an unfortunate and unavoidable side effect of creating a flash project that is based around underrated artists.

In the end, I'm still not entirely sure if the guy I had a little encounter with was just messing with me or if he was actually upset. But it turned out ok in the end and everyone went on their merry way. The flash was released and those included got a bit of extra exposure, which is something a musician can never get enough of. It's our lifeblood, the more exposure, the better!

Q: Your first submission to the Audio Portal would be entitled My first improv.. How did you record this song and looking back on it, are you still proud of it?

A: Oi... That brings back memories. Well, that song I actually recorded with Audacity (The free recording program I recommended earlier), as this was long before I ever got Reaper. Was also before I had any fancy equipment, I was recording using the built in distortion on my dinky little 25 watt Fender practice amp via a cheap USB mic that I just put on the ground in front of my amp while I played.

Looking back on it... I can hear the same style in "My First Improv" as I do in some of my later songs, just more polished and easier on the ears. I try not to regret anything I've uploaded or look back on it and wish I had never done it. Because after all, I wouldn't be where I am now if I hadn't written that stuff years ago. I like to look back on my old stuff and see how far I've come. It helps give a sense of progress, that I'm improving as time goes by. So while I won't say I'm overly proud, I will say that I'm glad to have done it and uploaded it.

And I hope in a few more years, I'll look back on what I'm doing now and see even more progress.

Q: Your first steps into FL Studio would be Prelude. Certainly a fitting title to dramatic opening. How was it working with this program for one of your first times. How long did it take you to make this song?

A: While I don't think Prelude was my very first song out of FL Studio, it was certainly one of the first songs I did using the program. And I can honestly say, at the time, FL Studio was over my head. Prelude, I basically found a few cool sounds, slapped them together in what I thought sounded like a decent song and uploaded it.

There was no automation, no dynamic range, no creating my own synths. Prelude is as simple as an FL Studio song could really be. But we all have to start somewhere, right?

As for how long it took, I really couldn't say for sure, but I do remember that this was back before I actually bought FL Studio, so I was working with the demo version of the program, which did not allow you to save a project to work on it later. So I likely spent no more than 2 hours on the song. And regardless of the actual time it took, I guarantee it took longer than it should have considering what the song contained.

Q: Eternal Beginning gives us some more guitar work from you. When it comes to writing music, how do you go about writing music. Could you use this song as a demonstration?

A: Eternal Beginning was actually one of my more progressive songs back then, and I think it'd serve as a great example for how I generally write music.

First and foremost, you'll notice that most of my music tends to progress along, I don't often write stuff that is very vocal friendly, so I make up for it by writing songs that move along as a story would. There will be soft sections, melodic sections, heavy sections, and occasionally chaotic sections. I strive to keep my music moving forward, instead of revisiting themes and passages constantly as you would hear in a typical mainstream rock song where the structure is basically intro, verse, chorus, verse, break, chorus, outro (Which variations of course).

I believe that if someone is going to revisit a melody or theme of a song, that melody/theme should be interesting enough that people will want to hear it again. Otherwise, it's better that you push the song forward and introduce a new "section" as I call them, like a movie pushes a narrative forward from one scene to the next.

Unfortunately, this can be hard to do than you'd think, and it doesn't always work out. I often find myself struggling to come up with a new section for a song after I feel I've sort of played out a climax in the previous section. It's a trap I often lay for myself, is building, building, and building, only to find that once it reaches a climax, I don't know how to follow it up. Which is why I often use a section based writing style, the song will shift moods and continue to move forward instead of trying to really elaborate on a section that would only end up causing the song to sound redundant.

It's a complicated process, as any musician can tell you. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes what sounds awful to me will sound amazing to others. And on top of that, you are your own worst critic, I'll find myself trashing ideas that others will later say they loved and I should have kept working on.

Overall though, I truly believe music needs to come from somewhere, from emotions, from an experience in your life, not from a textbook about music theory, or a shallow song about something you've never experienced yourself. The most powerful and moving music comes straight from the soul, and I prefer to keep writing my music with this in mind. I try not to force myself to come up with something "just because".

Q: Back From Purgatory was said to be an intro to an album. It works as a great intro theme for you though. What made you want to plan an album though and how come the album was not released?

A: Actually, there's a funny story behind that song.

Originally, that was the outro solo of a song I was writing about a friends World of Warcraft character, a troll warrior to be exact. Unfortunately, this section sounded completely out of character compared to the rest of the song, but I thought it sounded cool, so cut it off the tail end of the song and decided to use it for an album I was trying to work on at the time.

The album, as you mentioned, never saw the light of day, in the end, I wasn't confident that I had the talent or the right material at the time to put out anything of any real worth, so I had opted to scrap the idea of an album until later down the road.

And here... 5 years later, I am actually working on a full length album, which I have titled "To The End Of The World", that will feature metal, orchestral, and trance/electronic music. I'm confident enough in myself now that I can put something out that people will enjoy, and people have shown interest via preorders of said album. I have a couple previews up on my profile of songs that will be on it.

I don't have an exact release date for it yet, but it will be out before the year is done, and I'll be posting updates on my progress along the way.

Unfortunately... The song "Back From Purgatory" will not be making an appearance on the album.

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[ Index Page | Special Theme | Official Thread ]

Interview No. 100

Interview By: @The-Great-One

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Welcome to the 100th Interview Extravaganza! I highly suggest you go back and read Part 1 if you haven't already. There is a lot to go through here and you certainly don't want to miss a single word of the stories and creativity behind these two artists.

Q: The movie My New Grounds would be a parody version of the HP commercials going around at the time. You two would make your very own versions with MarcyVF's New Grounds coming out first, followed by TommyVF's New Grounds. Why did you wait an entire year before doing yours Tommy? Also did you both consider doing one together instead of separate?

A:

TommyVF: First of all, I didn't wait a year! We made them pretty much simultaneously! Markus submitted his late December 2007, and I submitted mine right after new year's. I waited for some days to have a chance of winning a better award, I think. Dunno. And no, we never considered making one for both. Maybe that would've been fun, but we didn't want to be like one mutant organism, I guess. :) You know, like we were in mom's stomach. Belly. I mean womb.

COREY HOLLAND did the voices for the movies, and I always thought Marcy's was coolest. Anyways, it wasn't really original, but I'd say it was a nice experience. Yep. Was that an interesting sentence?

MarcyVF: Oh man, another example I was really stupid at the time: I wasn't aware of, untill now, (YES NOW!) that the style was a parody of the HP commercials. I just literally copied Allen Awesome's layout, man I feel so bad right now. I didn't even record the voices, I got Corey Holland (best voice actor ever) to do it for me. That's a little embarrassing. I also remember Allen Awesome humorously saying to me something like "You bumped me off frontpage, haha!", and I learned a new expression and felt really cool. Looking at the movie now, and the reviews, I feel really bad for copying Allen Awesome's flash, and the movie provoked disgust as I watch my awkward and unconfident hand movements and my arrogant, wannabe script. Tommy seems more humble. Maybe?

Holy shoosh. It's so super very funny how unaware we were at the time of what was happening around us, and of the trends that were around and why we were doing what we did. We basically just copied and mimicked others and "jumped on bandwagons". This reminds me that a cetrain Newgrounds user even PMed me with a long blog post he was planning on posting about artists like me and Tommy who were just "jumping on bandwagons" to gain cheap fame. Luckily, we talked him out of it and figured we had some things in common. HOHOHO, I bet you wonder who this user may be.

Oh, and the reason we didn't do one for the both of us is because I was first and we're two people.

Q: When it comes to animation, I believe your best work absolutely has to be Snowmen. The animation and art in this is simply breathtaking, it is not only humorous, but at the same time heart-warming as well. What all can you tell us about the creation of this movie as well as winning the award it did?

A:

TommyVF: We disagree that Snowmen is our best animation, but thanks for believing so! Spend It Wisely, you see, was a much larger project with more planning and thinking. And the very animation work in Snowmen is a lot more messy. Snowmen was mostly made for the Christmas spirit, and we wanted to do some snowmen-killing stuff. When we did the animation, we were really excited about character movement and things that Nogfish was doing (again, check him out!), so we emphasized cartoonish human animation. I agree that it ended up as a fairly nice thing, though. Probably one of our best animations... Thank you. :) It was exciting to create the whole thing, too, and Markus started the whole thing. Because it was whole thing. Which was whole. The thing. He did the spying and the fighting, and I loved the wackiness and followed him. I did the ending and added more scenes, and we didn't always have much time. But it was awesome winning a prize, and I'm glad people liked it. I've also heard that the ending with that baby has made lots of boys and girls out there cry their livers up and down, so that's really touchy and cool. I appreciate your appreciation. Maybe Justin Bieber watched it, even.

We also made an extended version for a Norwegian cultural arrangement/competition. Where I did all the music because we wanted to make most of the sound ourselves. The song in the fighting sequence is not something I'm very proud of, by the way! I made it by mixing random loops etc I found in Logic, the music program. Really random loops, that I randomly picked out from the list. So it was kind of a joke song, but we used it because we didn't have anything better to use. (I'd say we had, but I was young.)

MarcyVF: First, thanks for the love! Appreciate it. I so think Tommy is exaggerating a little here, as animation-wise Snowman is simply a little more spectacular than Spend It Wisely. Anyways, what Tommy says here is mostly true.

Q: TripleBits has you two working with SimonG once again. You have stated it as "A bunch of unfinished projects from the northern trio." I remember submitting this into the Newgrounds Treasure Hunt one year, because despite it being unfinished it is still quite funny. Why were these unfinished and why were they just thrown together?

A:

TommyVF: Wow, thanks for submitting it to the treasure hunt! Yes, TripleBits was something we had wanted to do for quite a long time. But the project itself went fast. It was inspired by Yotam Perel's (very radically great guy!) TidBitz, which was "a couple of shorts that were too short to be submitted to Newgrounds alone." This idea came from Wonchop's Tidbits, which was the same thing. Wonchop was first. Yotam Perel was second. And we were third!

They were unfinished because we had too many ideas and not enough time. You know, life. They were just thrown together because that was the easiest thing to do. You know, time.

MarcyVF: Thanks for the love once again, appreciate it. I'm Markus Vad Flaaten, and I approve this message, what Tommy just said.

Q: Life in Portal: Madness gave you both the chance to work with Yotam Perel, a.k.a. LazyMuffin and Egoraptor as well as other big artists such as HappyHarry, eddsworld, and Appsro. How did it feel to work with these different artists on this one project?

A:

TommyVF: To be honest, I didn't do anything at all. Markus recorded his own voice plus my voice, and I don't even know why. So I don't really feel like I've worked with any of them, though we've collaborated with Yotam after that project. And he's still really amazing. Sorry!

MarcyVF: Haha, um. Yeah. It was more a collaboration between everyone and Appsro. I don't think anybody had much contact with people other than Appsro. Unless I've been left behind. It was, unfortunately, not such a spectacular experience, and I didn't feel close to any of the big names. It was fun to brag about though. So fun.

Q: One of the strangest collaborations I have ever seen has to be Spend It Wisely. The bizarre nature of these characters, the animation, the writing, everything. Where did this idea spawn from and what was the process of it coming together?

A:

TommyVF: Just to get this straight: Me and my brother agree that this is the project we are most happy with. If you wanna watch our best stuff as of now, then watch Spend It Wisely! Please. DO IT!!!!11

The origins of this tale is actually a one-page comic we made for fun. It was called "Caz & P", and had 12 square pictures. Markus filled the first square, and I did the second, he the third, and so on. The concept was to not plan anything. I didn't know what Markus wanted to happen, and he didn't know what I was going to draw. There were two main characters: A guy with a cassette (audio tape) for a head (Caz), and one with a pear for a head (P). The heads were as large as their bodies, and their bodies looked like kid bodies. They didn't have eyes or facial details. The first square had them both standing next to eachother, and then they were talking and one of them god kidnapped by a giant flower. Basically.

Anyways, this comic was hanging on our wall, and I thought the characters were so cool that we ought to make an animation with them. So I told Markus and we started to script. The story was mainly my idea, and most of the scenes and ideas spawned when we were about to sleep. We wrote down a lot of ideas, both random and specific, big and small. And then we chose the best ideas and wrote a script with lines for each character. 75% of our ideas never made it into the animation!, by the way! We also planned what kind of music we wanted, what kind of backgrounds, what kind of drawing style and stuff. The thing we decided last was the ending.

We then contacted the three best voice actors we knew: Yotam Perel, Corey Holland and Aras Afsaji, a childhood friend. The three of them really did a great job, and it took them many months of updating and redoing and fixing and tweaking to get it all done. Their result was really hilarious and contained a lot of improvisation and different voice versions to choose from. We animated the whole movie simultaneously while mailing back and forth. Once we got some voice files, we animated and lip-synced the parts we could.

These things happened quite simultaneously, by the way. Don't be tricked by the paragraphs.

We also contacted Simon, a bropal from our neighborhood, to make some backgrounds. We asked him because we wanted some help, and because we wanted him to be a part of it. I made most of the music in Logic by recording guitar and keyboards and mixing and tweaking loops. Markus made one song, I think, and daddy recorded some bluesy B3 organ stuff for us. Because we're not that skilled.

Then we composited it all in After Effects, adding text, transitions, explosions and shaking, as well as color corrections, fading and extra stuff. We also added the stop-motion sequences, and some random trippy footage for the experimental fairy part.

And then we submitted it to Newground and Vimeo and Youtube, and it's now our most viewed and commented animation with almost 300 000 views. Thanks, folks!

A very sad fun fact about this animation is that we tried to submit it to the Amandus Festival (a Norwegian national youth movie festival/awards thingy) twice. This year and 2011. But in 2011 we were one day late by sending it in, and this year the animation was too long. Relevant fact: In 2010 we won the Best Animation Award on the Amandus Festival with "Snowmen". So yeah. Do the math. Lol. :)

Fun fact #2: The three voicers, YOTAM, COREY and ARAS, kept working with us professionally and paid on some freelance cartoon work we got into last summer. So their free work paid off in the long run, kind of. They're all very talented, versatile, funny, creative and cooperative voice actors, by the way. Give 'em a call.

MarcyVF: I've corrected Tommy on some areas of his answers, otherwise it's all true. This was Tommy's baby. He pushed this project along and initiated the whole thing. We did some pretty cool scripting and had some fun happy times on the bus to school. We were trying our best not to make a Chowder copy as we were, and have always kind of been a little anxious about trying not to steal other people's styles as we tend to become very very inspired. Like in MarcyVF's New Grounds - Allan Awesome, TwinBits - Yotam Perel/Wonchop, Snowmen - Nogfish, and also because of the bandwagon-PM mentioned earlier. Don't get me wrong, I think I've got some relatively original work as well, like Comeback Campnorth, Skater V2, Please Don't Mute Me!, Sugar Rush (Hi guys) and The Murderer.

Q: Recently, Edd Gould a.k.a. eddsworld. You two have been known to work with him, what can you tell us about Edd that I might not have known or others?

A:

TommyVF: I'm sorry, but I don't think we ever talked to Edd. We've watched his animations regularly, and were big fans, and we hear from many people that he was a great guy. But, as I said, the Life In The Portal collaboration didn't bring us closer to the other voice actors there, including Edd. I'm really impressed by the way his friends handled his passing, and I wish the people who loved him the most the very best! Rest in peace, bro.

MarcyVF: Unfortunately, we never got to work with Edd before his passing, so I'm afraid I can't tell you anything about him that you don't know. We were big fans, and I remember he was one of the first to make me use that v-mouth (http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wBxDmjZxxL0/0.jpg) sometimes. I was inspired by his simple faces and characters. It was really depressing to hear about his departing, and it made me think of this whole internet animation community thing. Although I didn't know him, I sure bet he was a fine young bloke, and the whole Eddsworld Legacy is just pure awesomeness.

Q: What advice do you have to give to those looking to get into animation?

A:

TommyVF: It kind of depends on what kind of animation, and what you wanna do with it... But, hmm... First advice, maybe: You have to like it! If you don't really want to spend hours and hours drawing the same characters, new backgrounds or whatever you want, you shouldn't do it. Animation can be a pain in the buttox for some people, and it requires patience. At least for me, who use my hands to draw.

Second advice, maybe: It takes a lot of time to learn Flash and to find your own style. Buy a cheap Wacom Bamboo tablet and download Flash. We learned Flash mostly by ourselves, and it was not a fast process! So again, be patient...

How to download Flash? Lol I don't know. I use a Mac, I don't know computer stuff.

A third advice is to watch animations, cartoons, movies, read comics and maybe even books. And all kinds of art. Depending on what you want to do, this will inspire you and hopefully keep your ideas fresh. Listen to music and animate what comes to mind!

Fourth advice: You can always do better! When you watch your animations, think of things that could be done different or better. Never stop learning lessons from others and yourself, and take critique and feedback.

If you want to make a living out of it, though, you should create as many ambitious, original, freestyle animations as you can, as well as having profiles all over the net. Getting the first paid jobs can be really hard, though, as it often depends on personal relations rather than being on Twitter and stuff. Check out sites like Wooshii, or just make small animations for free for people you know. Like intros, ads, conference videos, entertainment for weddings, or just whatever you can. Or make a simple series on Youtube and get some hundred thousand views every month. And get a sponsor or something? Don't know how that works, lol!

MarcyVF: To get where me and my brother are now, based on our story and our experience?

Thing number one: Suck it in! MMH! Watch loads and loads of cartoons or animations you like. Whatever you find inspiring, touching, interesting or amusing, just suck it all in and let it become a part of you. Listen to music if you love music, talk to people if you love that. You know. Yeah. Um, just fill your head with inspiration from wherever.

Thing number two: Puke it all out again! If you wanna be good at it, you just need to stop working out, stop dating, and stop doing homework and eating or whatever you may come up with doing, and just animate or draw all day long. That was a joke. But time is needed. Oh gah, I'm so cliché it hurts my back. Man! But really, use your inspiration and try to make something new. Wow, who am I to give you this advice?

Thing number three: Copy. Then try to be original. My hard theory is that copying is learning, and the best way of learning. As we copy reality and learn from it and understand how reality work, only then can cartoonish exaggeration and juiciness like that commence. By bending the original copy. I loved Nogfish's style so much I copied it for a period, then I tried to bend it to my own. That was hard, though, but I think it's the way to go for most new learners who aren't contemporary artist who aim on creating a new art form every other day.

Thing number four: Get Flash or ToonBoom or something. I think ToonBoom is pretty rad, but never tried it.

Thing number five: I guess keep failing and stay hungry stay foolish and all that.

Q: With this redesign, there are many more options for collaboration than ever before. What advice can you give to those who are looking to start a collab or looking to join a collab?

A:

TommyVF: Leading a collab? Remember that you don't have to accept all the crappy bits you may receive, as you're actually in charge. Don't be afraid to give critique. Participating in a collab? Make your part unique and complete, make it stand out. And I'm not saying all this because I'm good at it. I'm not.

When I cooperate with, say, Markus and Simon, we communicate personally all the time, so it's a different process. It's really important, though, that if you're a leader, you shouldn't let anyone mess with your vision or idea for the project or the final outcome. Be a dictator, because then it turns out the best. The more different opinions trying to fuse, the higher the chance for a not so polished, thorough and nice outcome. In my opinion.

MarcyVF: On the One Layer Collab, I was, as I've said, a stupid little boy. Anyways, my best advice is do your best and try to stick out. Don't make a collab entry that looks a bit like someone else's. :) Tommy's dictatorship theory of creative process is my choice too. If you have a good idea, don't let anyone hurt it, haha. If you believe in your idea, just go with that 100 % instead of some other idea 50 %. Now I'm being a little bit cocky maybe, but if you see the horizon (a stunning result being possible) nobody else can sail for that exact same horizon, cause it's all in your head. At least that's my experience: the best things are made when a product is built as close as possible to the polished main idea. Something like that.

Q: How has your time on Newgrounds affected you as a person and a creator?

A:

TommyVF: This was answered in part in the first question, but Newgrounds has been very important for us. It has probably shaped our humor and animation, storytelling and drawing style. The different artist and the multitude of series and ideas has fueled our creativity and motivated us in many ways. Until we got to work with animation professionally! Newgrounds has also given us a vast number of viewers, a whole lot of feedback, many great friends, and of course a nice place to hang out with other creative Flash nerds. Which is a positive description of Newgrounders.

MarcyVF: It has affected me greatly, of course, it was the first thing that showed to me that this animation thing I'd been doing was a global thing that people around the world could show interest in. As we dived into the Newgrounds community, and didn't know of or care to join any other communities like YouTube, DeviantArt, Vimeo or Dribbble (before Campnorth, haha), our humour, drawing and animation style, evry freaking thing, it changed according to our Newgrounds community. Our whole basis for developing a real skill within animation was formed in the community. We learned to be confident about our ideas, that somehow you could make money out of it, and that great people with pretty pretty voices and proficient proficient skills were right around the corner ready to collaborate! THANKS, NEWGROUNDS! We would like to kiss Newgrounds on the mouth for it helping us become what we are today. Giggle.

Q: What can we expect from the Vad Flaaten Bros. in the future?

A:

TommyVF: We're going to London in September to study! A Bachelor in Animation and Illustration at Kingston University. So we will probably produce a lot more, since it's what we learn at school. Right now we're kind of working on a secret, silly series with random stuff in it. Maybe an episode of that is around the corner? WHO KNOWS? Not this guy.

MarcyVF: My little brother is being weird again. Luckily this is the final question. YEAH UM we've been working a lot the past years, and trying out other things (check out our Dribbble/Vimeo), so sorry for that. The pressure I felt when I got my first encouraging review as a 13 year-old Newgrounder, I still kind of feel today. Which is funny. And also touching. I've tried 3D, design, motion graphics and filming, but stupid animation is still my passion. Anyways, we'd like to get back to silly stupid random characters, and we're even planning a silly stupid random series. Oh man. That's it for now, folks. If you read all this, I feel sorry for you.

TommyVF: Though I was being silly, we are actually taking a BA in Illustration & Animation at Kingston Uni starting september the 17th. And yeah, you shouldn't read all this. At least not this. This. This. This. THHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Patience is a virtue, this is very true seeing how this one interview took three months to do. Tommy and Markus are both very funny people and it shows in their answers. However they are serious about their works and have fun with it more than anything else. These two were simply a delight to interview and seeing as how they were requested a good bit I wanted to save them for the 100th and I am certainly glad I did. They're works range from bizarre to beautiful both at the same time. A set of twins, different mindsets, and overall artistic majesty and wonderful comedic timing.

So number 100. I was asked by some people if this is where I should call it an end. To be of no more. I myself wondered if I should either stop doing The Interviewer at this point or pass it down to someone else to run, and slowly yet surely drift away into the shadows. Yeah, yeah, I know, cut the melodramatic crap. Throughout this time of waiting for Tommy and Markus to respond to my questions, I slowly got the itch to start doing interviews again and I can't wait to keep going. I have a long list of suggestions and as long as I have my fuel source by my side I don't see myself stopping anytime soon. We've hit 100... so let's hit 100 more.

[ PART 1 | PART 2 ]

Interview No. 100

Interview By: @The-Great-One

Today is a special day. The 100th Interview. Come a long way since 2009. It doesn't seem like a long time either. A lot of these interviews I feel as if it were yesterday when I wrote them. We last celebrated our 50th Interview with @Monocrom and since then we have grown. There have been others who have joined in with The Interviewer such as @NekoMika and @Atlas. @Asandir became inspired to do his own interviewing overtime.

For the 60th Interview I was privileged enough to interview @eddsworld a.k.a. Edd Gould. He passed away recently and he is missed by many here on Newgrounds. Around the same time, the man who pretty much introduced me to Newgrounds, @Randy-Solem also passed away. So it has been some sad times. The Interviewer keeps on going though, with more stories to tell and more underrated individuals to find.

Such as the 70th Interview where I interviewed @Jimtopia who not only has a series here on Newgrounds featuring his characters, but he is probably one, very few of you have heard of. The 80th Interview brought us a dark visionary @MOC-Productions with his Madness Day contribution as well as his take on what a sequel to The Dark Knight would have been like. The 90th Interview would feature a group of Newgrounds musicians who make commercial music for games, movies, and television. They were The Symphony of Specters.

I also got to go a bit deeper when I spoke with @AlmightyHans and Robert Hays. The other members of The Interviewer sat down with big Newgrounds names such as @JeremyLokken and @Afro-Ninja. This is simply just scratching the surface of what has been done since Interview No. 50.

Today though we come to No. 100 and today's guests are certainly not unknown here on Newgrounds. Their works include Check This Out!, The Murderer, Snowmen, and Spend It Wisely. They are two brothers who have been drawing and animating practically their entire lives. They are @TommyVF and @MarcyVF, Tommy Vad Flaaten and Markus Vad Flaaten, The Vad Flaaten Brothers.

[ PART 1 | PART 2 ]

Today is a special day. The 100th Interview. Come a long way since 2009. It doesn't seem like a long time either. A lot of these interviews I feel as if it were yesterday when I wrote them. We last celebrated our 50th Interview with Monocrom and since then we have grown. There have been others who have joined in with The Interviewer such as SCTE3 and J-Rex. Asandir became inspired to do his own interviewing overtime.

For the 60th Interview I was privileged enough to interview eddsworld a.k.a. Edd Gould. He passed away recently and he is missed by many here on Newgrounds. Around the same time, the man who pretty much introduced me to Newgrounds, Randy-Solem also passed away. So it has been some sad times. The Interviewer keeps on going though, with more stories to tell and more underrated individuals to find.

Such as the 70th Interview where I interviewed Jimtopia who not only has a series here on Newgrounds featuring his characters, but he is probably one, very few of you have heard of. The 80th Interview brought us a dark visionary MOC-Productions with his Madness Day contribution as well as his take on what a sequel to The Dark Knight would have been like. The 90th Interview would feature a group of Newgrounds musicians who make commercial music for games, movies, and television. They were The Symphony of Specters.

I also got to go a bit deeper when I spoke with AlmightyHans and Robert Hays. The other members of The Interviewer sat down with big Newgrounds names such as JeremyLokken and Afro-Ninja. This is simply just scratching the surface of what has been done since Interview No. 50.

Today though we come to No. 100 and today's guests are certainly not unknown here on Newgrounds. Their works include Check This Out!, The Murderer, Snowmen, and Spend It Wisely. They are two brothers who have been drawing and animating practically their entire lives. They are TommyVF and MarcyVF, Tommy Vad Flaaten and Markus Vad Flaaten, The Vad Flaaten Brothers.

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:

TommyVF: Since my brother and I have been drawing all our lives, and got introduced to Flash by our father when we were seven or eight, we got in touch with Mr. Internet pretty quickly. At first we just played and watched Flash games and movies (or random, interactive stuff) on freeonlinegames.com, as well as other pages. That was the site that pointed us at Newgrounds, where we found the authors of the Flash-products became much more visible. And Newgrounds really seemed like a cool place for newcomers, with lots of different people (or different kinds of nerds) in a vibrant community, as well as an exciting site with plenty of colorful, weird and fun elements (like the Flash portal, forums, co-authoring (awesome!), diverse front page, author news, voting, reviews, awards, categories <3). So we embraced it! Submitted crappy crap, got our first goofy, long review, voted and got to know more people. We also had some profile on Deviantart.com, and later campnorth.tv (come back, pl0x), and other sites at different times. But we really appreciated Newgrounds as 13-year-olds because it was new and huge and exciting and gave us our first real self-promoting opportunities. Like choosing the double-ended-CAPS, fashionable "TommY" instead of "Tommy" in TommyVF, and getting to know that "Marcy" is a girls name. It was our first impression/encounter of/with many things.

MarcyVF: But as I'd been on the web for a while, and been watching and playing stuff on Newgrounds, one day I just kind of realized that I could submit MY stuff to this very site. That made me insanely excited. Our dad had a policy that we had to ask him for permission to get an account on a web site, I think. Or at least that was my notion. For some reason we followed the age restriction of 13 on the website, and when I was 13 I got an account. And it was also my belief that all "C" characters in were pronounced "K" in English, so when I chose my really hip and cool fictional nickname Marky, I simply located any K and made it a C because that's what I knew about English. Yep. I wonder if some people actually thought I was a girl when reading my username. Giggle giggle. Anyways, my first submission got blammed. Didn't really notice that, as my brain was at the time severely underdeveloped. But the whole review thing and people who were older than me telling me "please make more!!!!!" and stuff like that, they somehow motivated me more than anybody else. I kind of felt a pressure, which was weird. So I quit Newgrounds. Just kidding. But the question was WHY did I join! And that was because I wanted fame. Wow.

Also, Marcy is not my name. My name is Markus.

Q: You two are brothers, twin brothers to be in fact. Which on of you is older and what can you tell us about growing up as twins?

A:

TommyVF: It started when the sperm met the egg and fused into a zygote. Then, instead of dividing and growing into a person, that cell divided itself into two separate zygotes. Those two zygotes then started to divide and grow, until two individuals were created. That means me and my brother are identical twins with the same DNA, legal human clones! Since the zygote simply split, and we were created at the same time, neither is older. But I, Tommy, was born four minutes before Markus, after having his ass on my head for nine months. Such a lovely experience.

Growing up as twins was, has been, and is, really awesome and motivating, thought we haven't experienced anything else. We've lived together and shared interests and thoughts throughout our childhood. And it has probably/hopefully fueled our creativity, because we've often had many of the same ideas. It's also pretty cool (I think) to have an automatic friend. Though not all twins are friends. We also fight a lot and kill each other. Evry day I'm killin'-in'.

We're also gay.

MarcyVF: Everything Tommy said is wrong. Even though the zygote split at the same time and all that, my part of the zygote still separated from his part a little earlier. Sorry, that's just the facts.

Growing up as twins is, was, has always been, and will always be, a horrible experience. As the responsible older brother, he's the parasite, the bad copy who merely sucks the goo of life out of me. Pretty painful. No really, Tommy is a very frustrating little human, but at least, as I'm the original copy, he's not as frustrating as me. No really, he is a very frustrating little human, but we have in some or many ways a very unique relationship. The one I feel the most at home with, still the one I love being away from the most. That sounds weird? GOOD!

Q: When did you two get into art and animation?

A:

TommyVF: Since we were babies, we've been drawing characters, places and comics. We made comic books and invented worlds and stories as kids, and got introduced to FLASH when we were around 7 or 8. Our dad is a graphic designer and used it to create tiny web ads for houses, and he thought we might like it. But our dad showed us some basics of Flash, then we learned more and more ourselves. We've never really took any good tutorials for animation or drawing in the program, so I don't know if we suck at Flash. We got some tips from other animators, though. Also, I use Flash CS3, which is kind of an old version! Funnech!

We didn't use other programs until we met Simon, who made us utilize Photoshop, After Effects and Cinema 4D. Utilize is a funny word.

MarcyVF: Um, yeah, we draw. We drew so much our mom almost shot us down with a crossbow because there were drawings everywhere. I remember dad told me once, ONCE, and he even tells me he can't remember, but still I think I recall it (not very clearly though), that when I was crying or sulking/moping/(weird translation of the Norwegian verb furte') one time because of a drawing or something I can't fully remember, he told me that I was best at drawing or that a drawing I had just drawn was better than Tommy's. But you know what, I probably heard wrong cause he would never say that and I realize now that it all sounds ridiculously fabricated. Anyways, we just always drew, at school, at home, with and without each other and with friends, and started doing it digitally when we got hold of Flash, which our dad showed us. We basically mimicked everything around us. What I mean by that is when I saw cartoons and films on TV, we would watch them again and again and again and remember how they were. Some Looney Toons VHSs we watched a ton of times and even stopped in the midst of, then slowly forwarded/backwarded (or whatever it's called when you wind the VHS thing) it, and saw that the characters were warped and stuff when moving fast. FUN! So, whenever we started drawing or animating, it was our own memory that supported us with ideas as we drew computer game comics a lot. This changed a little with age, though, we got a weird and sudden interest in violence for example. Just because.

Q: Judging by your early works, you both seem to like skateboarding. What can you tell us about skateboarding and why you would make many different animations about it?

A:

TommyVF: WE PLAYED TONY HAWKS PRO SKATER 4! And 2, before that. But THPS4 came free with our eMacs, and the sound effects, animation and gameplay had a great influence. As well as all the other games, like Driver, Jazz Jackrabbit 2, Monkey Shines (old!), Boom (old!), Total Annihilation, and of course the dangerously lousy Runescape. Just kidding. We didn't play Runescape when we were that little, and it was more a social thing. We play it now, though. Brilliant game. Anyways, the concept of skateboarding had been fascinating to us, because of all the tricks and all the visual stuff surrounding it all. Kind of... We've also had a skateboarding period, where we learned to jump/ollie. I only performed a pop shove it once, by accident. On a cat. We use our longboards from time to time, though. But not really.

MarcyVF: Yeah, computer games influenced us greatly. We stole the sounds and put stick men on skateboards. Motion tweening stick men rolling on skateboard was super easy to animate and just the most brilliant and genius concept. Those old THPS4 sound effects are still the best I have, and I use them. We did skate a little in our spare time, as we suddenly got a big interest in it. Like all our weird little new hobbies, our parents provided us with motivation and did what they could. Tommy says a lot of weird stuff in his answer to this one. Wow.

Q: There would be a club here entitled -Skate Flash Club-. It would be the first time you two would work together in the movie Skate Flash Collab 2. What was the experience like working with a group of others as well as your brother?

A:

TommyVF: The Skate Flash Club was overall a really fun experience, because we talked everyday, joking and showing each other skateboard and animation stuff. It was our first time talking in a forum, so we enjoyed it. I think we learned a lot, too, and we participated in two collaborations, which I think made us improve as animators.

Another forum that we joined after this, was the forum Ultimate Pwnage, created by Tyler "Nogfish" Naugle, an animator which we really love. He has superb skills and an awesome cartoonish style. We also collaborated on that forum, joking, talking and making quick birthday collabs for every little user. We got to know a lot of people from around the globe, and probably improved our English abilities, too.

MarcyVF: Oh yeah, wow. The Skate Flash Club was completely awesome. Our first web community thing, where we talked to people in a forum for real. Was a little weird as we weren't that good in English amongst other things. I remember I wanted a forum signature, but kept uploading the same picture in every forum post because that's what I thought other people did to get the signature image. What a moron people must've thought I was. And this wasn't our first time animating together, just our first collaboration online. Anyways, just to clarify: I did a lot of idiot things on the internet when I was young. Looking back now, I honestly think there should be an age restriction of 16 for expressing yourself on the web. (Joke.) Lol. Example: when Luis didn't like the new style of Johny Magic, I got a tantrum. Read Luis's comment here And my hatred here I can't believe it's just 4 years ago. I still say incredibly stupid things, but at least not so everyone can see. Sorry Luis.

Q: What can you tell us about TWINTRASH?

A:

TommyVF: We can tell you that many people think we call ourselves that! But we don't. TwinTrash is a series we made for animation we did together, plus other random stuff. It was originally meant for smaller, weirder projects, and we tried out some new ideas and brought some "guest authors" with us on the way. We had always wanted to make a series together. RWD (Radical Wrong Doers) was also something we were digging at the time, so the whole thing was really inspired by that. Submitting "quality spam", kind of. We also numbered the submissions 001, 002 and so on, to make it look mass produced and cool. Which is kind of silly, but it was fun to have a series going on and try to create colorful and diverse animations.

The most popular TwinTrash-submittions were Runner I and Runner II, which in my opinion shouldn't have been a part of TwinTrash at all, because the project was a lot more special and planned than the others. The runner "technique" was also heavily inspired (if not taken) from an animator/illustrator called MRAW on Newgrounds, Jack Dubben, which we knew from the Skate Flash Club forum. Just check out his "SillyStopSkateMation" movies! Long time ago, though.

MarcyVF: I can tell you what Tommy said, and that our associates over at Aschehoug publishing calls us Twintrash. Though it was never our trademark or our clan name. It has nothing to do with Tommy's full given name being Tommy Vad Twintrash Flaaten.

Q: Check This Out! is a hilarious three part stunt movie. You two would work on this with SimonG. What can you tell us about Simon and working on him on this movie?

A:

TommyVF: Simon is our bropal for life. We had never met other Norwegians that shared our visual interests, so we showed him Apple and Flash while he showed us Photoshop and design. So we became friends and started to make Flash together, like "Dreams", "Daydreams", "Comeback Campnorth" and "Check This Out!". We were mostly just fooling around and having fun, and it was and is super awesome to work with him. We used some automated speech website for the voices, so it turned out really silly. Simon is so cool. And lol, why are you calling it a stunt movie? You're actually making it sound like a good product. When it was just a childish and random animation. Thanks!

MarcyVF: We fell in love with Simon in the summer of 2008, we spent a lot of time together. One of us usually animated, while the two others played Skate or something. It was real fun, and I remember Simon being really self-conscious about his animation. When we came to his part of Check This Out, he always were like "awh, yeah and then it's my crappy part" and he gave us that deeply-in-love-with-you face, if you know what I mean. Okay, that final part was not entirely true. But for example, he made me animate a silhouette falling down some stairs, and my shot at it really sucked. We probably didn't tell him how we secretly admired his cinematic timing and cutting, and his Disney-ish drawing style.

Q: One of my favorites by you two has to be The Murderer. You stated that the inspiration came from Newgrounds member tinytim for showing you the song. The story you told with it though is quite amazing. When it came to working on this how did you draw the visuals that you saw from this song?

A:

TommyVF: Thanks so much for still liking our older work. I think Markus got the song from tinytim, and we loved it. We might have watched the music video, too, but Markus wanted to make something else. I don't know who came up with the idea, but Markus did most of the work. So he probably got the idea, too. Yes, I had to mimic his character, but it was a fun little thing. We still listen to the song.

MarcyVF: First, Thanks for the love! Though I first couldn't take seriously that you thought The Murderer was one of your favorites, I now see that it's kind of good story-wise, still super simple, but one of our more short story-ish animations. About drawing out from a song and the sounds in it, that's basically something we've always loved doing. Music is one art form we love even more than animation, and using songs in our animations can really fuel the whole process increeeeedibly! Apart from my girlfriend, music is what inspires me most. I love it when I can make an animation respond to every movement in the music or sound design. That's something called fun.

Q: The Bible in 05.30, shows pretty much the Holy Bible in five minutes and thirty seconds with not only comedic flair, but some beautiful artistic moments in it as well. What inspired you to tell this story and do it within this short period of time?

A:

TommyVF: I don't know how common the practice of Christian confirmation is in other countries, but, as you can read here, confimation in Norway is a very social and nice event. My brother and I were asked to create some kind of animation for the "ceremony", which normally contained entertainment and other stuff. So we decided to make the story of the Bible into a short cartoon, and it was shown in the church during the confirmation. Me and my brother are Christians, by the way. Like, crazy ones. With swords.

Like Justin Bieber.

MarcyVF: Like Tommy says, we made this on our Christian confirmation show thing in our local church. I got the idea, yeah, and like Tommy mentioned, Justin Bieber's beliefs are the only thing about him I like. Just to clarify, kay? Giggle.

Maybe I'm joking to much here. And maybe it's not funny in any way, so sorry. But my Christian beliefs are something I've wanted to portray or convey somehow through animation for a long time. It's kind of hard, as I think many Christian-themed movies and animations are so insanely crappy or cheesy that it embarrasses me. Still, I have a couple of ideas up my sleeve which I aim to make happen sometime, as the opportunity to at least put a smile on someone's face because of something I've made that has to do with God, is an opportunity I'm thankful of, and really want to use.

And in case someone's curious about our Christianity: Yes, we pray. No, we're not creationists. Yes, we try to read the Bible. No, we don't over-interpret verses. Yes, we attend(ed) this pentecostal church (before London): http://www.pinsekirkenbetel.no Who's in the house? JC. Yo tell me who's in the house? JC.

Q: What can you tell me about The One Layer Collab thread and the movie The One Layer Collab?

A:

TommyVF: Markus made the collab and the thread.

MarcyVF: What a weird project and a weird time. Funny to read how I talk like a horrible teacher in the author comments. And you can see in the thread that I'm becoming arrogant about Skater V2 already. Oh boy! Everyone who participated here were either better than me in English or older than me. It was a horrible amount of work. And I remember one funny story!

Funny story time: When I was compiling the collab, looking through parts and putting them all together, I looked at Timmy The Wing's second appearance in the collab while my mom was in the room. In the part, a man takes off his hat while we only see his shadow. And the shadow of his head without the hat looks like a penis, then we see it's a weird little camel on his head, not a penis. I was not aware of this, as I was really stupid at the time, and just thought it was a random animation of a guy with a camel under his hat. My mom, however, saw this short and then silently said behind me "It... looked... like a penis." I was really surprised and answered "No no no, it's just supposed to look like the shadow of his weird camel head".

[ PART 1 | PART 2 ]