Interview No. 12
Interview By: @The-Great-One
Today's artist is one of the flash portal, audio portal, and now art portal communities. He has received Daily Feature awards for Wii Are Sold Out, Dollar, and Merry ThankMas!. He is also a Forum Moderator and an Art Moderator. Ladies and gentlemen I present to you an underrated talent @SardonicSamurai.
Q: How did you find Newgrounds and why did you join?
A: The first I ever heard of newgrounds was way back when the assassin games were out. A lot of my friends were suspended from school because they were playing it in class. So I had been going to newgrounds for a long time. I didn't actually sign up until September of '05, and the reason why I did was after I watched FALLEN ANGEL: TEASER nearly a year after it was submitted. It motivated me to finally create an account and start posting on the BBS.
Q: Your first flash was a Halloween flash enititled The Necromancer. Where did the idea of this come from and what was the experience like making it?
A: I had been playing with flash for a little while, and some of the projects I had been working on were taking too long and I really wanted to just have something on the portal. When I heard news that people were making Halloween flashes, I came up with a short skit and decided to create a quick flash entry. I definitely had fun making it, and I knew I wasn't going to win anything. I just had fun with it and hoped people would at least enjoy it and get a chuckle or two.
Q: A flash you contributed to would be Welcome to PalTalk which would be something more suitable for the Audio Portal. Was the voice in the flash submission the actual guy or was it someone else reading this? Also was this for real or was it a joke?
A: I joined Paltalk and became somewhat of a regular for a long time (Though I rarely go on it nowadays) One day, some random kid decided to enter the chat and act retarded like that. It was sort of funny listening and watching other peoples reaction to him; taking him way too seriously. People actually thought he was some deprived sheltered kid, so I drew (or whatever the hell you want to call those bunches of lines) a picture with some of the things he yelled about. It was just a stupid inside joke, haha. Hurray for spam!
Q: Another flash I want you to tell me about is Soft Taco! Where did the joke come from and what was the experience in creating this flash?
A: Yet another Paltalk insider thing. Around the time, I had a Taco Bell spree and would order around 6 soft tacos and come back into chat and talk about how delicious it was. People would say I was going to explode into a toilet for eating so much of that garbage, so as a joke I made the flash in 2-3 hours and submitted it to the portal. I had no idea it'd get as popular as it did. I think most of my animations (if that's what you'd like to call them) are shit. The only reason why I score so high is because people like my sense of humor and my crazy voices I guess.
Q: The first flash to win you a Daily Award would be Wii Are Sold Out. It's quite obvious where the storyline and concept came from, but why did you want to make a flash talking about this?
A: I worked in Target electronics during the insane hype people had for that damned console. "Excuse me sir do you have any Wii's?!", "I need a Wii I'm sure you have to have some in the backroom!", "Why don't you people ever have Wii's?!". I would literally be asked those types of questions every 2-3 minutes over the course of several months. One day, I was being yelled out by a customer (or "guests" as we call them at Target for some gay reason). I went into the backroom twitching because I wanted so badly to do something that would have prevented me from making flash for a long ass time, haha. Instead, I vented through flash when I got home and submitted it to the portal. This was yet another flash submission I thought would never get as many views as it did, haha.
Q: Your next flash that would win a Daily Feature would be entitled Dollar. Why did you create this flash and what was the process behind it? Also who did the voice of the Dollar, just out of curiosity?
A: It seems like any popular flash I make is created due to me venting. A group of friends wanted to go hang out in an area that was around 30-45 minutes away. I really wanted to go, but gas was $4.00+ and I had no money to fill my tank up. Instead of going out to party with friends, I created that flash as a joke. I was the voice actor for the Dollar, as well as every other character I've ever animated. I don't like asking for voice actors help, and I have a wide range of voices. I've constantly been told by friends to get into voice acting, and I'm just now starting to take those people seriously. I'm looking for a new microphone and hope to start voicing other peoples animations as well as my own!
Q: Another Daily Feature win for you would be for the flash Merry ThankMas!. Where did the idea for this come from and what was the process in creating this flash?
A: To start, I am not a very religious person. The ideas of religion are great, but people tend to ruin them. Christmas, for example, should be a great holiday. Instead, people kill each other over sales and... wow this is sort of sounding like Merry ThanksMas isn't it? Basically, I just threw in a bunch of random characters and had them talking to one another. My favorite Holiday is probably Thanksgiving, and it gets completely run over by Christmas. Hell, the day after Thanksgiving is Black Friday. "Hey it was nice to see you guys here on Thanksgiving but I'm leaving to go wait in line for 6 hours for some sales for Christmas!"
Q: A flash entitled Stamper N' Johnny would be making fun of Stamper and JohnnyUtah. I want to know how you came about creating this flash and why?
A: If you look at some of their flashes, you'll see that they both submitted some form of a shape themed animation. Soon after, people started making different shapes in different flashes in different scenarios. By the time I got wind of the whole thing, people had already submitted pretty much all recognizable shapes to the portal, so I figured instead of shapes I'd have two of the people that caused the damned thing jumping up and down on that damned gray line. If you haven't noticed the pattern yet, most and almost all of my animations are created in spur of the moment. I'm trying to change that but I'm a busy man, haha.
Q: You unlike other flash artists also have works in the Audio Portal. Your first song there was PartySamurai. Your second song was SamuariPluck. What can you tell me about these songs?
A: Those were created in fruity loops 5 several years before I first submitted them. A friend gave me a copy of his FL studio, so I decided to experiment. Those were my experiments. I have no idea how to create good sounding songs, but eventually I'd like to try and learn how to use Fruity Loops, along with other software. Once I get my new microphone, I might fiddle around with making new submissions for the audio portal.
Q: How did you become a Forum Moderator?
A: To be perfectly honest, I'm really not sure. Long before I became a mod, Wade started up a game of Halo 2 and posted about it in the forum. I joined in, and I rocked at the game. I was befriended by Wade and some other staff members and I started playing with them regularly. Unlike most people on the forums, I treated them like people; not gods. I was there to have fun and not suck e-penis. I later joined Paltalk, and I was constantly solving problems in the chat. I was on my way out to run some errands when Wade first told me I was being modded. I had to give a quick thanks and run out the door before I could even check anything out. So I guess I was moderated because I was a relaxed and fair person that never asked or begged or even showed signs of wanting to moderate the site.
Q: Do you enjoy your job as a Forum Moderator?
A: First, I wouldn't consider it a job. I'm definitely not being paid to help moderate, haha. It's more like volunteering to clean up trash off the side of a highway. I'm quite lenient towards people, so I generally don't get complaints from users who're spamming. As a matter of fact, I really haven't been banning anyone, minus a few people here and there. I've been so busy with work and other things that my online time has become small. Since college is over, I'm slowly starting to go online more and more, though I still go out to hang with friends and go clubbing or dancing and the whatnot. As a matter of fact, I came home to read your message right after getting back from dancing with a great group of friends, both old and new.
Q: What can we expect from SardonicSamurai in the future?
A: I really want to start submitting more to the portal. I'm really surprised at the following I have now due to some animations I never thought would become so popular. I really like to make people laugh and I hope to create even more laughs. I have so many ideas and small projects started, I have no idea what will hit the portal next. More likely than anything else, something will probably piss me off and I'll go on a 3-4 hour drawing/ voicing/ lip syncing spree and submit it to the portal, haha.
As far as what I'd like to have on the portal, I would love to start a series with my username as a main character. I'm still working out ideas but I hope I can work on that some more. I'm also thinking of making an animation about a group of workers in space... but I won't give much detail on that because I'm still working out character designs and a script... I hope to at least submit one thing to the portal this summer!
I enjoyed interviewing SardonicSamurai and see him as just a basic everyday user. He's just your everyday user who treats the site as is. Although he isn't exactly dedicated to it, he does enjoy being here.