Interview No. 59

Interview By: @The-Great-One

Today's guest is yet again another Newgrounds Artist. However you will find this one throughout the Art Forum and Art Portal. His works can be seen within the flash movies The Green Line Collab and RD10 Poetry & Art Collab. He has also done works on the flash Proper Raptors which would win a Daily Feature and Weekly 5th Place. This artist is none other than @Fifty-50.

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

A: I first found out about a website called Newgrounds when I was in elementary school, my friend told me about this place that has awesome games and I should go visit. To be exact, it was about this specific game that my old friend kept talking about. A game where you could use multiple weapons to kill someone, it sounded super awesome in my opinion. So I decided to try it. I liked it quite a lot and I eventually kept on playing games here. That was a long time ago, about 2005 or so but I registered quite recently on 2009. ( I know you've heard of this story a lot lol )

Q: Your first interest in the Art Portal would be in a little club called the Art Portal Patrol. What is the purpose of this club and do you still assist with it?

A: Oh yes, the Art Portal Patrol. I don't really recall having anything significant to do with them, since I mainly got interested on art because of the prospect of scouting and having "special" privileges. I even made this newspost. But hopefully a friend of mine was kind enough to scout even though my art looked terrible. Now that I look back that was kinda idiotic lol.

The Portal Patrol was a place to hunt down art thieves, those people who steal art and claim them as their own. They're good people, and I salute them for their noble deed. I never really got involved with them but I'm sure they're doing the things they do for the better good.

Q: Your first submission to the Art Portal would be entitled I'm So Dark. What can you tell us about this piece and looking back on it are you still proud of it?

A: I think that piece looks reeeeeaaaaaalllyy terrible, and I'm not even remotely proud of that drawing. I'm not really the kind of person that's proud of the things he does to start with, but I think that one is just terrible. Even though it looks rather "different", I still won't delete it since it's part of my history, my story or something like that.

The story behind this is quite an embarrassing one, but I'm not ashamed to talk about it. Remember what I said about wanting to be scouted? I was very egostical and proud of myself that I actually made that drawing especially with the purpose of making people scout me with, and MS-Paint? Seriously? My drawings look very strange now that I look at it. I can't even draw a proper looking woman.

The emo look in my early drawings is probably caused by my liking of "My Chemical Romance" at the time, it's really odd. Since I now think of them as fags lol. So am I a fag for liking them? I don't know. But really, I find it disturbing that I used to listen to that kind of stuff. Is it relevant to say I was 13 at the time? Puberty? I guess so.

Q: Fifty-50's improved art. would finally be a thread where you showcase your art due to multiple other threads asking for advice. When it comes to making an art thread would you recommend that other artists make their own art threads and if so then why?

A: Oh most definitely. Artists should make their own art threads.It's mainly because it generally helps moderators with their work of always cleaning up the Art Forum. It prevents confusion and you're artwork will definitely look much more organized. I mean you can just link to one thread instead of linking to multiple ones whenever you feel like showing your art to people from other sites.

Plus it would also help the Art Forum Regs to critique and comment on your artwork easier, and maybe even keep track of your improvement/progress through the times.It's very useful. What's great is you can make an art thread even you're not that good at drawing. You'll improve eventually if you keep your mind open to the people giving you advice on your art.

Q: When it comes to different artwork I personally tend to like the more gothic pieces. One of yours that I like is entitled Skeleton Thing. Where did the inspiration come from for this also which came first the skeleton or the background?

A: Gothic huh? Interesting. I noticed that a lot of people also like that piece. Well I always had a lot of interest in all things macabre and creepy. I tend to draw a lot of skull or death related artwork back then. My parents find it disturbing, my friends find it awesome. But I rarely do things like that anymore. Oh well, I guess people change. I generaly do more boring stuff these days.

The skeleton came first as I recall. I remember how I drew it with my trusty mouse. I think it was quite a time consuming effort but I don't really like this one. Maybe I should remake it? That would be awesome. The background isn't really anything special, I don't remember how I made it though.

Q: When we spoke with Toast-Tony we talked about The Friday Flood. He stated that...

"The Friday flood is an Art forum invasion of the art portal. Basically a theme is given to the users, the users then conjure up a drawing like magic, and submit the drawing with the flood theme image as the thumbnail at a specific time and date leading to a "flood" of the "portal" page."

Would you agree with this statement or have a different interpretation of it?

A: Tony is definitely spot-on with that description. It happens every first friday of every month (it's announced about 3-4 weeks in advance) and it's definitely worth to participate. The flood is that every participant will make the thumbnail the "Friday Flood" icon so that the portal looks it's been "flooded" with the same thumbnail.

It's also funny that some people get ticked off because they think the flood is a bad thing. There's a thread for every flood in the art forum. This is the latest one but it looks as if it's in a stand still.

Q: There are three pieces in the Art Portal from you. Forever Alone Cover, Forever Alone pg 1 and Forever Alone pg 2. What is Forever Alone and will we be seeing more of it?

A: Oh that. That has a very retarded but at the same time entertaining story behind that. You see, one day on the Art Forum when suddenly a girl waltzes in the forum and makes a thread about her comic book. She mentions a comic book by her about "two ten-year old lesbians falling in love with each other." And she plans to publish Well, being the rational person that I am, I wtf'd and went on with my day.

But as the time passes the thread becomes a goldmine of lulz when artists started making parodies of the said comic book. Well I decided to jump on the bandwagon and made my own parody. My parody was well-recieved by the people so I decided to make a thread about it. Well naturally she was quite mad but suddenly became quite delusional, by stating that she was "happy" to recieve "fan art" You can just read the whole thread for the drama and humor of the whole incident.

Q: When looking at your artwork you tend to favor towards the anime style from time to time. Is there any inspiration to this or is it a certain style that you've adapted to?

A: Yeah, I'm really not that happy about drawing anime since it's an overall generic and unoriginal style to me. It's ironic right? The style is hard to describe. It's kinda "addictive" to draw in these kinds of styles. I'll be attending college next year and I'll get a course about art so I can improve my realism. Anime is pretty popular on Newgrounds espcially women.I don't blame them though.

Well come what may. I'll refine my anime and also my other styles. As so I can become a better artist. Plus watching tons of anime doesn't help either.

Q: What other inspirations have you taken into your artwork over time?

A: Well I generally take my family, friends and God (I'm religious) as part of the things that inspire me. But most of the time I don't have a clear vessel of inspiration. I guess it's mostly my desire to get better and better in terms of skill. Although I'm still well far away from being awesome. But I'll do my best.

Q: When we spoke to HeRetiK we talked about The Red Line. We also talked to Toast-Tony about The Green Line Collab which was created out of inspiration of "The Red Line" art collab. How did you come across this collaboration and what was it like working with them?

A: Well it was very shaky at first since Liquify/Travis, the collab leader, didn't seem pretty competent to start his own collab. But things eventually got better and things began to run smoothly. But at the end of the collab there was quite a scene if Cloudeater was allowed to be part of the co-authors. Liquify/Travis was quite annoyed with Cloudy for trivial reasons in my opinion.

But at the end everything was okay and we got to submit our collab. It's kinda sad we didn't get to win anything though.

Q: NG Movie Jam 1 would give artists and animators 48 hours to create a flash animation. Your entry would win the Movie Jam and would be entitled Proper Raptors. The story would be submitted in the Submission Thread on page 6 by Eddache. How did this story come about you and your crew and what was the process in creating it?

A: The story was okay to work with in my opinion. And it was better to work with a simpler story due to the time constraints. I guess I can say it was absolutely perfect for us. I'm very happy with the results. I would like to thank my team mates Mark-er, Eddache and LiquidOoze.

The process of making was quite smooth, we got to a steady start thanks to our animator (Mark-er), the first thing to go in were the voices by Eddache and I drew the backgrounds. The plan was for Mark-er to animate a portion of the movie, send it to me, I'll get to working on the backgrounds and I'll send it back to him. It was like that until we eventually finished. I have to say we almost didn't make it since the last part was incredibly difficult to get down.

The last thing that went in was LiquidOoze's awesome music. Although it was only 30 seconds or less in duration, it was quite difficult to do with a time constraint of 48 hours. And we ended up winning 1st place! Awesome.

I ended up spending my share of the money on a "Newgrounds Calendar". It's still hanging on my wall, it's better than any other boring things I usually put there.

Q: When it comes to working with collabs what do you look for before joining? In other words what advice can you give to those in wanting to start a collab or join a collab?

A: I check if the collab idea is a good one, and not an extremely retarded one like the "Epilepsy Collab". It was a collab about animations that have backgrounds that can induce epileptic seizures like the ones seen on one banned pokemon episode. That could kill someone lol. You should also check if the collab leader is responsible and has the sufficient ability to manage and get the collab running smoothly.

Best of luck joining your collabs.

Q: What can we expect from Fifty-50 in the near future?

A: You can expect more art and drawings. And in the future I'll also make games and animations. As a matter a fact I'm working on a movie now.It's about 2 percent complete. I'd like to thank The-Great-One for giving me the honor of an interview. Also my gratitude to the reader.

Fifty-50 is certainly a wonderful artist who I'm sure his talents will only grow from here. His style as of now is a mere stepping stone to greater things. I guess one thing that I have learned from this is that if you look hard enough you can find wonderous things that you wouldn't expect to see.