I couldnt think of a cute title for this post, probably cause im so sleepy. Anyway what was originally going to be a week long mini-project, grew into a 5 month affair, has finallly reached its clitoral climax.

Portal Defenders

The basic concept of this game stemmed back when Castle Crashers came out, we thought (me and BoMToons) wouldnt it be fun to use the little characters in the intro and make something with them. So we had initially just had these two characters beating up these random characters and so then one thing lead to another, and every round of characters we'd finish we'd step back and say, oh you cant have a newgrounds based game without a cameo by Glaiel, then BoM would come back and be like well if youre going to have him then you must include Psychogoldfish.. etc

This went on for about 5 months... its actually been a cool experience atleast for me, cause i never realized just how much inspiration and content this site has to draw from. I mean even popular flash movies/games aside, the personalities that troll/spam/work this place are like the perfect catalyst of inspiration.

That being said, go check it out. Its got alot of cool little suprises and NG/Psychogoldfish has been gracious in allowing us to flagship the achievement system. So any achievements you gain are logged and you should see them on the movie page when you come back to it.

I ran across an interesting blog this morning that I thought would be worth sharing. Basically its a blog that decomposes title sequences from all sorts of movies. Some of them come with pretty cool comments and challenges that they faced while making it.

I think that particularly here on NG, most animators are still a couple light years away from really striving to make their whole movie, a package. Its probably really tempting to just tween in your Arial credits and get to the juicy bits of your movie and/or you've already labored so hard on the other stuff that you dont have time/cant be bothered to get a decent set of titling to go with it.

But I think in the case of the title sequence, you are literally giving people the first impression and it would be nice to really engage your audience at that time because more likely than not, you have the most undivided attention you'll get, in the first 15 seconds or so of loading up your movie. Anyway , its a fun blog, and all the title sequences can be seen in HD so its fun if youre into that sort of thing. Even if youre not, and just need some ideas on interesting ways to handle the title sequence of your own up and coming movie.

Linky McLink

MegaCon Feb 27 - March 1
Location: Orlando, FL

From the upper east coast we wind our way down south. I dont have a great deal of info on this yet, but the word on the streeetz is that The-Swain and a few other Florida folks are going to have a NG-themed booth. I *might* be able to show up. Its going to be cutting it close but I figure if Swain and Ego do a terrible job, i'll just goto Disney World.

Amsterdam Meet-up March 5-8
Location: Amsterdam, The Netherlands

This is kind of spur of the moment and mostly because im still high from the fumes of the London meetup earlier this month(no pun intended?). I thought it'd be fun to try one in Amsterdam. I have a few people who will be turning up and in all likelihood it will be similar to how the first London meet started off, where it was a very small group 'hanging out'. Believe it or not once upon a time London meet was only like 12 people. Not the 60+ that showed up this past outting. I've never been to Amsterdam anyway. ALSO worth mentioning is that Luka has been documenting all the european meetups so far and so he will be joining me on this outting as well. All this heavy effort to capture things on video by Nathan and Luka will merge at some point to create a really grand and true representation of the global power of the site, aka itll be fucking cool.

Montreal Meet June 5th - 7th 18+ only
Location: Montreal, Canadaaaa

One of the most entertaining meet-ups of the year. I think they are on their fourth(?) one, this one is run by fellow mod poxpower. There is apparently a beer festival going on during this particular meet-up which can only sweeten the deal further. This meet has gotten consistently bigger, it wouldnt suprise me if it reaches a suprising number this time around. Regardless, if youre canadian (or not ) and in the area then you should make an effort to get out there.

Wizard Con Philadelphia June 19-21
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

A booth in Philly, imagine that. Shenanigans to follow the con.

San Diego Comic Con 2009 | July 23-26
Location: San Diego, CA

This is another event that isnt necessarily a meet-up, however it always draws out a large number of Newgrounds who's-who. This event has huge numbers of other people to elbow through but all in all it is actually quite fun and San Diego is always sunny and pleasant unlike London. Theres some special newgrounds related events being brainstormed. It should be fun and its an opportunity to meet some of the staff

Penny Arcade Expo 2009 | Sept 4th - 6th
Location: Seattle, WA

Another west coast event. This one way up in the corner of the country. I'm going to actually make an effort to go this year. I've been told its the cooler, less crowded cousin of Comic Con. Like comic con, this event is more about mingling than an actual 'meet-up' but its a good opportunity to catch some of the staff, particularly if you snoozed on comic con in San Diego

Denver meet-up | Sept 25-27th
Location: Denver, Colorado

There has been a few attempts at trying to bring NG to the Midwest and all of them had fallen short in the past. This year PsychoGoldfish is taking matters into his own hands and syncing a meet-up with the Great American Beer Festival in an effort to attract the interest of users like me I'm sure.
This is a promising event, with a couple of staff members showing up in addition to other NG users who live nearby and have the misfortune of living in some of the most boring parts of the country :D

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Thats all for now, I will likely revise that list as i get more info.

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone that made it out. It's been a great testament to the community appeal that newgrounds has and how unique our community is in comparison with other copycat sites like youtube etc.

i had wanted to make it my effort to go and atleast get a handshake in to everyone to personally thank them for coming over. I dont believe i got to everyone but know that i did intend to and will probably be more aggressive about meeting that goal next time around.

Its kind of humbling to think that this all started off as a simple flash regs lounge gathering 2 years ago, with just me and mogly in a hotel room and getting together with a handful of people over at namco. Fast forward two years and now we've got like 50+ users come out and show their support for the site. From well known personalities to lurkers and new users alike.

I'll be using this week to coordinate getting peoples photos and trying to make some sort of photo narative of the whole ordeal.

I do want to send out a special thanks to Tom and his staff for making the trip out. I have gotten nothing but praise and positive feedback for how awesome it was for users to have gotten a chance to meet you all. Well I missed my flight so I'm actually spending my birthday in this hotel room but oh well, if anything its a good opportunity to catch my breath from the whole thing. I'd be annoyed but in reality I feel like my birthday party spanned almost 5 days and for that I have nothing to be upset about.

'Cheers'

-Luisssss

I was going to make a front page post but considering Tom already stole my thunder, I wont.

I'm on my way out to the airport now, I have no idea if I'll be able to update the hub page from London. So if I dont and you want to go or are planning on going, then just show up. You dont need to be invited or whatever. More likely than not you will need to walk over to Namco rather than the London Eye. Its supposed to be raining and so we dont have folks standing in the rain we will head over to Namco. Theres a map below for your reference. If you are running late, then you should also just head straight to Namco. If you neeed my mobile number over in the uk just PM me.

See yaaa

-L

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Where:London Eye, London, England
When: Saturday January 17th, 2009 at 1pm / 13:00

Well I wanted to release this on Dec 31st, but I hit a few snags and bumps so It was a few days late. BUT it is done finally. Im sure I speak for the rest of the people that helped me to say it was REALLY fun dealing with 100+ entries. And by fun i mean laborous.

All in all, I'm glad to be done with the tour in a fairly timely fashion and hope you find 5 mins to go look at what everyones done. I've gotten a few people ask me, why the NG staff wasnt in this particular tour, well i think that it actually shows more of the community spirit when its the community gathering up and giving back to Newgrounds rather than the other way around. So yeah, thats all folks!

SUPER CONVENIENT LINK HERE

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Also the sketchbook tour shirt for 08 will be in the NG store in about another week and a half so yeaaaaa

?!?

I managed to get this little animation done cause i was feeling the spirit of the holidayssss

Thank you ng for a great year and all that. I truly am thankful for the opportunity to have gotten to work with/interact/spam with so many more folks this year, its been fun.

I'm going to go chug some eggnogfish now.

CIAO

Retro X-mas

Ok so I've been under increasing pressure to finish up and release my projects in progress because apparently people think Ive been doin a whole lot of nothin... so heres a cliche list of updates:

Sketchbook Tour 2008
I'd say this project is about 70% done. I'm waiting on the voicework, the name transitions I'm working on, the shirts are sent to the printer and i have to throw together the front menu. I dont want to release the tour until the shirts are back from printing so its quite possible that the project will lag into Janauary. *Braces for the moans and groans*
I do want to make it my goal to finish the parts of it that are under my control this month. So that when the shirts DO come back from printing i can push it out.

Untitled Game
I'm wrapping up a game with the loveable BoMToons. What was supposed to be a really simple game has become anything but. (sounds typical doesnt it) However I am quite pleased with how its coming along. I am also slated to finish that this month.

Xmas cameos and other misc
I have 2 or 3 xmas themed things I'm lending my support on. I'm taking a week off from work to work on them so hopefully i can sqeezy that into this months backlog and have that out within the given time.

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I aint Zekey so I have no cool animations to share as a parting post but I CAN share with you this link I ran into last week. Basically its a Jap Design Studio thats been making 3D renditions of 8-bit sprites from the golden age of Nintendo.
Im not normally a fan of 3D shit but the mixing of retro and modern 3d technologies was interesting to say the least. You can view more here

The image below is of river city ransom, which if you didnt know has been very influential over the look of that luis charicature I always draw.

So last week we kicked off the Weekly Animator Flash-Offs over at the Flash Forum. Basically what it is, is a simple task for animators to animate over the course of the week. They post up their work and other people can critique and give advice to. It helped me get my mojo back in terms of starting to once again animate for movies rather than games (yes they are very different in mindsets) and it was fun. which is way more important.

ANYWAY, to promote them I slapped together me and LaserKarl's piece and made a mini-movie from it Shirt N' Pants. You can see it under my latest flash submissions, its the low scoring one lmao. People got really outragged when such a dumb excersize made it to the fp. Oh well..... you'll live.... somehow.

Join us for this week when the task is to move this concrete block of heavy shit. EXCITING I KNOW.