SDCC

Hey, so. ComicCon. Long story short: It was fucking incredible.

I'm making a semi-con report since I'll be lucky enough to get you guys to read THIS much as is.

After getting in to San Diego the previous day, my group, which consisted of Mike, Zach, Tom and our first-ever meeting with the fabled Tara Billinger, checked into DoubleTree and we checked out Preview Night of the con. Admitedly I didn't spend too much time with my travelling partners at the time of the con itself, as I quickly made my way over to the Behemoth/Newgrounds booth beneath row 5000, which was incredibly conveniant by the way. After getting to meet most of everyone, I hung with Kira Buckland, Ross O'Donovan & Hans Van Harken that night. We headed to their hotel with a group of others for some Smashin' and good times were had, and even CZ joined in on the fun!

We had a good number of fans come to say hey over at the booth, which was an awesome lead up to the absolutely outstanding party we had on Friday night. I gotta fuckin' hand it to Tom Fulp and the fine people at Behemoth (who brought you Alien Homonid and now Castle Crashers) for setting this thing up. I got to mingle with many, many fine folks I hadn't fully interacted with, including Krinkels, Ryan Miller & Jenna Smith, the Super Flash Bros. and tons more. This party just really made me proud to be part of a community like Newgrounds, with so many creative people in one place...and I can say that I'm in that pool of talent. Screw the naysayers of the animation world that scrutinize this site, I love it, and I love everyone that's in it.

There were some speedbumps for me here and there. I had some MAJOR issues with my debt card thanks to the hotel having some screw-ups...and then after the fact we almost got kicked outta the hotel one night, but thankfully avoided that. I missed the Avatar panel on the Friday, but went to the party for its entirety instead of the last two hours, which was a much better idea in the long run. Cycon, his brother Jared and girlfriend Elise, Channel Cat and Kira were all nice enough to set me up with a cab to get back home that night as well. You guys are the bomb...s.
Con-related stuff directly, let's see...met Jhonen Vasquez and got to speak with him for a bit, where I got some helpful advice from a fellow animator. I met Bryan Lee O'Malley the creator of Scott Pilgrim & the Avatar creators later on, both for a total of 30 seconds each sadly, but pleasures nonetheless to make their aqquaintences. Got some autographs from them, which was neat. I also met Erin Fitzgerald, the voice of Nazz & May on Ed, Edd & Eddy as well as her buddy Mel Crosby, both of them were incredibly nice and I swear talked to me for like 15 minutes. I got some great feedback from them after checking out some of my stuff so I did a decent amount of networking while I was there. Ironically, it was also mostly with people I didn't plan on trying to network WITH in the first place, which was a neat surprise.

Bought a few things, but not too much due to money troubles. I gotta sketch from Tokyopop Artist and FUNimation voice actor, Sonny Strait (Krillin, Usopp, Hughes) at his Artist Alley table. I got a copy of "Adventures in Voice Acting" on DVD, finally. I bought my own copy of Scott Pilgrim Volume 4 from the Oni Press booth, as well as a copy of good sir Chris Reilly's comic Igor at the SLG booth. Probably picked up a few other things, but most of my money was dedicated to eating...which is sad because I realize I didn't eat nearly enough as I should have during this trip. Also I tasted sushi for the first time, which is totally not groundbreaking by normal standards, I know, but it was a big deal for me. Oh and a bunch of us watched a screening of AiKa R-16, the first anime featuring Kira as a lead character, and we all laughed our asses off at the ridiculous amounts of unecassary pantyshots and titshots.

The only thing I was disappointed about was my farewell. I feel like I didn't get to say goodbye to everyone. Nonetheless, the fact that I got to meet everyone was enough to satisfy me. Along with satisfaction, I felt...resolved. That definitely describes this con pretty well, for me anyway, that a lot of stuff was resolved. Many of those things of which were a pretty big deal. I feel incredibly refreshed and happy. This was one of the best weekends...hell, WEEKS of my life. So to everyone...Tom Fulp and his lovely wife April, Flash Bros. Tom & Dim, Luis, Afro-Ninja, Anigen, Egoraptor, Ross, Hans, CZ, Mike Ruocco, Ryan & Jenna, Cycon and his DCK crew, Red and especially Kira, you guys made this fuckin' trip for me. Thanks to all of you so much for an amazing time.

Just got back home today, where my team and I saw off Tara and her mom & sister. We'll be seein' Tara down here in a month or so for school, but it was thanks to her and her family that this trip was even possible in the first place so thanks to you guys too!

Destiny draws nearer...

Newgrounds is freedom for all things animation.

First off, and most importantly: Scene 3 is finished and Part 1 of the Movie has reached 60% completion. I now have the remainder of the summer to finish two more scenes and hopefully release the final product of Part 1 just before Fall. Here's some screencaps to whet your appetite.

San Diego Comic-con is about a week away and in about 5 days I'll be shipping off to California. I've gotta LOT of stuff to crack down on and finish before the weekend's up, mostly in preparation for the con. This event is gonna prove to be quite monumental for me, like a big story arc where you kinda-sorta know what will happen but don't know exactly how it'll play out. I know that's an incredibly dorky way of putting it, but I'm really excited about this and am hoping everything will go smoothly. Takin' a small break from working on the movie for this breif moment, but rest assured I'll be getting plenty of important work done.

I'm proud of myself...I know that's probably going to come off as "arrogant" to some, but I genuinely mean it. I'm proud of how far I've made it, even if it's not very far to begin with, with my own abilities as an artist and with the help of all the people that have helped out and care enough to wanna be there with me. I'm really thankful for those contributing friends and partners and I've got big plans. My only hope is that things will pan out as I continue to work harder and harder and gain more and more experience, and then hopefully said big plans will come to fruition, somehow.

"You ants have a nice summer...LET'S RIDE!!"

"Oh my god, it's SO GOOD..."

Still working on Scene 3. Meantime, here's the last of the Rangers' character histories.

Doodle "Pinky" Yankit - Last of the three overshadowed stereotypes is my "tribute" to preppy/valley-girl Kimberly. Pinky's design is a combination of her (Amy Jo Johnson) and the second Pink Ranger, Kat (minus the Australian). Her name actually comes from the original script listing all of the Rangers by their color and not by their actual names, which I was only partially coming up with at the time. I couldn't think of something good for her, so I ended up keeping her nickname that Meat reffered to her by, "Pinky". Later I ended up using this as a plot device for stopping a time-warp, by having her real name (Doodle) be the keyword to save the day. Her real name is obviously supposed to be like "Yankee Doodle" but the "Yankit" part makes reference to her...'job' during "sexy time" as mentioned a few times.

On that same note, yeah she's essentially the eye-candy/sex symbol of the series. I tried to make her another case like Chan where she's one of the only characters who knows what's going on in the grand scheme of things, but yet she has plenty of "dumb blonde" moments as you'll witness very early on in the movie.

Her voice was another obvious one, plus it's an easy character to pull off. I handed this one to Rina Adachi (known as Mizura on places like the VAA) since I felt she was a bit underexposed in the amateur voiceover world, especially in the case of NG, so this felt like a good oppourtunity.