Patience is a virtue.

We're workin' on it. This past week has mostly been dedicated to the tech side of things and getting all five scenes that make up Part 1 to work in a way that it can be submitted to Newgrounds. Much of this I owe to Marc Levy, otherwise known as "God of Chaos" who has the patience of a saint, helping me out with his video and general tech knowledge to get this thing done for you guys. Just bear with us for a little more and it should be completed soon. Sorry for the delays.

We're in business.

The animation process of Part 1 is now officially complete. The final steps to be taken are the audio mastering and then compiling. If everything goes smoothly, Part 1 should be up for what I hope will be your viewing pleasure within the next week. Here's hoping...

The Truth About Go! Go! Parody Rangers.

Late into my 11th Grade year in High School, I began thinking of a new concept for a flash movie after realizing pretty far in that my previous series wasn't being very successful. Wanting to do something slightly more advanced than moving sprites around on a battle grid shooting pixelated projectiles at each other, I looked at something that would also be more appealing to Newgrounds, which was where I continued to post my flash movies since I first started in 2004. After listening to some funny clips recorded by Egoraptor, I got inspired and realized that Power Rangers hadn't really been spoofed in cartoon form on Newgrounds. Dragonball Z, Mario and Sonic dominated the parody department for a good long while and I had always been a huge Power Rangers fan as a kid, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

Wanting to start basic with the use of "character models" along the style of other graphics within Newgrounds movies, as well as many flash-based cartoons on [Adult Swim], I designed the Rangers before the summer of 2006 began and conceptualized the overall movie. I wrote up the script, casted everybody with some of the best voices I could depend on from the previous project I worked on, along with Egoraptor who was kind enough to join the cast with his intepretation of Zordon & Alpha 5. I designed each of the Rangers with something specific to focus on in the animation, such as Meat's muscle structure, Chan's anime character-like movements, or Pinky's...assets, all of which later came VERY much in handy for when I started to fully animate the characters in the current movie.

Three installments later with a decent amount of success, it was a good ride and meant a lot to me to recieve any sort of recognition on Newgrounds for the first time. However, it hasn't come without its mistakes in the process. My first mistake with the series as a whole was having such a specific set audience in mind from the beginning. With production of an actual cartoon for broadcast for instance, your audience is definitely something to consider, but not in the same way, since this ended up causing a few other issues. My second mistake, going off of that, was the "style" of humor that I ended up depending on. My whole approach at "marketting" Parody Rangers 1 started with promoting Egoraptor doing a large amount of voice acting in it, as well as the use of several jokes from the previously linked clips. Then, to add fuel to the fire, my obsession at the time with various internet memes from a few certain websites didn't quite help.

The three movies continued to be less and less about spoofing Power Rangers and more about jokes along those lines in order to "appease" the niche on Newgrounds that I had drawn in. Since the Feature movie is a direct adaptation of the Power Rangers movie with Ivan Ooze, I think it goes back to the "roots" of the original idea being to poke at Power Rangers, all in good fun, but still with plenty of "those kind" of jokes that some people still enjoy as well. For both sides of that spectrum I think there's more than enough to entertain, very much also in thanks to my amazing voice cast that just make everything a thousand times funnier than what I actually write...because to be honest, I don't look back on any of the 3 installments, or even this current feature and genuinely think I'm ANY sort of expert on comedy. At all.

In either case...and this applies to anything I make and put out for people to see, the point is to entertain. If the audience that exists gets a kick out of it, THAT'S what matters regardless of what my thoughts are. The Feature Movie is essentially an explosion of all things Parody Rangers are known for; this is both a good thing and a bad thing. However, I can simply hope that everyone who watches it will just take it for what it is. Then, once I'm finished with the entire thing I can move on to, what I can also hope will be, bigger and better things. Still, I think it's important for any artist or creator to accept older works as themself being at that stage during that point in time. Even if they weren't necassarily "Good" stages, I feel that way about both TTA and Go! Go! Parody Rangers now, even with the latter still technically going on. It's prettymuch all I can do.

You caught...a "SCREEN!"

" Give nickname to SCREEN? "







The last one I had to color twice, along with the other frames accompanying it due to Flash crashing midway into the coloring process, doubling my work that day. Just put the finishing touches on this 2 and a half minute scene...one more to go!

This is how the college bum works!

We're not 3 quarters of the way from finishing. Scene 4 is nearly finished, which will soon bump progress up to about 80% completion on Part 1's animation. Scene 5 is about two minutes in length and shouldn't be incredibly difficult to animate, so definitely it should be finished and hopefully out for people to watch by mid-September. I'm having a few tech issues, such as getting more RAM for my computer resolved very soon. There's also the matter of me going back to college in about a week.

Going off of that, here's a comparison of how I'm working currently to how I'll be working not long from now.

So essentially, because of my computer's current power, it's going to be a little difficult to continue currently. One issue may be covered thanks to what will hopefully be the super-powered computers at the School of Visual Arts being able to back me up with what I'm doing currently, as well as anything else I'll be doing for the next couple of years. So long story short, I have about a week left to work on both my laptop and converse/be distracted by my Home PC, before I head back to the concrete jungle where I'll mostly be using JUST my laptop while working with gigantic .fla files and continuing to finish this godforsaken project.

I'll have Scene 4 screenshots soon, most likely.

Continuing...

Aright, so we're at this point, the summer's almost over...time for a reality check.

"$00pah NiN10Doh!" probably won't be out by this month. I'm pushing for everyone on board, including myself, to finish all of their segments, but honestly I don't think it's gonna happen. I was hoping it'd be released by mid-summer, but by the time the convention swung around I knew that wasn't gonna happen, so I aimed for August.

More importantly (I guess?), the Rangers Movie is continuing to be worked on and I'm currently animating Scene 4 (out of 5). This one I DEFINITELY wanted to be out by the end of the Summer, or more likely the very beginning of September. Yet again, honestly, s'probably not gonna happen. I've finished plenty of work for $00pah NiN10Doh!, but the Movie needs to come first since I'm in serious need of money for college.

Now for the big one, in regards to the Parody Rangers Feature Movie as a whole.

I'm not going to bore you all with details, nor do I feel like sharing them here, but long story short: a LOT of stuff has happened since San Diego Comic-Con. Some of that "stuff" has forced me to also take a major reality check on the Parody Rangers "franchise" (I use that term EXTREMELY lightly) overall...that being, it's really not that good in the first place. In fact, many of the reasons people like it in the first place, are things that have nothing to do with me. There's quite a bit of meaning behind that statement alone.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate when anyone enjoys anything I've done, regardless of how I feel about it. Nevertheless, my feelings have changed, plus, as previously mentioned, I don't wanna be doing this forever. I genuinely WANT to finish both of these projects I'm working on currently, in case of the Movie being all three parts of it. There's a slim, SLIM chance that Part 1 of the Movie may be the only part that is actually finished and submitted, however I'm not aiming for this outcome. I'd much rather complete the movie in its entirety and complete the "story". That's more likely to happen, but I'm putting that possibility out now, so you're aware.

I know a lot of this is a bit vague and I apologize for that. Bear with me for a bit longer and I'll hope for the best. What's relevant about this post, I guess you could say, is that hopefully Part 1 will be finished and released by September, while $00pah NiN10Doh! follows soon after.

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!