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.

"Id'll be awsum mo'fo'a, we'll go up'n be all like...R-R-R-RUDU-DU-DU-DU-DUH!!

First off, please be sure to check out my newly designed website!

July finally arrives and as each day passes my anticipation for ComicCon grows. I made lots of great memories at AnimeExpo about a year ago and sadly can't attend again this summer, but a few members of the Parody Rangers cast, including Egoraptor, Tomamoto and Rina-chan who was the champion of last year's AXIdol competition, will be there. Ego and Tomamoto will both be entering this time around and are sure to dominate. Can't wait to see the videos of it. Anyways, here's one of the last two Rangers characters histories:

Jerome "Mace" Jacksum - The token black character, who I'm surprised I haven't gotten reamed for yet. I have NO idea as to where Mace's design came from. I knew off the bat that there was going to be a black character, as a throwback to "Zack" from the original Mighty Morphin' Team, and I think Mace even had a different name at some point (which escapes me). The flails (which I thought at the time were maces) were just some strange quirk I thought'd be funny to go along with his "bling" factor, plus the -M- (Majin) amulet he wears...I think he even has a golden tooth.

His voice was obvious from the start, but it was a tad tricky finding someone who could do a tough (but still funny-sounding) urban-black voice. I actually went through about two or three people before I settled on Jacob Sanders (aka Niro Rose), since two of them couldn't do it and one of them was sick at the time. Niro was another case where I felt like he should be given a fully character, so I gave him a shot and he nailed it better than I expected.

I felt like the voice was getting higher and higher as the three movies progressed, so we worked hard to make sure it was deep sounding. There's a joke in the feature movie pertaining to his voice that I dare not spoil. Rest assured though, Niro's about as white as it gets.

Oh for all ten of you interested (for what reason I'll never know), the reason behind Mace's flail arms'll be explained in the movie during a certain part improved completely by Niro. Look forward to that.

"Sure, I love to be for your team!"

Scene 2 of Part 1 is complete! So about 5-6 minutes of the 14-15 full length of Part 1 is done (2 out of 5 scenes). Scene 3 I'm very excited about working on, since it's the first apperance of the villains in fully-animated movie form. The whole thing's comin' along very well so far. Here's another little character history, this time of:

Chan Yung - Playing up the horrible Asian-stereotype jokes, Chan was born. I learned after the fact that Thuy Trang, the actress who portrayed "Trini" in the original Mighty Morphin' series, ended up dying in a terrible car accident, hence the small tribute to her at the end of Rangers 1, with Chan popping up using a quick little blooper her VA did during the record. Maria Vu was another case where I wanted to make use of her as a main character, similiar to my usage of Chris for Meat. We quickly found her cute little voice and made Chan into almost like a "mascot" character, despite her obviously being overshadowed by Meat and Billiam for example. There very easily could be plushies of her.

On the animation side of things, I did some...weird things with Chan. Her face was done as a cross between the "^_^" emoticon and a bunch of V's put together to make features, with her mouth, specifically, being animated at a lower framerate to give the illusion of an "Anime mouth". This is more obvious in the feature movie. Another odd trait I gave her, and this was the case with Willy too, was her lack of arms during certain scenes. She's supposed to have flaily kimino sleeves, but they only show up when she needs to. You'll see plenty of moments in the movie where they magically appear and disappear depending on the situation.

Chan, along with Mace and Pinky in certain cases, ends up also being one of the only SMART characters in story, giving the attitude that she seems the be the only one who actually knows what's going on...though at the same time, I seem to make a lotta jokes with her being "paired up" with other characters, such as the fanfictions (that don't really exist, I promise) of her and Willy, followed by having her and Mace "hook up" afterward.

"This show is racist propaganda like whoa..." & "Forward, my fellow troops of justice!"

Still workin' on Scene 2. I've got some pretty detailed backgrounds to complete for this one, hopefully they'll turn out half-decent thanks to my having reference on-hand from the movie itself. Kinda wish the background artist deal would've worked out, but ah well. My goal is to be into (if not done with) the 3rd Scene before ComicCon. I'm also aiming for a t-shirt to release along with the first part of the movie. Le'ts hope that'll work out. Meantime, here's another character (or characters, in this case) history:

Willy & Billiam Williams - I originally cast Edwyn Tiong as Willy in Parody Rangers 1 after hearing the voice eventually used for the character in another flash movie as "Jeff Andonuts" from Earthbound. The voice was very high-pitched, fast and hyper. Sometimes you couldn't even understand it, but it worked perfectly. I didn't voice direct Edwyn straight-forward for the first Rangers cartoon, so he did all of the lines in what was eventually Billaims voice! I told him that it wasn't exactly what I was looking for, but that the voice was hilarious and definitely wanted to make use of it somehow. Sure enough, the second one came around I found a "use" for it pretty damn quick.

The setup of Meat and Willy being best buddies worked very well, as it helped give more reason for Meat's swirling emotions for the later episodes. Since Willy is directly based on Billy from the Mighty Morphin' series, I had him "move away" and replaced, as per the usual in the history of the Power Rangers series, and figured it would be easily accepted by the viewers. I'm glad I made the decision, as Billiam's one of my favorite characters now as well.

Billiam is a combination of many different things, at least by his looks anyway. Cyborg 002 and Pheonix Wright were, for whatever reason, the first things that came into my head for when I came up with his character design. The voice that Edwyn indirectly came up with was so hilarious and led into my choice of making Billiam a flaming stereotypical gay man. I remember a few friends of mine in High School were a little shaky on making the switch to him from Willy, but after "Green Day" came out everyone settled into him nicely. Now Willy's boring in comparison to him.

"Yo, evil! I'ma Powah Rangah! BIZZAM!"

Little somethin' to hold you guys over. I'm working on the second scene now, makin' MUCH better progress since this one's a little shorter. By now I'm about a quarter of the way through the first part of the movie that will be submitted before the end of the Summer. But anyway, here's the first of a few character history stories, starting with everyone's favorite:

Red Meat - Originally based on a clip done by Egoraptor called "Zordon's Dilemma", which featured Zordon and Tommy from the original Mighty Morphin' series arguing about random crap, and Jason comes in at the end screaming like a maniac. Jason, of course, was obviously Meat's base model.

When Parody Rangers 1 was first conceptualized back in 2006, I thought the movie would be carried mainly by Zordon and Alpha having to deal with annoying teenagers. By the end of the movie, I and everybody else knew Meat was the REAL star of the show. Chris Zito does an amazing job with his voice, and I knew I was gonna use him as the character from the beginning after wanting to make use of his voice talent as a MAIN character for quite a while. Meat's over-enthusiasm lends itself well to his quotable catch-phrases the fans can't help but dig.

He's also overly emotional, which I helped play up on throughout the trilogy of movies, where he can be totally gung-ho and a your best bud in the world, but as soon as something goes horribly wrong for him, he becomes a sea of sorrow and regret, which slowly turns into depressing anger and rage. The feature movie gives quite a bit of development, very much akin to the process he goes through during each of the original three movies I've made.
By this point, Meat's without a doubt one of my favorite characters of the hundreds I've created and designed.