WELL, THAT'S ANOTHER ONE DONE. I struggled through a lot but tried my best to stay winning, and with the help of friends, I think we all stayed winning! This year's felt more eventful and bumpy than most, so I think I'll try my best to go over my favourite things that happened throughout the year and share some writings and thoughts, and also update a tad on the projects I'm working on. Happy new year! This is a long one.

Funkin'

I love this damn banner

I'll get this one out of the way first since it's what essentially shaped the beginning of my year. In December last year I started work on a Funkin' fan animation, funneling all my excitement and adrenaline that fueled me ever since the game took off. I worked on it on and off until in February, the Friday Night Funkin' Animation Jam was announced.

I SWEAR I HAD NO IDEA ABOUT THIS BUT GOOD TIMING!! I didn't care much about winning anything but seeing everyone else excitedly work on their animation got me pumped, so I hunkered down and doubled my efforts to get the animation done in time for the deadline.

It was a thrill, blasting hi-energy music, drinking unhealthy amounts of sugar to knock out those last few frames the night of the deadline was a rush. That 'animation adrenaline' is something I live for, and is something I sorely miss working neverendingly on my original short, though later in the year I'd get a chance to experience it again. More on that later.

The result was 'THE LOST OPENING'. An extremely unoriginal idea in hindsight, though I think I started work on my entry before most others considering I started before the jam was announced. Regardless, @Postboy's was 10x better so it doesn't matter.

My favourite thing to come from this collab was getting my ass beat. My animation is OK, but I don't care much for it at all anymore. All I can see now are my mistakes, and I'm happy about that. The rivalries spawned from this jam have been electric, fueling me with inspiration to push myself further with my animation and never stop. Despite the struggles of this year, that feeling of motivation has never left me.

It's because of that that so far this has been my favourite animation jam on the site. So many god-tier entries, and it was just carried by this excitement felt throughout the whole website as new life was breathed into NG's soul and the site exploded.

Also, MY ENTRY HAD A BALLER JAM MADE BY THE ONE N' ONLY @HEYOPC THAT WAS RAD. Godly as yours is Posty, everyone used that Fresh remix in their entry, so I still get more style points for that. THANKS CHRIS!!

The Funkin' game had one hell of a year, too. The launch of Week 7 is something I'll never forget. Watching that drop live, lighting Twitter ablaze and literally breaking Newgrounds was genuinely magical. It's tough to describe, but without getting too sappy, It's like watching a dream you believed in finally come true. Seeing the kickstarter soar, ending with that juicy 2mil lit my heart on fire and my mind exploded trying to comprehend the coolest Newgrounds game ever coming into existence. The devs have a long road ahead of them. Call me biased, but I got a gut feeling it's gonna be bitchin'.

Shrigmas Strike Back

This was the funniest thing that happened all year and I don't give a shit what you think. So, on July 2nd 2021, mushrooms started invading Twitter. It all began when I happened upon a funny new wojak drawn by some guy on 4chan. This funny little mushroom fellow made me laugh so much, it was the most joy I had felt all year.

Me, circa July 2nd 2021

Before I knew it, I was infected. I became the shrigma male. It wasn't long before my spores spread to my good friends on Discord. Suddenly, every good person in the vicinity had been mutated into mushroom folk.

The initial spread of shrooms, origin of the Shrigma males

Shrigmas weren't always accepted and faced some prejudice

Sooner or later, the spores sought broader horizons, and leapt from Discord onto the Twitter wasteland. There it infected countless unassuming dolts and spread its spores around the globe, forming a new army, nay, a nation. If you were there, you were one of us. The free people of Newgrounds and of Twitter united under a shared love of one silly little mushroom.

A mere taste of the Shrigma nation

Finally, the sun set and thus it came to pass that the Shrigma's would depart upon the shores from which they arrived. Though short lived, the shrigma's presence brought smiles and joy to the bleak online world, and for that I am forever happy to have been apart of it. So long, silly mushrooms.

The Aran Islands

During the summer, I visited some family for a weekend on the Aran Islands. Aran is comprised of three islands off the west coast of Ireland and visiting it was one of the greatest highlights of my year. I was having a quite dour time up until this point, I was locked up in isolation, finishing secondary school (@THRIFTMAN MOVED TO AMERICA AW HELL NAW but he came back tho :>), battling the idea of college and figuring out how I wanted to go about life and all that.

So to visit these remote islands even for a weekend was the greatest relief for me and my imagination, I was blessed to have some of the finest weather I've seen in this country while I visited and had to take some photos.

A collage of random photos I took from Aran. It's all just a bunch of rocks really, but I love it

I had never been to these islands my entire life despite them being so close to me, and finally getting to see it for the first time was like entering a new world. It's a completely vast, untouched land of grass, hills and stone. It's similar to alot of countryside Ireland, but the excitement for me came from it being an even more condensed, smaller island that you could run from one side to the other in less than 20 minutes or so.

Being atop a hill and looking out into the endless, vast ocean, then looking over the other direction and across the sea seeing the ferociously tall hills of Connemara was breathtaking. I brought my sketchbook with me and tried my best to sketch the landscapes.

There's something to the Irish landscape that I feel few media has been able to convey correctly, even if not directly referrencing the Irish countryside. Visiting the ruins of monastaries and forts on the islands, I get a real sense of melancholy and sadness. Nature has engulfed these rocky ruins, stories and history that has been lost to time, with only scattered memories giving us fragments as to what they were. There exists games and movies that replicate this feeling well, but to actually stand there and see it with your own eyes, and feel it, is something else.

I've always wanted to convey the raggedy sense of adventure I get from nature into my work, but it's so hard. It seems impossible to really and truly make something that is as fun to watch/read as it is to actually run through open fields and climb rocks by the sea.

Nevertheless, I won't stop trying. My trip gave me a wave of inspiration that I used to design characters and write a story that I'm still working on. It's a smaller one-shot comic that I won't say anything about other than it's really funny and cool and will be good. That's all I really wanted to write about my trip to Aran. It was one of the greatest things to soothe my heart this year and I hope I get to visit it another time someday. Elden Ring has alot to live upto because exploring that island was too much fun.

Lunar Kicks

You probably know by now that my next big animated project is a space cartoon called Lunar Kicks. As of writing, I've been working on it for about 8 months. All the animation is mostly done, I'm just cleaning it all up now, however with the detail I'm working at now it's taking longer than ever. Working on a project like this for 8 months is tiring, which is why I've taken up writing and designing characters for other smaller projects in between animating.

To best describe my current feelings on this, I'll share an excerpt from my journal dated 22nd of November, 2021:

''It's at this point in the animation that I get so wrapped up in the work that I forget why I'm even doing it in the first place. I mean, I know why, but I certainly don't feel it. It's impossible to keep up your initial enthusiasm during the entire animation process.

I'm struggling to find words to describe how I feel about it because truly I feel nothing.

I'm not depressed about it, or stressed, really, I don't feel anything. All I know is that it has to be done. I can't say I'm excited anymore, how could I be. Though as downbeat as my writing is, I know that despite its flaws, this animation will be very good, and the day it releases will be a good one.

So no matter what, I have something to look forward to.''

Bit overdramatic, but I was definitely overwhelmed at the time by the animation and just life in general. Things are better now, and work on the animation is resuming now at an alright pace. I averaged about 6 cleaned up frames a day while balancing everything else, but now with more free time I should get alot more work done and hopefully have this done 2022. I WILL. Then I'll take a nice break and make something simpler..... no, I won't.

LOOK AT THIS ART!! BY @CINNABUNN!! AND POSTBOY

SCHOOL SUX!! N STUFF

I'll try not to overshare here, but this stuff has had an impact on my work and myself this year and it's been a major part of me being very lame and WAAAAAH!

I graduated secondary school and started my first year of college this year. With the pandemic, the world in ruins, the final year of secondary was a hellish nightmare that I've already blocked out my mind, so that doesn't matter anymore. What matters is my current situation in college. I opted to study Design (Graphic Design, Illustration etc.) and MAN IT SUCKS!

I didn't very much want to go to college, but I saw no other real option. I did alot of work this year before I finished secondary school finished to learn about the animation industry in Ireland and to see if there was a way I could land a job before I graduated so I wouldn't have to go to college. I emailed and asked alot of professional animator people for their opinions, talked to industry people and even signed up and attended an Animation Skillnet workshop consisting of lectures teaching animators about studios, how TV productions run and how to find jobs and make nice demo reels and stuff. I was the only non-college graduate in attendance and I was very awkward but I didn't care because I was determined, DETERMINED to find a way out of college.

And I did. Kinda. I won't go into details, but very early in the year I was offered a contract to work a cleanup animation job for a very cool Irish animation studio that I like very much. I was ecstatic. However, discussing the details during a meeting revealed to me that the time frame I would have to work CLASHED with my very important end of year secondary school exams. I was pretty heartbroken. I had to make a choice, between this contract job, or finishing secondary school.

I chose to finish school. The smarter choice, I'm sure, but man it was crushing. It felt to me like school having the last laugh. One final 'fuck you' to me, to just ruin a perfectly good opportunity right before I left, as if school didn't already annoy me enough. I could've gone very bitter over this, and for a little bit I probably did, but I just picked up and kept going, more-or-less accepting my fate to go to college and play it safe.

I didn't want to go to animation college. It just didn't feel right to me. I want to do my own thing, my own way, and have as little influence from institutions as possible. Full respect to animators who studied in college, but for me it doesn't feel like my style. So instead I opted for a design course I hadn't much interest in and I regret it. I thought I could just sleep through classes while I work on my own stuff, but it's kind of biting me in the ass. I don't really care, because I don't care. About college. I should, probably. But MAN.

art college is nothing like blue blazes I've discovered

I've been skipping classes to just wander around town and draw my own sketches of buildings and landscapes, people and things. Writing whatever comes to my mind, feelings ideas and concepts. Doing my own thing. It's what I want to do.

I guess I'm arrogant, and stubborn. I'm young, and I shouldn't make drastic decisions. But there's gotta be something better than this. I know if I keep trying I can make a living in animation. But how do I want to go about doing that? Working a studio job comes with its own worries about burnout and lack of energy for my own pursuits, but it's gotta be better than this. Freelance sounds nice. But I just don't know. I haven't dropped out of college because I don't know where to go or what to do. This is how my mind wanders, but despite all these feelings I know if I just keep moving forward I'll be good.

I don't know where I'm headed but I know I'll be fine. I'll stick to keeping true to what I think is cool.

For 2022 I'm gonna keep pushing myself and get myself out there, find a way to survive with a little more happiness than I have in my current situation. Which honestly ain't asking for much, 'cause even in my current state, I'm blessed with the greatest friends and the greatest community on the internet. No matter how down I got, my homies kept me from going off the deep end. And for that, I have no words to express my thanks.

LET'S END THIS

This year was wacky, and amazing. I illustrated a children's book, which was wild and out of nowhere, but really fun. I'm going to be working on another one due for release in February, so that will be another adventure.

Thank you my friends, and to all the new homies I met this year. To all my animator bozos, namely @Magibauble and @Postboy who's work excited me the most and really gave me the kick to put the pedal to the metal. Thank you @Arzonaut for letting me help on your EVA cartoon, digging through your .fla was fun.

To @ninjamuffin99 and @Wandaboy, those dumb swag cartoons we made gave me that adrenaline animation I was really looking for and had me laughing harder than you can say HOWARD WHA T DA HELL MAN

To @Carmet for doxxing that russian kid and mailing a pipe bomb to his house that was really funny

OK not gonna @ more people, I hate leaving people out. Yeah, if I didn't @ you, it's because you actually really fuckin annoyed me this year and I really would rather not even talk to you actually. So scram.

I SAID SCRAM!!