Hey you! It's me, Piggybank! It's been a while, and I hope you're well.

I've got TWO (yes, two!) things to share with YOU today:

I'm working on a new original short~

It's been way too long since my last one (which was Keev back in 2015) so this project is primarily focused on breaking the ice and quickly getting something out the door that's animated by one person (me) between my freelance work. I've been fortunate enough to get to collaborate with some really amazing and talented folks for this one though, and I'm also planning on keeping the short exclusive to Newgrounds for a time (much like with Keev) because I like supporting NG when I can.

I hope to have it out before the end of this year if all goes well, but I'm also taking my time with pre-production and making sure all my ducks are in a row with designs and voice acting before I dive into animation, so things may change on that front. I also haven't directed or written a short in almost a decade so I don't entirely know what I'm doing right now haha!

here's a picture in the meantime from some test footage. who is this mysterious character? what are we even looking at?? You'll have to wait to find out...!

if you're not able to see this image, rest assured: it is not a picture of Sonic.

I've launched an email newsletter: https://buttondown.com/MarkandFlops

Those who sign up (or grab the RSS feed) will be notified whenever I release a new big project thing somewhere, whether it's on Newgrounds, YouTube, at a festival, in outer space, or anywhere! I'd like to also use it to help keep you updated on other things, maybe feature sneak previews, WIPs, concept art, comics or whatever spoiler-free stuff I can fit into the occasional newsletter.

My hope is that this grows into a straightforward way for those interested to keep updated on what I'm making without needing to sign up for a Patreon or comb eight different social media sites, because I'm tired of doing that and maybe there's other people following me who are getting tired of that too. I'll still occasionally publish blog posts here on NG, but if you want more updates on what I'm up to beyond here, that might be an option.

Okay that's two things, so we're done for now! Thank you for reading and for following!

Will be in touch~

That's right: much like the surf rolling back onto the sand, Seaside Fireflies is back, this time as a playable desktop demo at SAGE 2022!

You can download the demo and check out the booth here.

And check out some more of the awesome games at SAGE this year while you're at it!

This new demo features a bunch of stuff, including adjusted difficulty, a new shop, a new explore mode, new music from the returning Daryl Barnes and newcomer RecD, more NPCs to talk to, and a bunch of other tweaks I've forgotten about. And more uses of the word, "new", I'm sure.

And dang, you can even check out RecD's new music for the game right here on Newgrounds! Geez, you probably even saw it on the front page just now, too!! Wow!!!

You'll also be able to find the CUBE in the new explore mode! What is the CUBE? You'll have to play and find out!

For returning players, the firefly layout for the main game has been completely redone, making it now possible to collect them all and get a new good ending. However, the firefly layout has now increased to 192, while the time limit has not changed. It's more than possible to beat the game without any help, but consider spending your earned fireflies from your attempts inside the new Shop for fun new optional power-ups which add to the fun and make the game a little easier!

This game wouldn't have continued development without all of the incredible feedback and support it has received since it showed up on itch and Newgrounds. I'm glad to see the game continue development, and I hope to maybe share more updates on it down the line. :D

Thank you!

Hi!

I wanted to leave a quick and slightly belated thanks to all of you for your interest and support of Seaside Fireflies. I only just noticed today that both it and the episode of Ollie and Scoops that I helped with both got front paged, which is incredibly humbling.

While I'm unfortunately not going to have the time yet to create immediate updates for the game, it's very exciting to see the game perform as well as it did, and the feedback has been helpful in getting a feel for where it could go next if things change.

As for the future of the project, I would absolutely love to find a way to create more of Seaside and expand upon its world, be it by creating more gameplay or even dropping the game half and pursuing an animated project instead. I've been looking into options and chatting with folks since launching the game to gauge interest, so fingers crossed maybe an opportunity will appear!

In the meantime though, I seriously appreciate all of the kind words and great feedback. It always means the world to see people be even slightly interested in something I've made that isn't entirely derivative of an existing IP.

Anyway, thank you once again for your support!

USER OF THE DAY, COMING THROUGH

I'm assuming UOTD is randomly chosen, but regardless this is a really cool honor for me as someone who's been on the site for a while and was a pleasant surprise to wake up to! Thank you!!

While I'm at it, I wanna leave a general thanks of support for everyone here on Newgrounds. I know NG is in a very different (and looking from the outside in, what seems to be a much better) place today compared to 2018, but that year was a game-changer for me with getting out of a dead-end gig and making animation work for me as my full-time job, and I like to think I have NG to thank for a lot of the good fortune I met with that year.

If it wasn't for the glowing response to Keev and other cool things like being able to help on the Smash Bros Collab, I don't know if I would have what would become my full-time animation job today. Recently I've been enjoying creating artwork and finding a new audience beyond animation, but I also can't wait to eventually be able to share more animated stuff on here!

Before I go, here's a few sneak peeks at things I've been working on lately...

• I'm working on a web version of Slimerella at the Strawberry Circus, a game jam submission I also made back in 2018 but never got to share here on Newgrounds. This version will not only address some quality-of-life stuff and touch up some of the artwork, but also hopefully include new cutscenes, a boss battle... and maybe more~
• The game itself is a mix of Shantae and Super Mario Odyssey, where you play as a slime girl who's trying to escape a nefarious circus.

• I guest-starred on an episode of the Bumblekast this week! I talk with Sonic the Hedgehog comic book writer Ian Flynn and certified cool guy Kyle about the magical world of working in animation and storyboarding, and how it compares to working in the also equally magical world of comics. This is probably the only time you will ever hear my voice, so feel free to give it a listen before it's gone!

• Work continues on Sonic Fights Robotnik, an animatic retelling of the incredible Sonic fanfic of the same title, using audio recorded from a reading held during SAGE 2015. It features incredible guest stars, both in the recording itself and guest animators who've been so kind as to help me knock this out! This project has sat in the virtual vault for over six years, but as of this writing we're aiming for a soft deadline of the end of this year. :D

okay I gotta get back to work now, thank you all once again from the bottom of my heart for your support!

I don't have a lot to say here, just wanted to leave a quick journal thanking you all for the art feature!

I've been featured before on NG for animation stuff, but never before for an illustration, so I thank you for your support and interest.

I'll be back with more to share, eventually!

In the meantime, please accept this karate-chopping Robotnik:

We've entered another year, which means it's time for a small annual recap!

Looking back for a moment, it's interesting how 2020 was one of the busiest years I've had in a long time, yet still felt like a miserable year in the end. Aside from life milestones like getting my own place, I got to help on a lot of projects last year, ranging from shows to short films, games and even comics. Honestly, it was probably one of the most productive years I've had since 2011-2013... and maybe the exhaustion I'm feeling (along with everything else that happened) is part of why I still walked away feeling miserable.

I guess what also made it frustrating for me, however, is that almost no one will get to see most of the work I did last year for a long time, maybe not even this year. Part of that is my fault, but part of it is also the nature of the business, too. I can't help but always feel like I could do more to somehow get things out sooner.

My hope though is that maybe I'm wrong, and you'll start to see some of the things I've helped with appear in 2021. Fingers crossed!

As for 2021 plans, here's what's immediately around the corner from me personally. No idea why both things are coincidentally Sonic related, other than it just ended up that way. :P

• My new webcomic Professional Relations went live this week! This was my pet project throughout 2020 whenever I needed the distraction, and after receiving interest in the comics I was making, I've started releasing them on Tapas for those who'd like to read them. I hope someday I can release these on Newgrounds too, but I'm waiting to see if we can maybe get support for comic uploads first, as the Art Portal doesn't seem equipped yet for this kind of content to my knowledge. It's been about five years since I ended Ask Spike Da Dragon, so having a new webcomic to work on again whenever the mood strikes is a nice thing to have.

• As announced recently by Sonic Paradox, they'll be releasing a remaster soon of two of my films from 2012 and 2013: Tails' New Pet and Sonic Lost World's Parkour Engine! These will be released in a double-feature that I'm putting together, featuring new audio, widescreen support, 4K resolution, and more. I'd also like to look into releasing this collection on Newgrounds, as neither of these shorts have been uploaded on here and I feel better uploading them now that they'll have new copyright-friendly audio accompanying them.

That's all for now, but there's likely more things to come!

Looking forward, I want to try pursuing more of my own projects going into this year, and experience having to direct and manage more team endeavors. I have so many irons in the oven now that it's becoming very difficult to keep up on my own, so I want to look into my options for adapting to this new and very humbling demand I seem to be experiencing.

okay I'm done typing for now, thank you, see you later!

It's time for Rayman to chop your limbs off.

...I mean, it's time for us to talk about the new year.

In hindsight, 2019 was relatively quiet for me compared to 2018 on NG, but I still managed to accomplish creating a new short for the year with alien and bobcat advetnure, so I'm happy about that!

One goal I think I have for 2020 is to try making some new footage that might come closer to the output and quality of some of the cool places I've wanted to work at over this past decade. If possible though, I wanna do something dumb like alien and bobcat too, maybe even as a backup plan in case things get too busy. We'll see what happens!

Also wanna do more collaboration with others, bouncing ideas & feedback off of more cool friends and colleagues, and inviting others to help out on personal projects and short films. It's just no fun working remotely by myself, so I think the solution to that might be to get involved in some stuff and open the doors more, so to speak.

Overall this year ended up being a wild blur, hopping between a small variety of shows and projects like the Hobby Kids Adventures show I mentioned last time (that even has merch at Walmart now, like holy crap I have merch from a show I've worked on sitting on my desk now!!) and other neat things and events, some of which I can't talk about yet, and some of which I can't remember at the moment because that's how fast and crazy this year was. In a way, that's kind of a nice feeling to have.

Lastly, I ended up spending a majority of the year with Pencilmation, having just finished my 10th short with them at the start of the month and capping the year off with playing the teeniest, tiniest part in helping to launch the channel into being the third most-viewed on all of YouTube for 2019. Never could I have imagined anything I helped with would appear in one of those coughterriblecough YouTube Rewind videos, let alone grow to such incredible heights, but it's wonderful to see my work playing even a tiny part in something so big.

It sure does help warm my cold heart during this joyful holiday season.

Hope you all have a wonderful holiday, and thank you again for your support!

anyway, here comes Globox with his chainsaw axe, all set to help Rayman with chopping your limbs off:

I don't usually talk much about work beyond my personal projects, but since this ended up turning into a couple big milestones for myself (and its been over a year since my last blog post...) I'm gonna take a moment to mention this one!

Recently a new animated show for streaming platforms was announced called Hobby Kids Adventures. I ended up wearing many hats for this show, being an animator, production supervisor and video editor at the start, then moving to being a storyboard artist, then moving once more to becoming a storyboard supervisor and animatic editor by the end of my involvement. This was my first foray with any supervising positions (beyond my own stuff of course, lol) and in hindsight it was a fun learning experience that I think I gained a lot from. The crew on the show did some really cool stuff too, and I was really lucky to have such a great group of people to work with!

I think I also realized after this show that I really love making storyboards. I had kinda just walked into doing boards on an earlier show without much experience and only a desire to help out more, but I quickly grew to love storyboarding while working on this one. It was a job that let me have a lot more oversight of an entire episode and the story within, but without having to animate the whole thing myself. :P

That being said, hopefully someday I might be able to earn the opportunity to work on a board-driven show instead of something script-driven like this was. I found a script made it much easier to draw almost exactly what your client wanted you to draw (and keep within the time limit for the episode), but there were more than a few moments where I felt like I could have said and done so much more had there not been a script in the way, haha. Maybe someday!

Anyway that's all I have to say about that bye for now

Hi!

I just uploaded a "new" animation onto Newgrounds!  It's called Keev!  And the title does actually end with that exclamation mark!  Wow!

Feel free to check that out!

For a little bit of extra history (and to explain the whole "new" thing), the film was completed in December of 2015 as my senior film before graduating college.  I also entered it into the Edinboro Fall Film Festival, where it somehow walked away with a Silver award!  Which I guess means this is the first film I've made that ever won anything at a festival, so that's really cool!

I never really felt comfortable posting the film much of anywhere though.  It wasn't the film I originally wanted to make for my senior film at the time, but to be fair, the scope of the original project was simply too big to do on my own in time for graduation.  I threw together this project in the span of a semester using some scrapped character designs as a backup plan, and was honestly gobsmacked to see the positive reception it got.

Looking back, I felt bummed out that I didn't get to make something I felt was firing on all cylinders.  And yet, people still seemed to enjoy the film, and I know it was certainly fun to make.  It may not be that really big project that I'm still kicking around as of this writing (over two years later?!), but at least Keev was actually finished, and it honestly didn't turn out half-bad in my book!

Anyway, here's some concept art as thanks for reading my rambling:

Since the game jam is still going for the rest of today, I'm pushing a quick hot n' spicy update for Dust Bunnies your way this Memorial Day!

Some significant stuff, and some little stuff, although those may be rather subjective definitions for the following:

• Some new options in the Options menu, including WASD key support and swapping the Left and Right mouse buttons!  Combine those with the Space Bar to Jump option to get something much closer to a traditional WASD/Mouse combo.
• You can now switch weapons by also pressing the 1, 2 or 3 buttons on the keyboard.
• Normal mode now has some bunnies in the level that are lit on fire!  One touch from a burning bunny will kill you and restart the level, just like in Hard mode where every bunny is lit on fire.  It's not the craziest addition, but I hope this helps get players in Normal mode to be a little more on their toes.
• Mute buttons for Music and Sound are also included, just in case you want to avoid the possibility of your head exploding after listening to the awesome soundtrack for too long.
• Adjusted volume of awesome soundtrack down to half as loud, so less speakers and headphones explode when the game starts up.
• Bunnies that are on fire now have a reddish tint to them.  Helps a ton with identifying them from harmless bunnies in a crowd, so you know which way to run away from.

Hopefully I didn't break anything else!  Feel free to let me know if you run into any problems!

Thanks again for checking the game out, and also to everyone who sent in their thoughts so far that inspired these fixes!