While everyone else was having fun at all these Pico day events I decided to rush out a dumbass tankman cartoon. Happy Pico Day ya'll! Enjoy!

I've been working on a comedy radio play about a couple of fantasy adventurers. Here's a playlist to the rough recordings of the first 4 episodes.

I'm looking for help with voice acting mainly, but wouldn't mind some assistance with writing if you love the demo's I made and have strong ideas.

I'm not experienced as a writer or voice actor, but one day driving home from work this dialogue popped into my head and I recorded it on the spot (you can hear this in the first episode of the demo tapes).

After that, I casually worked on episode 2-4 and decided on making it into an 8 part series. I'd love some help doing silly voices and replacing these early recordings with some cleaner audio.

If you're interested, just let me know what role you'd like and send me a quick low-effort demo or your reel. This is a super-niche project that will most likely only live on Newgrounds and is entirely for fun! So... give it a listen and let me know if you'd like to collab.

some wholesome madness for the day after

watch here - madness: premonition

7 years ago, Nov 5, 2008, I submitted Dandy with David Silver and wrote this as part of the NG description:

"Nov 5, 2008 Ahh, and so we are released from the shackles of slavery and tossed into the await of your critique. But how we await oh so humbly, and sit in hope that you'll have a wonderful time playing our little gift to you. Oh how this day has been delayed by our own lack of will to progress, but finally we've come to this final deliverance and how we hope to grace you with our work. And know, that this was indeed for you, and only you. For what we enjoy most is for you to enjoy what we make for you. So know, that many people will read this, but you, you are definitely my favorite among them."

Now we've remade the flash game, and it's on Steam. I hope to join the rest of our NG brethren in the NG curators page. As you see in our release trailer, @almightyhans is a good friend and our neighbor, so Newgrounds is never far from my mind. Hope ya'll enjoy our trailer, and hopefully our game.

Hey everyone, just wanted to let you know Dandy is on Steam Greenlight. Help spread the word!

Go Vote Here

Dandy was born on NG 6 years ago as a flash game, you can check that out here.

Edit*

Weird for some reason all my text was deleted because I put in the wrong youtube embed code.

We're 16 days into our Kickstarter for Dandy: Or a Brief Glimpse Into the Life of the Candy Alchemist and we've decided to give out a free demo of the game to promote it. Here's the teaser with narration by Hans Van Harken.

And here's the link to the demo for Windows and OSX:

DOWNLOAD HERE

CHECK OUT THE KICKSTARTER HERE

Lemme know what you think, I hope you guys enjoy it.

I recently wrote about Newgrounds and how as an independent game developer I felt like I couldn't contribute or participate as much as I wanted if I wasn't using flash, html-5 or unity. After talking with a few people, and giving it some more thought I think I was sort of missing the point. Newgrounds is a community, its position as a host for content is equal to its position as a launchpad for creativity and collaboration. 

It didn't feel quite right every time I posted a promotion here in an attempt to redirect people towards my latest project. I think that's because I felt a seperation between content posted and here, and content hosted elsewhere. That felt strangely parasitic. But I think that came from some strange mix of sentimentality and contrivance on my part. I want to share here because this is the community I came from. It's simple.

So here's my promotion, my call to action, and my hope for feedback:

6 years ago I made a flash game called Dandy with my friend David Silver. Tom generously sponsored it, made us t-shirts, and was all around just the nicest person ever. I've learned a lot since then, and we decided to remake it. 

After 6 months of pre-production and 6 weeks of actual development we got to a point where we were really happy with the game. There's a huge scope it could occupy and it seems like something really worthwhile for us to make. The thing is we're funding it all out of pocket. These 6 weeks of dev time have showed us we can accomplish a ton, and quickly, but not quickly enough to have it reach it's full potential before we run out of money. So we decided to crowdfund with Kickstarter, and so far it's going well.

If you're at all interested, or enjoyed the old game, check out the Kickstarter. We put a lot of work into the rewards, and we're super open to feedback.

Or watch the trailer here:

We're also working on a video series to help new devs. I hope for it to be a back and forth between myself and questions people ask in the comments/twitter/newgrounds. So far it's mostly about game design, but I also have 8 years of experience animating with Flash and still use it today, so if you have any questions I'll answer them on the show.

In the latest episode I talk about the Newgrounds version of Dandy, and what issues I think it has and how I can fix them:

TL:DR

Newgrounds is awesome.

Kickstarter for Dandy

Video series for Game Devs

I've been wanting to make a post like this for a while and with all the Youtube talk I think it's a good time for it.

Newgrounds is my alma mater. Tom provided us with a platform to grow as creative people. It was open, and everyone was sharing everything. We were mostly teenagers; drawing, animating, and coding. Newgrounds is the reason that when I was twelve I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life; make games. It's crazy that in the Indie Games conversation I don't hear Newgrounds attributed to it's sudden and violent growth more often. So many of the "rockstar" indie devs we praise in the industry came from Newgrounds. At a certain point though, participating becomes unfeasible.

With animated cartoons the need for higher functionality outside of Flash is somewhat low. Sure you can use After Effects, Photoshop, Toon Boom, Maya, etc, to go a bit further, but the writing, the pacing, the style and overall quality can usually stay at a rather high level without those tools. The real issue for Newgrounds here is monetization, and the iron fist Youtube currently holds on video content.

With game development it's not the same. Flash is stifling when it comes to game development. From the frustrating workarounds with Action Script, to  Flash Players' low capabilities, Flash development is a nightmare for anyone trying to make a "fully featured" game. Despite some miraculous efforts from several flash devs, I doubt their recommendation to use the same tools would be a hearty one. However, Flash is easy to learn, and easy to work with at a basic level. That leaves Newgrounds as a springboard for up and comers, and the Stencyl and Flixel jams are amazing ways that it continues doing that. But how can Newgrounds continue to nurture these up and comers once they move on to developing mobile and pc games in an attempt to make a living?

Newgrounds has been housing, promoting, and spitting out amazing game devs for a long time, the same as it has for animators. A lot of these devs are still loyal. They haven't forgotten where they came from. They may not be active anymore, but they linger, they visit their old home once in a while and contribute when they can. This hasn't really been part of the conversation, and I'm not sure what Newgrounds should do, or if they can do anything at all. They've recently begun to support HTML 5 and Unity games, and that seems like a step in the right direction.

I don't really know where Newgrounds stands, or what it could even provide to independent game developers trying to make a living. I'm sure there's been a lot thought put into moving Newgrounds forward, and I'm only voicing a thought that's been lingering in the back of my mind. I have great respect for Tom and what he's done for our community. It feels strange that coming here and promoting games completely removed from Newgrounds is my only viable means to contribute.

My current project is a remake of a game Tom/Newgrounds generously sponsored when I was 15 years old. Tom gave us a surprising amount of support with that project, going as far as making t-shirts for the NG store. It made us feel validated. We were kids making bad games, but Tom saw potential. I'm making this game with that generosity and the growth Newgrounds provided me in mind. It just feels wrong that in order to fulfill the potential Newgrounds has given me, I've had to move so far away from here. Of course that was probably never the point of newgrounds, to house us, but personally I miss it.

If anything this is just a thanks to Tom for everything. From my love of games and making games, to meeting some of my best friends, Newgrounds has been a huge influence in my life. I will always be coming back, even if it's just as a spectator for now.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/
575564

First time putting a game on NG in so long. Really missed that anticipation of watching it come through the portal.

It does happen to be an ad for my game in the app store, but I still think it's pretty fun and it's nice to be able to submit to Newgrounds again.

Anyway, <plug> http://wefiends.com/ </plug> and <plug> Sushi Boy Thunder (Free App) </plug>

Enjoy guys, and obviously, vote 5.