First off, some kind of cool news, me and my friends are starting a webcomic! The characters in the comic are based off of my friends and I of the same name (so Plette, David and of course, Me! (Pete)) So if you've got a moment, give it a look. We've put a lot of work into it over the last couple of months.

www.shotdownagain.com

The artist for it is someone who you may have seen on the frontpage just recently, and he also helped me greatly with my new cartoon, it's Plette!

Speakin' of new things, go check out the aforementioned cartoon! It was a bit rushed, but I'm pretty happy with the final result, and the reviews have been pretty positive if I do say so myself!

Check out CROW

Sorry for my quietness lately, been pretty busy with college and stuff, which, by the way, if you're interested I'll be posting all my college projects (or at least the majority of them on my new Vimeo account)

In upcoming news, Fizz 2 is still in production, and I've got a Christmas cartoon planned, I just need to get started on it.

One thing I'd like to mention, I appreciate all of the VA's applying for parts in Fizz, and I apologize if I didn't get back to you on things, I got a lot of applicants and it became kind of confusing trying to keep track of who had parts and who didn't and who I replied to and whatnot, so once again, sorry if I didn't ever get back to you.

That's all for now.
-Jimtopia

Okay, so I'm going to try to keep this as condensed as possible, but we'll see...

UPDATE: I'm currently NOT accepting any more voice actors, if I need more I'll make a post about it, but I have quite enough as it is!

-Need Voice Actors-

First things first, I need voice actors for the upcoming cartoon, Fizz Episode 2! I finished the script yesterday, and got it to a point that I'm happy with. The characters I need voices for, are as follows:

Rob- Fizz's roommate, typical college guy, fairly intelligent, nice person. (The VA will have to be willing to do this character for more than one episode, because he will be a recurring character)

The Mayor- I'm going to need a VA for the Mayor of the city Fizz lives in, I don't have anything too specific picked out, except whoever voices for him needs to not sound like a teenager, I need a realistic old person voice. (Again, this will be a recurring character for the series)
Villain 1- Just a generic scruffy-voiced villain. (Probably not a recurring character)

Villain 2- Another generic villain, if you can sound evil you are eligible for the part. (Probably not a recurring character)

The Main Villain- This is the main evil guy for the series, and Fizz's arch-rival. If you try out for this role you'll need to be willing to do him for future episodes. Also, I'd like this character to have an English accent, but I'm not picky.

I'm not going to post the whole script here, but if you are interested in any of the above roles please do not hesitate to send me a PM!

-Need Collab Participants-

This section starts with a short story. Way back in May I attempted to get a Jim and Pals Shorts Collab together in time for July 19th, (AKA Jim Day 2009). I figured it'd be perfect as it could mark the 10th episode of Jim and Pals, and the 4th Jim Day. I had a list of 6 or so animators all ready to go, and I PM'd them, and I got okay's from 5 of them, which was good enough for me to pursue this project, sadly though as time went on all but two of my participants (who actually got there parts completely done) had dropped, and honestly a collab with 2 completed projects isn't much of a collab at all.

So the point of this is: I need to find a few more people (preferably four), who'd be willing to participate in a Jim and Pals Shorts collab, it's pretty much exactly what you'd expect, given the name, of the collab, so if you're interested, please PM me and I'll give you some details about it.

-Comic-Con-

I hate to make this the last thing on my list, but Comic-Con was a couple weeks ago, and I'm sure that most of you were/are interested in Comic-Con have read all the recaps you can handle at this point! But I figure it's still worth mentioning at least, so here goes...

This year's Comic-Con was a blast, as expected, but not just because of all the awesome news, and awesome celebrities that were there, but because, first off, I had a larger group of friends there this year, and second, the whole experience wasn't ridiculously overwhelming, like it was last year.

I didn't go to as many panels this year, because honestly things were just way to packed to make it worth it. That's not to say I didn't go to any panels at all, I was lucky and got into a few, but the one's that I was really excited about... well let's just say it turns out that everyone else was as well. Luckily, that didn't stop the experience from being crazy fun. I just ended up spending most of my time in the Exhibit Hall, which, was just as, if not more overwhelming then I remember from last year. It took me a good 2 days to finally see all of that place, and this year I was lucky enough to have money with which to buy souvenirs, so that was nice, last year I was pretty much flat broke all throughout Comic-Con, this year I could treat myself a bit.

The real fun though, was hanging out at the NG/Behemoth booth, it's nice to have people remember your name when you go back, because honestly I wasn't expecting people to, I thought I would have to re-introduce myself to everyone, which I was cool with, but luckily, I didn't have to! I talked with all the folks from last year, Egoraptor, RubberNinja, Anigen, HansVanHarken, Tom Fulp, and I met a few new people as well!

The real icing on the cake though, and the highlight of me and my friends trip was probably the Newgrounds party. I got a chance to meet every single one of my favorite authors from Newgrounds, which was an amazing experience. I talked with Krinkels, shook hands with RTIL, conversed with HappyHarry, and even hugged LazyMuffin!

So yeah, Comic-Con was great, and if any of the folks I met are reading this, it was good meeting you, and I hope to see you again! (Below is me hanging out with a few folks at the NG party!)

So yeah, that pretty much covers everything, if you actually read this whole thing I congratulate you, you are a more patient person than I. And be sure to PM ME if you are interested in any of the Voice Acting opportunities, or participating in the collab!

-Jimtopia

Once I feel that I've actually grasped the whole experience I'll be sure to give you guys a write-up of my comic-con adventures!

First off...

I have a Twitter!

If you're into that sorta thing. I'll try to update it periodically throughout Comic-Con and whatnot, should be kinda fun... or at least mildly entertaining.

Second, pretty soon I'm going to be getting in the car and headin' off to the airport! I'm pretty excited to see all of (or at least a fair amount) of the Newgrounds folk from last year, not to mention some other people I heard were coming.

Also in the world of slightly interesting things, I'm workin' on new banner and profile picture artwork that doesn't suck, stay tuned. =O

That's all for now.

-Jimtopia

I'm going to try to keep this short, but first off I want to give a big thanks to all the folks who took the time to watch/rate/comment and (hopefully) enjoy Fizz while it was on the frontpage! It means a lot to me that so many people enjoy the new series I made, and I assure you there's much more where that came from. Which leads me to my next point!

A new Jimtopia cartoon will be coming out soon! This one's kind of special to me, it's a collaboration of some really cool authors on Newgrounds, and I'm sure you guys will get a kick out of it. Now for those of you who are big fans of the Jim series, you may know that Jim Day 09 is coming up, sadly I don't think this cartoon will be out by then, but hey I'd rather get a quality cartoon together, then have to rush to get it out on time.

Third thing! I am going to be heading to San Deigo Comic-Con next week for a whole week, and I am very excited! Last year was a ton of fun, and it looks like a lot of the personalities that went last year are going to be going back! I hope I get a chance to see all you guys again! And, this time, if there's any after hour parties I'll be sure not to miss them.

Fourth, I've got some neat new ideas for cartoons cooking up, I don't really want to give much away, but here's a hint, one of my favorite Newgrounds Audio Artists, looks to be coming back to the music-making scene!

Alrighty, that's all for now, next time I post I'll probably be at an airport, awaiting my flight to San Diego!

EDIT (6/19/09): It's out, go watch it!

Man, it's been awhile since I've posted here. Well, good news is that I have completed a new cartoon, the first one in a new series I hope to do, and it should be out by tomorrow, so keep an eye out for that!

It's entitled "Fizz," and it's about a superhero with the power to manipulate soda. Sadly you don't actually get to see any back-story with this first episode, you also don't get to see him use his power, but if you like it you'll definitely see more of that stuff when episode two comes out! I attempted to make a cartoon like this way back a few years ago that ended up being my lowest scoring Newgrounds cartoon (0.96/5.00)!

You can watch it here if you dare.

I decided to do this because the idea has been burning a hole in my head for years now, and since that earlier cartoon didn't do the character justice (not by a long shot), I figured I'd see if I could make something actually entertaining with the character.

So be on the look out for Fizz Episode 1, hittin' the portal tomorrow!
-Jimtopia

(he is very shocked at the ridiculous size of his hair!)

Guess what time it is... that's right, it's summer! Ahh, yes, the birds are singing, the bees are buzzing, the perfect weather for me to sit in my room and make Flash cartoons (*not really).

And just so this blog post isn't a total waste, here's a fun video I'm sure you've all seen at this point!

-Jimtopia

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Recently I've begun to unravel the mystery that is After Effects CS3. Mainly due to the fact that I have to learn it for my Motion Graphics II class, but honestly I'm probably going to be fiddling with it all summer, because it seems like it'd be a worthwhile program to understand.

Mainly what this news post is about though, is that I've been wanting to try combining some of the new things I'm doing in Flash with some of the cool things you can do in After Effects, sadly though After Effects doesn't like plain old SWF files, which surprised me honestly, but whatever.

The main point of this is I was just curious if anyone out there knows any good software, or any other way for that matter, to convert SWF to any video type (preferably MOV considering I use a Mac). I know there's no way to actually convert the file itself to a video, but hopefully you understand what I'm getting at.

Thanks in Advance,
Jimtopia

First off, even though it's late, congrats to Tom and April on their baby (Tom Jr.)! Better late than never.

(Please Note: If you do not care enough to read it all, please scroll down to the tl;dr section at the bottom.)

Secondly, I believe that I have a little explaining to do seeing as I've only released one cartoon since 2009 began. Well, at the end of February I managed to get a job at a local computer help desk for ten bucks an hour. And given the economy I was lucky to get a job anywhere, so I took it. It's only part-time, so Monday-Thursday from 1-5 o'clock. But I also have class from 8-Noon Monday-Thursday as well, so between class and work and homework, since the end of February I've had close to no time to work on any of the projects that I've wanted to, and it's been driving me nuts. Don't get me wrong, learning new skills and new software (such as Maya, AfterEffects, etc...) is great, but I do miss the days when I could spend a good 5 hours on a Flash and just get a big chunk of it done. But man, I really just haven't had the time.

But with the school year drawing to a close fairly soon, I really want to get about 3 (maybe 4 if you're lucky) cartoons done before the end of July. One of which being a Jim related cartoon, the other two being completely new things that I've never tried before (so far they're looking pretty good). I may upload some sort of compilation video to Youtube at the end of the school year to show you all the stuff I've done, but we'll see where that goes.

Tl;dr: I got a job, and that combined with schoolwork has eaten up all my time; but I want to get about 3 new cartoons done by mid-summer.

Thanks for Reading,
-Jimtopia

Hehe, funnay.