It feels good to be back at the wheel. Well I must say that was one hell of a break. I haven't touched flash in a little over a month, which may not seem like much, but for someone who is obsessed with animating, it's difficult. Anyway, I think I've gotten my life more in order now. I am getting a job at this place called V.O.R.P. (Victim-Offender Reconciliation Program) I'll be keeping there website up to date, and potentially be designing them a new site altogether. We haven't quite worked out pay but it will probably be anywhere from 10-13$ an hour. Taking a break was a great idea, and I finally have a little bit of financial security in my life.

PART 1: SPRINGVILLE (CLOVERFIELD PARODY)

One thing I was working on these past 2 months was this movie for a local film festival. It's a parody of the movie Cloverfield, which, if you saw it, is a very easy movie to parody. This was written mostly by Jacob Plette, one of my friends. We all brainstormed ideas, but he was the one to get them down on paper in a coherent way. I must say it was a blast making an ass out of myself on camera, we may do this again this summer.

Here's Part 1:

.
/* */
Part 2:

.
/* */
...and Part 3:

.
/* */
Some of the jokes I'm sure you guys wont get, but it's fine, the movie wasn't made to be epic, it was just a fun experiment in me and my friends film making abilities.

PART 2: SHOT DOWN AGAIN (WEBCOMIC)

Next on the list of cool stuff I'm doing/starting, me and my friends are starting up a webcomic called Shot Down Again. It will have artwork by me, and writing by me. My friend David will be upkeeping the website, which will soon be located at: www.shotdownagain.com (obviously there's nothing there yet). If you want to get samples of my art, check out http://jimtopia.deviantart.com.

PART 3: JIM'S TIME CARTOON

Last but certainly not least, is my next cartoon. Jim's Time Cartoon! This is going to be a fairly long cartoon with voices! That should excite a few of you, a fair amount of people preferred it when Jim talked, and I must admit I kind of do too. This cartoon is going to be comin' at you guys in 2 parts. Part 1 will have the plot/character development, whereas part 2 is going to have more action scenes. The script for part 2 isn't entirely done, but It's coming along.

It feels good to start animating again, a 1 month break is really something that I needed. Expect to see some cool stuff coming soon to my site, and Newgrounds.

Thanks for Reading! ^_^

(Oh right, how could I forget your picture? Let's see what I've got here- Ah HA! Also here's a link to the higher quality version of it)

Very VERY Important; Please Read-

Okay, so I know that in my last news post, I probably sounded like an asshole, saying that my cartoons weren't up to snuff, and complaining that I didn't get an award or front page, and honestly, I feel like an ass about it. I questioned the judgment of the masses, I need to be able to trust them more. Sure I worked on it for 2 months, but hey, if it's not entertaining, it's not entertaining. The viewers know that better than anyone; and who am I to question them?

But that's not the point of this news post, the point is that I'm going to be taking a break from animation for awhile. I'm honestly not sure how long it will be, but I have a feeling that come summer, I'll have nothing else to do (excluding my job) but animate. So it's only for a couple months max. Don't forget about me though, I'm not giving up on it entirely, I just need to get my life in order right now. Hopefully the few people that do check my news page understand this.

I'm sure I'm going to go on Newgrounds still, I can't stay away from this place, but as of today (March 23rd, 2008) I am not going to submit anything until I get my life more in order.

Don't forget about me,
~Jimtopia

P.S. I am going to try to update my LiveJournal more. If you want to read about the aspects of my life, not related to animation, check that out, I should be updating more frequently.

ABOUT BRAWL (EDIT): I have added everyone who wanted to be added up to the first 15 comments.

So, for those of you who clicked here because you saw the word Brawl, my friend code is: 2320-5798-1378
Please leave a comment in this news post with your code if you intend to add me. Thanks.

Okay, so for those of you who like to actually read my cartoon production updates, here ya go. First let me start by saying that my newest cartoon, TV Rules the Nation, really needs some love. It didn't even get a daily award, which kind of pissed me off. I mean, when you work on something for 2 months and get 19 reviews and a little over 1200 views to show for it, you feel gypped. Whereas something like this which took me 3 days, gets daily 4th and almost the same number of reviews/votes, you can maybe understand why I'd be pissed. So please go rate/review TV Rules the Nation, I would really appreciate even just a little more feedback on that cartoon. And hey, if your friends like Daft Punk, show them the cartoon, I show my friends flash cartoons all the time.

Okay, so enough self advertising. Time to tell you about what's to come. Yes, it is a Jim cartoon, hopefully this doesn't anger/upset any of you; seeing as my last cartoon was such high quality, and I'm going back to a "Jim based cartoon." But let me just say this in my defense, I do not intend for it to be like this cartoon, or this one for that matter, I am going to treat this next Jim cartoon the same way I treated TV Rules the Nation. I'm actually going to use different camera angles, re-draw Jim multiple times (I'm sure), this cartoon is going to have voices! To put it simply, it's going to be epic, I'm going to make sure of it. So please, when I say that my next cartoon is a "Jim cartoon" don't think of it as one of my old ones where I used maybe 1 or 2 camera angles, think of it as something entirely new. After this one, I don't think you'll look at Jim the same way again.

Okay, so thanks for reading this far, and here's a screenshot for you all. But before you look at it, let me just say that this is still basically just concept art, and I am in no way done drawing this scene, I guess you could just call it filler; mainly I'm putting it here just so you guys have something to look at, lol.

~Jimtopia

Done done done, I'm freakin' done! Ah, it feels so good! Okay, so, like the title and first sentence of this news post says, I am done with TV Rules the Nation. The cartoon is a total of 2 minutes and 38 seconds long. So, unnecessary percentage:

TV Rules the Nation:
Approx. Percentage: 100%
Run Time: 2:38
Release Date: March 7th

I really hope that this cartoon does well in the portal, I worked my butt off on this thing and I don't want it to all be for naught. Well, enjoy your screenshot, and wish me luck tommorow.

~Jimtopia

P.S. I'll be submitting it right after school, so about 4:00 Central Time.

Hey hey everyone, it's been awhile, what's up? It's been about 3 weeks, so I figured, hey, why not update 1 day early? So here it is, your cartoon production update! Okay, let's get down to business, shall we?

First off, here's the percentage:

TV Rules the Nation:
Approximate Percentage: 75%
Current Runtime: 1 Minute and 30 Seconds

I'll just give you a quick synopses of how this cartoon is going. It can be described in 3 words: "Slowly but surely." I think I can finish by the end of February, and if not then, then for sure early March! I really hope to finish before March 13th, because that's when I'm getting Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and, well, to be honest, that's going to eat up a huge chunk of my time, let me tell ya. Anyway, seeing as I only have about 30 seconds left, I know how this whole thing is most likely going to look when it's done, and I think this has serious NG frontpage potential. I know that's not my jurisdiction, but this is definitely better than TU3, and TU3 got frontpage. Wish me luck.

In other news, I've been doing a little bit with my tablet, nothing terribly impressive mind you, but I've made a couple of these little comics if you want to check them out:

Comic 1: Posture
Comic 2: Flammable

**please note that is not the limits of my drawing capability those only took about 20 minutes to put together fully**

Also, if you didn't know, I have a Deviant Art account. So check that out sometime, I upload some stuff you don't see on NG there!

Okay, another big project that I've been working on lately, is me and my friends are entering a local film festival. We're making a parody of the movie Cloverfield. Now, this isn't going to be like the parodies of it on NG like Awesomefield or The REAL Cloverfield, this is going to be a full length (probably over a forty-five minutes) live action movie, featuring me and my friends. Written by Jacob Plette. I put together a trailer, if you want to see.

--Trailer--

What else, what else? I guess nothing except the weekly screenshot (located below)! Enjoy.

~Jimtopia

Please Read: If you are just here because you accidentally clicked here, or are interested but don't feel like reading the whole news post, please scroll down, look at the weekly screenshot, and tell me what you think.

Thanks in Advance.

Well here we are again, another 2 weeks (and 3 days actually) since my last Cartoon Production Update. I hope you guys are actually reading these. Well, even if you aren't, I'm still going to make them, it makes me feel like I have fans, lol. Anyway, these last 2 weeks have been neat, I've gotten 2 portal awards, and I've gotten a fair amount done on "TV Rules the Nation"! For those of you who don't know what that is, come this way.

Okay, so, time for a recap of the past 2 weeks of my life. Okay, about 18 days ago (roughly) I submitted this cartoon, which took me only about 40 minutes to put together fully. This one was actually the first cartoon I made in Flash MX, and it's the first cartoon I used my tablet for, and to be honest, I couldn't be happier. I couldn't have asked for a better way for my first tablet cartoon to go, it gives me confidence in any of my upcoming tablet related endeavors. I feel kind of gypped in a small way, just as SirSchmoopy did when he made Splash Attack. Read about it here (warning long read). I mean, the cartoon got a higher score than any cartoon I've ever submitted to newgrounds. It makes you wonder why people put effort into flashes at all? Anyway, I don't mean to worry you, I'm still going to make fun stuff for you to watch, I just had to get that off my chest.

Onto my next flash submitted in the last 2 weeks: Jim and Pals Shorts Episode 5: Portal Mishaps. A parody of the very popular Xbox 360 game, Portal. I know that I'm a little late in making this, as the Portal fever has already died down exponentially; still, It felt like it'd been too long since I submitted something with any effort put into it, so I set aside TV Rules the Nation and made a short funny cartoon. Take a look at it if you haven't already. It turned out very well I think.

Okay, and now for what you've all been waiting for, the weekly percentage!

TV Rules the Nation:
Approximate Percentage: 49%
Current Runtime: 1 minute and 13 seconds

This cartoon has really been coming along very well, It's fun to do, and it's very pretty to look at, if I do say so myself. I obviously haven't gotten a ton of it done, like my last update, but it's getting harder as I go along (as I predicted) so it takes more time to make it good. Not a whole lot to say about this other than I think you're all really going to enjoy it.

Okay, now for something a little extra this week. I've been thinking a lot about Jim lately, actually ever since I made JaPS EP. 5 and I decided that I need to make another big Jim cartoon. I came to the realization that I hadn't made any long, really Jim orientated cartoons, since Jim Day 07. I didn't really count Tetris Unleashed 3 or Jim: The Movie (Trailer) because TU3 was more about Tetris, and wasn't comedy based, and JtMT didn't have much of a storyline (or any for that matter). So I'm going to be making a fairly long Jim cartoon after TV Rules the Nation is done (or maybe I'll start when I'm almost done, just to get a head start on things). I have some good ideas for this cartoon, and I'm going to start storyboarding it soon.

In conclusion, here's your weekly screenshot for TV Rules the Nation, my upcoming cartoon, and I hope you enjoy it.

~Jimtopia

P.S. The reason this Cartoon Production Update is so long is because I'm not going to be able to update until Friday, January 22nd. I am going to be visiting my sister in Iowa next weekend, she popped her arm out of her socket, yikes. Anyway, sorry about making you wait all weekend for this, I had to get my crap together, and hopefully next time, my cartoon will be 99% done. =P

Please Read: Thanks for checking out my Cartoon Production Update for this week, before you click back due to boredom please scroll down, look at this weeks screenshot and give a comment on what you think about it. Thank you.

For all you people who enjoy reading the whole thing, the rest of this is for you. My cartoon has actually been coming along very very well! Over the last two weeks, I've over doubled the current runtime of the cartoon, here's the statistics:

Television Rules the Nation:
Current Percentage- 32%
Current Runtime- 48.5 Seconds
Current Filesize- 1.2 MB

This cartoon has been really fun to work on, even though I haven't gotten that many chances over the last 3 or so days, I'm surprised at how fast it's coming along. That percentage would be more, but I had semester tests from January 9th until the 11th, so studying ate up a lot of time. Stupid school. I'm not going to be able to give you guys a released date yet, just because I'm only about a third done, and I don't know how hard the next parts that are coming up are going to be to animate. Well, that's all for this week, a short one. As always, your weekly screenshot is below.

Enjoy,
Jimtopia

P.S. If you didn't notice I submitted a new cartoon this past week, it did surprisingly well for only taking 40 minutes to make. Check it out if you've got a minute.

Important Note: If you are one of the people who don't feel like reading this whole thing, then please just scroll down, look at the pic, maybe read a little of the information about the cartoon, and tell me what you think. Thanks in advance.

Now for the rest of you:

First off, Happy (late) New Year everyone! Okay, the mandatory spread of good will is done with, let's move on. As you may or may not know, I got a Wacom Tablet for X-mas, this one to be exact.

Now if you missed it (which I'm sure most of you who are reading this did) I revealed the results of my poll on Dec. 24th. If you are too lazy to click there and read the results, it turned out to be a tie between waiting for the tablet, and making a "future-esque" cartoon. So I decided to do both. And now here's something I haven't been able to do for the last 3 news posts, give you a percentage! Just FYI, the new cartoon is called "Television Rules the Nation." and is set too the Daft Punk song "Television Rules the Nation" (...sort of).

Television Rules the Nation-
Approx. Percentage: 11%
Current Runtime: 16.5 Seconds

Now, I know I said I was going to make a Cartoon Production Update once a week, but really, I think 2 weeks is a pretty good amount of time in between updates. If I did once a week (at least for this cartoon) there wouldn't be much to update. So if you would like me to cut to the chase, basically what I'm saying is: There will only be one Cartoon Production Update every 2 weeks from now on! Everyone clear? Good.

Now I think I'll tell you a little bit about the cartoon itself. Basically to re-iterate for the... 4th time, it's going to be like the cartoon Future by Celarent. Sadly my cartoon isn't going to be as good as his, (huge surprise) but that doesn't mean it wont be epic. This cartoon is definitely better than any cartoon I've ever made, as it should be. I'm really taking a lot of time with the camera angle and shots in this one; incidentally, the cartoon looks much better. Now, unlike Future, this cartoon has a little more of a defined storyline; rather than 3 or so (but I'm not saying that's bad thing). One thing about this cartoon that's kind of bad is that, due to the high use of filter effects, it's going to almost mandatory that you watch it at medium-low quality.

Well that's it for this week. Below is a screenshot of one of the first parts of the cartoon. Enjoy.

~Jimtopia

Well since I got all the results that I think I'm GOING to get from my previous news entry, I decided to post the results.

The Options Were:

Option 1: Begin work on Tetris Unleashed 4.

Option 2: Make something similar to Future.

Option 3: Make "The Koolmoves Kollab."

Option 4: Wait for me to get my Wacom Tablet, and see where that goes.

Here Were the Results:

Option 1: 0

Option 2: 4

Option 3: 0

Option 4: 4

So rather than go through the whole ordeal of "OH NOEZ IT R A TIE IDK WUT 2 DU!!" I've decided that I'm going to make a cartoon like future, WITH my tablet. Tomorrow's Christmas, and I'll be getting it tomorrow, hopefully you guys can wait. Okay so thanks for voting!

~Jimtopia

Well I suppose it's time for another one of these, oh, and for you people that just read the first sentences of these to see if they're interesting, and leave, scroll to the bottom of this news post and vote!

Okay, so here's a little update on what I've been up to since Christmas in Jimtopia was released. Nothing. Honestly I've been "on break" for the last 9 days, haven't started anything, just been kinda screwing around in Flash MX '04, and hanging out on the internet and crap. In other words it has been a very uneventful 9 days or so.

Jumping into Flash stuff, I am currently... torn. I can't decide what to do next. I have tons of ideas for cartoons and stuff, I just can't decide on which one to do next.

Now, I've been seriously considering doing a Tetris Unleashed 4, but haven't officially made up my mind. I know a fair amount of people PM'd me, telling me to make TU4 have the plot that TU3 was going to have, as shown in this trailer.
Honestly this doesn't sound like a bad idea as a project to take on now, it does seem like it may be too soon after TU3 was released, but that's where you guys (the people still reading this) come in. But more on that later.

My next project idea was something similar to this. I know how he did a lot of the things in that cartoon, and honestly I think I could make something similar potentially. I even have some songs picked out that could work perfectly for it. Realistically though I think I could do this project really well if I just waited until I get better with CS3. Koolmoves could do it I'm sure, I'm just worried about the file size if I use KM.

My third idea was a collaboration. It would basically be a collab about a Koolmoves file fighting a Flash MX file, I think I'd call it "The Koolmoves Kollab." Obviously one of the requirements would be that your part has to be made in Koolmoves. I've been really debating doing this though because I'm not sure how many people on newgrounds know about, or have even heard about Koolmoves.

My final idea, which really isn't even an idea, is just for you guys to be patient, wait for me to get my Tablet for X-mas, and see where that goes. So finally without further ado...

It's time to vote!

Option 1: Begin work on Tetris Unleashed 4.

Option 2: Make something similar to Future.

Option 3: Make "The Koolmoves Kollab."

Option 4: Wait for me to get my Wacom Tablet, and see where that goes.

Please Vote for Options 1, 2, 3, or 4.

~Jimtopia