Just posted a corporate promo video my company was commissioned to create. I'm particularly psyched that I was able to use a a Newgrounds musical artist and voice actor.

There's seriously an endless pool of creativity and talent here, and it makes sense that while Newgrounds talent pretty much owns the internet in terms of animation (and is a rock solid competitor in the flash game arena), there's no reason NG talent shouldn't be owning the commercial/corporate creative projects. Obviously, a number of said projects are more video/film oriented, but even so, the sheer force of the creative power here is a contender against so many "established" creative agencies.

I'm rambling and pipe-dreaming. But this isn't the last commission our company is getting, and it's great to know I have a creative team in the thousands to tap into and bring on board.

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IN OTHER NEWS!!!!!!

Team Brothers Grin (RedHarvest, Wurmy, AcmeDyne, and myself) have been working hard on our Game Jam 5 submission. After seeing what we'd created ... we decided it would be in all our best interests to polish it up, rather than rush it. Hopefully, it will still be considered as part of the collection.

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IN OTHER NEWSSSS!!!!!!!

I'm working with Redminus on a short ... secrect project in the style of H&C. NOT MINDCRAFT RELATED!!!!

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IN OTHER NEWSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!

Lots of other collabs and voicing and work work work wPRKWORKRWOWRLKWKRWORRWOKRWWRKWRORWKWR KWRK!!!!!!!!!!

Hey Newgrounds (yes, all of you)!

It's been one long, busy year since I joined the NG community. Much has occurred in and outside the NG world. And while I could get all gushy and misty about my time here, thus far ... I feel I've done enough of that over the past 12 months. So, instead, I'll just get down to business.

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PERSONAL HIGHLIGHTS
- The People: Feedback, support, love, sexual explicivity, and pure hatred. I wouldn't have it any other way.
- NYC mini-meet: My first taste of NG blood ... in the flesh, with Gory, Grub, and Luis.
- 24HRC: A dozen animators chasing a 24-hour deadline does a lot for a man (or woman?)
- Louissi's Games: Getting to voice for Catapult Madness, Turtle Girl, and Armor Mayhem
- DotDotDot: Almost purely for the attention NG, PSTW, Rhete, and Dmac got. I've got some love/hate for it.
- NYC meet 2011: Tom, MindChamber, Mike, Swain, Afro, Tystarr, Luis (again) ... all sorts of yummy awesome.
- Tank Awards/Pico Day: Once in a lifetime chance to mingle with more talent than I could comprehend.
Personally, I think they need to let Stamper and Bob travel more often.
JohnnyUtah's an angry drunk who should be locked in a cage. <3
- Getting pixelated by Hans ... and then him misspelling my name in his giftatar
- Beta testing : Abobo and Symphonic Tower Defense ... uber fun, guys!
- Creaturing collab: Up and running, with an initial roster that melts my face
(Cosmicdeath, TurkerOnAStick, Deadspread83, Pixelcake, Captain-Ben, Tystarr, Ornery)

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COMING SOON
- A short piece I voiced for Bomblu
- 2 TOFA entries (just voices), for Elfman and Sandwich
- EBF4 : The Goldfish was accepted (thanks, Matt :D)
- Working on Pengwin game with Manly-Chicken
- Voicing for Abysmal Adventures 2, Crooktooth 2, Genius Cop 2, Trey Archer 2 and a bunch of others
- Voicing for MOC production's Madness video
- Continuing the On the Palisades series with Jonimator (vo, and now writing)
- The upcoming Game Jam
- Judging for AVAT
- Finishing the music video for Prism
- Finishing storyboards for (Jazza's) Larry's Axemas story
- Beta testing No time to Explain
- A new "type" of Kinetic typography ...

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I'm sure I'm missing a bunch of stuff. Apologies to anyone or anything I left out. Newgrounds has quickly become an indespensable hub of creativity for me. The friendships and partnerships I've made on the site have not only allowed me to explore my own ideas, passions, and interests, but have also helped in my professional life.

I don't see things slowing down. Thanks for an awesome year, guys.

Here's to many more.

:D

M!ck
RicePirate

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AUDIO
I'm getting Adobe Audition this afternoon.
Should be fun to play with for the number of Newgrounds-based VO projects lately,
including three gigs for SOAP Creative, and future home auditions.

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VISUAL
Some animation ... but fairly light, as June is approaching, and I'll be on retainer.
Working on a game with Manly-Chicken.
As well as some doodles for Epic Fantasy Battle 4 foes.

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FUTURE
Newgrounds Wordpress theme, based on the current design. If Stamper prefers, I'll build it from scratch (though graphics, not so much), if he's cool with it, I'll nab some of the styles.
The creaturing collab is underway, but I'll save that for another post.

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Oh, Pico-Day-slash-Tank-Awards...
One week later, and I'm already feeling nostalgic.

I have to say, the one thing that stands out about that day, more than anything else, was how awesome everyone was. There was just an overwhelming sense of support, smiles and hugs everywhere ... and no egos being thrown around. Maybe it's because I'm used to hanging around actors, but the overall sense of humbleness was a huge surprise.

Excessive talent, creativity, kindness, booze, and food... all day, all night, non-stop. I guess that's what it was all about.

I thought about posting personal highlights, but honestly ... (a) there's seriously too many, I mean, hell, I started the day at 8:30am chatting with Tom about Newgrounds for an hour and ended up polishing off two bottles of whiskey with Stamper, Afro, and Luis, watching Swain smear biquick all over his face while getting made fun of for DotDotDot by Utah ... and (b) I honestly can't remember all of the night ... or the following morning for that matter.

Pico Day is Fucking win.

M!ck
Rice

___
u_u
===

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY
This April has been the busiest month on record. I feel like I'm in an Oliver Stone movie written/directed after a week-long cocaine binge, I've seriously been so overworked, in front of our project manager I started filling a bowl with coffee (I didn't even realize it until I was half-way done filling the bowl).

So, my submission count for this month has been shit.

___
o_O
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JUDGMENT DAY
I was honored to have been selected as a member of the judging panel for the Best Movie of 2010. It's not an enviable task. There's so much fucking talent, such an endless spectrum of skills and ideas, it's the reason I joined the site, and continue to be involved ... even if I haven't had time to submit this month. That said, I was happy not to see a single typography in the running, cuz that shit sucks.

___
>o<
===

FULL OF HOT AIR
While I haven't managed to complete a solo flash project, I have been able to voice a couple projects that should be seeing the light of the portal fairly soon. Submissions include:

On the Palisades 2, Crooktooth 2, Genius Cop 2, Trey Archer 2, Abysmal Adventures #2 (almost done!), RWA's upcoming submission, a new piece by Matija27, Ockeroids upcoming submission ... and a couple others.

___
*.*
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PICO DAY, MUTHAFUHKAHS!
Along with the great honor of being selected for the judging panel, I'll also be attending the Pico Day/Tank Awards event this weekend. I deeply moved by these generous and sexy honors ... that said, I plan to bribe the shit out of everyone there, as well as the NG online community, to help secure a spot for next year.

And while I'll likely not finish my personal submission for Pico Day, I will have voiced two official entries, so ... that kinda counts ... right, Luis?

___
i_i
===

With my very first Pico Day around the corner, I've got less than a month to go to piece together a submission for the big day. Work has never been more taxing, and a film shoot needs to get planned in the middle of the month ... so it'll be a bit of a crunch...

In other news, I've been holding off submitting a recent corporate promo flash vid I made, along with the voices of Chris Zambelis and the music of Ockeroid. The company asked me to hold off any official release of the video until the teaser site is live. Here's a sneak peek.

And lastly, I completed a commission for Whirled (by Three Rings). It's player avatar that happens to have a taste of Newgrounds to it. :)

Here's the avatar, go play with it

Quality is so fucking terrible ... which is fine... I'd rather you play with it, then just look at it.

EDIT:

Also, I uploaded a song I made a while back. It's meant to be joke, though it's so totally epic.

Lots of random stuff...

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In the world of iPhone games...

- TINY WINGS : If you haven't gotten Tiny Wings, it's a great little treat. The skill ramp is both challenging and satisfying, and the objectives make replay both fun and frustrating.

- BATTLEHEART : By Mika Mobile (makers of OMG! Pirates) have released a fun real time strategy/action RPG. It's missing some essential pieces (namely, a story), but it's fun, colorful, a great study for simple yet effective effects (love the fireball). The art-style inspired me to create a flash-based configurable avatar for Whirled. You can play with it, and customize it (just click on it). Here's a video demo.

- INFINITY BLADE : Like my Battleheart announcement, this is about a week late. However, there's been a long awaited update. Lots of great content has been added. My only warning to players is, if you attempt to play "New Game+" and you ever return to Bloodline 1 ... they really mean bloodline 1.

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FLASH - issues with exporting videos to mov : solved

If you've ever experienced "artifacting" when exporting your flash to video (that's when you get all those ghosted pixels). There's a very simple reason for it. It took me forever to figure out. I'd spent countless hours exporting with virtually every possible combination of settings. Well, I finally stumbled upon the answer (in the Adobe forums, no less... fail).

I don't have Adobe Premiere, and I have yet to find a workable swf2video converter for Mac (shut up).

Flash (on a Mac... shut up), exports to quicktime. Quicktime runs on 30fps. So, the answer is simple ... all your animations have to 30fps in order to export without a glitch. I tried it. And it works. It's a pain in the ass to rework any older animations at 24fps, but at least now I know. And if you didn't before... so do you.

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Newgrounds Redesign feature request

- email notification for pms (unless that exists, and I'm just not seeing it)
- Flash/submission sorting : I originally though it would be helpful to have automated categories (like vo, art, author, producer), that you could select and sort your flashes by. But after some thought, I think there's actually an even more useful solution... submission folders. With that, I could create a folder for "comedies", or "collabs", or "testing frame by frame", or "stuff I voiced for". Folks could then visit a user page and view how the user would like to separate their submissions. Just an idea.

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Firefox vs Chrome 10?
I've been a long standing Firefox fan. However, I recently received this article on Chrome 10, and I'm considering the move. If you've already walked down this path, I'd love your thoughts.

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Future Submissions

- I have a corporate promo video, that I finished. Just waiting on the client to approve posting. (I will have to convert the swf to video, and seeing as I made it in 24fps ... I could really use some help from anyone who has a converter ... as I'm on a Mac ... shut up). The video features the music of Ockeroid and voice of Chris Zambelis.

- As always a ton of side projects that are getting pushed back as our company grows. But I'd like to finish a small tribute to "Dad and Me" vs "Castle crashers" vs "Pico".

- The music video is still on my plate.

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NY MEET

It was great meeting Tom, Mike, Mindchamber, TS, and the rest of the gang. Seeing Luis is always a pleasure (rawr!). I got to meet and drink with some wonderfully kind and talented folks, and I hope it's not the last time. Thanks, Gory, for putting it together. Will definitely be at the next :D

LATEST SUBMISSIONS
Nerds can never love . Always a huge pleasure to work with Ockeroid.
MvC3: She-Hulk . A quick tribute to Tom's Hulk animation.
Newgrounds Worm . Was honored to work with BoM as well as all the amazing artists in the collab.

Lots of voicing stuff in the pipeline, just have to catch up on work stuff.

NYC meetup . If you're going, I'll be out on Friday night :D

Lots of other projects I'm getting to when I have the time ...

OPINION POLL : ART vs SCRIPT
If you had to choose one or the other, which do you feel is more important (or makes a bigger impact), art or script? Just curious what folks think.

Here's the deal. I need to learn a fucking style.

I need to nail down some kind of drawing/animating style, so I can actually get good at something, explore it, and hone it. If you've seen my work, you can easily tell that I've been struggling to nail down anything remotely consistent.

I feel like a series could help. I'd be doing it for both creative exploration and technical mastery. And by 'mastery', I mean my own personal never-gone-to-art school kind of in-my-spare-time type mastery.

---

Do the write thing?
I've got a number of projects I need to finish up, but that's not going to stop me from my greater goal: learning a style. That said, if there are any great writers out there ... I have ideas, but I think it may be time to explore beyond my own limits. Plus, considering I don't have all the time in the world, having a spot-on script would cut the creation process in half.

I'm just putting feelers out there. I'd appreciate artistic advice... honestly, I just wanna get good at something... rather than starting from scratch every time.

thanks NG,

RicePirate (M!ck Lauer)

(below are screens from the Prism music video and my upcoming Inception parody)

Official, but not mandatory :)

From Tom's latest blog post:

----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----

UPDATE: Rice Pirate has made a preloader that sums up the experience Friday night of trying to match-make all the teams after having a clock that was an hour off and over 100 people in chat:

SWF (preview)
http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/f7 50edbe8cd2128f275090ac901ac3e3

FLA (in AS3)
http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/80 00076af1eae021ff645783e0a8eb0d

If you don't like the visual you can pass on it, but it's there if you want some unity amongst the submissions. :)

----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----

For those who weren't there, Stamper's sharp charisma essentially convinced the staff to chug down Jim Beam and tell racist jokes about their own mothers, while Tom had to sift through the rotting mass grave of submissions and teams. All set to the ceaselessly streaming questions, comments, and complaints blazing through the chat box.

The preloader was a tribute to that snowy Winter's night (last night).

In other news, I've got the music video for Prism all storyboarded up. And if I ever clear my slate, I'd like to start a short series...