depressed.

Surprise, I'm not doing too great.

I don't really know how to open this blog, to be honest. I've been offline for quite a bit, and that is for two reasons. For one, I've been quite busy in my personal life. Lots of plans, lots of work.

But the other reason is a lot more personal. I've been struggling mentally, for a REALLY long time. Like, about 4-5 years. I don't really want to get too deep into it, but it's gotten really bad this year, and I've only now started getting some help with it. It's been very hard to get the motivation to make cartoons (or motivation for anything, for that matter), or even get out of bed...

I'm putting all things I'm planning on an indefinite hiatus until I get well enough that I can start making cartoons again. I'm really sorry to do this, considering I haven't even really made anything of real quality yet... hell, I bet nobody really cares that I'm making this post at all. But oh well, I might as well put this out there for the curious.

-Jonah G.

sick

(THIS POST WAS MEANT FOR JANUARY 15th, BUT I FORGOT TO POST IT. JUST PRETEND ITS JANUARY REAL QUICK.)
Well talk about a crummy way to start the new year.

The last two weeks have kinda sucked for me, considering I spend most of it stuck in my room with a terrible cough. But I think I'm getting ahead of myself, let's start at the beginning: 

So my week started out pretty decent. I went to school obviously, and it was nice to see my friends again after winter break. We all caught up and talked about what we did over winter break. In fact, we were all planning to have a Xbox LAN party last Friday because my friend just recently got an Xbox 360 with all the Halo games. So I guess you could say things were looking up for me.

And then the coughs happened.

Monday went fine enough, but there was an occasional cough or two. I thought it would be fine, and went on with my day. On Tuesday, it was a bit more prevalent. My head was hurting a little bit, and the coughs became a bit more apparent, but again, I didn't think much of it.

But as soon as I got home from school, my body just decided to kick it into overtime. My head hurt a LOT, and I kept coughing and coughing. I just felt miserable in general, and just immediately laid in my bed and did nothing. My mom eventually came in and checked my temperature, which was 102F.

So as you might have guessed, I stayed home. I was just sorta stuck in my bed half of the time, only getting up to get a drink or something. I didn't even play any games or whatever, I just felt that miserable.
This went on for like three or four days, until I started to get a little better, enough for me to fully take advantage of the fact that I was stuck at home. You see, if you've ever been stuck at home with sickness, you know it isn't that bad. In fact, it's kind of baller ass. Think about it; you have the whole house to yourself, you can pretty much do whatever.Me personally? I played a hell of a lot of Halo CE. And yes, it was fun as shit.But that being said, you're still sick, so you're still coughing like half of the time. For me though, it was well over 3/4ths of the time, because my immune system hates me. For whatever reason, I just seem to have these coughing fits that last for like 5 minutes tops. They're brutal coughs to, to the point where I gag and stuff.So yeah, it's not fun.After about a week of this, I seemed to be doing better. I was a bit sniffly, but I was at a point where I could go back to school, which I did. I went back for a day, and I felt like I was finally done being sick.And then the coughs happened again.For whatever reason, I started violently coughing at night, worse than usual. The coughs were so violent that I nearly vomited.My mom ended up waking up because i was so loud, and told me that I was staying home again (if I was still sick after the weekend).So this time around, I didn't even have a CHANCE to mess around at home, because I was pretty much stuck in my bed half of the time because I was coughing so much. I got some cough drops, but they didn't work.But the annoying thing was it was never predictable. Sometimes I would be fine, somedays I wasn't. Somedays it felt like I was walking on sunshine, and somedays I was coughing out my right lung.And the headaches, holy SHIT the headaches. That was probably the only thing that was consistent, and it was annoying. Not even aspirin would work.It got so god damn annoying that I asked my mom if she could take me to the doctor because I was concerned for my health.Turns out there WAS something wrong with me; I had strep throat. But you wanna know the weird part?? After that doctors appointment, I was completely fine!! No coughing, no headaches, it was all over....What the fuck?!!I mean i'm not complaining, I'mmore than happy that it's over. But my immune system sure is damn inconsistent, isn't it?Anyways, I think that's about it for my first post of 2023. Hopefully I remember to update this thing daily this time. Hope you are having a good day.-Jonah G.

2022 in review

I made my yearly review on Newgrounds, check it out!

https://lazypix3l.newgrounds.com/news/post/1328917

update + weird science collab

Fuck.

So I may or may not have forgot to update my blog for a whole ass month. To be fair, I'd say it's more important to focus on your life than a blog that nobody reads. But fuck it, here I am. Anyways, here is what happened for the past month.

The Weird Science collab is out! After 2 months of work and procrastination, the collab just released a couple days ago! Upon release, Newgrounds gifted us the Daily 2nd trophy for that day, as well as the "Underdog of the week" award. I don't know what the fuck that means, but thank you anyways Newgrounds, it's an honor! The collab is currently at 500+ views and is still going up, the support we've gotten is crazy! I can't wait to make more collabs like this!

Of course, I didn't do it all by myself. I got a lot of help from Zteagh Lock with hosting the collab, because god knows I couldn't do it all by myself.

I also really wanna thank Scene-Kid Lock for keeping me motivated through the whole thing. There were times where I felt unmotivated to make the project, and he gave me something to look forward to! Seriously, thanks for everything.

And of course, the parts turned out amazing. Every single one. Genuinely amazing stuff everyone did, I couldn't have done it without all of you.

THANK YOU EVERYONE!!!

Aside from the collab, I've been also making a lot of animation for my animation class... obviously. I've been doing pretty well in that class, so I mostly have free time to do whatever I want. Here is an animation about Tony Hawk Pro Skater, enjoy.

I also made this one to test readability in a cartoon. Apparently, the rule is that you have to be able to read the text on screen three times before it can move on to the next scene. I didn't have any ideas, so I sort of half-assed it and just had the dude pull out a sign.

Then there is this one that I am really proud of, which is just a guy yelling in anger because they dropped an ice cream cone. I just love the expression and the smears, they turned out pretty solid. I only got one complaint, which is a pretty good sign if you ask me.

And then my favorite one I've made so far is this animation right here, just a quick little short about a guy with a top hat and a ball. I think the timing needs some work, but I just like how the ball smacking the dude's face played out, it's just kinda funny to me. Also, everyone laughed at it, so I think that is also a good sign.

This is also one of the few animations that I was required to plan it out on paper. So, here's that I guess.

 

By the way, if you're wondering why the animations look so sketchy, that's because I am using a different animation program called Krita to make these, specifically at school. Ironically, I used this program before to make my very first animation on my computer 2 years ago, so I guess we've come full circle.

Using Krita as much as I do though, I realized why I had abandoned it in the first place; It isn't very fun to use. It is way too laggy and crashes all the time, and is WAY too complex for my liking, and just isn't fun to use at all. I much prefer Flash.

Like hear me out right; In Flash, how do you make a motion tween? Go to the frame, right click it, select create Motion tween/Classic tween. 

How do you make a motion tween in Krita? Go into the Layers tab, select Add, then select Transform Tool, open the dockers menu and add Animation Curves into the workspace, THEN create a keyframe from where you want it to go and end. And don't even get me started on easing.

The multiple brushes are cool I guess, but I'm only going to be using two. Cool to have options I guess. I'm not dogging on anyone using Krita, it's honestly really cool for an open source program. But it just isn't for me.

Aside from all of that though, what have I been doing outside of animating? Well... skateboarding! Yeah, I have grown a lot of interest in it, and have started skating again at my local skatepark with my friend. I enjoy it a lot, and I hope to improve my skills a lot more. I also plan to make a documentary about my experience with skating and all that jazz, it's going to be a lot of fun to make!

I have collected some more records and DVD's too, and some really good ones as well! For the records, I picked up Plastic Beach and The Wall (two of my favorite albums) and Men at Work's "Business as Usual", which is really good as well. But on the DVD end of things, I picked up Ghostbusters, Jurassic Park, and the Red VS Blue Blood Gulch Chronicles Box Set, my favorite one by far. I wouldn't go out of your way to buy one currently because of... you know... Rooster Teeth. But if you happen to find it at your local video store or something, definitely pick it up ASAP. It is absolutely worth your money.

I am also looking forward to Jakey's new album ROMCOM coming out tomorrow! As I am writing this, it currently isn't up on Spotify, but I can't wait until it is! I have been waiting so long for this album, and it has me hyped. I'll let you guys know how it is.

Oh, and I picked up an Xbox 360 S! It's really fucking cool, and I am playing all the games I missed out on due to being a Nintendo fanboy my entire life. I plan on playing the entire Halo series (up to Reach), and Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3, but I also plan on playing Grand Theft Auto 4 and 5. I've already played San Andreas and Vice City, and they are stupid fun, but I've always wondered what the next gen GTA's are like. I guess I'll find out when I get them.

As for the games I want to pick up, I really wanna play the Skate games. I've heard they're really good, and I want to see how they changed the skateboarding gameplay in contrast to Tony Hawk.

I also want to play Guitar Hero on the 360. I have some of the games on my Wii, but it is obviously quite limited because of the Wii's hardware limitations. I have always wondered what the games are like on the 360, so I plan to get Warrior's of Rock and Guitar Hero 5 on the system, the games I haven't played yet.

I think that's it! I'm gonna try to update this blog more, but I can't promise anything. See ya later!

-Jonah G.

progress

Shits going down!

For the uninformed, I recently started the Weird Science collab, and things are going really really well! On day one of making the collab, all of the parts were taken! Like.... WHAT??

Not only that, but I got three parts finished on day one too!! And they aren't spam either, these parts were really well done! I'm still working on my part(s), and these guys can get out parts in a single day??? Fucking kings if you ask me.

I'm not going to share the parts so I can hold the surprise a bit longer, but they look super epic. Trust me.

Since it's my blog though, I might as well share my progress on the whole thing. I haven't started the outro yet, but I have started making the intro and the part I assigned myself. I might as well start with the intro... I'm pretty much done with the intro, I did a animation with my character singing the lyrics, then it cuts to the collab logo. Oh yeah, here is the collab logo, designed by me!

What do you think? Personally I really like how it turned out! I made it in Paint 3D in like half an hour, so I think it is pretty cool for what it is! :)

As for the actual part I am doing, I am not going to give away too much, but I plan to make some people from the Lock Legion play in a band where I am the lead singer, followed by me talking about "my creation" (makes more sense in context).

Here is a frame from the animation so far, ya stinky.

I really like this angle, especially since I'm messing around with shading. I haven't made the background yet, but I plan on doing so in a second. I find it funny how I was too lazy to actually add the guitar, so I slapped a transparent PNG and called it a day. Also, it is a reference to a Lock Legion movie where MP3 Lock has a music battle with Wine Lock. Only I would get that though!

And as for the outro, I plan on doing a transition to the credits... somehow. I don't know how yet, but I'm sure I'll think of something. The intro and outro I can't really finish yet though, because I need the names of the people doing the collab. And even though I know who is in the collab, I don't know if they have to give up their parts, so I'm waiting till all (or the majority) of people finish their parts.

And that's about it! I can't wait for the collab to finish, and for everyone's parts to finally come together! Thanks to anyone who has submitted a part (or is currently making one), and I love you guys!

-Jonah G.

(P.S: Have an interest in making cool ass animations? You can join the Lock Legion too! Here is the link:
https://locklegion.com

<3 Lock Legion)