Hey peeps it's time I made a brand new news post about all the new news on newgrounds
But seriously, it's been a full year and nothing, almost nothing. WELL you have no idea, let's get started.
The project Mr Super vs Anti Mr Super is finally complete, and holy crap is that satisfying to say with a breath of fresh air. I can work on something else, anything else. The next animation I make won’t be mr super related, that's all I'll say. It took me 5 years.
Then let's recap a bit shall we? Since I don't have a blog anywhere else on the net this is the place to read up! So that's the short answer anyway, and while yes that's true, there's a lot more to it than that. I originally storyboarded this in 2019, which was 5 years ago. In 2020 me and chris made our way to a recording studio in the city, and recorded everything, at least we thought, so almost everything. I learned so much about voice directing and VO since then and I'm grateful to have that experience. After that I assembled an animatic with some sounds and the voice lines, which is when I realized some takes just weren’t it! And THEN covid-19 happened.
Now that might seem unrelated but I assure you life got in the way of a lot of creative work in the latter half of 2020, but everyone says that! What really happened was strained personal relationships and procrastination. I wasn’t alone in thinking oh I’ll wait for covid to die off, and disappear, but we all know what happened with that. I sat on the unfinished animatic and occupied myself with other projects, lots of other smaller scale art pieces and shorts which is good. That's when I made Mr Super vs Super Mario, Mr Supers first flash style movie and crossover. I don’t blame anyone for looking at my socials and thinking I stopped making stuff altogether since there's been month long gaps in-between radio silence as of recent.
2021 kicked off with using my newgrounds a lot more, I always knew it was a cool place to be involved, but I didn’t realize just how good it really was in general. I participated in the among us animation jam the year prior, then I was reviewing lots of stuff on ng, became a judge for the newgrounds treasure hunt 2023, and then went to my first [newgrounds] meetup, ever.
Back to 2021, this was about the time I uploaded Mr Super vs Cyanrk, which is indeed a canon part of the Mr Super vs series. In 2021 I didn’t have a lot of motivation to make anything bigger than that ‘cause of the overlooming project I was putting off, which is a recurring theme for this movie. It was also October 2021 when I discovered our saving grace Neco Arc. More specifically, a phenomenon known as “Necotober” where artists and animators made sh- I mean low-effort user-posted content with the character which increased her popularity ten-fold. Such an easy, short, fun post made even me think, hey I can do that! Hahaha.
In 2022 I only uploaded 2 animations, but 5 art pieces! I was balancing the two and I didnt feel like complete garbage. (Remember that after Mr Super v.s. Blank, I suffered extreme burnout after saying, “burnout isn't real” in 2018.) I was confident that I could make cool things and have a somewhat alive schedule, maybe not the most consistent but I argue that's better than having tunnel vision like I have had recently. I also planned on having a booth at my local convention teaming up with another artist, but it didn’t end up happening. I had to distribute Mr Super keychains for free, as it was going to be an exclusive for that event. Anyways, Mr Super vs Neco Arc came to fruition, finally a new fully finished Mr Super animation, the second made using flash/animate and also the first with my new wacom cintiq! This was also when me and chris finished getting what was missing for the aforementioned looming project. That's pretty cool, but I think I'm forgetting something here. Ah yes the new character!
I made Fera the dragon girl, and started developing yet another series with my partner at the time. It was a lot of fun and inspired me to make an animation which also changed her initial design for good, adding her ahoge. But this isn’t about the Fera sad cat dance! Where were we…
In 2023 I knew this was the year I’d get it done, I had started animation in April 2022 and I thought I could wrap this up! So, happy with my progress, I uploaded an early rendered clip on youtube and made a post talking about the state of the project right here, which is a nice reflection of my stance on posting and trying to build hype. However life hits you like a truck, and I also took healthy breaks like contributing to the Breaking Bad Recrystallized project, my first ever re-creation and collaborative project. As well as Peter Griffins new best friend, and ‘Collabocalypse’ or ‘The Paper Plane Collab’ (That was the working title I think) which eventually became “Plane ‘N’ Simple.” I wanted to have a collab experience that was more direct and communicative with other artists, but that one wouldn’t come to light until 2024, hey that's this year! This was also the year I wanted to upload more, that included sketches which I consider a success. I finished the year with a bang, testing the limits of my parents laptop with “Ballos Test” (Twitter/X) and “NG girl Idle” (NG). Obviously with more non- Mr Super stuff coming out and the realization that I had a lot more work to do, it made the dream of finishing this “MSVAMS” nearly impossible. I had to re-evaluate, get it back on track, no more side projects. I set an internal release date to be May 18th I think, I know it was gonna be on a saturday.
I literally felt so behind that I mentally edited the entire trailer in my head, sound effects and everything. I worked on the animation using my parents laptop, and I eventually got my unit of a pc in march 2024, which meant I can actually use after effects, whoa! After making Witchlys New Years 2024, I was a bit harsh on myself for the delays but I buckled down and got the animation done in chunks, and went full throttle April-October only really popping out a small Halloween piece I rushed, since I had done that kinda consistently. After all the setbacks, I composited and edited the final thing, it started to feel more real and I settled with the last day of November to be the release date. Between the start and end of this movie I was able to make so much cool stuff, and I don't regret prolonging the animation either, because Mr Super wouldn’t be mirroring chris’s style if I didn't think hard on that decision. (All the boards are in my art style!) I think it wouldn’t be half of what it is if I didn't take my time with it and really put passion behind every single frame.
Phew! The recaps almost over. I just wanna say in other news I will be discontinuing my Twitter account indefinitely for obvious reasons, I cannot allow my art to be abused in a way I didn’t permit. Upload to NG today! Where you have a creative commons license on everything you post! Seriously though Bluesky has improved and it's only gonna get better when the artist ant colony leaves the old nest, or ant hill? I started posting there and will continue to do so. I am also going to cut the bad habit of uploading one thing to one social media platform, like they’re exclusives or something. Unless there's an incentive or a good reason for it, I shouldn’t be spreading myself so thin. I tried using Postybirb and it should help me with that, idk we will see. Insert Carrd link! Let's go! there it is, all my socials. This will have to do until I figure out how I'm going to make a website without using a basic website builder, gross. Speaking of which, there's an alternative to doing exclusive posts which are: different versions.
MSVAMS will have two versions, one will be on Youtube and one on Newgrounds. (I'm gonna be putting it on Vimeo too but that version is just the Trailer + NG version) I hope you’re excited and thanks for reading this text wall of an update. There's a lot of finer details I could include in a ‘how it was made’ video, but this is most of it.
Okay! News time, I am announcing very very early that I will be attending the 35th Pico Day! This is big because pico day is big. After seeing that triple the people went to toomanygames meetup this year, you can just imagine what it's going to be like this May. If you see me, I will have 3 stickers, Mr Super, Anti Mr Super, and a MSVAMS Special Sticker (design pending) I’ll be giving for free, to celebrate the release. I’d love to make merch someday but for now this is what I’m comfortable with and capable of. (I really need to get these posters out of my closet).
In other news, I got FRONTPAGED. I didn't expect it or really get notified about it but the Geiko fanart was a hit, I’m glad more people were able to see it compared to my usual stuff <3
I also obtained 100+ fans on newgrounds, which is the first milestone I felt was worthy of a celebratory type video, so thank you to everyone who genuinely likes the stuff I create, and my friends who support it. TwT
TLDR: Go watch the trailer because it's actually peak, I will be at Pico Day 2025, Fera isn’t new anymore, and MrShoeShine7 as a brand has changed in a good way.
Music link: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1329729 (I really like this song so listen to it)