Haha wowee what a fucking wacky year it's been. This has definitely felt like an eternity of a year in many ways with the civil unrest, politics, and of course the big Covid fucking everything up. I've tried to avoid some of that shit, especially the politics a bit more cuz its draining but it still festers its way into everyday life. And of course no one could obviously escape covid lol. Let's start this massive post with a quickie about personal shit first though lol.
IRL and Lil Personal Life Stuff
I don't delve into my personal life here on NG at all but IRL this year has been a bit of a meh one. My mom actually had COVID back in March-April and that was a bit of a scary time not only because of concern for health but for the fact my family could have all had the virus as well. Thankfully no one else got it and my mom did get better after about a month or two, but even today she's still suffering from long term symptoms of the virus. Along with this I had to do college online for most of this year which has made it hard to focus on any of my studies, broke up with my first ever gf (word of advice, don't jump into a relationship immediately just because you never had one before. Better to wait for that special girl than go for the first girl who shows interest in youđ), and not being able to hang out with my irl friends pretty much at all this year has drained me. Even an introvert like me has their limits. The amount of work I was juggling with school projects, Newgrounds, and my small part time job was not healthy towards the end of this year too. Spent multiple days a week up for over 24 hours getting work done and that was not good for my body lol. Gotta try and ease up on some of that shit next year. It was nice at least that I did get to go to probably the last big convention any of us are gonna see for a long while, PAX EAST back in March. Almost got meet @brandybuizel again but he had to leave early. I think I saw him with a pink hat once there lol but I did get to at least hang out with some irl friends there before the world shut down. However, despite some shittiness in my personal life and some that I've left out, my year on Newgrounds and the internet in general has probably been my best one yet.
Newgrounds In General
This year has easily been my most productive and creative year on NG yet, no contest. Not only have I grown in my art I feel, but I've posted the most amount of art work this year on NG than any other, including the smut which is hidden away at the moment teehee. Along with that, the amount of movies and collabs I took part in this year was nuts. I've made and been apart of more movies this year alone compared to all my years on Newgrounds previously combined. And I even reached my goal of hitting 750 fans before the end of the year! Let's get into some of those movies that I worked on now.
Animation Jams
I seem to always want to do animation jams and this year was no fuckin exception. I literally took part in every major animation jam this year except for maybe the spooktacular if you want to count that.
The first one was the Pet Jam and while it had a funny premise, my entry kinda came out shit in the end lol. I have to give thanks to @oddlem for helping voice the girl in the toon at the last fucking minute lol, thanks for being a G.
Next was the Elon Musk jam which I did all by myself and that was easily my shittiest toon this year lmao. I didn't think of an idea for a week and only had 2 weeks to shit out a toon and the result was not anything too amazing. I still think the ending to that toon is a lil funny tho.
The Neo Geo Jam Cyber Lip toon however was probably my most favorite thing I did this year. It's my longest cartoon I've ever done and it was the first toon of mine to get a daily first. I pushed myself to make the animation, color, shading, and backgrounds as good as they could be for the time I had to finish and I'm still proud of how that mostly turned out. And of course, props to @wandaboy, @thriftman, and @snackers for helping me out with that toon to make it as best as it could be. It even got 5th place in the jam overall! That was some good shit.
The last jam I took part in was the Among Us Jam. Ngl when this was first announced I was a little peeved that this was the jam theme but I said fuck it anyways and made somethin lol. Overall this jam toon was nothing too special but I am a lil proud of how much I got done for that toon in the 3 week time limit. What was really wild was when I posted this toon to Tik Tok of all places and it absolutely blew up getting over a million combined views on all 3 parts. First time I've gotten a million anything before. Big takeaway from this jam though was to always watermark your shit because people will fucking steal it lmao.
Collabs
I was a part of so many collabs this year, quite a few being shitposty but I don't care lol. The Pico day collab was a stupid idea that I think @wandaboy came up with and everyone doing something with big chungus as a troll made me laugh my ass off, and the credits @ninjamuffin99 did for that collab is still baller as fuck. There were some other shitposty collabs like the picoday one, like the Smash collab, the TF2 collab, the Raymond collab, and the Carameldansen collab which were all a fun to be a part of. Some more serious collabs I got to take part in was the Resident Evil Reanimated collab which was really fun because I love RE, and the Chutney Glaze Finale which I helped with about 6 shots in! That was definitely a really cool experience because it forced me to get as close to Chutney's style and animation as I could which I think I did pretty well on!
NG Pals
Before 2020 I was way more of a shy freak on NG and discord. I was still friends and pals with quite a few people on here but never really went out of my way to talk to people in vc or get into general mischief. But I definitely changed that this year I feel. It's been great fun talking way more on discord, hanging out with pals, playing games, and even talking about new shit we were gonna make. It was especially fun on Picoday since it had to be livestreamed this year and I just hung out in VC with some buds as we drew deranged shit in the drawpile type thingy that Cory, Ivan, and Dave were streaming on Twitch lol. I still have the clip of Ivan vomitting. The Hotbun discord was where I mostly talked to friends, but even when that server was gone, it wasn't like all my pals disappeared lol. The NGP discord, the Newgrounds discord, and a bunch of others had all my handsome guys and gals there and I've really enjoyed doing shit with all of you this year â€ïž
Not only that but damn it's also been super inspiring seeing some you guys do amazing shit this year. Super proud of my boys @ninjamuffin99 and @kawaisprite with the absolutely mind fucking success of Friday Night Funkin. Recently talking to the Milk bar lads like @milkbarjack and @milkyace and seeing the cool shit them and their whole team have been pumping out has been super sick. Play Dead Estate. Seeing people like @xinxinix be so engrossed in the NG community this year and seeing his love for it all has been super nice to see. Seeing my boy @brandybuizel help out with games like Near Deadline and the Advent calendar has also been super cool. Especially Advent, I have always looked forward to it every year and I'm super glad that he @nickconter and @geokureli helped make it possible again this year. Also seeing Duncan and Jones 3 by @snackers is super inspiring because I love the stupid humor in it, along with seeing how much improvement he's made with his animations. Baller shit right there. Also @luis and @wandaboy, you both are fuckin cuties, call me xoxoxoxo
I'm not gonna make a list of everyone that I became friends with or who made my year because I know I'll leave someone out and feel bad but you know who you are. Not one to get sappy, but you guys made 2020 from being a shitty year, to a pretty decent one overall!
(Though I still do miss my boy HenryEYES)
Plans for Next Year?
As of right now I've got a few wacky ass plans for 2021. First off is a Christmas collab hosted by the myth @rgpanims that should be coming out in about two weeks. A bit delayed I know lol. Along with that is the Eva collab I'm a part of that should be coming out sometime this year. Besides this though I've felt I never do a whole lot of original stuff so I'm trying to turn that around this year and potentially work on a toon that I've been thinking up for a while now. Still have to do a lot of work on that before I can even start animating on it or even ask for help, but I think it'll be something great. Otherwise, I'm riding with the wind baby, don't have a whole lot of other plans for NG this year besides what I mentioned, but there will absolutely be plenty of stuff that I'm still going to take part in and help out with.
If you somehow read all of this benign shit then I applaud you lol. I really wanted to write one these retrospectives out though, since so much happened this year and I want to remember all the good shit that happened among the bad. Also I always love reading these so maybe someone else might too. I really do love this website and everyone in it. I couldn't ask for a better community than this one. Thanks @tomfulp for making this ballers ass site, I wuv you. Thanks everyone for being there with me and let's make 2021 an even better year for Newgrounds. ăăăȘă 2020!
Anyways now I'm gonna go watch some vtubers since thats the new rabbit hole I'm in. Bye bye, I was watching Amelia Watson and now Gawr Gura is live in less than an hour.