I would like to humbly nominate myself. I've been steadily posting my music on NG since 2004 (128 songs so far) but I don't get a lot of attention or reviews. I do get a lot of high scores from voters, and I've had my music used in some pretty popular games, which is always great.

So please, check my stuff out, and leave some reviews. I know I at least feel like an underdog sometimes. :)

At 1/29/08 12:56 AM, Tomajko wrote: I hate to double post, but for example, here's one VERY simple, yet effective smoke effect.

http://www.swfup.com/file/113440

Yeah, something like that, except slower. That's a great example - do you have an .fla file for that?

I'm trying to make it look like smoke slowly entering the room, as if there's a fire in the next room. I've tried a bunch of different tutorials, but none of them have that slow, drifting effect that I want - they all look like cigarette smoke, and they're way too fast-moving.

Hey everybody,

I'm trying to make a very simple smoke effect for a short scene in one of my upcoming cartoons. The effect only has to last 54 frames (at 30 fps), and the smoke needs to drift in from the right side of the screen and move up very slowly. I've tried a number of different tutorials but none of them suit my needs. Is there anyone who can help me out here?

My latest, Haven. Vote and review, please! And be sure to check out my newest CD, "Winding Down"!

<img src="http://www.badatom.com/2007_ot_v5.j pg">

Hey,

I'm hard at work putting together my "Bad Atom" series of animations and I've been looking all over for a tutorial on how to do a side view lip-sync and I've yet to find anything. Can anyone here help me out, or at the very least point me to a NG animation that features side view mouth animations so I can study it? Thanks.

Hey,

I'm looking for four voice actors (three male, one female) to do the voices of the four main characters of my upcoming "Bad Atom" cartoons. This is a serious project, and most likely a long-term one. Here are the character breakdowns:

BAD ATOM
Has a voice that's the equivalent of a ten-year-old boy. His voice should be emotionally honest and truthful, without any hint of sarcasm. He has a kid's sense of humor coupled with a wide-eyed innocence and a unique view of the world.

SWIRLY TOP
The voice of a twelve-year-old girl with a slight sarcastic edge. She's not overly boyish or girly. She is a fairly smart, ordinary-sounding girl. No valley-girl speak!

WARTHAIRY H. BLOB
A bellowing, villainous voice full of pomp and bluster. He should have a wide vocal range for maximum comic effect. He basically needs to sound like the character looks. He should sound a little dumb, but able to form complete sentences.

GOOD ATOM
Has a slick and intelligent voice that makes him seem older than he is. A little bit of a rasp and more than a hint of superiority. Underneath all that is a tortured genius.

Anyone can audition, just send me a PM or email me with your demo. Here is some test dialogue to use...

Bad Atom is kidnapped by Good Atom and Warthairy H. Blob:

BAD ATOM
HELP!!!! HELP!!!!

GOOD ATOM
Save your breath, dear cousin! Soon,
you will be flame-broiled like a Whopper!
Ha, ha, ha, haaaaah!

BAD ATOM
Why did you kidnap me? Why are you
trying to kill me? And why are you
overacting?
(to Warthairy)
Who are you?

WARTHAIRY H. BLOB
My name is Warthairy H. Blob! And I'm
EVIL!!! BWA, HA, HA, HA!!!

BAD ATOM
(to Good Atom)
I see your taste in friends remains
the same...

WARTHAIRY H. BLOB
(to Good Atom)
Did he just make fun of me?

GOOD ATOM
Yes, I think he did.

WARTHAIRY H. BLOB
No one makes fun of Warthairy H. Blob!
Kill him now!

GOOD ATOM
Not yet. I want to wait until his
friend Swirly Top comes to his rescue,
then we'll kill them both! Then no
one will stand in our way!

WARTHAIRY H. BLOB
You're enjoying this, aren't you?

GOOD ATOM
You have no idea.

Bad Atom and Swirly Top play checkers:

SWIRLY TOP
Now you king me.

BAD ATOM
Why?

SWIRLY TOP
Because I got my guy to your side of
the board.

BAD ATOM
So he infiltrates my side of the
board, breaks through my defenses, and
then I make him royalty? I should have
him executed or something!

SWIRLY TOP
Just king me.

BAD ATOM
So where's my king?

SWIRLY TOP
You don't have one yet.

BAD ATOM
Then who's running the government?

SWIRLY TOP
What government?

BAD ATOM
You mean there's no government at all?

SWIRLY TOP
No! They're just pieces on a board!

BAD ATOM
Well, I...

SWIRLY TOP
What do you think this is, chess?

Thanks in advance!

Mr. X

I just put up two more songs last night, "Cross Country" and "Mechanized Fowl". I have a backlog of songs, I just haven't had the time to put them up.

Check 'em out

(Just a side note, I love the redesign, and I LOVE seeing how many people listen to my songs as well as download them. It makes me feel so much better knowing that a lot of people are listening to my stuff!)

I'm trying to make a button that plays random sounds every time you click on it. I've looked here through all the AS tutorials but came up empty. Anyone here have any idea how to do this?

Here's some of my latest:

Tour de Force
Fire and Ice in the Tropics
Curtain Call

I'll be happy to review anyone else's songs if you review mine.

Hey,

I know there's been a lot of talk about NG audio portal contributors getting their music published. Well, I've just done it myself and it was pretty easy.

I just released my first CD, ''It All Has to Start Somewhere'' on Lulu.com. It's kind of like a CafePress thing (which I'm also a part of) but they focus more on books, CDs, DVDs and such. It was pretty simple to put everything together, and the CDs are actually very inexpensive to buy. I'm selling mine for $6.99 - I'm sure there are a lot of people here that wouldn't mind spending seven or so bucks on CDs from their favorite AP artists. I know I'd buy a few myself.

In my case, I redid a lot of my music and made extended remixes, etc., so I wasn't just offering the same stuff you can download for free. I think a lot of people here would like to see some more audio artists start self-publishing their own stuff! (I would also love to see more people release their Flash cartoons on DVD, but that's another topic altogether. :))

Thoughts?

Here's a couple of SMW ideas...

SNES - Super Mario World

Mario jumps down from a tall ledge and lands on Yoshi, like on a horse in a Western. Unfortunately, he breaks Yoshi's back in the process.

Mario spins the wheel of Reznors and makes them all dizzy.

Mario knocks Bowser's giant cup out of the air. When it lands, out falls the Princess, naked.

Yoshi makes Mario angry, and Mario decides to get even. While jumping over a pit, Mario lets go of Yoshi and jumps away. Yoshi falls to his death.

Hopefully I'll inspire some great new Mario cartoons.

I posted a while back about the lack of original ideas in all those Mario sprite-based movies that flood the Portal on a daily basis. So I took a couple of hours of my time and came up with a pretty extensive list of ideas that could be used for Mario sprite movies.

I'm not a sprite animator, so I don't have any interest in animating any of these ideas. I just want to see some new and fresh Mario-related ideas in the Portal. So, go for it! Use any of these ideas as you wish. If anyone uses any of these, feel free to give me credit. :)

Any Mario Game:

Mario tries to throw a fireball but his hand catches on fire.

Mario jumps up to collect a star but the star stabs him in the face/head.

Mario tries to figure out how those question blocks float in the air.

Things Mario could throw other than fireballs: Beach balls, tennis balls, semen, water balls, a Slinky, ninja stars, Toad, darts, axes, feces, swastikas...

"Mirror, Mirror" Mario - An evil Mario with a goatee walks backwards through a left-scrolling level.

"One Life to Live" - Mario goes through a level and dies. But he doesn't come back to life. Bowser quickly takes over the Mushroom Kingdom, killing Luigi, enslaving the Toads and making the Princess his sex slave. The Mushroom Kingdom turns into a nightmarish wasteland - end of story.

Mario falls down a bottomless pit...

...and winds up in China.
...and keeps falling and falling until he wakes up in a cold sweat.
...and lands in the molten core of the earth.
...to commit suicide.

Mario falls down a bottomless pit, and discovers it isn't bottomless...

...while he's trapped down there, some Goombas come by and urinate on him.
...the pit fills with water until he drowns.
...Luigi comes by and fills the pit with dirt while laughing.
...it turns out to be the pit from Mortal Kombat, and Mario gets impaled.

Mario eats a mushroom and gets high. He gets the munchies and starts eating the bricks, the scenery, the enemies, even Toad's head (thinking he's another mushroom).

A bad player keeps killing Mario at the same spot in a level. Eventually, Mario gets pissed off and either yells at the player, or pops out of the screen and smacks him!

Mario stars in a remake of "It's A Wonderful Life", where a Boo Buddy ghost shows Mario what the Mushroom Kingdom would be like if he weren't around. In this world, Luigi is the hero who defeats all the enemies and gets to have wild monkey sex with the Princess. Mario goes, "Noooooo!!!!"

Mario's Ordinary Day - What does Mario do when he's not saving the Princess or kicking Koopa butt? He's laying underneath a pipe, holding a wrench, trying to unclog a toilet. It should be really boring and tedious, until (insert poop joke here).

NES - Super Mario Bros.

Mario approaches an area with a couple of bushes, and a shot rings out. Mario hits the dirt, and looks around to see who's shooting at him. It turns out to be a player with a light gun shooting at the ducks from Duck Hunt. Mario could stomp on the ducks, or get shot himself, or fight off the dog.

Mario vs. the timer countdown - where it goes under 100 and that little music cue comes up and the theme speeds up. Mario races to the end of the level before the time runs out, but...

...he trips and falls in a hole just prior to reaching the flagpole.
...Sonic the Hedgehog gets to the flagpole before him.
...he gets run over by an Excitebike guy.

Mario runs into an enemy and dies right there on the spot. Cut to the level screen. Mario goes through the level again, and walks past his dead body lying there.

Fire Mario encounters a Goomba, who hits a ? block and gets himself a mushroom. The Goomba hits another ? block and obtains a Fire Flower. Mario and the Goomba engage in a wicked battle with kick-ass techno music.

A Piranha plant falls in love with Mario, and keeps popping up in pipes everywhere, trying to kiss him.

You know how you can't beat the level until you touch the flagpole? What would happen if the flagpole screamed and ran away?

NES - Super Mario Bros. 2

Mario watches a Pidgit floating on a magic carpet and gets an idea (!) He jumps up, throws the Pidgit off, and starts flying away. Unfortunately, Mario and the carpet immediately plummet into a hole.

Mario picks up a key and sets off the Phanto. He puts it back, and the Phanto goes away. Repeat this ad nauseum until the Phanto gets pissed off.

Birdo shoots an egg at Mario. Mario swings a baseball bat, knocking the egg right back into Birdo's mouth. Birdo chokes on it and dies.

Other characters for the Character Select Screen?

Mario pulls up a piece of grass and...

...throws his back out.
...smokes it like weed.
...it's just the piece of grass. He throws it at an enemy, who just laughs at him.

Mario realizes that if you collect 5 cherries, you get an invincibility star. He collects four of them, but Pac-Man beats him to the last one.

One of Birdo's eggs hatches, and out comes a half-Birdo, half-Mario.

NES - Super Mario Bros. 3

After Bowser falls to his death, Mario finds the Princess in that little room at the end...except:

...he finds her corpse.
...he finds her with Luigi (!)
...he finds her with Bowser (!)(!)
...he finds her engaging in girl-on-girl action with Wendy O. Koopa. (o)(o)
...a flattened Bowser enters the room, wanting a rematch.

The sun chases after Mario and burns his ass.

Rejected Suit ideas:
Bat Suit (the 60s "Batman" theme plays)
Camel Suit, with humps on the back
Monkey Suit (throws flaming poo balls)
Ninja Turtle Suit, accompanied by the NES Ninja Turtles theme. Mario swings some nunchucks around.
Zoot Suit (complete with "Stayin' Alive" and disco balls)
Business Suit, with briefcase and sunglasses
Leather Chaps (add in Mario's voice going "Whoa!")
Star Trek Uniform (with photon torpedoes instead of fireballs)
Kirby Suit, Mario inhales a Goomba and chokes on it.
Luigi Suit - a naked Luigi chases after him, wanting his clothes back
Nazi SS Uniform (throwing swastikas)

Big Bertha eats Mario, then gets eaten by a Bigger Bertha, and a Bigger one, and so on...

Mario turns into a statue near a Hammer Brother. The Hammer Brother takes his hammer and smashes the statue!

A couple of Lakitus go fishing. One of them catches a tiny fish. The other one catches a medium-size fish, and the first one catches a Big Bertha, who (of course) eats them.

Game Boy - Super Mario Land 2

Mario puts on those gay bunny ears and flies away. Meanwhile, one of those adorable bunnies from Zelda: Link's Awakening is bleeding and screaming because Mario ripped his ears off.

Mario goes into space, and...

...an enemy knocks his helmet off. His head expands and explodes.
...he gets abducted by a UFO.
...he re-enacts the moon landing, complete with the "One small step for man..." audio.

SNES - Super Mario Kart

One of the racers gets pulled over by the cops, and winds up in jail (still in their kart).

While he races, Mario's kart falls apart a piece at a time. Eventually the whole frame falls apart, and Mario skids face-first into the pavement. Bloody!

Bowser ties Mario to his kart and pushes the kart into a lake. Mario dies a slow drowning death.

The kart racers get into a huge pile-up on the freeway.

The kart racers all have to stop in the middle of a race to let some baby ducks cross the way.

Mario takes his kart to a repair shop, where the the mechanic points out the problem - a Koopa shell stuck in the exhaust pipe.

Mario gets stuck behind the Princess, who is driving really slow. He does everything he can to get around her, and when he does, he eventually gives her the finger and speeds off.

Donkey Kong Jr. and Toad get into a fender-bender. They slowly get out and assess the damage. The other kart racers gawk at the accident scene as they slowly drive by. Things get even more awkward when Toad admits he's uninsured.

Yes, there are a few artists on here that I would buy CDs from. I've already burned a handful of CDs of my favorite songs from the AP, but it would be nice to have complete collections.

I'm actually going to be publishing five CDs with my themes through Lulu.com. Anyone interested in publishing their own music should sign up there. It's kind of like CafePress, where they only make copies when people buy your stuff. And it's free, which I always like. :)

I'm working on getting everything set up for my CDs now. Volumes 1-3 will cover 2004, 2005 and 2006, respectively. I'm including longer versions, alternate cuts and unreleased stuff. Volume 4 has all my video game remixes, and Volume 5 has all my cartoon series themes.

I'm doing this mostly for friends and family - of course, that's what I said when I opened up my CafePress shop. :)

This is a great idea for a topic!

It's always hard to honestly judge your own work, but I would say ."The First Day..." was my personal favorite song I submitted last year. I primarily make music for my own enjoyment, and I just find the second half of that song to be really catchy. It got kind of overlooked (only 19 d/l's) but someone submitted a nice 10/10 review.

Close seconds would be "Victory", "Twenty Years - Version 2" and "Another Rainy Day". As usual, if you check out my stuff, please vote on and review it! I'll always return the favor. And for those of you who don't have time to go through all 147 of my themes :) there's always my Jukebox Sampler.

Happy New Year!

I'm looking to make an optional scrolling news ticker at the bottom of my Flash animation (one that can be turned on and off). Should I just type up a long line of text on a bar, or is there some neat AS trick or shortcut I can use?

I'm on a roll making some new music, so check it out. Reviews are always appreciated, and I'll return the favor.

Check 'em out!

Hey everybody,

I'm looking for someone to create custom backgrounds for my latest animation, "Cat & Dog". I need backgrounds for a living room, kitchen, hallway and bedroom, as well as a house exterior. The style needs to look like hand-painted cels (like something from the classic Warner Bros. cartoons.) You'll receive credit at the end of the cartoon.

I've been working on the animation since August, and I posted an Alpha a while back. I've made a lot of improvements since then, and some nice backgrounds will really make it look like an old cartoon. If anyone is interested, PM or email me.

Michael

Hopefully this post will be useful. :)

Searching through the Audio Portal can be a pain, so I tried to find a way to make things easier. I made a Flash jukebox with samples of some of my themes, which are mostly short and great for games. My themes have been used in over 35 games so far.

Download the jukebox here!

It's about 2.5 MB, and it has samples of 29 of my themes. I have over 100 more in the Audio Portal, so be sure to check them out too. I'm hoping the jukebox idea will catch on and maybe people will find music more easily on NG.

I have a handful of catchy cartoony themes if you're interested:

Download my Flash jukebox sampler!

It has samples of 29 of my themes, and I have nearly 100 more in the Audio Portal. Hope that can be of some help to you.

I've been on NG for three years and right now I have 128 songs on the Audio Portal. Who has time to go through and listen to all of them? So I've just made an interactive Flash jukebox containing samples of my songs. Nothing flashy, just a simple soundboard-type deal with the samples separated into different categories.

There are 29 samples on it, all 30 seconds or less. I figured it would give listeners a chance to check out all the different songs I've made. I thought about submitting it to the Flash Portal but who knows what kind of response I would get. Hopefully this idea will catch on here - I know there are a lot of audio artists out there who have tons of great songs.

Click here to check it out - it's a link on the main page of my site

Or just download it by clicking here (2.39 MB)

Enjoy! And for those of you that leave reviews, I will be happy return the favor.

I was just thinking of all the things that I hate when I'm watching a Flash cartoon or playing a Flash game on NG. These are things that I see all the time, and I think they need to be addressed. So I've compiled a list of the most common offenses, and I'm wondering if anyone else here feels the same way. And if anyone thinks I'm just generally bashing, I can easily provide examples of what I mean.

Pacing.

I can't count the number of cartoons I've seen where they're just paced too slowly. Animations that should be a minute long instead drag on to 4 or 5 minutes of dead air. Jokes that could be funny are ruined by bad timing and overlong pauses. Editing and timing is a hard skill to master, but I wish more animators would pay more attention to it. It's especially ironic because the target NG audience would probably prefer something fast-paced. Plus shorter, faster-paced animations mean less work for the animator.

Voice acting.

Most people are not actors. I cringe when I'm watching a great animation being brought down by flat, lifeless voice acting. There are many good voice actors on NG, there's even a club for them. I wish more animators would look them up, especially younger ones. There's nothing worse than hearing a 13-year-old voice coming out of an adult character.

Intros.

Why does everything have to be a __________ Production? And why do intros and opening credits have to take up the first two minutes of a cartoon? Either include an option to skip past the credits, or shorten them. It's getting ridiculous. It's also related to the previous pacing issue.

Mario.

I'll admit, I enjoy sprite-based animations, and some of the Mario cartoons I've seen are easily among the best of NG. But now it's getting very old. Everyone and their mother is coming out with their own Mario cartoon. The stories are always the same, and so are the sprites. And this is a shame because there are so many different stories from different games that could be told. I'm waiting to see some really good cartoons based on Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario Land 2, or maybe even Super Mario Kart. People still love Mario, so let's see something new!

Public domain games.

Nobody wants to see yet another version of Asteroids with different graphics. I don't know why people bother to submit stuff like this.

Anime.

I'm not the biggest fan of the anime style, so it's annoying to see everyone copying it. Anime is not the be-all and end-all of animation. Instead of imitating anime, why not try to create original character designs, or at least something different? I just want to see more originality on NG, that's all.

End Credits.

Written by SameName.
Animated by SameName.
Directed by SameName.
Music by SameName.
Voices by SameName.
Produced by SameName.
Catering by SameName.
This stopped being funny a long time ago. Please, no more insanely long credits with the same name in it!

Good Animation, Bad Story.

I hate seeing beautiful animation go to waste on a bad or stupid story, or vice-versa. I really wish more people would collaborate on projects and try to find the best of both worlds. There are many people out there with great ideas, and many, many brilliant animators. They just need to get together. We need some kind of match-making service. :)

Stick Figures.

Yes, stick figures are easy to create. And yes, there have been a lot of great stick-related animations in the past (Stick RPG, The Battlefield, Xiao Xiao). But, like Mario movies, they are all becoming the same. Originality, please!

Spelling.

Some people are not the best spellers. But if you're going to have a lot of text or subtitles in your animation, double-check your spelling! There are so many places on the internet to go to check your spelling and grammar. You can even ask other NG users to check it for you. It's embarrassing to see an otherwise great animation be marred by spelling errors.

These are my major pet peeves, and I wonder if anyone else has any.

At 8/15/06 01:21 PM, letsgocubs13 wrote: Anyone got their new CD? Is it worth buying?

I'm a huge fan of theirs, and if you liked their first two CDs, the new one is just as good. Their songs are consistently good, you don't have to skip a track to get to the "good ones". Plus it was on sale at Best Buy for $9.99 which made things that much better. :)

And I don't find their stuff whiny at all. I could think of a few bands that are more deserving of a "whiny / Dawson's creek" label.

Also, I gather from your sig that you're a Dane Cook fan which now makes you my best friend. :)

Wow!

Second place and now frontpage! I don't even have a speech prepared! :)

Would've been nice to get Daily Feature, but at least I got beat by Flash genius Randy Solem. (Even though his latest was kind of disappointing and overrated.)

Okay, have it be about a muffin who's an out-of-work actor because nobody wants to see movies with muffins in them because muffin-related movies are usually stupid. So the muffin contemplates suicide because he's out of work and can't make ends meet and his verbally abusive wife, Cupcake, leaves him for one of those bigger, tastier Otis Spunkmeyer brand banana nut muffins ("At least he has money and name brand recognition!"). In the end, the muffin takes his own life and becomes famous for his spectacular suicidal jump off the top of a refrigerator. The end!

Yeah, that was just off the top of my head. :)

At 6/21/06 01:57 AM, --Storm-- wrote: If you really want to do it...

...do it yourself!

Heh heh. I was waiting for that response. :) Unfortunately, I have neither the time nor the inclination to get into Flash game programming. But I thought I'd throw the idea out there for anybody who might want to do something with it.

Below - Super Mario Bros. from Mario's point of view. "Watch out, Mario! There's a Goomba coming!" (Okay, the game probably couldn't look like this. I still think a first-person Mario game would be interesting.)

I came up with this idea for a Flash game just a little bit ago, and I don't even know if it could be done, but here goes...

Could somebody make an exact copy of the original Super Mario Bros. - just the first level - in a first person perspective? The whole game environment would only be one block wide, and Mario would be partially transparent so you could see ahead of him (just a short distance).

The sprites could all be the same, or maybe they could be customized to fit the new view. Then Mario could go through the same moves he does in the regular game, only with a different perspective. It would probably be a challenge even if you're really familiar with World 1-1.

Does anybody here have the skill to pull something like that off? Or is this idea too crazy and unworkable?

^^^
Thanks! That's exactly what I was looking for.