May 9th was Pico Day, a celebration of all things Newgrounds! The biggest event of the day was the release of Picollage 2020, celebrating 25 years of NG:
The Picollage was organized by @BillPremo and @LoganPhresh, programmed by @Mike and featured 56 artists! I implore you to check it out if you haven’t already.
We also hosted a fan art contest and the entries this year were phenomenal! Here are the winners:
1st - $200
@Gatekid3 revisits the first project he was ever asked to help with, Newgrounds Zero Hour. This time around he presents a vision for what would be one helluva game, with a reimaged Pico vs Alucard battle intro. This is the type of work that inspires entire games to get made!
2nd - $150
@Kengabr arranged a dynamic explosion of characters, shining a light on a number of games that have often been overlooked in group shots like this. We like to picture something like this as a wall mural at the office!
3rd - $100
@mogy64 assembled a vibrant montage of personalities in homage to a classic Capcom Friendly Club promo. Every character pops, making this piece feel like a real party. @HappyHarry even updated his Twitter avatar to feature this rendition of Killgar!
4th - $100
@MKMaffo does a brilliant job capturing NG’s past, present and future in one group shot. I sometimes get weary of seeing the old characters get rolled out but this illustration makes them all feel fresh again.
5th - $100
There’s something special about this piece by @TheDyingSun, which captures a cool night city vibe. It also propagates the idea of a physical NG space illuminated by color themes from the different Portals; a dream many of us share.
6th - $100
@ScepterDPinoy makes elaborate pixel art collages and you're sorely missing out if you don't study this up-close. This piece is like a Where’s Waldo of Newgrounds, where you find yourself rewarded as you explore every corner and discover characters you missed the first time around.
Thank you everyone who participated in Pico Day, it really means a lot to us here with Newgrounds on the brain! If some of this is foreign to you, read up on the NG history.
Other News
The Art Inspired Music contest is in progress and the goal is to make songs inspired by art here on NG!
We’re hosting a Musk Animation Jam, a controversial decision but one that we expect will have interesting results.
If you’ve made something for the Sailor Moon Redraw Challenge, tag it with sailormoonredraw so people can browse them all in one place! I’ve added a few aliases to merge similar tags into the same results.
From today through the 27th we’re running an ad campaign that will be visible to non-Supporters. Our efforts to be ad-free are going well and our supporter total continues to grow; however it’s a long-term process and on occasion we’ll need to pay some bills with campaigns like this. Hopefully increasingly rare occasions! We’re super grateful that so many of you have been able to toss NG a couple bucks a month when so much upheaval is happening in the world.
