So much Madness,,,

I really like the writing in the Ascentrium series.

The Madness never ends this year...

Congrats to the winners!

interesting, 9th place showed up under the "new submissions by the following popular artists" section of yesterday's p-bot post, how is that possible

Good eye. A different submission yesterday maybe, now deleted/replaced?

Or those 'by popular artists' mentions don't consider if a submission's still under judgement or not, so they can be mentioned in one post and pass judgement (for potential award) before the next one...

they were definitely the same submission, same link and everything. I only noticed because the link was already clicked lol

that "popular artists" section has actually caught my interest lately, 'cause there have been people with less fans than me that have appeared there, but I've never appeared there (as far as I know), and surely there should be a lot more than 3 of the same popular artists showing up there all the time. I looked back over the last month and there wasn't a single account that was newer than 2007 in there, so that leads me to believe that only accounts made before 2008 can appear there, for whatever reason, I'll have to look back further to really confirm, but it's definitely interesting.

Ahh I didn't actually realize those names linked to the actual submissions! You're right then. Seems like the only possibility left is that you can qualify for both, first 'popular artists' before you've passed judgement, and then an award when you have, if the submission hadn't gone through at the time of that first P-Bot post.

I've been wondering if it might have to do with views, either total, or accumulative over a particular period of time. Artists like ZabuJard who submit stuff pretty much every single day are bound to amount a lot of views even if each individual submission never gains that much popularity. Or if it has to do with accumulative ratings, or more so some formula regarding submission frequency with regard to ratings or views...

But that is interesting. Skimming through the latest 20 or so it seems true, only real OGs among the popular ones. I know I've appeared in that list before btw. If this is true maybe there's a limitation in the P-Bot script. Like the Y2K bug but for popular artists here past some certain year the date selection doesn't go, and unnoticed all this time...

Overall views seems l ikely, but then again, some of the people I've seen show up in there only have a few submissions that didn't even get a lot of views, so I'm not entirely sure. I had read in some old forum posts that it had to do with batting average, but I think that was just in reference to the fact that you needed 3 submissions to even have a batting average.

@MistyEntertainment's theory was that this was likely a feature that was added with the 2008 re-design so only accounts before 2008 can show up, but I actually did see an account from early 2008 that showed up, so now I'm wondering if it's that you had to have 3 submissions before the 2008 re-design in order to show up. It's definitely an interesting quirk of newgrounds either way, and I'm surprised no one has really talked about it.

Hmm. If it does have something to do with batting average maybe that'd also explain why newer users aren't showing up, as batting average hasn't been in use/been broken for some time now... unless I've missed the stat coming back...

The early 2008 redesign did happen in 2008, so possibly all accounts up till and including 2008, then? That does seem possible.

I am pretty surprised I've just never though about this before, maybe you just grow used to seeing certain users pop up under that popular artists bar again and again...

yeah, tbh I wouldn't have even started thinking about it if I hadn't seen someone with 35 fans get in there lol

my account was made in 2008, which is why I don't understand why I never get in there. I think the one 2008 account I saw that got in there was made in early 2008, but I don't know when exactly the 2008 re-design happened, but that's something I'll look into when I finally decide to do further research into this. I'm much too busy right now, but it's still fun to think about ;)

also the fact that years ago there would be over 10 people listed in that section but nowadays it's rare to see more than 3-5. There's so much stuff submitted to the site every day, that number should be going up, not down. It just doesn't make sense.

Ah! Curious who that might've been now...

Maybe has to do with when you started submitting things more so than signed up? If it is batting average that would've come into play at the time of your first submission too, up till whatever point it broke (2012?). Maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about though. XD

Hmm, the 'big' redesign was actually back in July 2007, but maybe this P-Bot thing didn't happen then...

Too true. Should probably ask staff about this at some point...

my bad, it was 75 fans, up to 81 now (first person in the list), though still, that's definitely not what I would think would be considered popular.

yeah, I submitted one thing in 2008 and it got blammed, wasn't until 2010 that I tried to submit again. I think my second thing got blammed too, can't remember lol

so it very well could be that you had to have 3 submissions before this theoretical date.

maybe, though I seem to recall seeing p-bot posts from pre-2008 that had the popular artist section, though maybe not

I certainly plan to when I get around to actually properly researching it ;)

Ah I checked their profile too earlier, they've been submitting a lot recently, so that amount thing hmm...

Do you still have those old ones lying around by any chance?

Riiight, the three submissions required for a batting average thing too...

Ongoing uncertainty and bafflement.

Best of luck. :)

Yeah, it's interesting that the people that show up in there also seem to submit a lot.

I have links to all the eulogy pages for my blammed submissions at least, somewhere, though the only one I think I actually have is this, which I think was my first newgrounds submission, but I made it in 2009 and I feel like I submitted something in 2008, but maybe not.

Also I found the .swf for that recently so I can actually do an HD remaster of it if I want lol

Hi I have A JRPG Im almost finished working on and looking for someone to play test it before release by the end of this year. Is anyone interested?

Mmm. Wonder how many prolific new users there are now, can't be just that can it...

What a way to kickstart your animation career! The edginess goes right with the times. Even voice acting. Bit fuzzy but still, impressively thorough for your first thing ever! Mine was: https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/e828b106acc65bdd25218193190874da

Why not ! XD Shame the tenth anniversary for it just passed though, would've been the perfect time.

Hey, sure, I'd be honored to try it out. Is it one that'll be posted online when done? Potential to be listed as a beta tester in the credits maybe (or just credits, somewhere)? Feel free to send a PM with details... if I'd qualify.

If you're looking for more testers you might be able to gather some via a newspost with a title asking for betatesting, or a forum thread, maybe most suitably in General, Video Games, Development or Collaboration.

Edit. or maybe you already have! Hope more people get involved...

I know I've seen a few people submit quite a bit, there's so much stuff submitted now though it's hard to keep up.

That wasn't my first overall animation, just the first done in flash. I had been making really crappy cartoons with MS Paint and Windows Movie Maker for a year before that, though I first "animated" in maybe 2004 with some gif program that was pre-installed on our computer.

Also something tells me people didn't vote 5 on that lol

If I ever go back to doing throwback thursday stuff where I upload old previously unreleased cartoons onto youtube, a remaster of that would be a good fit, so maybe. I think I already did convert it with swivel so I'd just have to upload it.

Yeah. Some really prolific new ones too come to think of it, meatcanyon comes to mind. Not to mention them adult artists, wonder if you're exempt from getting mentioned at all if you make A-rated stuff, or just the trophies...

Ah you started earlier. I know I messed around with some other software too at the time, but I have no idea what I was doing with them. Might just have been slideshows. Had a fun phase where I made 'choose your own adventure' type games with folders in folders, progressing the story via text files in each directory.

Not enough people no. :) It's in the obituaries somewhere... a few days in a row actually. I didn't get why it didn't pass so I just kept submitting it over and over. XD

Would be cool! Always appreciate old content. It's a shame when people just purge their old work since it's not on par with the new stuff. It's all part of the journey!

A-rated stuff definitely shows up in the popular artists section, I've seen HornyGamercom show up there a few times.

Yeah, before I could actually animate I would just draw out a scene in a single MS Paint image, or maybe I tried to make a flipbook first, I can't remember. I know for years I wanted to do stop motion since I had a ton of LEGO and I had been watching a bunch of brick films, though I guess that would've had to have been after youtube was a thing.

lol

yeah, I hate when people just hide their old stuff, especially when it's the stuff that initially got them noticed and people actually liked them. I mean, I have a ton of unlisted old videos on youtube, but they're all still available in a public playlist. I just didn't want the worst shit cluttering my channel (same with my live stream archives, all unlisted but still accessible through a playlist)

Thanks so much!! awesome ill send you a PM. Its going to be free to play. I eventually will post it online when its done. Theres just alot of kinks i gotta work out regarding music!!

Ah, good to know.

Flipbooks were the shizzle too! :D Just dabbled in notebook page corners myself. Man there's so much creative stuff you can do without any individual software, feels like a bit of the fun's lost with the digitalization/unification of it all...

We have tons of stopmotion here too! Not least Knox legendary claymations. If you haven't seen the newer blockmation wave (apparently not using the L word is a way to save potential copyright woes now):

Would be fun to see that if you get to making it!

Good call. Respect on keeping it all, totally agree.

Thank you too! Should be fun.

Ah yes, I definitely remember drawing stuff in the corners of notebooks and watching it move. Good times.

There certainly is a charm to crudely made traditional animation that's hard to reproduce with digital stuff, it is possible though.

Yeah man, I watched everything L word related on newgrounds back in 2008. It felt like I was watching stuff I shouldn't be since I had read on the forums that LEGO was removing brickfilms from newgrounds, but then it seemed like they were okay with it 'cause they had released their own official brickfilm set with a camera and everything. That was released in 2000 though, so I guess LEGO had been okay with it for a while.

This was the one brickfilm that stood out to me the most on Newgrounds at the time. Looks like the uploader deleted their account last month, or their account was deleted or something, since it had survived this entire time. That's a shame, though it was just a really low quality trailer for the full 56 minute film, which I downloaded back in 2008 and still have to this day.

I don't think I've seen this one yet, I'll get around to it when I'm not busy lol

What, stopmotion? I've done it a few times before. I did a whole series that wasn't very good, aside from the last 2 episodes, which was directly inspired by LEGO RPG: The Movie (the aforementioned 56 minute brickfilm). I also did this LEGO Mario thing:

As well as this

Plus some claymation of my own too!

And I was actually planning on making a serious stop motion short film earlier this year in May, with proper armatures and everything, I even bought a new tripod for it!!!

I can't remember exactly what got in the way, though earlier in the month I had to do a bunch of bullshit labor for my step-dad because he doesn't know how to take care of his ancient house so everything's constantly breaking, and that made me completely scrap my Pico Day plans, so I'm guessing that got in the way of that too, unless I just pushed it back 'cause it was originally being made for a film festival, and there was no way I would get it done for the deadline, so I just finished up that Red Dead parody instead, I can't remember.

Either way, I can't make it now because I moved out of my step dad's house and had to leave all my fabric and materials there for now. I'll get 'em at some point though.

I hate deleting things, and I hate that there are a lot of old videos of mine that are just gone 'cause I couldn't upload them and then they just somehow disappeared.

I always feel weird about having these conversations on p-bot posts lol especially when it just devolves into me (relevantly) linking my own stuff and just talking about how bullshit the first half of this year was. It's not relevant to the post, you know?

My inbox is so fucking full though that I couldn't even suggest moving it there lol

True, all kinds of filters for all kinds of non-digital artifacts available too. :)

Oooh. Interesting. Didn't know of that, or about the potential-brickfilm-removing-incidents. Sounded like you didn't think stopmotion had a place on NG now though? That it'd be more for YT? I thought you might've been missing out on this particular genre all this time.

Well that sucks. :/ Seems it's still on YT though: https://youtu.be/p_Kv3LXEbLQ

...and the link above's in the Wayback Archive if you want to see the trailer again too, coincidentially also with an official archive.org link to the full thing: https://archive.org/details/LegoRPGTheMovie

Not sure I saw this back in the day, think I'll download it too in case anything happens to it. :)

All of Edbound's work is amazing. :) Felt like there could be a new wave of this stuff starting here last year (or was it earlier this year), but it calmed down a bit.

Bookmarking!

Man. Turbulent times lately. Did you manage to get your own place? Car too?

Hehe, somehow these always turn into these long convos too, relevant beginnings though, and never wrong with a few extra plugs...

Could maybe move it to some newspost comment section if necessary. :)

Oh no, I meant I initially discovered brickfilms on youtube, so that would've had to have been 2005 or 2006, wasn't until 2008 that I saw brickfilms on newgrounds, even though I had been browsing newgrounds since 2004. Stopmotion absolutely has a place on newgrounds and it's a shame there isn't more of it.

Yeah, I was thinking about linking to that lol

I was also thinking about linking to the archive of it, but it seemed more fitting to just link to the eulogy since I had found it it was gone!

also where do you think I originally downloaded it from? ;)

I used to watch it every year, but I stopped at some point. Been a few years now, maybe I should watch it again for old time's sake.

So many great people submitting to newgrounds in the past few years I just haven't caught up on because I've been so busy focusing on my own stuff and more importantly getting my shit together. One day I'll watch everything lol

Nah, I'm living with my oldest brother and his wife and 2 kids. We're currently cramped up in a tiny apartment, but will be moving into a bigger place before the end of the year hopefully.

I really should focus on getting a car, though I'd need to get my actual driver's license first (still only have a permit, and I haven't even driven since I got it). My brother was gonna teach me how to drive but then he got busy working two jobs, and now he's only working one job but it's still been weird finding time to do anything. Things will get straightened out eventually. In the meantime I've been staying very productive, as can be seen by my drastically increased output ;)

Every single time Cyberdevil, smh

I'm sure we could move it to the comments of @MistyEntertainment's latest newspost, I'm sure he wouldn't mind

or like discord or something

Aha, gotcha. True that.

Always feels somewhat wrong to link to YT videos on NG, but if it's in some obscure P-Bot post...

Honestly didn't realize the archive.org link was in the description too! XD I gave it a Google...

It's cool you managed to get the latest review on that submission too btw.

Woah. It's really that good? More a tradition?

I used to believe I really could but there's no way I'll be catching up now. XD

Ah, good to have family at least. Lot of siblings? Hope you find a good place. This corona thing might possibly be lowering real estate prices a bit...

Both pretty frequent submission and frequent commenting on these P-Bot post lately yupp, seems so. :) I get stressed up over just part-time stuff, inspiring grind... I bought a cheap car myself recently so I can skip the commuting for a while, better avoid potentially infectious people as long as I live around my relatively old parents, but man cars aren't cheap to own... at least not around here. Plus all them unexpected repairs.

*affirmative headbangin'*

Ah wouldn't that be equally weird though? XD Though this can't go on for that long now, better respond to some actual newsposts soon and get something going there instead...

That'd work. Though I'm really not much on Discord if I don't have to, all conversations seem to hold a higher purpose here on NG, all open and transparent and cumulatively documented somehow...

Yeah, I don't even link my own youtube channel in my newgrounds, but my newgrounds is the first link in my youtube channel ;)

tbh I forgot that's where I got it until you mentioned it lol

last review on the newgrounds upload, and first comment on the youtube upload B)

Keep in mind, this was from when I was like 13-16 or so. It's probably not as amazing in retrospect but it's still a fun experience.

In the future, we'll all live to be over 1000 so we can watch every single thing ever uploaded to newgrounds.

I have 5 siblings, though I would only ever want to live with my older siblings, all of which I have now lived with at some point lol

covid really did fuck a lot of the plans I had for this year, but it also got me to be so scared that I just started animating again and not caring about anything, and it also partially got me into a better situation so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I wouldn't say my p-bot post commenting has been frequent, at least not counting the last few days lol, my uploading on the other hand, yeah

I've been more productive these last few months than I have been in the last 5 years, and I hate that I can't even enjoy it because I'm severely depressed. But sometimes I realize how much I'm doing and it feels good.

Also yeah, fuck car insurance and maintenance and all that shit. I do not look forward to it lol

Luckily I'm back in an area where I can walk to get to most places, so I don't have to rely on stupidly long public transport times (which would be worse now 'cause the risk of covid) or just not being able to go anywhere 'cause it takes over an hour just to walk to civilization and there's no public transport.

It would be weird, but more importantly it would be incredibly funny.

I know the Newgrounds chat is a thing again, I only used it once I think, back when it was first introduced, so idk if it's different now. Either way, I'm gonna make a new news post soon, so I guess we can just talk there whenever that will be

Wish more people did it that way. :)

XD

Oooh! Impressive!

Got it. Of course still gotta watch it but: hype-lever moderately low then. :)

But then wouldn't all the content creators also keep submitting stuff for another thousand years, plus even more people join in, and all stay even longer than usual as they all live lengthier lives and leave behind them a previously unimaginably prolific repertoire, creating at an ever-increasing pace as they both more and more master their craft and speed up the process, and all of our software evolves to simplify things even further, not to speak on the potentially huge population booms now that everyone's virtually immortal...?

Ah, nice. Sounds like most are older ones?

It's strange how easily we adapt to new situations too. :) The whole world changes in a matter of month and it's still just life as usual. Personally I felt pretty stagnant a while after this all started, just working from home all the time, seemed like each day was just the same as the last, everything fused together and time sped up way too much. Really need to break the routine a bit to separate one memory from the next. Summer was great though, and since I'm not working entirely from home any more things do get broken up a bit more.

Anyway I was actually a bit hopeful when this all started. Felt like humankind might all unite somehow. Everyone help each other. At our lowest point we'd improve, quickly work together to find a cure, and make the world a brighter and more amazing place than it had ever been before!!! Doesn't really seem that way anymore.

Glad at least you handled it the optimal way though. :)

I just got back in time for it to seem that way huh. :P

Dang man. Still that crippling depression... I guess animation's both an outlet and a distraction in a way?

At least you know what you have ahead of you. XD I was naive!

Nice. Good exercise too.

Hmmmmm! If you do make the move to move it there I shall follow.

Ah yeah there's that too. Real time chat though... IDK, I like the pace with conversations like these. Seems most people prefer it the other way though.

Anyway, into whichever place this conversational spirals: sounds good!

look, it'll all work out in the end, trust me

yeah, 3 older siblings, 2 younger ones.

I kinda realized maybe a week or two back that things are certainly different now compared to how they were at the start of the pandemic, at least when it comes to going out in public, so something is kinda working.

In the beginning, things weren't all that different for me, since I was already locked inside my step dad's house and couldn't really leave, the only real difference being that now going to the store was a huge, anxiety-filled pain in the ass. Things obviously got worse as time went on, especially when bars closed down and my step dad lost his karaoke dj job, and then there was the lockdown so everyone was forced to be inside. Tensions were high, man. There was lots of other shit I could talk about but, eh, it's not important ;)

I had a little hope too, but then that hope very VERY quickly faded. I guess a slight amount of it might be returning now, though it's hard to tell.

Perhaps.

What was funny was I think I uploaded something that got an award like the day of or after you left for your trip, so I was like "damn, I guess cyberdevil isn't gonna see this one" lol

certainly an outlet, though I'm not so sure about it being a distraction now. It used to absolutely take my mind off everything, but now it's gotten so bad that it doesn't, and I have to just force myself to work in order to stay productive. Sometimes I get in the zone of animating though and I can forget all the horrible things happening around me ;)

Let's give him a nice little surprise ;)

There is something about this form of communication that feels special. Not quite the pace of emails, but there's definitely still a wait and a surprise factor to when you'll get a reply. Honestly so much time had passed since the last response that I thought that was it for now, and then here you go, sending one more lol

yes