Today’s Drawing Tablet Recipient

Today’s tablet recipient is @pizza602slut!

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  Boney plays X Pelo

  by pizza602slut

  Illustration

  1,335 Views

  (Everyone)

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  Boo gtfo, Mario ain't scared anymore

  by pizza602slut

  Illustration

  146 Views

  (Everyone)

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  Always ready for action

  by pizza602slut

  Illustration

  119 Views

  (Everyone)

Pizza602slut has been drawing with a Samsung tablet and MediBang but wants something he can hook up to his laptop, so he can use tools like Clip Studio Paint. Clip Studio is popular among artists nowadays and frequently on sale, I'll note.

Today’s Featured Flash (without Flash)

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  James The Christmas Zebra

  by The-Super-Flash-Bros

  Swing from cloud to cloud eating cookies - awesome fun!

  Game

  159,845 Views

  (Everyone)

What better way to kick off December than with a Christmas-themed game? James the Christmas Zebra sends you swinging from cloud to cloud, eating cookies and avoiding explosive puddings. It was made by @The-Super-Flash-Bros, who went on to create modern classics like Tangle Tower, Marching Order and Snipperclips!

About the Drawing Tablet Giveaway

Newgrounds is hosting a 2020 Drawing Tablet Giveaway, inviting artists to apply for the chance to receive a drawing tablet. Applications are still open, however you must be US-based (tablets are sent directly from Amazon) and your chances will greatly improve if you have examples of your art or animation here on NG.

We’ve received generous donations from @Egoraptor, @AnonymousAlchemist, @SinclairStrange, @RonDMC, @SaucySaucepan, @Afro-Ninja, @Jonas, @NCH, @Sabtastic, @Squidly, @MSGhero, @Rarykos, @Straqt, @kleinerjunge, @DevAesthetic, @NickSenny, @MrChambers, @53xy83457 and @AKA-38CAUTION. As a result, this will be our biggest tablet giveaway ever!

About Flash Preservation

Most of the content shared on NG nowadays isn’t Flash; you can share your HTML5 games and any sort of original animation you’ve made in video format, as well as art, music, voice reels and podcasts. As the original Flash Portal we also host a lot of classic and occasional new Flash content.

Newgrounds sponsors the development of Ruffle.rs, to run Flash content in the browser without Flash. Flash will be removed from browsers at the end of the year but thanks to Ruffle, we can enjoy Flash forever! Ruffle doesn’t support everything yet, which is why we have Newgrounds Player as a desktop fallback until it does.

Ruffle was created by @Mike as an open-source alternative to the Flash plug-in, free of all the legacy problems associated with Flash. Lots of smart people have gotten involved with the project and you can sponsor it with money or help as a Rust developer.

For the remainder of the year, I’ll be making regular posts highlighting both drawing tablet winners and classic Flash content that is now supported by Ruffle.

Community News

@Cleod-9 is hosting a Fraymakers Art Contest!

@Xinxinix is hosting a Secret Santa Art Trade!

@Everratic is hosting a Video Game Music Challenge!

@JohnMontoya is giving away a license for Drumazon to one lucky person who joins his Discord server!

Read yesterday’s issue of The Tank Tribune! 

Thoughts on Flash

There was a viral tweet yesterday about Flash support being removed from browsers. Reading it is a reminder of how much of an uphill battle it has been to educate people about ongoing preservation efforts. It made me think about all the interviews I’ve done over the years and how there have always been details that get left out because they don’t fit the narrative. 

For example, in early death-of-Flash stories years ago, I would always note how NG wouldn’t be removing Flash content and would be working on alternative ways to play it; however those comments never became part of the story because the story was about how Flash was going away.

Later, stories started shifting to archival efforts for playing Flash off-line, at which point I was telling people about Ruffle and efforts to keep Flash running in the browser, only to see those comments left out because playing Flash in the browser wasn’t part of the story. More recent articles this year have finally begun to mention Ruffle, which has been encouraging.

Sometimes I feel like I’m being gaslit but really I’m just experiencing how the world works, how public relations works. No one has the full picture, the full message; it’s all fragments being parroted around ad nauseum. It’s discouraging when you realize how hard it can be to get a large number of people to update their perception and it makes you realize why so many billions of dollars are spent on marketing and PR. 

To this day, I would say the majority of people familiar with the name “Newgrounds” assume it will be shutting down at the end of this year, or that it already shut down years ago, because they can’t disassociate it from Flash and the familiar narrative about Flash. It makes me curious to see where things go in 2021, when Flash has “ended” and Newgrounds hasn’t. Will people’s brains perform a reboot and see the site with fresh eyes? It could be like “The Great Awakening” but for NG. More likely, we'll just continue on this path of slow but steady progress.

Does Ruffle support other flash websites?

Yeah, any site can integrate Ruffle directly but for sites that haven't integrated it, users can install a browser extension that will auto-swap out SWF embed tags with Ruffle. That will likely be getting more publicity as support for the majority of Flash games comes further along.

Glad to see this old trash fire still kicking.

If they add Ruffle to their sites, yeah

Rumors of NG'S demise are greatly exaggerated. It's one of the few remaining becaons of freedom in a rising sea of ad-companies buying up art-places and ruining them by censorship and ad-conforming. (and simply firing staff, reducing maintanance etc)

I educate ppl whenever I get the chance but the flash = ded narrative is simple and hard ingrained.

It's my experience that most people remember Newgrounds for it's controversies. On Facebook I've had group mods mistakenly remove my posts because of it. While frustrating, I try to remain patient with these people and explain that while NG does host some questionable content, that's not all it is. I try to focus on community and the support a lot of us receive here but you know as well as I do it's hard to be understood or even heard out there on hyper sterilized social media platforms.

Yeah, drama and porn are the two things the general public tend to remember, vs "the first ever instant publishing platform for games and animation."

It's funny that not only people miss the whole picture, they sometimes refuse to see it when it's shown to them. It's hard for many to widen their viewpoint, to accept a multitude of viewpoints. And that's one of the reasons Newgrounds is so cool - it offers you such a variety of views, opinions and approaches. And it never stops to do evolve and expand. Long live Newgrounds!

I'm not usually one to whip up memes in response to something, but:

Yo Congrats on the Winner!

Also yeah, People are very ignorant and only listens to what people say without actually doing research about preservation. Others have pointed out about Flashpoint and how awesome it is, which is great. But I wish more people would understand about sites not shutting down.

Flashpoint is good for an offline archive, Ruffle's great for online preservation - Big tech is still bein' big tech carrying a chunk of the narrative, but I think time will heal wounds now that Flash has essentially survived its death in browsers.

I see youre giving away art tablets. Hmm kinda cool. 😎

I'd argue you've managed to do a lot already by making all of us here aware of Ruffle and other preservation stuff. I'm curious as well to see what happens after Flash's end, hopefully its all good!

(heres a meme to lighten up the mood for everyone ^w^)

Teacher: What's so funny?

Me: Nothing.

My brain: CornHub and No-Shuck November.

Thanks for the shout out and for the tablet giveaway , winning this tablet has made my year, I hope to see more winners announced and wish the best of luck to the participants

Yeah, I really wish that people would just wake the hell up, about Flash and Newgrounds. But no, as long as that stupid narrative keeps getting shoved down people's people's throats, it will never change. I pray that once Flash is gone, people won't give up on viewing Newgrounds, and Flash content

Well I always wanted to type something related about Flash, but that didn't happen at all. I was thinking of placing a parody ad, for any file on NG that runs and was created from Flash. I was thinking about having a page dedicated to flash, the thoughts about it over the years, the history of it, and it's future regarding ruffle and the add-on (well for both ruffle and flash) itself. It wouldn't be a bad idea, so some people can find the answer instead of making the same topic, over and over again. (Well I wanted to type more about it, but I have some things to do.)

I'm glad I'm not the only one to run into this weird narrative of flash not being supported anymore equaling "well, I guess they're gonna delete every swf off of the internet at once" and then I tell them about ruffle+other flash preservation projects and they go "oh" and a month later they bring it up again and somehow completely forget what I said. Drives me mad!

Interesting perspective. I've been following the development of Ruffle for a while now, so I've always had that side of the story and have even found myself correcting peers who assume that all Flash content will be gone forever, NG is shutting down, etc. While it's certainly the end of an era, it's definitely not the end of web animation/games.

also 3001th post AHOYYYY

Blue Maxima also has some flash preservation stuff, nothing like ruffle though but yeah.

A little retrospective Congrats @pizza602slut! :)

Not sure I've played the Ruffle selection of the day here either hmm, may require doing...

With recent Tumblr, Twitter, YouTube and similar migrations here I'd been feeling like maybe that reboot had happened. Remember some earlier tweet about the death of Flash or similar getting a surge of Newgrounds related comments, attesting to this place still being alive and well, and the air of encouragement that surrounded that seemed to further the sense of establishment/awakening/all those good things. But maybe that was just fortunate coincidence in who commented/which ones garnered some attention there.

Definitely curious to see if the death of Flash maybe turns into a new life for the Grounds. There's so much potential now! And competition suddenly seems uncertain. Kongregate have apparently been falling behind on maintenance; don't seem to be making an effort to prepare for this impending shift, wonder if they'll be around for the new year now. Would be a shame if they aren't, as one of the old ones too, but just interesting to observe how easy competition shifts/things weigh in favor of one place over others depending on their focus.

It's good to be reminded how one-sided the media often is too, by intention or. Too easy to forget to really keep an open mind as to how the perspectives you mold from whatever particular content it is you partake in are probably all very lacking nuance; probably pushing whatever narrative currently seems to be of most interest or commercial value...

More like do they support Ruffle. ;) Hope to be adding it to my own site soon too, it's a pretty revolutionary thing...

Maybe some day that plan will come to fruition too. :) Good intentions!

Nice. XD Nissan Prairie was pretty good too I hear. An uncle had one for some fourteen years back in the day and didn't need to repair/replace a single thing. Impeccable build quality.

Congrats to @pizza602slut on winning the number 8 Drawing Tablet. Looking forward to see your new submissions.

Thanks , I already started practicing using my new tablet and I need lots of practice, will post soon

You are welcome. Post when you can.