On November 24th, I saw that there was a drawing tablet giveaway being done by Tom Fulp and, seeing how my current one broke months ago, I entered. Whenever I entered giveaways like this, I never won, so my expectations were low. I followed the instructions given and sent my submission.

A few days later I opened up Newgrounds and noticed I got a DM. It was from Tom Fulp! And the title read “Tablet”! 👀 Did I win??? I opened it and got this message!

I was super excited! Finally, I could make digital art again! <3 I had gotten so accustomed to traditional art (and spent so much money on traditional supplies) that I don’t think I’m gonna go back to digital entirely. Probably just for animation work mostly.

On December 2nd, Tom Fulp announced me as the winner of the second tablet in another news post. He linked to three of my art pieces, including the Return of the Jedi comic I’m kinda proud of and the SuperMega YouTube thumbnail I did for DeloBeast! 😀 I ended up getting four new followers from that shoutout.

The tablet arrived earlier than expected! It came today on the 3rd instead of the 5th! I was actually kind of shocked to see that the tablet has a bigger drawing area than my old one, USB-C with other USB adapters, tilt support, a textured overlay, and a glove! Rad!!!

Thank you, @TomFulp and everyone at Newgrounds! I appreciate it a lot! I hope to make a lot of cool new things using this gift. :)

Let me begin by saying I love this game. I’m only 9 hours in and while I do have some issues with it, overall I am having a fantastic time with it. I’m playing the Switch version that got dumped online before the official release of Nov. 8th using the Switch emulator Ryujinx. Now, the emulator itself had a number of stability issues that weren’t related to how the game would perform on actual hardware. There were frequent crashes, freezes, slowdown, and low framerates throughout the whole experience. …And yet it never really impacted my enjoyment of the game itself! The emulator issues were frustrating, but the game itself never was. I hope that alone shows how fun this game is.

The game is very melancholic. That’s a new tone the Sonic series has never really tackled in the games. You feel very alone on the Starfall Islands (despite the Koco populating the island). It feels sad, but it’s not off putting. Running around at a leisurely pace is oddly relaxing to me, especially on the first island. The forest is a great setting that fits the melancholic mood. The second and third islands were less great, but the melancholy was still there.

The characters are more reactive than proactive. Things just kinda happened around them and the characters more or less just stand there and watch. However, what it is they react to is indeed left me wanting to figure out what was going on. There were many “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?” type moments, especially at the beginning.

The story beats don’t change from this “What is happening? What is Cyberspace? Who are the Ancients? What are the Koco?” focus even after 3 islands in. After 8 hours of no meaningful plot progression, the mystery gets stale. I was left hoping for more plot progression by the third island.

The side story sequences are for the most part very unsubstantial. They take a previous cutscene and make a more concentrated version of it. You get some nice dialogue, though! It’s fun if you happen to come across a side story, but they weren’t really worth actively seeking them out.

The character dialogue is where it’s at! For the first time since the Adventure series and the Storybook series, I can honestly say that these characters finally speak like actual characters and not caricatures. The voice acting and voice direction is a welcome change of pace. At no point did I think, “Oh, god, shut the hell up please? This is embarrassing” like I did with Colors and Lost World. This is no doubt thanks to the amazing work of Ian Flynn, the writer of the IDW comics. The dialogue feels like it came right out of the comics themselves and I am so thankful for that.

Sonic feels like he has weakness and that he’s not literally always on top of things, but that never stops him from trying his best to do the right thing and even be a lil’ cocky while doing it.

The music is all fantastic, but none of it stood out as catchy like previous games. Even the Super Sonic boss fights aren’t memorable, but I think that’s because of the sheer amount of noise from the sound effects. The SS boss fight music is absolutely 100% kickass, don’t get me wrong!!

The platforming that occurs in the open world involves mostly rail grinding. There isn’t much platforming to be done while on the ground.

Occasionally, I ran into bugs where the springs positioned at the end of a rail wouldn’t activate and Sonic would clip through the spring, sometimes leading to death. There were situations where I could react quickly enough and get back onto the rail and attempt to use the spring again. Though this is an issue that crops up sometimes, I give props to the controls that I was able to make such quick life-saving maneuvers.

The Cyberspace levels are for the most part fun! The levels that are modeled after previous games like Unleashed and Adventure 2 are the most fun. The Adventure 2 levels are the most fun because they are the most expansive and have the most turns where the typical boost level designs are very straight and narrow. Also, I hope you like Green Hill Zone because most of the levels use that theme! There are other level themes (Chemical Plant, Sky Sanctuary, and a city theme), but by far the most common one is Green Hill.

The graphics on the Switch version are serviceable but not great. When things like trees and bushes are far away but still kinda close, they use a very noticeable pixel art texture before the model is loaded in fully as you get closer. They straight up look like Minecraft textures. If you can get acclimated to this, you will hardly notice it as you play it on Switch. It’s clear the Switch is the least good port, but if it’s your only option, it isn't necessarily a bad one!

I learned today that PQube and VEWO Interactive are releasing both Nexomon and Nexomon: Extinction as one package in Nexomon + Nexomon: Extinction Complete Collection! Some of you may know that I was a composer on these projects, and I was delighted to see this lovely new announcement. They are classic creature-capturing JRPGs with a twist. This appears to be the best way to own these games.

I don’t get royalties or residuals for these games, so if you would like to support me directly, you can find my music for these games here on Newgrounds and on Bandcamp and YouTube. I’m working on getting these up on Spotify too one day!

Unfortunately, I also learned today there is some kind of drama with PQube. They face accusations that Mojiken Studio and Toge Productions, developers of A Space For the Unbound, were supposed to receive a grant in 2020 and PQube withheld it and used it for themselves. PQube denies this. As a contractor, I’ve never interacted directly with PQube and have only ever interacted with people from VEWO, who are unrelated to the issue. You can read the dev team’s comments on their Twitter.

Learning about this makes me upset, especially because my work is associated with PQube. It’s work I’m proud of. An article on the matter calls these accusations a “new low” for game publishers. I would like to do a giveaway like I did for Extinction, but this news really sours my perception of the people I worked with. I may do one, I may not. I’d like to see this controversy resolved before going forward with anything that praises PQube.

TL;DR — AI art: good or bad?

I see a lot of working artists worried that the advancements and growing interest in AI-generated art will leave them in the dust. Artists are already struggling, so putting up new opposition—an opposition so efficient they cannot possibly hope to compete—is making them disillusioned. A human artist might take days to months to complete a beautiful piece of art, but an AI can do it in mere seconds. 

“Prompt artists”, people who specialize in writing prompts that will generate interesting AI art, sounds stupid, but it could be a real thing if AI art becomes more accepted. You could say that it’s just typing words into a computer and letting it do all the work for you. And you’d be right. It sounds analogous to when computers started being used for art in the 90s and early 2000s when people would say that “digital art is not real art”. However, those people were just being ignorant. It requires artistic skills to make good digital art the same way that it takes artistic skills to make good traditional art. Can that be said of “prompt artists”, though? The skill, I imagine, would be in conceptualizing and not performing since the performance would be entirely done by the AI. Maybe the AI could become so customizable that it would be possible for someone to “master” it.

The average person would not care, though. They would only see the final result on social media and say, “This looks good!” or “This looks bad!” and then move on with their day. Only other artists, enthusiasts, or elitists would care about how the art was made rather than just the final result. From what I can see, the only people who are interested *right now* in commercializing AI art are the people running AI art services through subscription models and NFT bros, whose opinions are so worthless I hesitated to even mention them just now. At least right now, in 2022, are artists really threatened by AI art services and NFT bros? They have their problems for sure, but is losing a job because of AI a reality right now? I don’t think so, or if it is, then it’s negligible currently. However, with advancements in AI, I can see how they could be used against working artists in order to save time and save costs. A corporation can only care about “the real human experience” so much if at all.

I’m wondering if we’re rejecting the evolution of art in fighting against it or if it really is a violation of what it means to be “art”. I can see it from both sides; however, I think it’s important to point out that one side is more utopian and the other is dystopian. If the world were perfect, then AI art and human art could coexist perfectly fine and there’d be no problems. It’d be a fine addition to the wondrous world of art. But in the real world, art is treated as a commodity that can be profiteered at the expense of the artists that make it. If there is a way to exploit artists and AI art generators, they will be exploited. If someone only acknowledges the utopian perspective, I feel they’re either ignorant or they’re trying to convince people so that they can be more easily exploited.

I’m interested in hearing what people think! Let me know if you think AI art is a good thing or bad thing.

GAME GRUMPS: 10-YEAR ANNIVERSARY

Let me describe to you my daily after-school ritual in 2012 when I was a fifteen-year-old ninth grader. Despite my poor memory, I remember this well. I would sit next to my friend Tiffany on the school bus ride home, leave together at our stop in Hellam, walk Tiffany to her house, and then head to my Dad’s apartment nearby.

First thing I would do is turn on my dad’s computer, which was in his bedroom. I wasn’t allowed to be in his bedroom or on the computer before dad got home, but I did anyway. I had important things to watch on YouTube! The bedroom window faced the parking lot, so I’d keep a very close eye on the parking lot through the window blinds to make sure Dad wouldn’t catch me breaking the rules.

While the computer was booting up, I’d go into the kitchen and make a very specific sandwich. It was a sandwich made of sweet bologna, pepper jack cheese, thousand island dressing, and wheat bread, then microwaved for thirty seconds. It was microwaved just enough that the bread wouldn't become soggy, but still heated up the sandwich enough that it changed the “feel” of the sandwich when eating it. I’d put it on a plate because my dad complained about me leaving crumbs on the floor and desk.

Once the computer and sandwich were ready, I’d open YouTube and watch Game Grumps, a new let’s play show featuring @Egoraptor and JonTron. It was the funniest shit in the world to me and made a long, arduous day at school feel more bearable. Their comedy was unlike anything I had heard before. I could “sense” their friendship more than any other YouTube duo I knew. I remember being amazed when they finally showed Barry’s face. I remember listening to Waterflame’s Poppy Bros. remix a thousand times. I bought their shirts. No matter how awful the day I had at school or at home, there was one thing I knew I could count on: new episodes of Game Grumps every day.

Of course, I was shocked when Jon announced his sudden immediate departure from the show the following year. I could sense that episodes were generally getting staler and the loud, goofy energy just wasn’t there as often as before. Looking back as an adult, this change was fine. Things change and I think it’s better to look back fondly on what we had instead of demanding things return to the way they were—especially when it’s something as ultimately unimportant as a let’s play show. It took me a while to get used to the new replacement co-host Danny. I was still salty about Jon leaving. But like countless other fans, the classic “Mayor Luigi” bit was what softened me up enough to accept him. I enjoyed Arin and Danny’s time on Grumps much the same, but I always missed Arin and Jon.

It saddens me that in 2017 Jon was revealed to have white nationalist political views. It soured a lot of the race comedy from early Game Grumps; it changed my perception of those jokes from “These are just jokes! They don’t mean them seriously” to “Was this the beginning of white nationalism creeping out earlier in his life?” Perhaps at the time the race jokes were indeed just jokes and that lack of restraint later led him to being indoctrinated by online far right personalities. He never did properly apologize, he now makes pro-leftwing jokes in JonTron, and he has stopped publicly talking about politics almost entirely, so it’s hard to say for sure if he has changed his mind.

I had intended to make an anniversary cartoon and release it on this day because of the strong nostalgia I have for not only early Grumps but where I was in life in 2012. But I didn’t necessarily want to honor Jon with an anniversary animation because of what I explained earlier. I’m sentimental for the show and co-hosts that helped shape my sense of comedy, made me feel better on bad days, and inspired my own work on YouTube.

It dawns on me that I’ve been mostly making cartoons of let’s players on and off for ten years. I’d like to stop doing let’s player cartoons one day because I feel like everything I have to say artistically with these cartoons has already been said, both by myself and by the myriad of other great let’s player animators out there. Animation is a medium capable of much more than just Game Grumps and SuperMega and Oney Plays over and over, and I want to explore that. I feel limited to doing just these kinds of cartoons. It’s what I’m best known for and so it’s what is expected of me, though. To do something else risks alienating the audience I’ve been building for ten years. My attempts at other kinds of animation and art have always been failures in terms of views, despite having fun making those things. Whether that is a problem with the algorithm, me not playing the algorithm to my advantage, or if the non-let’s player cartoons just don’t connect with people, moving on from let’s player cartoons is something I want to do in the future.

— Alyxandr

We've reached the $15 goal! The reward is a studio tour! I will clean up and start recording it tomorrow. Additionally, DoodleDemon and I recorded a let's play for Pokemon Legends Arceus. Also, my friend Abbey and I recorded a small curry cooking video! I hope you will all enjoy this content this February!

WIPs are available on my Ko-fi page!

Members only; you can be a member by pledging to the first tier. <3

I will be working on this OneyPlays Animated cartoon in about an hour and will be working on it all day today.

I've been thinking of ways I can make money from my art. There are people who collect animation cels as a hobby. I had the idea to make something imitating animation cels of my own work or from other shows/movies/games/etc. It would be a combination of inked line art with acrylic paint colors on top of a printed background. It would then be framed in a traditional frame or a 3D, shadowbox frame.

Based off what I can tell right now, materials would cost $60 in total. Given the cost of materials and labor, I imagine that a framed cel would be $50 to $70 plus shipping. Other services on Etsy are selling theirs for $280.

Is this something you would be interested in buying?

If it is, leave a comment to be added to a list and if this were to get off the ground, I'll contact you about what animation cel art you'd like created.

I work for a professional YouTuber named MatterBoar. His main content includes:

• Movie/show reaction videos
• Covers of showtunes and soundtracks from those movies and shows
• OneyPlays Animated cartoons and MatterBoar Reaction Animated cartoons

He is currently at 23,800 subscribers and 44.7 million total views. Currently, our reaction videos average about 2,500 views per video with our highest viewed reaction video at 4,800 views. I work with him among a community of creatives as a co-host, animator, musician, and video editor. He is looking for additional freelancers to commission and fill these roles in order to speed up and streamline the process of creating and uploading quality content.

All communication is done through Discord, so if you don't have one, I highly recommend you make an account. There are dedicated Discord servers for each of these roles so that you can interact with other creatives.

VIDEO EDITORS

MatterBoar is looking to commission video editors who can confidently accomplish the following:

• Fast paced — Squishing and cutting our commentary together to improve comedy and pacing
• "Best of"-like — Movie/show reaction videos are essentially highlight compilations of our commentary and riffing
• Improved sound — Make sure everyone's audio is at a good level. (I try to handle this as best I can in OBS while recording, but sometimes it needs extra effort in post.)
• High availability and reliability — Given MatterBoar's upload calendar, turnaround times can range anywhere from weeks to a few days. The editor must be attentively available and ready to work in order to meet deadlines.

The recorded footage you'll be working with is typically about 90 to 120 minutes long. Finished videos typically range anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes long. The current rate is $10/minute of the final product. If you feel you are up for it, contact us using the contact info below. Provide your editing experience and examples of video editing you feel are most relevant to this position. If you're accepted, you'll be given test footage to edit. If you don't edit the test video to MatterBoar's liking, he may give you pointers and you can try again. If you do edit the video to his liking, you'll be hired.

Here are playlists of examples of our reaction videos:

ANIMATORS

MatterBoar is looking to commission cartoon animators to create OneyPlays Animated videos and animate clips of our reaction videos. MatterBoar will give you a clip he wants animated. You may have creative freedom beyond that, he may give you storyboards or a general idea to go with.

Animators must be able to meet the following:

• Collaborate — You may want to collaborate with other artists in order to improve the video and make production move faster. For example, I am working currently working with a background artist for an OneyPlays Animated.
• High Availability and Reliability — Given that animation in particular can be time-consuming, we may be lenient with deadlines. Regardless, you must communicate with updates and make progress in a timely manner.

As it stands right now, contact me or MatterBoar with your rates, examples of your animation, and your experience. Contact info is found below.

Here is a playlist of examples of previous animated videos:

MUSICIANS

Musicians of all kinds are wanted: vocalists, pianists, producers, saxophonists, etc.

Musicians must be able to meet the following:

• Collaborate — You may need to work with other musicians and we have many in the MatterBoar music Discord server you can work with. This cover of I Got 5 On It, for example, is a collaboration between three creatives from the server.
• High Availability and Reliability — Covers coincide with reaction videos and will most often release at the same time as the reactions. You must be up to the task given to you and complete the song before the deadline. Not every reaction video will have music made for it.
• Ability to Match Aesthetics — Sometimes MatterBoar will give you a vibe that he wants the song to be. In the cover of I Got 5 On It, I made an overall standard accompaniment, but MatterBoar wanted it to be spooky for Halloween. So other musicians collaborated to add general Halloween SFX to make it spooky. Sometimes, MatterBoar will give you creative freedom.

As it stands right now, contact me or MatterBoar with your rates, examples of your music, and your experience. Contact info is found below.

Here are some examples of our music covers:

WEBSITE DEVELOPER

He is looking for someone to develop a website. I will update the post when I get info about it and the rate.

CONTACT INFO

If you are interested, leave a comment below with your Discord username and then contact us on Discord. My username is adesyndicate#2010 and MatterBoar's is MatterBoar#7745. If you don't have a Discord, DM me on Newgrounds.

If the positions have been filled, I will try to notify everyone who applied.

If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments.