Just made my first cartoon in 2 years. Here is that.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/697533

I've been going to Ball State to study animation for the past 2 years. If you haven't heard of it that's okay. I wouldn't reccomend it for 2d animators. When I signed up I assumed i'd be making shorts and animating a bunch right away, but that wasn't the case at all. Not that this was necessarily bad, the first year being a foundations year was really helpful to my nonexistant traditional drawing skills at the time.

But then my sophomore year, we got into actual animation stuff. I learned the program is super 3d focused, and I've been learning a lot of maya. I've even gotten a decent job making 3d models for historical recreations of places that are viewed in VR. I don't have any photos of that yet, but if you're curious at all about what I've made in class here's my demo reel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFeSGwxabp8

I like doing 3d stuff, but I feel like I've lost track of what I want to do with animation. I started animating because I wanted to make videos, and I had no crew to make them. I could do animation on my own. Looking back on the past two years, I haven't really made anything I'm excited about, aside from this dumb short about asses. I made it in about a month of casual work and decided I really just wanted to make something and not stress about it.  It feels like the sort of thing I was hoping to make in college. 

Anyway, making this has gotten me thinking. I want to collaberate with more people. I have this vauge idea for a series where it's like twilight zone/black mirror/ray bradbury type stuff, but with animated comedy shorts. Each episode I would collab with someone new, whether that be a writer or an animator. I want to get back into the stuff I really like making. If that sounds like something you'd be interested in helping with, let me know. I think it could be a lot of fun.

Thanks for reading all this, if you've gotten this far. If you've got any general feedback on that video, or if you'd like to collab on something, let me know. I'd love to talk.

-Jonny

Right now i'm looking for people to voice the first two characters, Jishan and Morgan. Ignore Bill for now.

Jishan is like 18-19 years old. He's vaugely confident around children but bad at speaking to adults/people his age. Jishan is indian but does not sound like Apu. Please do not make him sound like Apu.

Morgan is like 10-11, something in elementary. People would call him pessimistic. He doesn't relate to people his age mostly.

If you want to try out for either character, pm me on newgrounds or send me an email at jlorp.swales@gmail.com or just comment something below and i'll send you the script.

as a warning, i have barely slept in the last 48 hours, this will be badly written and brief.

http://globalgamejam.org/2017/games/bat-shark

I worked with a couple friends and some people i met at GGJ on a game for global game jam and forgot to feed my hamster. I think the game went pretty well for a first go at it, I'd really suggest joining a local game jam to anyone who has a hard time getting motivated to work. being in that athmosphere was a really great experience.

It's just a little collectathon platformer, takes like 5 minutes to beat.  The theme was "waves" and we didn't use it very well.

I'd love to upload the game to newgrounds but when i try to use the HTML export, the sprites all become randomized. If anyone knows how to fix that, i'd appreciate any tips i can get on getting it up for the web, i know very little about programming (hence, gamemaker). 

anyway, thanks for reading. let me know what you think of the game!

-Jonny

*Update*

figured out html export, game is now up on newgrounds

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/687774

I finished my Novice round entry for NATA, if you want to watch it here's a link.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/660636

I got sort of overly ambitious with this, animating a 5 minute long cartoon in 3 weeks is not a good idea. I should've cut some scenes, but I think I'm relatively happy with how it turned out. I stepped out of my comfort zone with it, not just with the length but I was aiming for a semi-serious tone in it, which I've not done before. I remember liking it when I wrote it, so I'm hoping it's decent now but I'm so burnt out on it I don't really know what to think about it anymore. I'm planning on walking away from it for a week or two and coming back to see it freshly, to see if I still like it then.

If you've got any constructive criticism on it, I'd like to hear that. I don't get critical feedback very often and I'd like to hear some to try and make my next thing better. Anyway, this is probably my last round of NATA, but I'm glad I did it this year. I met some cool people and learned a lot and whatnot. Valuable experience. I reccomend it.

Thanks

- Jonny.

My thing is done!

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/659198

I feel like I normally do a sort of "Guy talks to guy" thing, so I tried to branch out a bit on this one. I have some "Guy talks to girl", some "Guy talks to girl talks to guy" and some "Guy talks to self". I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, Watch it if you want. 

In other news, my series (Loitering) is on a bit of a hiatus until I get kicked out of NATA (Which, I imagine won't be too long). I do have a script and a handful of the voice acting in though. Hopefully I'll have some updates on where that will be going soon. The script's around 5 minutes long, so it could be a while. Anyway, hope you enjoy my cartoon, I had fun making it. 

-Jonny

Just finished a new cartoon (Help Wanted) and I'm sort of looking for feedback on the animation style I chose. It's sort of simplistic, it was meant to be something I could produce quickly but still looked unique. If you've got any thoughts on how I could improve it, I'd love to hear them. 

www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/654446

I just finished my first game with one of my close friends, and I'm really happy with how it turned out. I'd really been having a hard time finding motivation recently work on projects, but this game got me back on track. It's far from perfect, but I'm really proud of it. I didn't do any of the code, but I did design all of the later levels of the game, and I think it turned out interesting, at the very least. 

Here's a link to the game ( http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/653394 ). If you've got some spare time, I really appreciate any reviews or feedback. Completing the game has really put me back into the creative process, and I've got ideas for a few new videos coming (hopefully) soon. I'm really trying to figure out where to go with Loitering (My series), but I wouldn't expect that to come in the immediate future. I do have another cartoon that's been nearly done for quite a while, and should be coming very soon, so look out for that. That's about all I've got for now, but keep an eye out for my content this year, I'm excited to see where everything goes.

(Thanks for reading this)

-Jonny

I just finished my first non-NATA animation. It's the first part of a series, so it's mostly setup, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I have ideas for the next few episodes, I hope to finish them quite a bit faster than what it took me to do this one. Anyway, here's the link. I would really apreciate some feedback on it.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/648822

So I didn't make the next round of NATA, I figured this was my last one buy I'm still a little bummed. Congrats to Fungasm for winning our bracket. 

Anyway, I'll still be working on some stuff to be released at whenever I'm finished with it. I want to really work on my drawing & animation skills. Stay tuned for that stuff. I did a thing for the Creature collab, whenever that's getting released. I'd like to do comics & other things, I just don't know what's coming. This isn't really an update I'm not giving you any news. Gosh. I'm a hack. Stay tuned for more of me being a hack.

-Jonny

So I didn't expect to make the next round of NATA, but I did, so disregard the last post I made about Summer stuff because now I'm doing NATA more. Fungasm & MihaP are in my bracket, which is insane. They're both super talented. Go look at their stuff. 

Fungasm: 

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/639808

MihaP: 

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/639763

Anyway here's a still from my work-in-progress entry. I'm trying to make this one a good deal cleaner visually than "Star Log". All I've really got so far are backgrounds & script & Character designs, everything else will happen as soon as I get voices from other NG people. There's a lady in my cartoon so I needed a lady voice.

That's all I have to say. Good luck to everyone involved in NATA.