I was making something for Robot Day but ended up not finishing it yet, partly due to seasonal allergies screwing with my eyeballs (couldn't even look at my computer screen at times). To keep with the spirit of Robot Day though, here's what I had so far anyway:

... and here's a design sheet I had made to figure out the robot design beforehand:

So anyway, Happy Robot Day!

It's been a long time coming with many ups and downs, but our Ultimate sequel to Super Swag Bros from 2015 has finally arrived! Check it out here: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/723532

Big thanks to IggieKaze for additional animation to make this happen sooner, as well as BobbyDubs for added voice acting.

May your New Year be a Smashing success.

... hell, maybe my last parody in general, at least for a good while. I need to shift to some original shit for a change.

Anyway, you can watch it here:

www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/675226

And with that, "Rayman Randimation" can finally rest in PEACE. (not that anyone here seemed to be bothered by the unfulfilled promise of a Part 4)

I need a drink.

I finished a short animated clip for Aesop Rock's "15 Impossible Seconds" contest. You can watch it here:

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

Feels good to finally finish something of my own after so long. I guess I'll be getting back to those other two WIPs of mine within the next couple days.

It's been a while since my last news post, and nothing's really happened yet. I've been doing a couple small commissions and fiddling around with a few of my own animations, but I haven't finished anything since like December, and I keep flip-flopping between projects before completing anything. Feels weird. Anyway, I'll soon be finishing a short clip for a contest, (more details later):

A quick Undertale thing:

... and a Rayman Origins parody as a sort of capstone to my Rayman Randimation series:

Seriously, them damn kids on YooToob wouldn't shut up about it. Funny stuff, not that I'm making this parody just to appease them.

I'm also helping SickDeathFiend and Evil-Dog beta-test their newest multiplayer game, Streets of the Dead, and they could really use more people. If you enjoyed Road of the Dead or any of those games, check out SDF's post here: http://sickdeathfiend.newgrounds.com/news/post/957065

I'll be back when I actually have something finished.

I went back and documented and optimized over 150 images of my artwork from the past decade. You can find it all on my DeviantArt page: http://lightninglionng.deviantart.com/

I also selected a few of the better ones and posted them on here. A few of them were already on here, but I reposted them because I wanted everything to be in chronological order. Now that I've caught up with all of that and I'm done spamming, I'll only be posting brand new works to the Art Portal from here on out.

I'm currently working on a Rayman Origins animation to finally give some sense of closure to my train of Rayman parodies. Any more updates on that would be on my Twitter: https://twitter.com/LightningLionNG

... and so comes New Year's Eve, the time where everyone snaps out of their immediate state of mind to look back at what happened during the past 12 months, spends a short while trying to look the other way, and cobbles together a list of goals for the next numeric year, often lacking the necessary conviction to actually carry them out for any significant length of time.

Here is a short compilation of all of the animated stuff I finished this year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7N4sNSKzj8

This year felt odd for me, as it was my first year out of college since I graduated in December of 2014. Beforehand, I was focused on learning and making original 'fine art' and animation for my classes and toughing out the final stretch of my 4-year college education.

During 2015, however, I started the year with no clue what to do in terms of an art/animation career or even just working on animation in general. I felt like I wasn't ready for the next step in my 'career,' so I thought I should just focus on improving my techniques and overall skill, try to find my style and creative places within, and start browsing for my next 'step' later.

As I had to focus solely on original 'fine art' stuff for a couple years, I sort of 'rubber-banded' back to my kid-like disposition of making the usual parodies based on popular stuff of my interest and dumb humor now that I had the chance. The first thing I made was based on a moment from a Let's Player's video on YouTube that I enjoyed and thought would be entertaining, something that many people do a lot, but I hadn't done yet.

Lo and behold, the LPer found it and asked to put it on his channel. I happily agreed and ended up getting a bunch of new subscribers to my YT channel as a result. I never really cared about subs or anything like that before, but something about getting hundreds of new viewers in such a short amount of time made me think I was doing something right. These people included other YTers asking about commissions, so that was another plus. I had thoughts along the lines of 'maybe I can do stuff like this for a while to bring more people here to see my BETTER stuff whenever I do it' and 'the more of this kind of thing I do, the more commission opportunities I could find.'

I've been strangely focused on my YouTube stats and how my 'channel' is growing this whole time, but I certainly hadn't forgotten about Newgrounds. Infact, I was working on a project for Pico Day in March/April that unfortunately didn't pan out. Maybe I'll pick it back up later on and make it 10x as good for another Pico Day or something.

I still want to do some dumb parodies based on well-known shit that interests me, but I also want to start focusing on some original stuff again that I can call my own. I feel like both of these kinds of works have value in different ways, like a yin and yang of sorts, so I enjoy doing both. Then again, this is all in the context of my current mindset and the nature of 'success' on internet platforms; I could very well change my mind depending on how 'successful' I am and where that success is in the future.

Anyway, that was my ramble on 'internet fame' and how it's starting to mesh with me continuing to be an animator without much direction at this point. Hopefully throughout 2016 I'll formulate a better idea of how to make 'success' and 'fulfillment' out of all this disjointed craziness.

Here's my spooky little cartoon about Blueberry RedBull.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/665455

Stay thirsty, my friends ... wait, no, that's not it.

Errr ... AH! It gives you wiiings.

Here's a couple animated bits for my next short animation. It'll likely be done before the month ends.

In case you haven't noticed, Newgrounds' halloween icons are active!

I also made my profile pic more spoopy.

I'm not making anything Halloween-themed this year, but later this month, I might have another animation that's kind of, uh, scary-ish, idk.