Okay, I'll still make it without your help, but it'll just end up taking 5 years instead of 1.

Yeah, I know it's been a while since my last news post (almost long enough for me to have made a movie apparently!!!)

And there are reasons for that, but I've been meaning to make a news post entirely dedicated to it, and I probably should have before this one, but I'm an idiot, and that's the big reason, but the other big reason is life, but that's a story for another day.

This news post is about Steamboat Willing.

What's Steamboat Willing? The name sure sounds awfully similar to that one 1928 animated short starring that one mouse.... Yes, Steamboat Willing is a "sequel" to Steamboat Willie, about Mickey getting shipwrecked on a mysterious island and winding up at the center of an ancient prophecy. How that makes sense, that's up to you to find out by watching it... but first it's gotta be funded!

I've thought about making a movie starring "the mouse" for a long time, hoping that one day Disney would actually let him slip into the public domain after trying so hard to keep it from happening, though I never really had an idea. And when things started falling into the public domain again on January 1st, 2019 after a 20 year freeze, it definitely seemed more likely that the mouse would fall too. And it just kept seeming more and more likely as time went on.

Then in 2021 while working in a factory, an idea finally came to me: Mickey gets caught in a storm and ends up shipwrecked on a mysterious island.

There was a little more to it than that, but that's a spoiler. The idea was simple, but there was definitely a lot of potential. How did it get to that point? What happens after? Ideas kept coming to me, and as long as Disney didn't pull some last minute strings, Steamboat Willie and all the characters and story elements introduced into it should become public domain in 2024, and it was only a few years away at that point.

Over the next year, more ideas came to me and in 2022 I finally decided to take all my loose ideas and try to structure them into a plot and eventually got a script wrote, and then kept refining it. I finally recorded scratch audio and started storyboarding the film last year. I currently have 12 minutes storyboarded, the entire first act, and with the rest of the audio roughly timed out, it's about 45 minutes long.

In fact, I've had 12 minutes storyboarded since December, I haven't actually been able to focus on storyboarding it anymore this year, I wanted to release the teaser February 1st, one month after Steamboat Willie fell into the public domain, but it took a bit longer than expected, and I was just busy working freelance among other things. I finally finished and released the teaser over a week ago though, and you can watch it on newgrounds here!

Didn't really seem to get much attention here, but hey, that's what this news post is for!

Alongside the teaser, I launched the kickstarter. Originally I wanted to put the teaser out on the 10th this month, and then launch the kickstarter in june or july alongside a different clip, because that's when I was under the impression my freelance gig would be wrapping up, but then I found out at the beginning of the month that it was in fact ending right now, as we were unknowingly cleaning up the last few remaining shots. So for a bit there I was scrambling to find a job, applying to everything I could, because my freelance gig was only paying just enough to afford my living expenses, and after getting fucked over by taxes, I have no savings from the last year of work.

I realized I couldn't do much about that right now anyways, I'd already applied to every job available I could physically get to, so I just had to wait. In the meantime I could still work on the teaser and try to get it out as soon as possible and just launch the kickstarter now, in hopes it's a success and earns enough for me to work on the film full time for a year. So I kept working on the teaser and finished it, a little later than expected, I think it was the 13th, and then I finished putting together the kickstarter, not realizing before that it would then take a couple days for it to get approved and be ready to actually launch. Indie Animation Day was also coming up on the 16th, so I know I needed to have it up no later than that, and ultimately I launched the kickstarter on the 15th, just in time to try to promote it some on the 16th.

Since launching the kickstarter, I've also released a few animatic clips, and will post the whole first act at some point before the campaign is over. The other clips are all on youtube if you're interested, doesn't feel right to upload animatics here.

I'm trying to raise $10,000 because my living expenses for a year are only ~$8,400, which after kickstarter fees and taxes comes out to needing about $10,000, and yeah, trying to animate 45 minutes in a year sounds crazy, but I managed to animate the last 4 minutes of FrogMan and Pico in 2 weeks while suffering from hives, so theoretically I could animate 8 minutes in a month, or 96 minutes in a year, so trying to do 45 minutes in the same amount of time should be more than doable. It's gonna be a hell workload, but I'm confident I can do it if I don't have to worry about anything other than making it.

So please, if you've been following me for a long time, or just started following recently, if you like my work or just like "the mouse" and wanna see a cool 2D animated movie starring him, please consider supporting Steamboat Willing on kickstarter! There's only 20 days left, and it's not looking great so far, but still better than I expected. I know it can reach the goal if I get the right eyes on it, I've seen several kickstarters make more than what I'm asking in a single day.

Thank you for reading, and I swear I'll make a news post about my absence two weeks from now!

Last month marked 10 years since I released FrogMan the Series into the world. I had a few plans to celebrate, though nothing as grandiose as I should do for such a momentous occasion.

Either way, those plans were: Upload the FMTS 10th Anniversary short on 9/1, the actual 10th anniversary, and then at some point in the month, upload a video entitled "The Origin and Future of FrogMan" and then make a news post talking about the 10th anniversary, and linking to these things. Obviously neither of these worked out. I got the 10th anniversary short done at some point in the month at least, so there's that.

What didn't get done though, was The Origin and Future of FrogMan.

I spent nearly 6 hours editing the audio, and spent maybe an hour or two editing the video, but quickly lost all motivation to continue because it was just taking away time from making cartoons, and I'd much rather be doing that.

I was just gonna scrap the video and maybe get back to it later, but since I had already spent so much time editing the audio, I thought, why not upload it as a podcast to newgrounds? Sure, I do reference a couple things that would've been shown in the visuals, but it doesn't really detract from it too much, so hopefully it works.

So here is The Origin and Future of FrogMan, the audio version. Below is the transcript if you wanna read along while listening. IIRC you can embed audio portal submissions in news posts and play them in page, but idk how to do it, so if I fucked it up, then whoops. If you can't actually, then fuck.

Transcript:

September 1st, 2010 was the day I first released FrogMan the Series into the world, although I had teased it for a bit before then. It's now September 2020, so in celebration of 10 years of FrogMan the Series, I wanna talk about the origins of the show, and what I want to do with it in the future. And although FrogMan the Series started in 2010, the FrogMan characters have been around a lot longer than that. FrogMan himself dates all the way back to 2003!

After the death of my first step father, some changes were made in my childhood home, shortly before losing it because my mom's name wasn't on the mortage or something. One of these changes was ripping up all the carpet. I don't know entirely why this was done, probably because they were stained with animal urine, but in doing so, the concrete underneith was exposed, and us children were given freedom to draw on the floors with chalk, which also perfectly coincided with the airing of the Nickelodeon show Chalk Zone, and so in the midst of drawing characters from the show and recreating scenes from the show, I created 3 original characters, all superheroes: Super Billy, his sidekick Pig Boy, and FrogMan.

Yeah, I never really thought about it until now, but I guess technically FrogMan is a Chalk Zone OC... godda-

So because I was still a small brained child who was more interested in making up stories with his toys, not much was really done with these characters, or maybe there was, but I can't remember. That kinda changed though, when my school did their annual young author's competition and all the students were given a small, hardback book with blank pages to write whatever story they wanted in it, and so of course now getting the chance to write an actual book, fresh off making these new characters, I absolutely made a story with them. Just kidding, instead I made a book called Monsters of the World, that had nothing to do with FrogMan, but it is the orign of the character Cheese, and his race the cheese monsters, as well as a few other races in the FrogMan world, including an alien species inspired by the snorks! And squidward too, probably.

Unfortunately I no longer have The Monsters of the World, so it's completely gone forever. It's understandable though since we moved a lot and stuff was lost all the time. Regardlesss, nothing ever really came of this, I didn't place in the contest or make a lot of money or anything, but it does live on in memory. I do remember one of the pages being very bloody, depicting the aftermath of a war between cat people and dog people, in which all the cat people were brutally killed, and showing this to the teacher. I don't remember their reaction though, probably an awkward laugh.

The next year though, in 2004, we once again had the young author's competition, and this year instead of just what was essentially a field guide to the citizens of some world, I decided to make an actual story, and one using FrogMan! And thus, The Adventures of FrogMan was born! And unlike Monsters of the World, this one I actually still have somehow!

The first in a 5 book series, it's nothing too special. It introduces FrogMan and his rival, the Terrible Toad, and explains a little bit about what goes on, but then oh no, an unknown villain shows up and kidnaps FrogMan!

Ah, but being an actual story this time, surely I placed in the contest and went on to get a book deal with a big publisher and made a lot of money? No, but I always told people I got 4th place, which I'm not sure if that was actually true or not. I can't imagine it was, but why would 9 year old me lie like that?

So obviously FrogMan went from being fairly family friendly, to being what it is now, and I don't know if I wanted the series to be explicit or not at first, but since it was made for school it had to be pretty clean anyways, but that didnt' stop me from putting blood in!!!

The only reason I bring this up, is because 2 years later I made the 2nd book, The Adventures of FrogMan 2, but this time it was made outside of school, and I made it significantly more adult, adding (censored) swearing, and (censored) nudity. And even though it was made outside of school, it was still one of the small, hardback books the school gave us to make the stories with. I don't remember how I got this, whether it was given to me the previous year and I never wrote a story with it, or if I just asked for it or I stole it or what, but it exists and I still have it!

Also fun fact: when I originally made it, the censored text was represented with symbols, inspired by Conker's Bad Fur Day, but then a while later I went in and edited it with white out and wrote over it to make the words bit clearer, but still censored, by replacing the vowels with dashes. Also I specifically remember asking my mom if I could put cussing in it since it wasn't being made for school. That's kind of adorable.

Oh, looking at it again, I actually made the decision to change the type of censoring after the first few pages, because the rest of it doesn't have the white out. Also something I noticed here and in the first book, is the speech bubbles are numbered. This was clearly done after the fact since it's in black pen, and the first book was done in pencil and this was done in blue pen for some reason. I don't remember these numbers being here though, and I certainly don't remember doing it myself! It reminds me of how for the cover of The Monsters of the World, someone drew a face on a roach monster, because I guess it got smeared away??? but it just looked really bad so what the heck!

I must've done this though, I can't imagine anyone else doing it, especially since these books haven't really left my side for the past decade and a half. Sure do love having memory problems thanks to depression.

So with The Adventures of FrogMan 1 getting made in 2004, and The Adventures of FrogMan 2 getting made in 2006, logically The Adventures of FrogMan 3 would get made in 2008, right? Well, it did! Or at least, part of it. But then it somehow got thrown out!!! Great. Epic. I don't know how that mistake gets made, but it definitely made me very mad. I eventually tried to start working on it again, but I only got as far as the title page, as I found out a few years ago when I found it inside a sketch book that one of my sisters had apparently held onto all this time, along with some early model sheets!

So I kinda just completely neglected to talk about the plot of The Advnetures of FrogMan 2, but really, nothing happens. FrogMan gets captured and taken to the villains lair, Bionic Bug leaves, and FrogMan escapes. And then he just goes on an uneventful adventure and eventually finds Pig Land, and, shockingly, a pig version of Pig Boy. Oh yeah, and he fights Terrible Toad again.

The Adventures of FrogMan 3 was gonna be a bit bigger, taking place in Pig Land and introducing us to Wise Frog and Toady, and probably Super Billy, I can't remember. I'm not sure what the villains were originally going to do in this issue, if they were even gonna do anything at all, but FrogMan was definitely gonna be training for the majority of it.

I'm talking vaguely about it because honestly I don't remember. Like I said, originally The Adventures of FrogMan was gonna have 5 books, but I honestly don't remember everything that was gonna happen, and I don't know what would've even filled those last two books. The only other big details I remember are that FrogMan was gonna join the side of evil, and then Wise Frog and Toady would have to convince him to come back to the side of good, and then he would, and then I think Toady joined the side of evil and then they had to get him to come back to the side of good because it turns out he was actually the most powerful of the frogs??? I guess that could fill 5 books, but it's just kinda redundant and stupid.

Looking at this page from the old FrogMan the Series Wiki, I had written down titles for The Adventures of FrogMan books, but they don't really do much to tell me what each was gonna be about. They did remind me though that Frogs of the Round Table started out as a book, and there was also a book called Frogman's Random Day that I completely forgot about and I guess is just lost forever. All I remember from it was it was made in 2007 and was inspired by the mortal kombat parody "Scorpion's Random Day".

Either way, in like 2009 or early 2010 I did have the whole story figured out, I think I wrote it down on paper somewhere, and I know for sure I made a big drawing depicting all the characters from The Adventures of FrogMan, and I think maybe even illustrating the order of events in the series??? I wish I still had this, but unfortuntately a lot of this early stuff is just lost, once again from moving so many times. At least I still have the 2 original books though, as well as these turnarounds and the cover for The Adventures of FrogMan 3. If you're curious to see the stories in full, in 2009 I uploaded a couple of videos in which I read the books as FrogMan, as well as another video in which he reads Science Books, a book I made in 7th grade starring a couple of characters that I would love to do more with but much like everything else I've made, the production has been rocky.

Eventually I'd like to scan the books and just dump the pages online so everyone can witness the cringe, but until that day, FrogMan Reads will have to do!

So like I said, there were supposed to be 5 books in the series, and I had everything planned out, so would I ever actually finish the story? I guess I had intended to, but since my main interest started leaning toward animation, I guess I was just gonna reboot the whole series into cartoons, because at some point I started adapting The Adventures of FrogMan into scripts!

I don't have the original copies of these scripts anymore, so windows says they were created in 2014 and last modified in 2012, but I'm pretty sure I started these in 2009 or 2010. By that point I had definitely started doing non Adventures of FrogMan things with the characters, including a christmas special I wrote in 2009, which I have the script for that also says it was made in 2012, so I don't trust these dates at all.

Also I forgot to mention in 6th grade I made The Adventures of FrogMan .5, a prequel to The Adventures of FrogMan in which FrogMan eats breakfast. The only significant thing about it is it introduces the character Toast, who was briefly seen in episode 2 of FrogMan the Series, esentially recreating his first appearance, before being eaten by Terrible Toad. Yay, more lost media.

Anyways, the scripts I wrote differ pretty significantly from the books. The first script doesn't differ too much from the orignal, aside from a few dialogue changes, including an honestly better pun, also more blood, but still as family friendly as the original! No, I did not go back and retroactively add in any profanity, well except for this descriptive bit.

The biggest change comes from having a physical narrator, which I remember being a little iffy on to begin with, but I wasn't sure what else to do since the descriptive parts were such a big part of the original books, so it just made sense. It also lacks the best feature of the original, being that the last 5 pages just state "blank page" but it does have a similarly lame teaser for the next book. Fun fact: The original title for the Adventures of FrogMan 2 was going to be FrogMan and the Bionic Bug, but as you can see here, it was clearly changed to FrogMan escapes, and The Adventures of FrogMan 3 was originally titled The Sidekick, but was then changed to FrogMan and Toady, so it's kinda like the opposite. Now you might be wondering why I decided to change this, well (trailes off)

Speaking of The Adventures of FrogMan 2, The differences between the original and this script are staggering! I actually learned how to spell censor! I still mispelled clothes though, but almost. Also all of the profanity is gone, escept for this one line for some reason. Also yes, for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to just blatantly make FrogMan's parents Homer and Marge Simpson, even though it makese no sense.

I think originally this was just gonna be a subtle nod with the designs, but then I decided to be blatant about it after the fact since in the original, the speech bubbles showing this are clearly drawn with a different pen, but then the rest of the book is as well so maybe not???

Either way, It's interesting to see that I decided to revert it to a more family friendly tone again, and it's also just really meta, mostly in a cringe way. Also most of the dialogue is straight up the same, and where there are deviations they're kinda worse, like Terriblee Toad's introductory line. I felt the brief "I said there'd be a round 2" in the original worked well and kept the pacing tight, and while I appreciate the expanded world building the new line has, it really just bogs everything down and it's not very well executed.

Also this script lacks the inventive "how to draw frogman" section the orignal had. Yeah, turns out The Adventures of FrogMan 2 was longer than The Adventures of FrogMan, since it lacked the iconic 5 blank pages, and instead had a 1 page how to draw, and then the reverse of the back cover had a space for comments, which I got from my friends and family. Fun fact, the person who the book is dedicated to, was the most critical, rightfully so.

Also it's lacking the back cover's about the author section which is also primo cringe and apparently my sister wrote her name all over it at some point and tried to cover it up with white out and thought I wouldn't notice. Spoiler alert: I noticed.

Lastly, while the scripts for The Adventures of FrogMan 1 and 2 might differ somewhat, the script for The Adventures of FrogMan 3 is exactly the same as the original, in that it's only a title page. Good job me, the story is lost forever.

Reading these scripts again though, maybe they were written later than I thought. The way they're written is definitely post-2009, since the spelling and grammar are halfway decent, and The Adventures of FrogMan 2 changes this assassin dude to Shade, who I'm pretty sure I didn't properly design until I was planning the FrogMan the Series Movie, which I completed the first draft script for in 2012, so who knows, maybe these were written in 2012, though I think it's more likely to be late 2011, who knows.

Speaking of FrogMan the Series, that's what happened after this. After a few attempts to bring back and finish The Adventures of FrogMan, I decided to just go ahead and just make something else with the characters. Like I said before, I had alrady been doing this for a bit, as can be seen in some of my earlier uploads, so I guess a sitcom was just the natural next step. I say sitcom, because, let's be honest that's what it really is, but in the show itself it's referred to as a reality show, because it's supposd to be FrogMan's real life, so I guess it's kinda both? I only called it a reality show at the time because I had just started watching drawn together and that was marketed as the first animated reality show, and I was like "I wanna do that too!!!!!!!!!!" so I did.

But yes, FrogMan the Series was first released to the world on September 1st, 2010, but it had been developing for a while before that. I'm not sure of the exact date of conception, but it at least dates back to february of 2010, where I uploaded "frogman fight scene", a look at what could be a potential frogman series, and then a few months later I made the FrogMan the Series pilot, for the 8th grade talent show. Unfortunately, you'll never guess, it's lost! Although you're not missing much because it was just episode 1 with all the swearing and subplot with the villains removed, and drawn in microsoft paint, it is unfortunate. There's still hope it can one day be found though. it was burned to a dvd so Alex still might have it, or he might have the original files on an old hard drive somewhere, I know I've seen it. At the very least, the audio for it has bene preserverd thanks to a recording of the talent show. Unfortunately the visuals are gone though because whoever filmed this didn't bother to check if they could actually see the screen it was being projected on.

I don't even know how the pilot got lost. I've literally got everything else from that time, i've got all the original images for LEGO Land for god's sake, but I don't have the FrogMan the Series pilot, or the short cartoon I made before that to audition for the talent show. To get a better idea of what it looked like though, just imagine the quality of Attack of the Squirrel King but it's episode 1 of FrogMan the series condensed into 2 minutes.

Either way, while I didn't win the talent show, I don't know how the pilot was pretty good, I told everyone the actual series would be premiereing later in the year, and over the summer, I started working on it. I can't remember when exactly I started working on it, but I know episode 1 and 2 were done before school started, and I think episode 2 was finished in july??? I'm not sure, I wanna say school started in august, but I remember episode 1 premiering shortly after school started so that conflicts with that, and I don't remember how long episode 3 took to make, but I know it didn't make the original deadline and instead was released in november, and as we all know, that trend kept happening.

Yes, FrogMan the Series was planned as a series with weekly episodes, I thought I could get a 10 minute cartoon done every week, and maybe I did for the first two episodes, but I can't remember. Clearly episode 3 took longer, but its production was also different, I switched to flash halfway through, and yeah it was very jarring, but ultimately it was for the better. The program I was using before, Anime Studio, was very limiting, but unfortunately when I made the switch back to flash, I brought most of my workflow with me, and that meant very stilted, cut-out style animation.

Which is funny considering I kinda knew how frame by frame animation worked before working in anime studio, as is evidenced by attack of the squirrel king and the FrogMan the Series pilot, but I didn't remember this again until halfway through production of episode 5. Episode 4, although the drawings were better, I guess I just got lazy and decided to only have key poses and not even do any tweens, and then in episode 5 I went back to tweens, but then tried doing a bit more limited frame by frame, and then after that point I swore off tweens forever, especially after making the first FrogMan the series short, Frogs of the Round Table, a remake of a 2009 short I made, also called Frogs of the Round Table, which caused some confusion when I told my 9th grade art teacher to look up FrogMan the Series on youtube before it was out, because I titled the short FrogMan Mini-series: Frogs of the Round Table, and it was the only thing that showed up because the series proper wasn't out yet.

But yes, as fate would have it, the weekly episodes were not meant to be. In fact, any consistency wasn't meant to be. Even full episodes, ultimately, weren't meant to be.

Maybe if my dad hadn't died at the end of 2010 things would've gone differently, but there were many factors at play as to why the episodes were delayed so much. Like I said, episode 3 came out in november 2010, not such a bad delay in the long run, but then episode 4 didn't come out until may of 2011. Though to be fair, I also made a music video starring the FrogMan characters in january of 2011, but we don't talk about that.

After that I swore it wouldn't be that long of a wait for episode 5, I even started it shortly after completing episode 4. And then it didn't come out until june of 2012. And then I swore there wouldn't be another long wait for episode 6, which I started shortly after finishing episode 5. And then it didn't come out until april of 2016, but that's already pretty common knowledge.

What's also pretty common knowledge is that in 2012 I started making FrogMan the Series shorts! They were pretty sparse at first, but as the years went on it ws clear there was going to be more of them than full episodes, at least until I could actually produce full seasons.

What isn't pretty common knowledge though, is that there were actually THREE versions of episode 6. Two versions, sure, some people probably knew that, since I uploaded The Lost Episode, but there actually was a version before that that I started almost immedaitely after episode 5, I think I only had one frame done, or at least the first shot, and it looked very bad and was terible so I deleted it and started over.

And then until the end of 2012 I was working on the new version of episode 6, and then I couldn't work on it any longer because my computer died and I had no access to the file. I eventually got a new computer and eventually got access to the file again, but I didn't finish it up for some reason. I guess I just didn't feel the urge to. I had started working on other things at that point, but part of me still wanted to do FrogMan, so in 2014 I made the decision to scrap what I had of episode 6 again, and start over, because the animation was just so much worse and different at that point to really be usable, and I wasn't 100% satisfied with the script either, so I rewrote some stuff, recorded the lines with alex, and begain animating, and I got two scenes finished, and then once again stopped working, until late 2015 when I had no internet and was alone and afraid and had nothing else to do or seek comfort from, so I opened a scene from episode 6 for the first time in over a year and just started animating. And it felt good. And then I animated more scenes, and then finally, in april of 2016, I finished episode 6, and although the quality is really inconsistent, it felt so good to finally get that out and off my back, but now, I felt no urge to work on episode 7. Since it's the last part of the vacation trilogy, I re-wrote and recorded voices back to back with episode 6. But now episode 6 was done and I had no urge to work on the next one. And honestly, I still don't.

Since starting FrogMan the Series, I've had so many more ideas for series and shorts and movies that I want to do way more, and I'm way more passionate about. It sucks, because for the longest time, FrogMan the Series was all I wanted to make, and I have so many ideas for episodes and movies and all these spin offs and everything, I've got 10 seasons worth of ideas, 120 total episodes and 3 movies. There's some really good, deep, personally meaningful episodes in the later seasons that I'm really proud of that I would love to make, but I'd have to make a ton of episodes before hand to even get to that point, and I just don't wann do it. Maybe I will one day.

The closest thing I have an urge to work on that's related to FrogMan the Series is a spinoff starring Toady called Pollywogs, which I started as a comic in 2015, and said I would revive this year but havn't, though maybe I have by the time this video's out, I don't know.

Pollywogs was originally conceived as an animated series, lasting 3 seasons for a total of 36 episodes, and the comic was cancelled because that's what it should be. Animated. The story takes place between seasons 7 and 8 of FrogMan the Series, so logically I shouldn't make it until after season 7 of FrogMan the Series, but just like all the episodes of that that I truly care about, I'd have to make so much before I can even get to that point, but since Pollywogs is a spinoff I could just do it at any point, but there's still a few other projects I care more about that I wanna get done before that.

Another spinoff for FrogMan the Series I wrote but never actually made, is Lame Villains, a 6 episode series starring the villains, written because it had been a few years since I had got to animate them, and it would still be a few more since they don't appear again until like episode 9 I think??? Either way, I started planning the series in 2014, and it still hasn't been made so so much for that. One day though.

In addition to the episodes, shorts, and spinoffs, in 2015 I also released FrogMan and Pico, a 12 minute animated short film that takes place within the FrogMan the Series canon, but isn't an episode, so I guess it's just a special.

I started FrogMan and Pico in 2013, and it took 2 years to make, although I took pretty big breaks from it here and there so it was probably only around 8 months of actual work. Either way, it's my longest cartoon, and probably still the one I'm proud of the most. But, that will change one day.

And as of making this video, the most recent thing related to Frogman the Series to come out, as the 10th anniversary special short, unless I didn't actually finish it in time, in which case, boy this is awkward.

But of course, every original cartoon I make takes place in the FrogMan universe, the FrogMan Cinematic Universe, or FMCU if you will, so technically everything I make is related to FrogMan, except for the few cases where it isin't... uh

There would've also been another short earlier this year that I actually started in 2017, but I once again couldn't finish that because of stupid crap, so that'll come out next year.

So that's the past and present of FrogMan, but what about the future?

Well, honestly, and I hate to say this, I think I'm kinda done with FrogMan the Series at this point. It's been over 4 years since episode 6 came out, and I still feel no urge to work on episode 7, and if I did, I'd have to re-record all the voices anyways, and that's a lot of work. I thought about rebooting the seires at one point, because I could do the first few episodes so much better now, and ultimately that just might be what happens. I'm still not 100% on that.

What is 100% certain though is that there will be more FrogMan the Series shorts, though maybe not too frequent. I've got a ton of ideas and scripts for them, but again, there's so many more cartoons I wanna make, but 1 or two a year is perfectly doable, especially for anniversarys.

The biggest thing though, is that I still wanna finish The Adventures of FrogMan. Yes, the biggest anime twist in history, except not really. Obviously I don't remember all the specifics of the origianl story, but I remembered enough to try and piece together some kind of adaptation of it, and over the period of a couple years, I did. From november 2013 to some time in 2014, I fleshed out a plot outline for a feature-length FrogMan origin story, and in 2014 it was finally finished. The story for The Adventures of FrogMan was finally finished, at least, in some form.

All the redundent stuff was removed, but it was still pretty bloated and messy just because there was so much going on, and so it was further refined. Either way, I had the bulk of the story figured out, and I drew up a poster, which I still like, though it'll definitely need to be remade now 'cause the art's pretty old, and I'm probably gonna end up going with a drastically differnet art style for the final film, and some characters have ended up taking on a smaller role, but yes, at some point, The Adventures of FrogMan will be adapted into a feature-length origin film, simply titled FrogMan.

According to windows, the first draft of the script was finished in november of 2017, though I'm not entirely sure how accurate that is, but I do remember sitting on it for a few years and then finally writing the whole script out in one 16 hour sitting, so maybe.

And then until as recently as april of 2019 I continued to refine the script, adding and removing scenes as I saw fit, and now it's at a place where I'm mostly happy with it. I was happier with it last year, but now looking at it again I'm not so sure. I mean, it was never meant to be a masterpiece, it was never going to be, at best my hopes were the story was a 6/10 but the fight scenes are cool enough to keep you engaged, but it can always be improved, and maybe I'll go back and do more refining before I actually start working on it, which I'm not sure when it will actually be, but I would love to have the film done before I'm 30, so I've got 5 years.

I wanted to have it done before I was 25, but considering I still haven't started and I couldn't even make 10 episodes of FrogMan the Series in 10 years, the odds are pretty unlikely that that will actually happen.

Who knows though.

And that's just the FIRST FrogMan oirigin film. Oh what, you think this story could simply be told in a single film? Of course not. Well, the original story could, but as I developed it more, and thought about the world building, I had so many ideas and suddenly I had a film trilogy on my hands, and I've even got a few ideas for a fourth film, but that one's less likely to happen since it's not 100% important for the l o r e.

Also just to clarifiy, earlier I said there are 3 FrogMan the Series movies planned. These are unrelated to that, so tht's SIX whole movies just related to FrogMan, though these ones are kind of a different canon but not really. And of course, if the original story of The Adventures of FrogMan is the first film, then what's the story of the other two films if FrogMan the Series takes place immediately after the end of The Adventures of FrogMan and these Films aren't necessarily part of that? Well, all I'll say right now is that the true origins of FrogMan take place long before The Adventures of FrogMan, so it would only make sense that the other films would take place further back in the past. How much further? Well, you'll find out eventually. Hopefully.

And there you have it, the origins, and future of FrogMan, a 17 year old journey that still isn't finished, where there will be many more adventures to have. Some sooner than later, and some later than sooner.

And that was more poetic than anything else I've written that's related to FrogMan.

Oh god I only have 1k more characters in this post because of the transcript and I had so much more I wanted to say FUCK

uh...

Well, yeah, idk

I still don't know how to feel. I'm just trying to continue to work on cartoons at this point, because I can. I'm not using my time fully though, but I'll say more about that in my next news post. I wanted to make a news post talking about how shit this year has been, but I kept putting it off 'cause I knew this one was coming, and well, then it was over a month late, but you know what? it be like that sometimes

Also I still haven't got around to finishing the Pollywogs Revival comic, every time I open the file I just can't bring myself to do it. Maybe after I finish this halloween cartoon I can though, who knows.

Either way, happy 10 years FrogMan the Series. You've had a troubled history, but the journey isn't quite over yet.

Fuck I wanted to say so much more, I'll do a followup post if people want

Yeah, so my last news post on here was for the 10th anniversary of my Newgrounds account, which was in 2018, which means I did not make a single news post throughout all of 2019, despite having many chances and much to talk about. I just kept putting it off for whatever reason, and even when I made an update video in January, I still put off making a news post, 'cause I didn't just wanna copy-paste my bullet list I used as a guide for the update video and then link the update video and be like "listen to it if you want!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" 'cause it would feel disingenuous, and even at this point linking it wouldn't be much use because a lot of it is just inaccurate now because so much time has passed that things I talked about that I wanted to get out at certain times just haven't come out and aren't coming out, but it's still worth watching at least to know what I was up to in 2019, I guess.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68oS73m0VwI

If you wanna just skip to 2019 in review, go to 9:53, if not though, all you really need to know is I didn't get a lot of creative work done due to a mix of working two jobs, one being full time, for a few months, plus depression, as always.

So what happened to the stuff I said would come out in January and February? Well, I ended up getting sick at the end of January, and I continued to be sick for pretty much all of February. The worst of the sickness lasted for 2 weeks, but i was still recovering/mildly sick for another two weeks, in which time I didn't get anything done because I was horribly depressed, and then after finally getting to be productive for two days in a row, I got sick again, and I think I'm finally better now? My sinuses still feel a little fucked at times, but I feel good enough to get back to work, so I should probably do that before I get horribly depressed again. Oh wait, I already am :'(

Anyways, today is my 25th birthday, and surprise, I didn't manage to get any big project done before it, so much like not losing my virginity before 18, I am a complete failure!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nah, but I am gonna try harder now to really get shit done. For a while now I've considered 25 the real start of adulthood (because that's apparently when your brain becomes fully developed) so it's time to actually get my shit together. Too bad the days leading up to this (and really the whole year so far) has been shit. I don't wanna go into specifics 'cause it's just the same old family bullshit that keeps getting brought back up because it was never resolved, but suffice to say I've been feeling pretty fucking dead lately. I've lost count of how many mental breakdowns I've had since the new year. I swear my mental health has been rapidly declining and it's just another sign that I need to get the fuck out of my step-dad's house as soon as possible, so all the more reason to get my shit together ASAP.

There's a lot of shit that's getting in the way of this though. I've applied for probably over 100 jobs since moving back here, and none of them will hire me, though I did get two interviews that I thought went well, but one of them required an actual driver's license and I only have a permit so I couldn't get that, and that job was 5 minutes away from my house so it would've been perfect. So why don't I just get my driver's license? Well, because I've never driven. I only just got my learner's permit last year, because I figured it was time and I didn't just want to go straight for the license because I didn't have any driving experience, and although I did so well on the written driving test that I didn't even have to finish it (I didn't get a single question wrong so I guess I just automatically got a high enough score to pass), actually driving is a different story, and I didn't want to waste any more money potentially failing it because I've never driven, so I got the permit as a stepping stone, intending to get some driving experience in and eventually get the license. But then I never got a chance to drive before having to move back into my step-dad's house, because my roommate was always too busy to let me drive his car. I figured my step-dad would surly let me drive his van though, he'd get to experience the joy of teaching his (step) son how to drive. I was stupid to think this. I was stupid to think my step-dad could ever act like a normal fucking human being with any compassion or empathy. Maybe there is some hope though. I figure the reason he won't let me drive the van is because I'm not on the insurance, so simple solution: get on the insurance. I'm gonna need to be making more money before I can do that though, so you can see why this shit is so frustrating. Everything's a never-ending cycle of the same shit.

So in order to help with this, and just to try and stop being such a leech, soon I'm going to attempt to finally be a freelance artist and start doing commissions. I intended to start doing this LAST month, but you know, then I got sick all fucking month. So this month that will start. Probably.

I feel like I had more to say, but I've lost my train of thought again so whatever, I guess I said enough for now. Maybe I'll finally take advantage of the fact that I can post these on the front page every 2 weeks and actually make another news post two weeks from now. Or maybe I'll go another year, who knows.

The only birthday wish that matters

old shitty art I made expressing my love for Newgrounds

So today my Newgrounds account turned 10.  I was writing up a big post in a similar vein to my 5 year post, looking at all the stuff I made in that time and the life stuff that happened around it, but honestly?  It was tiring, and it just felt unnecessary.  I should be working on stuff instead of writing a bunch of nonsense at 7am, even if it's a special day.  Idk, maybe I'm just not in the right mindset right now.  It's great to look back and see how far I've come, but there's also a lot of stuff I don't remember, and most of the life stuff I DO remember is pretty shit and I kinda don't want to relive it right now, so instead, I'll just be glad that Newgrounds is still around and actually thriving for once thanks to tumblr's implosion, really brought a smile to my face seeing all this unfold.  Also all the porn has been a nice bonus I guess.

Maybe I will make that big news post with all the garbage I was writing down though, but right now isn't the right time I feel.  Maybe I should've started writing that post days ago like I planned to.  Oh well, here's to another 10 years!

...Fuck I'll be 33... But I'll also be a lot better off!!!!!

Also I forgot to mention it last time, but I released a new AU Reviews after 2 years, and it's the longest one yet, but I think it remains consistently entertaining throughout, so check it out if you want.

IDK what you'll see from me for the rest of the year, it's been hard to find the drive to actually work on things with being so exhausted from work and also having to deal with depression, but I'm close to finishing a 15 second cartoon and an EP, so I hope I can get those out at least.  I'm also working on a super secret thing I probably can't talk about and that's due on the 31st so we'll see how that goes.  I might talk about it in the new year if I'm feeling confident enough!!!!!!!!

And now I slumber.

I wanted to make this post on Halloween, but I'm an idiot so whoops!!!

First off, before I get into the meat of this post, for Halloween I released a short film I started making in 2016, The Chicken Choker.  It's only on youtube because it's live action, although I know that is allowed on Newgrounds, and maybe I should've uploaded it here since one of the characters is a puppet and there's even some animation, but I just felt like there were too many issues with it, the camera quality and acting aren't very good, but I still think it's pretty funny and I'm glad it's finally done and out.

I did upload the soundtrack on Newgrounds though, as well as the credits song.

And now some quick followups to the last news post.

-I got my GED!!!

Pretty quickly in fact.  Also it turns out I'm not as much of an idiot as I thought, because I scored high enough on some of the tests to get college credit, so that's cool.

-album

I did finally end up putting out my FAWM Album, originally called Fap All Wankin' Month, renamed to Rehash, because it was more thematically fitting.

You can listen to it on Newgrounds, youtube, or bandcamp.  The bandcamp version has commentary on each track, as well as instrumental and demo versions of each track when you download.  The youtube version is also nice because there's no pauses between songs so it flows how I intended, though I guess you could also get the same effect if you download the newgrounds versions and play them in media player or something, though maybe the newgrounds playlist also works like that (nope just checked there's a slight delay between songs, dammit Tom!!!)

All right, onto the bulk of this post.

My plans for the rest of the year have once again changed because... wait for it... I got a job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah, turns out I AM capable of working, who'd have thought.  I applied to a ton of jobs, and I even got an interview at Chipotle, but none of those went anywhere, until one day I decided to check one of the "matched jobs" that Indeed kept sending, and it seemed like something I could do so I applied, and then the next day they said they wanted me to apply in person, so I did, and then like a day later they called me back saying I had a shift available.  What the heck how did that go so smoothly!!!!

So the job title is "event staff" but basically it's just janitorial work before, during, and after events in the Orlando area, so it's pretty interesting, I'm constantly working a new job essentially.  I've worked at 5 (I think?) venues so far, though it's mostly been at 2, but each time is different.

I've been working since October 13th.  It's only 2 to 4 days a week, and the shifts are only 4 to 8 hours, but every shift has been pleasent and it's been (mostly) keeping me distracted from my bad thoughts and I've been making money so it's good.  I actually feel fufilled for once.  I feel like I have a purpose again.  Getting to and from work has been a pain in the ass though, if my roommate can't take me then I have to waste serveral hours on a bus, or waste a lot of money on an Uber to get there faster.

I also got a bank account, because oh yeah now that I have money I kinda need one of those, huh?

The whole process of setting it up was a huge pain in the ass, I really should've set it up BEFORE I got employed, but you know me, if I don't think I need something at that moment in time, then I don't need it.  Except I did because boy it would've made things a lot less stressful.  So it turns out that I actually had FIVE paychecks waiting fo rme when I finally went to pick them up, totaling like $320,  from the 6 shifts I had done up to that point.  I still couldn't cash them though because although I did have the bank account, I didn't know the account number so I couldn't actually use it.  The bank was supposed to send it in the mail.  They never did.  They did send the debit card though, which I couldn't activate because I needed the account number to do that!!!  After way too long, my roommate finally just took me to the bank (10 minute drive vs 1 hour walk) and I got everything sorted out, however I still can't do the online banking because every time I try to set it up something just fails so now I gotta call them.

Anyways, that's enough ranting about the bank.  I've still got plenty of things to do.  Next thing up is getting my driver's license and saving up for a car, because that would save so much time and money getting to work, and then I'll be pretty much fully independent, which will be great.

I was fearing this for a while, that I wouldn't be cut out for the real world, that I wouldn't be able to hold a job, but that fear is slowly going away.  I work hard and try to not fuck things up, and my employer has even said they really appreciate me, which feels weird but it makes me feel good.  At any moment that fear could still be realized though.  I could do something to fuck it all up, or maybe I'll crash and burn, but for now, things are good and they're going well and I feel good.

I am a little worried at the moment though, because I was supposed to work a 9 hour shift yesterday, but I decided it was best not to, since my wrist was hurting really bad after my last two shifts, and if I did work that other shift, I know for a fact the pain would've only gotten worse and then there wouldn't be enough time to recover before the next shift.  And I really didn't want to risk the pain getting worse, because what if it lead to something really bad to where I can no longer use my righ thand?  Then I wouldn't be able to draw and fuck knows that wouldn't be good. 

I guess I shouldn't worry too much about not working that shift, since I told them before hand that I couldn't do it and they seemed cool with it, and since all of the shifts are optional anyways, it probably doesn't matter, but I can't help but feel I've let them down.  They did change my schedule to give me that shift specifically, and I couldn't do it.  I shouldn't think like that though, nothing good will come of it.

Also, the thing I hate most about working is now I have less time to work on creative projects, and I'm too tired to work during the time I can, but now I have the drive to work on creative stuff again, but I can't.  Hopefully this will be a wake up call though, if I ever do get all the time in the world again, I won't take it for granted.  God I miss just being able to make things, and it really fucking sucks because I wasted a lot of time this year just wallowing in depression.  Nothing I can do about that though other than just make sure I'm using my time better in the future and not succumbing to the depression.

And now for my new plans for the rest of the year!!!!

Since there was no way I was gonna be able to do the rest of AU Reviews this year, I had decided to just do 2 more for now and save the rest for next year, but now I'm not doing anymore this year, instead I'm doing 2 more cartoons, plus another one that's a bit more special, and is going to take a bit of time so it probably won't actually be out this year.

One of those cartoons is a video game parody (oh no) and the other is kinda like my Retsupurae animation, only not Retsupurae and a lot shorter, but it's the same sorta idea, making a cartoon out of dialog from a youtube video.

And the special cartoon is a music video, I believe I referred to this in my last news post as a "super secret music video" which it still is, though I'll spill the beans a little bit.  It stars some characters from a series I've been developing called "Pollywogs", which started off as a comic here on Newgrounds, but I always wanted to do it as an animated series, and I lost interest in doing it as a comic, so now it will be a series again, but it won't happen for a long time.

The music video isn't necessarily part of the series though, but it does detail some events that happen in it at least, and it stars these guys:

Old-ass designs from 2016

Joey and Lophat have the biggest roles though, and I started refining their designs a while ago, and I was even posting some art on twitter.  I'll just include it here for convenience though.

Joey Design comparison - 2016 vs 2018

Lophat design comparison - 2016 vs 2018

And here's some shitty drawings I did while trying to refine their designs:

I'll get around to designing the other two at some point.  Not right now though because my wrist still kinda hurts.  I probably shouldn't be typing this much.

And finally, I still plan to get an EP out by the end of the year.  All the instrumentals are done and I've got temp vocals, and 2 of the tracks are already 100% done, but idk if I'll have time to record the final vocals for the rest of the songs.  Hopefully though.

Also there might just be something to celebrate the 8th anniversary of FMTS after all.  It's not going to be anything too special, but it will be something at least.

And that's something.

Today marks the 8th anniversary of FrogMan the Series, and I have nothing to celebrate it with lmao!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not too big of a deal though, this isn't the first time this has happened.  I did have a few things in mind to celebrate this year, but they couldn't get done in time, maybe there will be some kind of celebration by the end of the month though, idk.

Plus it's not like anyone cares about FMTS anyways!!!!!!!!!!1

Also I put out a Zelda cartoon, you should go watch it, I spent way too fucking long on it.

Speaking of, I always try to put a wall of text in the description, talking about the production history and my thoughts on it, and once again I couldn't fit all of it in the description because I don't know when to shut up, so now I'm just gonna copy-paste what I wrote here.

Holy fuck did this take forever.  I started this back in March of 2017, and no it didn't take over a year to make a two minute cartoon, but when I think about it, it feels like it still took 4 or 5 months of solid work, at least, there were a few spans of a couple weeks where I was working on this non-stop, including the last month, and I don't understand how I spent so long on a just barely two minute cartoon, though tbf a lot of the animation here is on 1's (just because of how fast a lot of it is) so that might have to do with it.  It didn't feel like I spent too long on the animation though, but my perception of time is pretty fucked so maybe I did, I don't know.

Anyways, clearly the production history of this was a nightmare, there's no reason it should've taken this long.  I started it back in March and figured I would finish it in March, 'cause that's when Breath of the Wild came out, but I couldn't, for a few reasons, the first being that I was busy filming a live action series that still hasn't seen the light of day, and then also my laptop got dead, but that was quickly taken care of.  After that, I kept going back and forth between projects and then eventually I put a teaser for this out, expecting to finish it some time soon, but then I stopped working on it again, and then that was it for a while.  I went and worked on a bunch of other things, only finishing a few.

And then we get to this year, where I couldn't bring myself to work on anything, so all the plans I had for the year had to be thrown out, multiple times.  I kept trying to work on many things, but couldn't get very far because I couldn't bring myself to work.  Since I had been in a similar mood before in 2015, where I couldn't work on anything and just decided to start working on FMTS again after a year, and then did nothing but work on FMTS 6 until it was done, and I realized that's what I wanted to work on all along, so I figured there must be something I really want to work on, since I couldn't bring myself to work on anything else.  I thought that thing would be Gripp, an animated mini-series that's very personally meaningful to me.  So I started working on it, and it ended up like everything else, I gave up just after starting because I couldn't bring myself to work further.  And then I decided to go back to the zelda cartoon.  And I could work on it.  For whatever stupid fucking reason, this was the cartoon I wanted to work on, maybe because it was left unfinished for so long, just like FMTS 6.  So I worked on it, and for 5 or 6 months, I put out no new cartoons.  I didn't work on it consistently over those 5 months, because I always fell back into that slump.  I never truly felt like I was 100% depressed though, I mean, I thought I was depressed, but I wasn't entirely sure, but these past few months, something changed.  I felt different.  Every waking second that wasn't spent occupying myself with some mindless activity, I was overcome with immense sadness, seemingly out of nowhere.  I'm still undiagnosed, but that change, with the feeling lasting for well over a month now, plus my shit memory, definitely makes me more confident that's what's actually going on.  I should really go to the doctor about that, but that costs money.

Anyways, after way too long, this cartoon is finally done.  And honestly?  I don't know how to feel about it.  I wanted to make it the best it could be since it had been so long, but in the end, I decided to not shade the whole thing, and even skimp out on some animation, because it would have been at least another month if I had, and I shouldn't be spending this much time on a stupid zelda cartoon.  Also I tried scoring this myself, instead of using music from the game, out of fear of Nintendo  smacking me down for copyright, and I don't know how to feel about the music.  It isn't great, but I think it gets the job done and doesn't detract from it at least.

With all that said, hopefully people still enjoy this, so it makes the time spent working on it worth it.  If not, well then whatever, I've got more important things to work on anyways.

And from the looks of it, I'd say people are enjoying it ;3

Also, in other news, I have some plans for the rest of the year! (oh no!!!!!!!)

Basically, all I plan to put out for the rest of the year, is

• an album
• 8 new AU Reviews
• a super secret music video
• and maybe an EP

Hopefully I can pull it off!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Also I moved, and am now working to get my GED, because I forgot that was a thing lmao.

Okay, that's it I guess.  I should probably post these more often, but then if I did that, I probably wouldn't have so much to talk about.

Maybe that's a good thing though.

I haven't wanted to be an animator all my life, not even an artist.  I don't know what I wanted to do when I was really young, I mostly just played with toys and didn't care about much else, but the art thing just kinda happened naturally.  I started drawing, because it was another thing to do, and I guess I liked it enough to pursue it further, to the point where in school I was the "artist" in the class, despite my drawings not actually being very good (they still aren't now tbh), but I was drawing, so I was an artist.

During these years, I don't remember exactly what I drew, I know there were a few characters I ended up making between the age of 5-9, characters that I've held onto all these years and will eventually do more with them (one being FrogMan, who I have done a lot with but we'll get to that later).  The other thing I remember drawing a lot as a kid, was the only cartoon I would make fan art of, Spongebob. I don't remember how long I was drawing Spongebob as a kid, but I was also drawing some original stuff around then too, including the first "Adventures of FrogMan" book. It's interesting, that Spongebob is the only cartoon I would draw as a kid, 'cause it really doesn't show up in my current art style, unlike a lot of other artists who were heavily inspired by cartoon art styles; they can still draw original content well though, unlike me.  I can actually draw the Spongebob characters pretty decently now though, so something did come of it.

That's all pretty unrelated to the topic at hand though, at least, mostly unrelated.  I did briefly mention FrogMan in that, and that's the topic, and we'll get to it, but I feel the need to give as much context as possible to help make the situation easier to understand.  Maybe it’s not needed, but eh, I don’t get to write a lot anyways, so… yeah.

At some point between 2004-2006 (I don't remember when exactly) I was introduced to Newgrounds.  I had been browsing the internet for a bit before, because we finally had dial up (wow), and I was mostly just going on LEGO.com, but once I found Newgrounds, I couldn't stay off of it.  A few years later, I realized that the stuff on Newgrounds was actually made by individual people, and not some corporate entity, and that was cool man, and super motivating. I had been trying to find more ways of furthering my "art" beyond crappy pencil drawings, or even worse MS Paint drawings, and I had discovered the art of Brick Films recently, so it seemed like animation was a good way to progress.

But I didn't start animating until a few years later.  I don't remember why it took so long. I guess I didn't understand that flash animations were made in flash, and I didn't know how to make cartoons, so it probably just took me awhile to figure things out.  So I made crappy "cartoons" in MS Paint. Fantastic.

I've already talked about that period of my life many times though, and that's not what this is about.  This is about FrogMan.

In 2004, I made the first FrogMan book, at the age of 9.  It ended on a cliffhanger, because I somehow planned out a 5 book series, but I completely forgot the original plan for that, or what the thought process even was, but 2 years later, in 2006 I made the 2nd book, and in 2008, 2 years after that I started the 3rd book, but it was never finished, and what I had done accidentally got thrown out, so it was lost to the ages, but I did remember most of what the story was supposed to be.  After that point though, I have no idea what the story was supposed to be, other than a few major plot points, but I don't know how I would've gotten 2 more books out of it.

By 2009 though, I had fully gotten into animation.  I was making pretty decent garbage with paint, and here I had an unfinished series of books, that I kinda cared about.  This character had been with me since 2003 at the earliest after all. And so I started writing scripts for a possible animated adaptation of the Adventures of FrogMan series.  When I got to book 3 again though, I couldn't finish it. Because I didn't know what the story was. The first two were easy, because it was just improving on what was already written, but with the third one, there was nothing there, other than a vague idea.

So I again sat on it for a while.  And then a year later, I completely gave up on the original story, and decided to make a FrogMan continuation in the form of an adult animated sitcom (that I erroneously branded as a reality show, though tbf it is supposed to be following the life of the family, so it kinda is a reality show, but really it's just another animated family sitcom).  And thus, FrogMan the Series was born.

It was like early to mid 2010 when I started writing episodes.  The first episode was already written at this point, 'cause when the school talent show rolled around, I had the bright idea to enter it with the talent of "animation" and I made the FrogMan the Series pilot for the talent show... except it was animated in paint, and had to be completely family friendly, so I basically re-wrote it and cut out the villain's subplot entirely.  And it was horribly edited because Alex didn't know what he was doing (sorry @RECONmasterFILMS). Animation-wise though, it was pretty decent. Looked about the same as Attack of the Squirrel King. I would show it to y'all, but it's kinda lost. I know it's still around somewhere though, so hopefully I'll one day be able to re-edit it and share it with everyone, 'cause it would suck to lose such a historical part of my development as an artist.

Anyways, after that, I started working on the series proper over the summer.  I thought it was gonna be animated in flash, but my trial ran out, and I couldn't afford it and I didn't want to resort to pirating.  I don't remember what I was thinking after that, but eventually my dad ended up buying me and my sister an animation program called Anime Studio for $50.  Unfortunately, this ended up being a severely limited version of Anime Studio. That we paid for. Yeah, okay.

I've gone into how bad this was many times, but because of its limitations, I ended up animating the first 2.5 episodes of FrogMan the Series in Anime Studio, so it was all tweened and stuff, and it didn't look very good.  Then during the making of episode 3 I got fed up with it and finally went and got flash, except I apparently forgot everything I had learned about animation from doing stuff with paint, so the first few episodes I did in flash ended up looking bad still.  That's my fault for trying to make long cartoons before I knew what I was doing. I eventually did get better at animating and ended up remembering how to actually do it after making a few shorts in between the episodes. Speaking of which:

FrogMan the Series was plagued with problems from the start.  The first two episodes were finished before school started, so it should've gone off on the right foot, getting episodes up every week should've been a piece of cake.  Episode one went up on September 1st, 2010, as planned, but then something went wrong during the editing of episode 2, so it had to be delayed by a week or two. That's fine, episode two was already finished, and I was well into episode 3, so it should be easy to get it out sooner.  But then there was an even bigger delay. Episode 3 didn't come out until November 14th, nearly 2 months after episode 2. I somehow still thought I could get the rest of the season out by the end of the year. Yeah, that didn't happen.

What did happen by the end of the year though, was my dad dying, and that sucked.  I've talked about that enough though, but that did mean that a lot of life stuff was getting in the way of making cartoons, so because of that, episode 4 didn't come out until May 22nd, 2011.  Because that gap was so long, I vowed that the wait for episode 5 wouldn't be nearly as long, and it ended up being way longer than I could've ever anticipated.

Episode 5 finally came out June 21, 2012, after many headaches that I've already gone into in other posts.  Once again though, after the way-too-long break, I promised it wouldn't be anywhere near as long between episode 5 and 6, in fact, I was pretty confident I could get the rest of the season out by the end of the year.  I'll never learn.

Episode 6 was making pretty good progress though, and by the time the end of the year came, I had about 3 minutes of it animated, which is pretty good since it was fully frame by frame now, instead of the bad tweening from previous episodes (at least episode 4 and 5 served as improvements for art style).  The original version of episode 6 still wasn't great though, the script had a lot of issues. Also, at some point, my computer died again, so I lost access to the file for a bit. In fact, I couldn't even access the file until over a year later, but still, I didn't touch it. It was just so long since, how could I just get back to it now?

It wasn't until 2014 that I finally decided.  Episode 6 was just too old at this point. I had improved so much with both art and animation, what I had would just be too jarring next to anything new, so I made the tough decision to scrap what I had, and start over completely from scratch, even re-writing a lot of the script and re-recording dialog because the original just wasn't very good.  And you know what? I had a lot of fun getting to record episode 6 and 7 back to back with Alex, and then directing my sister to record Chick Frog's lines. I immediately started working on the episode's animation, but then for whatever reason, I just stopped. I don't remember why, but considering the timing, it was probably depression. I still managed to make some shorts, but my output really wasn't that great.  And on top of that, I wasn't working on episode 6.

Since 2014 was the 10th anniversary of The Adventures of FrogMan, I deemed 2014 "The Year of FrogMan" so I was gonna make it special.  At this point, I had already made a few FMTS shorts, so I made a couple more in 2014, and I had planned to finish episode 6 and 7 by the end of the year.  At least I was getting a bit less ambitious with my plans.

One other big FrogMan related thing that happened in 2014, was I finally figured out what to do with the original story I started writing for The Adventures of FrogMan.  I tried writing an animated adaptation before, but it just wasn't working out. But in 2014, I finally figured it out: I would do a feature-length animated origin film, based on the story I "wrote" when I was 9, except, a lot better.  I started writing a plot outline, and I even made a cool poster for the film, and I even thought I could start animating it that year. Yeah, okay, I was still too ambitious.

I couldn't even finish episode 6 in 2014 though.  I don't remember why, I had already finished 2 scenes, but I sat on it for over a year.  I think maybe I couldn't work on it because I was working on FrogMan and Pico? I don't remember, but that seems likely, since I started that in 2013, and I was working on scene 2 and 3 in 2014.  Now that I think about it, I did work on a lot of cartoons in 2014, but still nowhere as many as I should have.

Point is, I didn't get back to work on episode 6 again until the summer of 2015, because I had no internet, was going crazy, and I had nothing else I could work on.  So I opened up flash, and started animating a new scene of episode 6. And it felt great. So I animated another scene, and then I storyboarded the rest of it, and I felt so good.  For the first time in a long time, I felt so good and I was happy because I finally figured out what I really wanted to work on. I wanted to work on episode 6 and finish it after all these years, and I didn't realize it earlier for some reason.  So I kept working on it, and from then until April 2016, I worked on nothing but episode 6, and finally, it was finished. I couldn't believe it. It had been nearly 4 years, and it was finally done. And after episode 6, I was satisfied. I felt no need to immediately jump into making episode 7.  Episode 6 was done, and that's all that mattered. It was a huge weight off of me.

It's been 2 years now, and I still haven't started episode 7.  I rewrote the script and re-recorded the audio at the same time as episode 6, but I haven't started animating it.  I haven't even started storyboarding it, and it's just because I haven't felt the need to. I've been working on all different kinds of creative projects since then, and I'm so overwhelmed with everything I want to do that I can't choose something to stick to, so I end up working on nothing a lot of the time.

I've made a few FMTS shorts since episode 6, but other than that, I don't know what to do with the series.  At the end of 2017, I finally finished writing the script for the FrogMan origin film, and I really want to animate it entirely by myself, because that'll just be the cheapest option, plus it’d be cool to say I animated a feature film all by myself.  But that's gonna take forever, and I'm perfectly fine with putting the time in, but after it's done, what do I do with it? I can't just spend years animating a MOVIE and then slap it up online for free and get a few hundred views. That's a problem I'll have to think about later though, when I actually decide to start working on it.

I was seriously thinking of starting the animation for the film this year, but I've got so many big projects I want to work on, and it'd make more sense to work on them first.  Most of this year though, I've felt unfulfilled, and I don't know what I want to work on, like when I figured out I wanted to work on episode 6. At first, I thought that would be my mini-series "Gripp".  So I started working on it earlier this year, but I just wasn't feeling it. I thought more than anything, that would be what I wanted to work on. Turns out the only thing I can really bring myself to work on now is the Breath of the Wild parody i started last year.  Yes, a stupid, dumb zelda parody based on a joke that's probably been done to death now. But it's more than that, and I did get a good bit of progress done on it last year, and I just sat on it, because I wasn't feeling it anymore at the time. But I guess I am now, because I can't bring myself to work on anything except for it, so I've gotta get it done, and that's what I've been working on, and that's why there hasn't been anything from me for the past few months, because I can't bring myself to work on anything else.

I was working on the Zelda cartoon for a good few weeks straight, I was even streaming most of the process, but then I got a chance to do an animation test for a potential freelance gig, so I had to stop to do that.  Coincidentally, I also had to do a bunch of yard work starting the same day, because it's hurricane season I guess, so we gotta get some things sorted. So I had to spend like 6 hours a day doing yard work, cutting down trees, replacing the roof, whatever, and then I had to work on the animation test, but I was so tired and sore from doing the yard work, I just couldn't most days, so the animation test took way longer than it should have, and this whole time I couldn't touch the zelda cartoon, the one thing I actually wanted to work on because it was holding me up from working on anything else.

That was the past two weeks. I finished the animation test on the 18th, but I haven't done much since then.  I've been kinda relaxing since, because the past two weeks were just so awful, but I've gotta get back to work on the zelda cartoon, because I can't bring myself to work on anything else.

But that's not entirely related, because it doesn't have anything to do with FMTS.

The actual point of this whole post, is, I wanna work on FMTS.  I have so many ideas, I've got over 100 episode ideas, and a few movies, and the thought of never being able to finish all of it kinda scares me, and it's getting more and more real the older I get and I hate it.  And, I'm at the point now where I could finally make the series look exactly how I've always wanted, and that idea is so cool to me, yet I'm still not working on it. Why? A big part, is 'cause a lot of the time I feel like it doesn't have enough fans to justify it, but I don't think that really matters, since a lot of the time, it also feels like it's the only thing I want to make.  If all of FrogMan the Series is all I got to make in my life time, I'd be happy. Even if it's just a stupid profane show about a bunch of frogs with super powers they don't even use, I really wanna make it, because it means a lot to me, and there's even some really good, meaningful stories in the later seasons, and I really wanna tell them. But I'm not working on it.

And the main reason, is animation takes a long time.  I wanna animate the episodes entirely frame by frame, but that would take way too long to do by myself, so the only options really, are hiring a team to help make the episodes quicker, which would cost a lot of money I don't have, or go back to tweens, so the episodes can get done drastically quicker.  There also comes the issue of the episode lengths. Some of them can get close to 30 minutes long. While a 30 minute video every day works on youtube, a 30 minute video every other month isn't gonna work, and most of the episodes aren't even 30 minutes, most aren't even 11. If I could make an episode in a decent amount of time though and UPLOAD them weekly, maybe it could be worthwhile if the time investment isn't so bad, but again, the only way of doing that is by outsourcing, or cutting back on the animation quality.  Alternatively, I could also upload the episodes in shorter chunks, and then later upload the full episodes, to milk them for all they're worth. This seems to be a route that a lot of people are going, but these episodes were written as full episodes, so they don't really have a natural splitting point, but looking at the scripts, it could work MOSTLY. I just would hate to do that, because then some episodes would have like 6 parts, and that's really annoying, but at least it would mean they could come out faster.

So that's my dilemma.  I want to work on FMTS, but I don't know what I should do.  I wanna make more shorts, I wanna make all 10 seasons, and I wanna make the couple of movies and spinoffs that I have locked in my head, but I don't know what I should do.

So what should I do?  Should I give in, and go back to tweens?  They wouldn't be as bad as they were originally, in fact, I could probably do some pretty good tweens now, because I have a bit more experience with better rigs now.  I wouldn't entirely enjoy doing it, but it would get the stories out. Another option is mostly using tweens but still supplementing with some frame by frame when it's not too much of a time-sink, but this could get jarring if I'm not careful, but I know it's doable, I've seen plenty of internet animators do it.

I really wanna keep doing FMTS fully frame by frame, but it'll take too long.  I don't wanna have to do tweens, but it makes the most sense. Give me your thoughts, 'cause it would really help.

I've made a poll to make this official: https://twitter.com/xArtistunknown/status/1009850973177696258

Thanks for reading this stupidly long, probably pretentious, ramble.  I do a lot of thinking, and I want to do a lot of writing, but I really feel like I shouldn't just dump all my awful thoughts on Newgrounds.  No one wants to read that. This isn't Deviantart or Tumblr... that does give me an idea though...

But that's for another day.  Thanks for reading. I'm gonna go back to not working now, because I'm once again in a transitional period where I don't feel like doing anything and I don't know what to do.  I'll get over it in a few days though. And then it'll happen again.

Yeah, so probably not the best way to start off the new year, but it's what's happening, so... yeah.

I've been saying for the longest time that I "have to get a job soon" well the time has finally come.  I don't know what will happen if I DON'T get a job, so I don't want to risk it, as much as I fear I'll fuck it up, or I just don't want to do it, the consequences of not getting one will probably be a lot worse.  And who knows, maybe the fear is for nothing, maybe getting a job and being forced into a situation where I have to be more social and listen to orders and perform tasks under pressure will actually make me better instead of causing me to break down.  Maybe.

What does any of that have to do with anything though?  Well, I had a whole schedule planned out for this year, I was planning on releasing 76 videos during the year (mostly on youtube), but now that the job thing is imminent, I've decided to just scrap everything and focus on making what I want, when I want, which means I'll be working on more personal projects and just finishing up things that have been long overdue.  Mainly though, I will be focusing on bettering myself and getting over all of my mental bullshit, because it's really been getting in the way of making things.

As for why it took so long for this to finally happen, well, the thing that has been holding me back from getting a job for so long is having an expired ID, which costs $40 to renew.  Why did it take so long to get $40?  Mainly laziness.  How did I even get that money without a job?  I certainly didn't ask for it (okay I did a few times but ended up spending it on food and other things because at the time I couldn't actually use it for the ID for a few reasons but that's a story for another time).  Since February 2015, AKA, when this whole "needing to get a job" thing started, I've been using a website called Opinion Outpost, where you can take surveys for cash.  No it isn't a scam, you actually do get paid, I've made a decent bit of money from it in the last 3 years.  I wouldn't recommend it though unless you're really desperate or have nothing better to do.  I hate it so much, the surveys take forever and the pay is very little.  Sometimes you get lucky and get a fun, quick survey that pays a lot, but for the most part, it's awful.  This is part of the reason why now is the time to get a job, I'm fucking tired of taking surveys, it takes too much time and isn't worth it.  Even now that I have the money for my ID, I'll still have to take them until I get a job because I still need money for food.  But yeah, the main reason I have to get a job now, is just 'cause I've been living back with my mom and (now) step-dad for a year now, and I haven't contributed much monetarily (I've contributed a lot in other ways, and haven't got much appreciation for it, but whatever it's fine), so it's time for me to stop being useless and shit (also there were some threats but maybe I'll talk about that later).

But yeah, I wrote and recorded 3 separate update videos where I said all this, each time it got shorter and shorter, and I was not satisfied with either of them, or I once again changed my mind after making them.  I was gonna release the 2nd one, but it was rambly and was just really depressing, but it covered basically everything I've said up to this point.   Ultimately I released the 3rd one, a short, scripted update that just vaguely covers the situation, and I expanded on it in the comments.  I don't know why I didn't expand on my plans for the year in the video itself, I guess I forgot, or I just watned to get it over with, I don't know.

But yeah, now that things are different, what ARE my plans for this year?  Well, to keep my youtube channel from dying, I'll be streaming some animation and other stuff at least once a week, and I MIGHT upload one short a month if I feel like it.

My main project for the year though is Gripp, a 5 episode mini-series that deals with themes of depression, attempted suicide, and drug addiction.  Some if it is based off personal experiences, some of it is based off experiences of others, experiences I have either been a part of, or have observed.  It's serious and meaningful, but it's still got some comedic relief here and there, because of course I couldn't write something entirely serious.  I'm hoping to get it out by august, but with working on it while also working a job, I don't know how long it'll take to make.  The whole series is about 24 minutes long, so at the very least I'd estimate it'd take 8 months to make, based on past experiences, and that's working FULL TIME, so I don't know.  I've gotten feedback on the scripts from a few people though, and they've said it's good, so hopefully people like it.  I'll be sharing more details later when I actually have something to show.

In addition to that, there will also be a 12 episode live action series of skits that me and @RECONmasterFILMS wrote and (mostly) filmed last year.  We've still got 2 episodes to film and then we gotta put the whole thing together, but that'll be airing in the fall.  They're skits, but there is a loose storyline, and the finale is definitely different, so hopefully people like it.  I like it.

That's basically it I guess.  Sorry to disappoint everyone, but you know, sometimes in order to get ahead, you've just gotta give up.  Temporarily at least.

Hey, so it's been quite a while since I've posted an update to Newgrounds.  It's been like what, over a year?  Yeah, I'm not letting that happen again.  I mean, I've posted a few cartoons here, and I tend to check out the help forum and answer any questions I can, but my last news post here was for the 6th anniversary of FMTS, and then the last news post before that was a similarly long break between.  Gonna try to update more often though, since I guess I might have fans here that don't follow me anywhere else?  I can post to the frontpage every 2 weeks, so I might as well use it.

Anyways, first bit of unrelated news, Chris (@MistyEntertainment) released a new EP recently and all proceeds from it until the end of October will be going to cancer research.  It's a pretty great deal I think, you get to listen to some great music, and get to also help kids with cancer.  Check it out here if you're interested: https://christophertom.bandcamp.com/album/plastic-people-ep

Okay, now to my shitty news.

So first off, if you missed it, my last release here was a short anthology entitled Anthology X, comprised of shorts I deemed to short and stupid for newgrounds + a few timed exclusives.  It ended up getting 2nd place and was on the front page for a litte, I don't know why it did, but it made me pretty happy.

All right, so what have I been working on recently?  Welp, for the past 2 weeks (and earlier in the year) I've been working on a live action series with Alex (@RECONmasterFILMS), and it was supposed to premier on October 13th, but has been pushed back because production hasn't been going as smoothly as it should, since Alex's family is busy moving.  Still, all of it will be filmed at least, so now we have a year to get all the post and shit done.  Just gonna be hard if we need to do some reshoots.

Since I've been at Alex's house for so long, we also did some live streams!  I wanted to do something different for the 7th anniversary of FMTS, which was on September 1st, and the only idea for a celebration I had was to do a live stream.  I wanted to do it ON the first, but it kept getting pushed back for various reasons.  In the end, we finally ended up doing it this past Monday, and although the stream ended up a little different than I had initially planned, it was still pretty fun.  If you wanna see me and Alex do commentary over every episode and short, as well as premeir a few things and make some shitty improv songs live, then it's all right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN_8dmMPZT4

Before that though, we did a test stream that ended up being the length of the stream we intended to do!  It's more scattered and "unscripted" but it's still fun.  It's a mix between improv songs, improv skits, and just random bullshit because I was very tired.

I hate linking to youtube, because it hurts Newgrounds, but can't really avoid it in an instance like this :p

Speaking of youtube, the non-advertiser friendly bullshit has finally hit me!  Turns out 15 of my videos are "not suitable for most advertisers".  I just kinda figured I wasn't gonna get hit due to my affiliation with a network, since it had been so long since people started getting hit, but NOPE.  I don't really care now, 'cause it's not like I was making much on youtube anyways, and most of the hit videos deserved it, but there were a few videos falsly hit that did annoy me, and it's really lame that you can't appeal unless you get 1k views in a week.  Seriously fuck youtube.

Okay, switching topics so I don't go into a full-on rant (already did that on twitter).  I haven't put out a lot of animated stuff lately, anything significant anyways.  I've been working on a lot, but I haven't FINISHED a lot because I've been jumping between projects like crazy.  I'll have something to show by the end of the year though (not just one thing, mind you).

The main reason I've been struggling to more consistently work on anything though, is, well, because I've been struggling.  Same old shit, my brain is dumb, blah blah.  I think I've gotten better though, 'cause before we started filming, I was being productive for a whole week, I even got my sleep schedule fixed!  So how did I (seemingly) overcome this problem that I've been trying to get rid of (again) since 2015?  By being traumatized, of course!  Yeah, so I really thought I was gonna die during hurricane Irma, so I told myself if I survived, I would get better and get back to being as productive as I can be, and spoiler alert, I survived, and the storm wasn't even that bad (for me at least)!  It was still a really trying time though, but hey, I'm glad good ended up coming from the bad.  It's kinda similar to when I originally got over my emotional bullshit in 2012, except in that instance after being traumatized I realized that in a sense, I got what I wanted afterall, and that getting so caught up over it was stupid.  Or something, I don't remember.  The point is, I guess I need to be traumatized in order to get back to work.

Anyways, so this month was gonna be the start of more content, but with the new series being pushed back, next month will be the start.  In addition to the new series, I was also gonna have two Halloween videos this year, one live action and one animated.  The animated one has been, surprise, pushed back.  The Halloween one though has been mostly done for a year, so I'm currently polishing it up and it'll be out on the 27th.  Idk if it'll be on Newgrounds though, since live action is a bit iffy here.  In addition to that, the rest of the year will be packed with content.  There'll be 8 new AU Reviews, and a few cartoons sprinkled inbetween!  So, plenty to look forward to.

I've got a lot planned for next year, so hopefully I can pull it off.  If not, well, then I guess you'll hear from me around this time next year, again.

September 1st marked the 6th anniversary of FrogMan the Series.  Yep, it's been six years, and there's only been six episodes.  WHAT HAPPENED?!  Well, a lot of stuff, but I've talked about that in-depth many times in many different places, and this isn't supposed to be a negative post, so yeah.  In addition to the 6 episodes though, there has also been 8 shorts, and FrogMan and Pico, so that could count as an additional 2 episodes if you want!

So how am I celebrating 6 years of FMTS?  Well, other than this shitty news post, there's a new short!  Watch School Scare!

It's not much of a celebration, but hey, it's better than most of the previous years!  Some years didn't even get a celebration!

So what does the future hold for FMTS?  Welp, it's finally got to the point where I feel like I can actually make all the crazy episodes I've written, but they're gonna take forever to make, so I'm not sure if I can make every episode and the movies, but if I had a fuckton of money, you bet that'd be the project I throw it into, because I'm an idiot.

Episode 6 was fairly well received though, so episode 7 and the rest of season 1 will come eventually, with shorts inbetween!  In an attempt to keep FMTS on everyone's minds so it doesn't fall into obscurity, I'm gonna try to release 1 FMTS related cartoon every 2 months, whether it be a short or an episode, so hopefully that works out.  I'm really bad at actually following through with plans though, so who knows.  There's just so many things to work on it's hard to pick something to just work on a lot of the time.

Welp, that got slightly less positive at points, but ehhhh.  HAPPY SIX YEARS, FMTS!

tfw literally no one cares

Oh yeah, I guess I should mention it somewhere, so whatever.  I also recently uploaded Brain Drama, and for some reason it got daily feature and was on the front page for a few days.  I don't understand why, considering it was made in a day, but hey, whatever.

Also I uploaded some music, so here is Sometimes and Surf Rock Test.  They're both very different from each other, so yeah.

Okay, that's it now I guess.

I'm dumb.