It's been a sad week, folks. My trusty Graphire4 appears to be heading to its grave.

It was, I want to say, five years ago that I collected what little money I could to buy myself this reliable tablet, for the sole purpose of making cartoons for this very website. It's been my companion and tool through 36 of the past 40 projects I've completed (Four were done on my ill-fated tablet PC) and will serve me just one more time before it is retired.

It was earlier this week that I had begun finding myself, more frequently than usual, correcting and correcting lines that I'd draw. At first, I assumed my hands were just retards -- they've failed me enough in the past. But I kept making the same mistakes again and again. My lines would bend and wave when I could swear my hand was steady. Attempts at correcting it would yield identical flaws. I finally pulled out a ruler to see if it was just me. Unfortunately, it wasn't. Though my tablet's surface is perfectly smooth, I am finding that it registers horizontal waving on its entire drawing space. The severity of these waves changes depending on where I draw, but they're present all over. It's causing me to modify almost every line I draw, adding even more work to an already enormous project. It seems like I'll never get this done.

I've decided this will be the last project I'll do with my Graphire4, thought hopefully it will be its swan song too. That is, if it can make it to the end.

Anyway, here's to a good life, buddy!

- Jared

Below is an example of the wobble overlaid onto a photo of the tablet and the ruler. It often gets worse than this.

On December 15th, actually. I didn't really think to post it here, but I realize I should, as this community has been important to me for a long time, no matter how inactive I have been in recent times.

It was a very cute proposal story that I'm sure none of you will read, so I'll keep it to myself. Suffice it to say that she is an awesome lady and I'm lucky to have her.

Congratulations are in order, and I expect you to deliver, fools.

It's been a hell of a long time since I made any cartoons, so I figured, "Whatevs." Seth and I put together another 24-hour flash cartoon:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/
494979

I hope you like it. Don't forget to leave reviews and vote on it and whatnot. Also, I love you.

- Jared

It wasn't a very good cartoon, but it's flattering. Thanks, dog.

With everyone posting New Year's Resolution essays and whatnot, this will likely just be white noise, but who gives a shit?

Since the year I began submitting flash animation to Newgrounds, 2008 has been my least productive year since, having only submitted one item. 2008 was the year above all other years in which I've began and invested significant amount of time into submissions that never came to fruition, including at least four large cartoons and a game.

So what's in store for 2009? My plan is to make at least three cartoons and at least one game over the course of 2009. It's not a very large goal, but it's better than last year.

I've already recorded audio for a pretty simple cartoon I hope to churn out on a boring weekend soon, and I might revisit some of my canceled cartoons from last year.

But the big one is the game. Character animation, enemy animation, giant map-work, animated sequences ... it might just be a miracle if this bastard alone gets completed. It's difficult for the both of us to balance the enormous workload and college at the same time. It took us somewhere around three months of summer to complete our little tower defense game. And that was before the world fell apart.

Let's hope I've got the balls to meet my goal in 2009.

Pretty bad. Not that I expected much.

I've been playing LittleBigPlanet since early yesterday, and I'm already willing to suggest that it is my favorite game of the year. That's above GTAIV, MGS4, Brawl, or anything else I've had the opportunity to play this year.

The online aspect of the game is currently not up, as GameStop released the game earlier than they were supposed to. So, for now, I've only played the "PLAY" and "CREATE" modes.

PLAY is incredibly robust and entertaining. They're stuffed with stickers, items, material, and bonus level keys. They've done an amazing job organizing the the content so that you can clearly see what you have left to do. If the game were this alone, I would be sold.

CREATE is just ridiculous. You're given all the tools they used to make the Story mode levels, so you can literally recreate an entire official level if you wanted. You use different unlockable material on your levels, so you'll need to spend a lot of time in the Story mode you make some really cool levels.

The game is also stuffed with tutorials on everything you need to know. You won't need to check out any Youtube videos to figure out how to put together any contraptions you may have in mind.

Overall, it's amazing. I'm pumped to see what the community has done with the tools as soon as it's up. On the two sections available to me alone, it's easily one of my favorite games. Disregard what people have said about other games before; LittleBigPlanet is the reason to buy a Playstation 3.

Newgrounds is perhaps the single most impressive creative community for animation on the internet. It is the Mecca for animation enthusiasts to collaborate, share, and create. Hundreds, if not thousands, of artists owe their skills to this site. But there's one thing that's missing: Female animators.

Off the top of my head, I can think of one female animator on Newgrounds. This makes up significantly less than 1% of all the animators on Newgrounds, which doesn't represent the true figures of women in the animation field.

Why not? It's true that more young men spend time on the internet than women, but I would imagine there are more creative women on the internet than what is represented on Newgrounds. This group is a crucial part of the field.

I'd like to see more women on Newgrounds submitting creative content. It's a demographic this community needs. We have incredible talent here (I would argue the best on the internet), but it's a lot of testosterone. We need Madness, we need dick jokes, we need Xombie, but we need something else too. I'm not suggesting that women can only make cutesy bullshit, but I think they can deliver another spin on it. I've got animator friends that are girls, and they can be vulgar or violent too, but they add a different twist to the same old.

The same way non-English speaking animators like Kol Belov and SamBakZa mix up the familiar with their own flavor, women do as well.

To reiterate my thesis, Newgrounds would benefit from female animators injecting themselves into the scene. I urge the community to convince the artsy women they know to get into Newgrounds and to get those animation students at their colleges to get them to come to Newgrounds. This is a great place for creativity to grow into a giant, mouth-foaming creature of epic proportion, and maybe that beast needs tits.

Thank-you for reading, and please consider what I've said. That, or close the window and go back to watching your porn of women humiliating themselves on the internet.

EDIT: Some more female artists on Newgrounds have been brought to my attention. Unfortunately, they only have maybe two submissions each. I urge those here to get out and make cartoons. We need your influence.

I'd just like to inform everybody that it's the second celebrated Twosday today, and the first of two Twosdays in 2008. This won't happen again until 2010 (which has three Twosdays!) If you're still out of the extremely popular loop, check it out here. Get out there and double up! I'll post my wrap-up later today.

- Jared
- Jared

WRAP-UP

So, apparently I slept twice as long today, and missed the majority of Twosday. I have no pictures, because I was sleeping.

I promise a more eventful Twosday this December!

I was bored today, so I threw this together. Not a lot of work involved, but whatever.

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