Anyone with a PS3 needs to get Warhawk. The servers have been pretty shitty a couple times throughout the past few ays, but they'll clear it up. This game rules.

That cartoon is a piece of crap, everyone. It's Sonic at his worst, mixed with every shitty episode of Dragonball Z you've ever seen. And his waves are traced. He keeps calling them rotoscoped, but you can't rotoscope animation. They call that tracing.

"However, the only traces were the waves when Nazo transformed. I can't draw waves for crap, so I kinda rotoscoped it, even though it wasn't live action footage." -- Chakra-X

I wouldn't have bothered posting this if it weren't for the fact that some Sonic fanboy that probably dreams of fellating Tails and getting fucked by Knuckles bitched at me about my 5/10 review. It's also pretty insane to think that out of 28 pages of reviews, 25 of them are perfect tens, two of them are nines (with two eights on the second page) and one page is seven or below. That's pretty unbalanced. Rarely does a flash deserve a 10/10, no matter what it is. 25/28 pages of 10/10 is insane. Nothing deserves that.

Last Thursday, the Ingus series officially turned two years old. I forgot to celebrate that gay day then, so I'll do it now.

Just over two years ago, I drew a retarded looking face with a ridiculous under-bite and a mouth full of battered chalk sticks I called teeth. Not knowing what to call this disfigured redneck, I made up a name; Ingus (only to find out about a year later that a band exists with this name, as well as an old Final Fantasy character). Then I began to draw a bear beside him. Then my computer shot off, and I lost everything. Then I tried to remember what Ingus and the bear looked like. I almost got it right. Seth Forsman took a look and told me to give the bear a Greenbay Packers cheese-hat, and I did. That day we thought of a conversation for the two to have, we recorded it, and I animated it. By 2:00 AM that day, I was ready to submit our cartoon to Newgrounds. It was originally just called "Ingus," but I felt that the name was too short, and people might just BLAM something like it. So I tacked on "Episode 1" to the title. The idea was never to make a series.
Later that day, likely when people were waking up in the world, the cartoon was posted on the front page. I was excited, and pretty shocked it even passed judgment. I was ultimately cheated out of a Daily Fifth place award by an asshole who will remain unnamed (rhymes with 'plaggot') and it was taken off the front page by the end of the day. Still, it was enough incentive to make a second cartoon, which only took about a week to make, and remains today as the most favorite among fans and regarded as the standard, despite the effort put forth in the newer ones.
It's a good time for this now, as I work on Ingus: Episode 9. It has taken me nearly four months to get to work on it since the script was finished, and it will likely take me ages to complete it. It's funny to think that it takes me so long to continue something that only took one day.

PS: Yeah, I'm lazy. Sorry I haven't submitted really anything this year -- An Ingus PSA is all I've submitted so far -- but finishing high school and getting ready for college out-of-state is a real bitch.

I just got my new microphone and preamp in the mail at home. The trouble is that I'm currently in Denver, Colorado, checking out RMCAD -- a school I may be heading to in the spring. So, when I get back to Spokane, Washington on Sunday, I'm going to try my best to nail down some radical voice-work and then get to work on actually making some scenes. The first "Act" is totally storyboarded. The first half of the second act is too simple to bother storyboarding (since I use the same shitty old symbols nine million times). The rest of it I will hope to get down as I go along.
For now, I'm sitting in a bare-bones Holiday Inn, one hour into the future, and going through some pictures I took at the Denver Zoo. It's more of a theme park without rides, but there were smelly animals that lamented endlessly at their inferiority and inability to construct a means of escape, so I was happy.

Speaking of which, I'll go into that. This one rhino with a giant dick was scraping against this big metal door, moaning and crying. Judging by the status of his cock, I would I assume that he wanted to bang the shit out of the hot rhino (I don't know if they consider each other hot) on the other side of the big metal door. Then he turned around and pissed on the door like a fire hose with his massive cock. Some black guy was there watching this. He turned to me, and we both felt humbled. The blow was probably worse for him because I'm sure he's not been belittled in that way other than maybe by his racial peers alone. I'm Irish, so I stand maybe a peg above the Jews and two above the Asians.

A tiger in another area was clawing at a big steel door too. People watched and laughed at his pussy-face as he tried to escape, and then started roaring, which for the dozen or so people out of harm's way, imposed about as much fear as a house cat's hiss.

What was more scary was the shrill cries of a chipmunk -- one of many chipmunks that ran about within the zoo -- that some hot chick snatched by the tail. It was pretty rad. It spun violently and attempted to gnaw off its own tail. I felt a little bad. The girl put it down after a while and it bolted off. I would have kept it, befriended it, and thereafter would become a chipmunk wrangler, where they would do my bidding at the risk of their own lives. I've always wanted to rule over squirrels, but I'll settle for these things.

By the way, Alvin and the Chipmunks looks like a shitty movie.

A major highlight of this adventure was spotting the noble, gigantic, guinea-pig-like creature: The Capybara. I guess they eat these things in Brazil. Assholes. These things kick ass. They're bigger than I expected. They probably matched the body dimensions of a two-foot-tall pot-bellied pig. The one Ingus had in the first episode of the series wasn't quite big enough. The fact that they knew they were the most badass creatures there hindered the possibility of any wacky shenanigans. They knew they had nothing to prove; they just sat there. Fucks.

Ron Paul is a badass. In 2008, Ron Paul is running for president. He's the best in line, and though his chances of winning are <1%, he still deserves everybody's vote.

Ron Paul is a Libertarian who strongly supports what the Constitution stands for. He's no neo-Conservative fuck that feigns the elephant ethic. This guy is what Republicans should be. Not only does he know what he's talking about and means what he says, but he knows how to say it. You won't catch this guy tripping over his own comments or retracting statements.

This guy has the right idea about things: Fuck the IRS, fuck big-time taxes, fuck abortion, fuck anti gay-marriage acts, fuck large government, fuck power-hungry politicians, fuck un-Constitutional war, fuck shitty and expensive government programs, fuck the PATRIOT act, fuck Gun Control.

If you are an American and you aren't a penis-face, you'll vote for this old badass. If you don't like Republicans, you don't have to vote for Obama or Clinton; this guy is set on fixing the Republicans without fucking everything up like the Democrats want to do. Giuliani is a dick and McCain is a flip-flop. And that one guy is a Mormon. You have a year to make the right decision, and four+ years of agony thereafter if you make the wrong one.

Here's an hour-long interview/Q&A session with Dr. Ron Paul (beware the annoying-looking Libertarian audience).

Also, check out his campaign page.

Here's his campaign sign. He has a gay slogan, though.

I know I'm a bit early (a whole year early), but you guys wouldn't even have known who this dude was, and that's a shame.

So, it's been nearly a year since the last canonical Ingus episode has come out... and I still haven't begun work on the ninth. The script has been done for at least 5 months, but I've been busy with senior finals and putting together a portfolio. But no more bitching. I will be starting the production of Ingus: Episode 9 today. I really hope to crack down and get a lot done each day. My unrealistic goal is mid-August, though the chances of making it are pretty much 2%.
This will be the longest episode of the entire series so far. The script as it is would clock in at about 8 or so minutes I'm guessing, which doesn't seem like much, but... it is... Mostly because I'm a fat lazy jackass. Whatever. Chances are I will heavily reduce some sections that carry on too long (including one commercial within the episode that I wrote to have run uninterrupted for over a minute, which may get belittled, or axed).The script is a mesh of two or three other scripts we had written that we never got the chance to make, which some of you may like to hear, considering the number of people who think the earlier episodes were written much funnier -- for those of you who liked the first ones, one of the scripts was titled "Ingus: Episode 3," but not the Bigfoot one we ended up making (such an unfortunate episode).
So look forward to Ingus 9 hopefully in the near future.

Also, I have been thinking about trying my hand at pulling a little contest for Ingus called "Ingus Sucks" or whatever, where people (preferably people who aren't really fans) make minute+ long parodies of Ingus, either just making fun of the series or criticizing in general, and then there could be little things for the winners or something. But the problem is that I doubt enough people would participate. I wouldn't want to be bound to giving a piece of shit flash that barely passed judgment a prize of any kind. So if any of you out there would be willing to participate in something like this, please let me know; through PM or replying here. I would love to do it, but need to know if it would be worth my time.

Thanks,
-Jared

I've been pretty critical of JAZZA's animated series, PALADIN, but I don't hate JAZZA, like people think. I must come off that way because I'm bugged at the amount of effort he put into it for what it turned out to be. It's the same way I react to Spider-Man 3; it could have been epic, but small issues crush the support beams and make the effort meaningless. That's all. Sorry, JAZZA. Bros fo' life, bitches.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, refer to this post.

- Jared

Okay, so it's safe to say you're all very familiar with JAZZA's PALADIN animated series here on Newgrounds. He's had pretty high scores on his more recent ones, and everyone seems to love them. But I don't, and I would like to explain that.

STORYLINE
So, the story of this cartoon is something like a hero on a quest to vanquish a tyrannous bad guy, who I guess is a demon or something. Now, that's about as generic as you can get with a fantasy story, but I'm not against being basic and simple. What causes problems is when that story is filled with things we've all seen before, like a having to fight a priest who has become a monster. It's supposed to be ironic, I guess. And having villains use children to apparently make it all the worse. How could anyone do this to a child? He's a villain, of course. And then the series' anticlimactic death scene and subsequent happiness cumshot on the world. If I were an ancient evil, I think I would know what holy weapons could kill me.

That little rant kind of took from my next point of interest...

CLICHES
The storyline, as I spoiled just above, is riddled with bad cliches I never needed to see a second time. Here are just a few from the latest episodes (because it would hurt to watch the older ones again):

- Wings bursting from a character's back. I hate this one so bad. You have no idea how many times I've seen flash animations that are going really well, and then someone has wings burst from their back. They're usually glowing, too. Thanks, Macromedia, for adding that fucking glow filter. I should probably blame Japan, however. They usually start this sort of thing.

- Deus Ex Machina. Most people probably don't know they've done this one. A lot of people don't even know what it is. Let me break it down: a deus ex machina is something where the plot or events are so fucked up and shit has hit the fan so hardcore that something, usually a device, is introduced at that moment to solve everything and fix the problems. Basically, this is used when the hero can't actually complete the task, but the story still needs to end on a happy note. Okay, so the sword was present from the beginning, but the sudden revelation of its potential power qualifies it to be in this category. I also think that the life restoring to the lend immediately and the instant casting of rainbows across the skies (literally) suggest a divine intervention.

- Villains who are evil because they are villains. Nobody ever does anything about this one. I see it in movies and game all the time, and yet it's the most aggravating. "Why is he doing these evil things?" "Because he's evil, duh!" It's like a bad argument. Occasionally people will say, "Oh, he's greedy and desires to take over the world" which is both dumb and cliche. Leave World-Conquering to the '80s cartoons based on toy lines. Don't use it as a true character trait. There aren't enough antagonists that are bad solely because they are on the opposite side of the coin from the hero. No one dares to suggest that the hero could be the wrong one. He's the hero; of course he's right. This cartoon promotes the idea that villains can be bad just because they're villains.

- Dark, red skies. Whenever evil takes over, the skies become red. What's the deal? Pick another color every once in a while.

There are plenty more cliches, but I should move on...

DIALOGUE
Unless I'm an idiot and this had intentionally bad dialogue, then JAZZA needs someone else to write this stuff. Sure, he got the point across, but it doesn't need to be so hammy. The Star Wars Saga had this problem too. I don't understand how this can happen. If it's being written for kids, that's okay. The Spider-Man movies were pretty silly, but it's okay because it's a comic book movie where this silly, pulpy talk is not only acceptable, but helps to get you in the feel of it. With PALADIN, it just threw me back again to the shitty cartoons I grew up on. Only this cartoon had ridiculous violence, which would suggest that he did not make it for my 7-year-old brother. We're smarter than we're given credit (well... this is Newgrounds...), and we don't need to be told what just happened and why it happened that way. We just saw it happen, we don't need it explained to us. We'll figure it out.

ART
Okay, this section very few people will agree with me on. So what? Fuck them. Nobody agrees with my distaste either, judging by the 4.45 the most recent one had. Anyway, there were some things that really bugged me about the way he drew his characters in most of the early episodes, and all but about half of the newest one. One, everyone's eyes are in their foreheads. Anybody who has taken an art class has one the upside-down egg, line down the middle, line through the middle, line three-fourths own, and line just below that. They teach us this for a reason. From the top of the head to the eyes, and from the eyes to the chin are about the same distance. Don't confuse your hairline for the top of your head. I'm, tired of people forgetting about the brain up there. This problem was reduced fairly decently about mid-mark in the final episode, but I sent him an e-mail about it just after watching episode 3, to which he replied to me that it was called "artistic style" or something, despite the fact that even Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse follow this rule.
The sides of people's heads still bothered me well throughout the series. Their jaw seemed to reach to the back of their necks, and their ears just sat wherever they wanted. Had JAZZA tried to follow those simple art rules, the series would have looked much better.

Uhh... I don't really have much more to complain about, or at least not that can be organized. Overall, I think that it felt too much like a bad '80s cartoon that had too much violence, or a parody of one, but just barely missing the mark. It loses itself between being too gory for kids and too dumb for adults. It seems to find an audience with idiots who don't really pick up on the errors of things and who give it too much credit. Still, the fact that I'm reviewing it more like a true series and less like a flash cartoon shows that it is still one of the more complete series on Newgrounds, which is a fair accomplishment. JAZZA obviously put a lot of time into it, which is a shame, considering all the faults that could have been easily written out in the beginning.

So, clearly the new design is up and everything. It's very cool. A lot of new little things that make the site feel less wonky. GREAT JOB, TEAM!

In other non-news, I have written the scripts for Ingus: Episode 9 and 10, as well as for another PSA, an a couple of other things. I'm waiting on a new mic, since my sound quality has been notoriously shitty. So when I get that, expect to see cartoons coming nine months thereafter (I'm still just as lazy).

BYE!