Hey Newgrounds!

Time for another update to elaborate more on my recent animated stuff if you're into that.

'Wandering Cloudlings'

Just released this 'chilling' sunset animation, this one began as a loopdeloop GIF from last year, which I really liked, so here it is a year later in a larger form! I asked my pal Moralo González to make a 'chilling' track to complement it, that's all I told him as I wanted him to take liberties doing his thing, and he ended up with this smooth -80s sounding as he described it- jam, you can find it here! https://moralogonzalez.bandcamp.com/

Similar to 'Dogs of the planet', it's another GIF which I ended up liking enough to want to expand on into a more elaborated piece. I've been liking this idea of making a fast animation test for a challenge/contest, and then later expand on them as larger projects. It was also a fun distraction to animate a bunch of different clouds-characters without worrying about making much sense.

FFVII COLLAB! 'Chocobo for 3'

I guess most NG folks are aware of this one already but I made a part for this massive collab! It's at 28:45 on the official collab, or here standalone on the Youtubes:

I have barely made any parody stuff, but as a long time Final Fantasy player (at least most of the first 10 mainline titles) I was excited to join in!! It took me a whiiile to decide on what to make because the game is massive with a lot of iconic characters, I had a few alt. ideas, like a spoof of the minigames of the Golden Saucer, and making fun of Sephiroth's Super Nova attack, but to make it more achievable I just decided to focus on a silly spoof with Chocobos, which I'm a fan of.

What happens to the rest of the party when Cloud rides a Chocobo, Do all 3 characters ride on it? do each of them get a Chocobo?, Or do they just get on Cloud's pocket? That was the starting idea, and I'm actually curious if the next part of the FFVII remake will answer that.

Shoutouts! to @frootlupin for helping out with voices, I was going to make it silent as more usual with my animations, but halfway through I realized voices could help push it a lot more, he did an awesome job with some expressive lines and also fun grunts and screams. Also shoutouts once again to my pal Moralo González on the music department with his remixes of a few themes.

And that's all for now! Funny how different these 2 projects are in comparison.

For curiosity and fun, it's cool to hear what NG folks think, Anything from these animations (or other of my works) you'd like to see more of?

Butzbo out!

Time for a few updates on creative molecules!! haven't done one of these in quiiite a while:

Llama vs. Llamas!!

So just recently I uploaded my latest game Llama vs. Llamas, a game-jam-game made in collab with my musician pal Moralo Gonzalez for the Extra Credits game jam, it's pretty short, but we're happy with the results. On a sidenote, a few years ago I traveled to Perú getting to know many of the Inca ruins, finding llamas in a lot of them, which was pretty inspiring at the time and I had been wanting to do something based on that setting for quite a while, so this was a fun context to give it a first shot.

In case you were wondering, the name is a silly spanish pun; Did you know, the word "Llama" in spanish is used for both the animal and flames?

I haven't published much in the world of games lately, but I go "gamedev-hungry" over time, and game jams are great for that! I like the excitement of making a new game prototype from scratch, and even if the results don't work so well, it's all good if you just spent one weekend on it. This was a lot of fun so I'll probably join another one soon.

Mario Paint animation!

More of an anecdote, but I was inspired by a Gaming historian video to actually try animating on Mario Paint. Now, Why would anyone do something like that?, well, I just became obsessed for two days wanting to experience using a Nintendo animation software for the Snes with a ton of limitations. If anyone is curious, I managed to get it to work with Zsnes emulator, setting my Wacom tablet to mouse mode, and a good deal of patience.

In this case I made a bunch of 4-frame character loops which can later be 'controlled' with the mouse over a background (kind of like a 'motion tween'). Once you get used to the limitations, the interface gets fun to use!

FFVII COLLAB!

So I finally joined one of these legendary Newgrounds Collabs!, you can expect a little contribution I made on it once it comes out :)

Sooo What's next?

Animation!

Earlier this year I uploaded 'Dogs of the Planet' which has gotten a great response and I've been wanting to begin with a new short film since, I'd like to get into a rhythm where I'm making one short per year, but due to work (and world events) it hasn't been the greatest year to begin an ambitious project. But in the meantime I'm working on a short chill animation for practice; It contains robots! here's a little peek.

Games?

Other than the game-jam stuff, I'm actually working on a couple of game projects! both are in stages too early to elaborate much on for now, one is a collaboration, and the other is a more personal project where I'm exploring a narrative adventure game with rpg elements, I'll leave this GIF as a microscopic teaser for now.

Aaand that's all for today!

It's great to drop by and see NG staying creative and eventfull during this mutant times ;)

Frogs and Flies from Newgrounds!

Time to kick off the year with a new animation I made for Pixel Day!

A little backstory/process!

Other than my short film 'Dogs of the Planet' (more on that below!) and a few loops, I didn't get as much time to make animation during 2019, BUT, at some point @Aap invited me to make a short duck-segment for his brain-twisting pixel animation Indian Runner duck! (go watch it!).

I made this part:

I hadn't done much in pixel art before other than a few small things, so it took me quiiite a while to get it to work. As space is so limited you have to be aware of the placing and color of every single pixel. But despite the difficulties, I think it ended up working after all. There is a "crispy" and vibrant quality of working in such a low resolution which I found appealing.

SO, after that I got inspired to try my hand at something more 'elaborated' on pixel art, and Newgrounds' Pixel Day seemed like the right excuse! Also there was the Loopdeloop challenge coming up, I usually like to make loops as a way to experiment with different things in animation, so, Why not do both things in one?

The inspirational theme for Loopdeloop was 'WHOOPS', so after a weird brainstorming I ended up with this frog which keeps being misleaded to press an unwanted button, here is the very first animatic:

Warning: it's SUUUPER rough, but I like to share it in it's most crude version as that's how the process normally starts.

So, with that defined I asked my composer pal Moralo González (who I've collaborated with in a good bunch of stuff by now such as the game Dinomelt ) if he was up for the mission of making a tune for this weird pixelated animation. While he had done chiptune esque-music, I wanted to see if he could make something both alien sounding for this weird ambience, and also more pure in terms of chiptune sound.

All of this resulting in the sick jam you hear in the final loop.

Meanwhile I finally began animating, starting with a resolution of 160x90 as it seemed to make the pixels stand out while not being so restrictive to work with, first starting with only linework and later on coloring. On this last aspect I got a bit greedy with the coloring style, trying some dithering effects (pretty much making multi-color pixel patterns. to simulate light-shadow effects) This is one thing I thought about recalling old Pokémon gameboy sprites such as this precious thing:

This took a lot more than anticipated throughout the animation being a more manual process (with a few shortcuts in some cases but in many parts done pixel-by-pixel) with the frog character having 20-30 unique frames.

There's probably a big basket of pixel art tricks I've yet to explore in terms of coloring, but for now I'm happy with how it ended up!

And that is how this poor frog looking for elusive nutrients came to be!

'Dogs of the Planet' coming to Newgrounds!

OOoohhh that's right!, I have another thing to announce!

This is the short film I finished last year, (here's a post I made back then) it's about time to finally web-release it! I have the impression it may be more of an internet short, so we'll see how it goes! I'm planning to first launch right here on Newgrounds by the end of January!

Hey Newgroundsss!

Been a while since my last upload here, and it turns out I've been quite busy working on my latest short film, 'Dogs of the Planet'! Check out this little sneak peek :)

As you can see it's a trailer, which I haven't seen that many of here on NG, but I found it still fun enough to share here as a brief collection of loops. The plan is to have an eventual web release of the full short (starting here on Newgrounds!) but that will be announced once I have a defined date.

It had been quiiite a while since my last propper animated short, the last one was... wait, Lizard Brain Freeze? and that was 4-5 years ago!! These past years I have focused a bit more on exploring games, and still keeping the excercise of short animated loops. So, motivated by a short loop I made for the loopdeloop challenge last year (the same GIF you see below, made with the base theme of ...DOGS), I began to collaborate with a musician friend to finally get back into a new (at least 'medium' sized?) animation project!

This is a short about ... well, dogs, particularly dogs who find themselves in a post-human world, as you can guess, it may (or not) be as serious as it sounds ;)

There are a few coolibert updates related to other projects for a later post, BUT for now I wanted to focus on this little ball of morphing canines, I find it pretty cool to announce it here considering how Newgrounds is what got me into trying animation in the first place.

ARF!!!

Hey Newgrounds organisms!
I like this page as a blogging platform, so here goes an update on recent stuff:

First a small recent thing: 'La Yema' ('the eggyolk' in spanish), this was kind of my Halloween project, I'm still participating regularly on the Loopdeloop bi-monthly animation challenges, as they have been helpful to explore weird ideas to try on loop form. the last one with the theme of FEAR led me to make this weirdness.

It was also an attempt at making something suspensefull, so the animation timing ended up being a lot more different than what I usually make. Another unusual thing was that aside from the sound effects, I also made the 'music' this time (music in a vague way, maybe it's more 'cues' than actual songs), I used ORGMaker which was pretty cool to test around once again (it's the same software which was originally made for music on the classic Cave Story).
 

Also, GAMES!
I'm still trying stuff in the world of games, so here's a few atoms:

'Ducks!'

This game was originally made for the Construct 3 game jam last year, well I recently got an award for Best Game on Ludopolis! A rising videogame festival in Valdivia, Chile. it got a pretty good response, so it's a good motivation to revisit and expand on this project.

Kick Punch, Eat Meat!
Now this is a more unique project, I've been working on art for this game by RobotMonkeyBrain, It's a 'deck-building' game on an early stage of development, follow its Intagram site for more updates on the game.

Mysterious (dog) short!

Entertaining as it is to make games, I want to keep focus on animated content. I actually haven't made a propper short in quite a while so I just began a new project I'll be updating a bit more about later on the (rest of the) year.
(hopefully before Smash Bros Ultimate comes out!).

Thanks for reading this noodle, now here's your reward:

Hey Newgrounds!, long time without an update, so here's a thing:

Just finished a quick GAME project, a little 'RPG' battle called 'Arcane Cereal Duel'!
Take a look!


 

Now I'll expand a bit about its making:

This one was originally created for 'The Very First Extra Credits Game Design Jam!' I had missed the Ludum Dare jam the previous weekend so this was a good alternative.

The inspirational theme for this game jam was a video where they talked about the concept of "Awesome per second". What's that, you ask?, well it's pretty much a critique on games that could deliver a better overall experience if they were shorter by getting rid of boring/less memorable parts.

After exploring a few ideas I liked this one as a way to make a content-heavy short game where there were a bunch of elements around you and you had to find the best way to use them in your favor, in some way like a Point and Click, but in battle form.

The game was made over a weekend on the 48 hour jam, barely finished a functional version, (the original one is up on itch.io if you're curious ). I liked the results, so I took some time I had through the week to update the graphics and a few details I wanted to improve from the first one, testing, dialogs, and a slightly varied enemy pattern.

I worked once again with Construct (3), which I've found great for the graphic implementation, I wasn't so sure if the battle system could be easily achieved, and after a few tests it became all about using variables properly, using only mouse controls made it a lot simpler too.

If the characters look familiar to some extent, they are the 2 wizards I rescued from a previous short animation from 2017 called 'Ketchup Golem'!, now called Wizlog and Spirk, an RPG battle was a great excuse to revisit them!

A fun fact, this is the first game where I actually make the music!, it took me a bit to tinker around, and I finally used ORGMaker, this one was originally created by Studio Pixel for the music of Cave Story, so I wanted to see what could be done with it. I don't have much of a background on this area. Possibly any oldschool RPG player may be able to tell that the battle theme is created following the same structure of old Final Fantasy Battle music.

It was also fun to toy around with simple dialog 'cutscenes' in the style of old rpgs, I like how a simple change of expression, along with a sound and dialog can do a lot to compensate for its simplicity. 
 

While in the short term I want to focus a bit more on animated content, this game was a pretty fun side project with still a good deal of animation.

What do you think? Is this something you'd like to see more of?

Lizards and Fish from Newgrounds!

Here's a little thing I've been making through the year: not too long ago I began making custom "token cards" designs for creatures  (which are mostly used as a complement on Magic: The Gathering) for the Cardamajigs store, and now a second series of ANIMATED cards are out!

I wasn't really aware that lenticular printing could allow so many frames of animation (actually a total of 8 in this case!) so it's been great to make a few things with this technology, it's pretty much some kind of GIF you can have in your hand.

If you're interested, either for your Magic battles or just to collect animation in physical form, head to the store!

Clay-morphed beings of Newgrounds, I haven't dropped by in a while, so it's time for a little update on sprouting molecules:

As the title says, not long ago I found a video of someone actually speedrunning Dinomelt! a 100% run!!!

I'm a big fan of events like Games done Quick with their usual Super Metroid races and the like, where players go in-depth about the game details and 'optimal routes' (that was one motivation to actually have a 'speedrun' medal here on NG), so it was amazing to see that this game had some speedrunning appeal, take a look if you're into that!!

Finding more Dinomelt feedback, and playthroughs on youtube has been a cool motivation; After finishing the game I've been taking a break before getting into what could be a next 'big project' due to other human-related duties, but in the meantime I'm making a few tests for an expanded build of 'DUCKS'.

Also, just out of experimentation I began using Instagram, which, while probably not intended, has been a fun platform to share quick animations around.

I also made a microscopic GIF-Comic for Halloween... so far that's my ONLY Art submission this year!?... Perhaps I should do something about that.

Splurt!

Hello Newgrounds!,
Time for a little (but also huge!) announcement!

Long-story short, on 2016, as part of the competitions of the Chilemonos Animation Festival (the biggest animation festival in Chile); I took part and won a pitching contest on new series for Cartoon Network LA. with a 'byte-sized' series called "Mantequillo"!!

/(You could translate it to 'butter kid' or something like that), it's based off some comics I had made for a chilean webcomic site called The Comic Fome (here's one (in spanish, though))

This led our small team to make two short pilot skits with this characters, as interstisials for the channel. For a while we weren't sure abut when and how it would become available (otherwise I would've made the announcement a long time ago!!!) But at last it's gone live on Cartoon Network LA (Latin America)! you should be able to watch it from the comfort of your device of choice as they also uploaded it on Youtube (see below).

It's reaally short and simple, but give it a watch! :)
 

Hey Newgrounds!

First of all, thanks to all who've played through and taken the time to review Dinomelt!, the response has been great over its featured weeks on Newgrounds and I've been paying close attention to all the feedback so far.

If you enjoyed the game (or if you're into OST collection, because why not), you can now get the Dinomelt's OST, by the coolibert Moralo Gonzalez on Bandcamp right now!! It's on "Name your price" mode, but consider supporting his music work by throwing a bit more than 0$.

Making the OST was a pretty unique part of the process, since it's among the few development tasks I didn't produced, but got some 'directing' to do instead; I had worked with Moralo before on numerous UNI works on Design School (most notably my first 'released game' Mastica Astros), but so far Dinomelt is the biggest project we've worked on in terms of scope and required music volume.

Proposing each track was an unusual challenge to get into, as the "Explorative Platofmer" genre comes with pretty unique musical needs in terms of ambientation, the biggest challenge being defining the 'world themes'; as the player is more likely to spend a lot more time into each area; which meant that the world tracks made by Moralo had to offer a lot of variety, while consistently covering an atmospheric mood of each area, something that doesn't apply to the rest of the OST which covers the boss battles, conversation themes, and later story-based tracks towards the Endgame. For a 'relatively short' game, we're pretty glad to have finished with a final volume of 14 tracks on the game! (well, maybe 11 if you don't count the brief 'fanfare'-type tracks).

I also made a little cover for your ocular absorption.

Splurt!