New to the Grounds #3

Hi, this is a series meant to feature new and interesting users on Newgrounds, and maybe help highlight the cool stuff they do here and elsewhere.

Artist #squizxy

Featured Piece;

Squizxy is a digital artist and animator that has shared their enjoyably bizarre sense of humor on the internet for some time but just recently joined NG. I have been a fan of their chaotic and artful shorts on youtube, and really think their style and energy fit in here quite nicely.

Show them some love on their youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/c/SquishySunset

and squizxy, welcome!

New to the Grounds #2

Hi, this is a series meant to feature new and interesting users on Newgrounds, and maybe help highlight the cool stuff they do here and elsewhere.

Artist #PASILION

Featured Piece;

Pasilion is a Finnish artist and designer who recently started sharing their work here, and all the stuff they have shown has some amazing characterization and world building, and I have been happy to see them make the front page so often in such a short time.

I also enjoyed checking out their website where they talk briefly about their inspirations , and maybe give them some love on their insta.

https://pasilion.com/portfolio

https://www.instagram.com/pasilion/

Music Video Musings: LORN - ANVIL

With Halloween having just passed, and finding ourselves firmly in fall in the northern hemisphere, I think this piece about "harvest" is quite suited.

For reference some of the notes in the video's description.

"The year 2100. In an effort to combat overpopulation, the postmortem social network "Anvil" is released."

The monochromatic starkness of the video is quite eye catching, and you can see the obvious respect for other works like Ghost in the Shell, Akira, and the works of Moebius.

I am not entirely sure which program they used to make the visuals put has the implied depth effects that I often seen in blender based works, and that oddity to the visuals really helps give a sense of unreality.

While being a very dark and moody piece, there is also a strong element of eroticism, which might be a comment of the the Anvil SMS being self soothing like our own SMS, or a remark on sex's purpose in our existences which are innately tied to death, especially what that would mean in an over populated 2100.

Ghost in the Shell's Author, Masamune Shiro, often uses sex, and sexualized characters in his works as a visual spice, common in manga/anime, but also he approaches it frankly as a part of human nature, and as something that effects our actions, and I think this video does well in reflecting that.

I will note it might feel like it's a piece made to be edgy, and it undeniably is, but I think it achieves that well hewn

gleam sincerely, and in a way that I find some unique value in.

On the note of my own viweing of this, one thing that stand out watching this piece is that I was kinda surprised to realize at the end that it is entirely instrumental, because it seemed to be telling a really weighty story, but used not a word, not spoken nor sung, was said.

The visual direction really plays with beat in a way that I deeply appreciate, but find uncomfortable, which might sum up my experience of this video quite nicely.

Thanks for reading, tty'alll.

New to the Grounds #1

Hi, this is a series meant to feature new and interesting users on Newgrounds, and maybe help highlight the cool stuff they do.

Sora Kingdom Hearts Tinkerbell summon;

which is quite lovely but also because they are working on the beginnings of a really interesting original project over on their youtube and I think anyone interested should check it out.

While you are over their maybe consider giving our new neighbor a like and a subscribe.

Thanks for reading, tty'alll.

Music Video Musings: super ☆ business ☆ dancing ☆ night

So, previously I have only talked about professional music videos, and I am a big fan of passion projects and fan works, so I wanted to feature this simple but fundamentally awesome piece by one rob gilliam (here is their youtube channel)

In the description rob talks about this being a short term assignment for a class and while the piece is bare bones in nature, I think that is where some of the magic of it lies.

As piece it uses alot of visual shorf hand to convey way more than you would think.

From the first shot the story of bored office worker is immediately understood form the water cooler and the drab grays.

The unassuming cubicle citizen shows their flair for the drama in their reveal of brightly colored lips and blazing blue eyes.

And the music stays steady in it's passion as the dancer just puts his full heart into feel the music.

The piece really pushes it self into fantasy with the sudden flip into golden hotpants and the journey shown in the montage of unrelenting jive, and even if the ending leaves us with a sense of it all been a self soothing daydream, the workers smile of self satisfaction gives it an odd truth.

Also noting excellent color design with the grays of the office and the dramatic reveals of the workers red lip, blue eyes, and golden hot pants, and in general I think there is alot to praise about how efficent but fresh feeling alot of the loops in the dance are, and I think that works for the audience because of the misleading but amusing nature of the apparent premise of a bored office worker.

It's just such a playful piece and really gets caught in you head, and when it came out 5 years ago I remember it giving me a similar sense of joy now as it did then.

I actually think comparing it to the slower paced live action music video for the original song by Modjo - Lady (hear me tonight) can help give a real sense of what visuals framing/remixing can do to a song, so it will include it here;

Thanks for reading, tty'alll.

Music Video Musings: Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood

So, even before the Gorillaz came out, I was a fan of Jamie Hewlett, and the strange words he loved to craft.

Tank Girl was on TV alot, and I heard it was based on a comic, and I forget how I got some issues of it, but I knew Hewlett could breath life into character in some fun ways.

So I was excited to see Gorillaz come out with this video, and I spent plenty of time poking around the flash enabled Kong Studios, and enjoying the music.

I think this music video did several clever thing in establishing the band, and now I will mention them in no particular order;

• featuring gorilla in the video helped ensure that when ever any one mentioned the video they could say "the one with the gorillas in it" which is effective marketing/name recognition proliferation.
• I think the cartoony aspects where used in a way that let there be darker content, more slap stick, and some stylish things like 2d's shadowed profile.
• It's a simple but effective intro to the nature of each character, which as the seminal work of this real fake band is good marketing.
• The animation allowed the characters and the visual elements to really play along side the music.
• the animate also allowed larger than life character like the ghost of Rustle's friend and the gorllia zombies to come into play, and for the team making it to use some fun shot composition.

It's nice to see the band still going strong after 20 years, I hope they keep at it.

Thanks for reading, tty'alll.

Music Video Musings; Wienners『GOD SAVE THE MUSIC』Music Video (Animated by Speedoru)

First off, nice work @Speedo!

Thank you for making this.

I really like this video for a few different reasons, but it's overall high quality and heart are clear.

I like the tangents and hard cuts as is helps keep up with the frantic music without having to spend to much time on a long animation cycle.

Also, the fact that a lot of those hard cuts have call backs later on really does feed into the upward and positive momentum of a song that titularly won't stop.

The Album cover mashups where a really cute may to show inspiration, and what music meant to the band/artist, and I liked the general theme of inspiration from people having doubt then later finding resolve, and true affection for their own culture and media they grew up with and love.

Smaller charm points;

• I liked the snub by the Flight attendant
• One of the 4 golden golds of music doing the goggles trick with their hand was a cute alteration to the see no evil pose series.
• I think some impressive effort was put into making this meaningful for a wide audience, and that is cool.
• There are various cool motifs like the contrast cuts, leading into the scrap book style, and the play on religious icons and the Tokusatsu segments!

In any case this is alot of fun, check it out if you haven't yet.

Mixed Messages - Tom Cardy

I kinda just wanted people to see this, as it uses implied motion very effectively, while not actually using that much actual animation.

The use of jump cuts with the beat and then longer shots with generic background motion or lighting changes works surprising well, and having the loop animation happen over the bridge is a nice mirroring of what a bridge in a song is for and what a animation loop is for.

The content is obviously ridiculous, but I think keeping most of the art fairly realistic, and using more cartoony facial features, in a style comparable to Pixar, allowed the goofy content to seem appropriately inappropriate (if that scans.)

Also the Female lead basically being a older Frankie Foster from Foster's imaginary Friends is possibly not intentional, but is still an nice homage if it is.

edit: Also check out the artist, Gabriella Antali's other great work;

https://galoo.carrd.co/

Thanks for reading, tty'alll.

A Jem and the Holograms FNF mod would be pretty cool.

It could use chipped parts of audio from the 80's cartoon, and would over all be pretty niffty.

A shout out to;

SeaMaggie

for there really fun work on a Portal (valve not NG) FNF mod, it is looking pretty awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKzPYt5wDgZdRCWCNRhA-SQ

Be well, and tty'alll

So I went ahead and gave some money to Disney and watched the first season of the owl house on Disney+, and while I did watch a few episodes of season 2 and some major plot points have been spoiled for me by cultural osmosis, I still wanted to note that I thought season 1 was very well done.

I think King, Eda, and Luz where an strong core cast, and played off of each other in some really fun an organic ways. and It is also very nice that side characters and the story telling of cartoons in general is having an nice renaissance of depth in story and character, and it's going to be interesting to see what a lot the kids this is actually aimed for have as nostalgia in about 15 years.

I am a big fan of opaque fantasy, so not clearly dark, nor straight-laced good, but that things are enjoyably complicated, and notably human.

I liked some of the ways the show talked about found family, it's magical metaphor for chronic illness, and personal meaning and drive in a world that does not really care.

Over all, it was something that made me happy, and I am excited and disappointed to wrap it up.

Thanks for reading.