So much to do!

School's been nuts since I got back. Really fun new classes and even funner assignments in my old ones. Doing a lotta things at once, but as always it's good to be busy. As I'm writing this, my regular net access is down while I'm at school, aside from being able to log onto AIM and Skype. It's inconvenient as all get-out, but at least it's keeping me semi-productive. Thankfully the school's got lots of computers around to check up on things, so...yay?

Rob Kohr's film is nearly complete. I'm up to my neck in coloring a bunch of shots for it. I think it'll only be a couple more weeks until it's all done, but I'm not sure if it'll be up publicly since he may be running it in festivals. Once I find out I'll definitely post more info; I think you guys'll really dig it. T'was a big honor to be part of such a visually-appealing animation project. Props to Rob. :]

Speaking of honors, one of my biggest honors for the past year is finally coming to fruition! My first episode of Pokemon Diamond & Pearl: Galactic Battles, will be airing this weekend on Cartoon Network! Saturday, Feb. 6th @ 7:00 AM (then again on Sunday, Feb. 7th @ 7:30 PM) and then most likely on the Pokemon section of CN's streaming site. It's US Episode 605 "An Egg Scramble". I'll post more about the character after they've premiered, but you guys'll probably recognize me as soon as they speak.

Still workin' on a few secret projects, one of which I'm glad is being kicked into high gear this month. Still not sure of a release date on that, but it's gonna be amazing. I'm really proud of what's come of it so far. Slowly building up to my thesis too. Pre-production on that will start over the Summer; I'm the most excited for that above all else.

Hope all's well with people and stay tuned~

Those couple weeks flew by, but I'll never forget 'em.

I'm already back in action for the new semester at school and I've got a LOT on the horizon to take care of. But, I'm on a normal sleep schedule (good sign) and rarin' to go for my new classes. I wish I had more time over the break to work on stuff, since I wasn't nearly as productive as I was hoping, but regardless, this vacation was somethin' else. Christmas passed, MAGFest was a blast and my last week before coming back to the city flew by in an instant...but every day was an absolute joy.

Once again, I gotta hand it to KROOOZE and all of the lovely staffers running MAGFest for giving me the chance to have such an amazing weekend. For MAGFest being a smaller-scale con compared to others, these people do a top-notch job. The whole thing took place at a hotel that apparantly looks like the covenant from Half-Life 2 (Hi! I'm Chris and I don't play mainstream video games! Derp.) with a very nice setup for all parties involved.

New Years Eve was a smashin' party complete with the voice of Duke Nukem doing the countdown into a "Happy Fuckin' New Year". Then I was happy to have my group of pals to hang with involving the two british gents, Martin (LittleKuriboh) and Lawrence (MasakoX) as well as Mart's two friends Carolyn and Ashley, who were nice enough to record a lot of our stupid antics and adventures throughout the con on video (a bunch of 'em are on YouTube already). I was also honored to be on a few panels with LK and Masako, including a couple of their panels, a Voice Actor panel (which included Jon St. John and Matt Mercer, both of whom are very awesome) and my spotlight panel where I showcased a bunch of my animated works. Thanks everyone who came to our panels and we hope y'all had a great time! :]

Con-stuff aside, we also had many misadventures while staying at the Hilton involving a fire-alarm on the first night, journeying through blistering cold to find a cab after dinner another night...and even getting into a car accident (no one was hurt) on the way to see Avatar the last morning! (That said, NO I haven't seen Avatar.)

So now that I'm back in action, I have a lot of things planned up until the Summer. Speaking of, there's a strong possibility of appearing at a few other conventions in the near future, but I'll post more of that when I hear anything definite. Meantime, I've got more coloring on Rob Kohr's film to take care of, a super-secret project that will hopefully be finished in the coming months and more schoolwork of course. Once Summer 2010 hits, I have to focus ALL of my energy into one specific project, while I'll go into a bit later.

Hope everyone had an amazing Holiday and here's to a badass 2010 for us all!

So the holidays come to a close and December's on its way out...

T'was a pretty full month, even during the holidays for me. Finished up all of my school stuff and looks like I got some damn good grades for all that ridiculous amount of work, phew! Christmas was fun, as were the parties and get-togethers that preceded it, but I'm hittin' the ground running and tryin' to work on stuff as much as I can over the next couple weeks 'til I go back for my next semester.

This'll be my last blog post for the year, so I won't have anything else to report until after January begins, but my 21st Birthday this Thursday's gonna be a blast with the MAGFest New Years Eve party! I was added to the guest page finally and I've already been set for a few panels. I'll have my own spotlight one where I'll be showcasing lots of animation stuff I've been working on, along with a few big announcements, then Masako and I will be on LittleKuriboh's Yu-Gi-Oh! Abridged panel which'll be sure to make a big splash. Lastly, he and I will be part of a really neat panel with John St. John and Matt Mercer that I'm super excited to be part of. All of those who can attend this year, I can't wait to see ya! This'll be an experience and a half.

2009 is quite a great year for animation. Fantastic Mister Fox was my absolute fav this year, with Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs as a close second. Disney did some amazing stuff of course with Up and Princess & the Frog, the latter of which I've seen 3 times over the last month and loved it each time. Pokemon had an awesome 12th flick in Arceus and the Jewel of Life and Coraline was really memorable, espcially for a few friends of mine. I hope 2010'll top this year but that's gonna be a tough line-up to beat.

That said, I hope y'all had a great December and I'll say right now, I've gotta LOT of really cool things in store for next year. I'm gonna work real hard and make sure I get done exactly what I need to do. Wish me luck and see ya in 2010 kids. :]

P.S. Almost forgot, thanks for the front pagin' on Jesus Sweets. Hope ya got a chuckle from it!

Okay really, I love December...

...but this may be THE busiest end of the year I've had in my life. I finally know the pain of Mike Luckas and the other SVA Cartooning majors with their ridiculous amounts of homework. SO much stuff to do...and schoolwork is only half of it! I've gotta ton due by the 16th and even more to finish before the month is up.

In the midst of the chaos, I managed to do a quick little cartoon for the holidays, thanks to creator Scott Frerichs of DBZ Abridged fame, for coming up with a funny little piece of fake commercial copy that I thought was BEGGING to be brought to life. Scott recorded it for me and I finished it in a couple days, came out pretty nicely and he and our friends all seemed to enjoy it! That and I had completely forgotten about the NG Winter contest, so that was a nice bonus too. Also I hope those who watched and were offended by any of the content will know that Scott and I don't mean any of it offensively and that Jesus Sweets was done all in good fun.

I've also gotta lotta stuff to prepare for MAGFest at the beginning of next year. Most likely I'll be doing my own panel where I'll have some stuff to showcase and a few things to announce, but I'll also be part of a few other panels that are focused on certain other guests...some surprises are in store, oh yes. :] Seriously, if you can make it to this con, do it. It's gonna be worth it.

Now I'm gonna go collapse, do some last second X-mas shopping and work my ass off on BACKGROUNDS OF ALL KINDS. HOORAY. Also thanks very much to all of the kinds folks who've supported and purchased the Parody Rangers t-shirts as well as the nice comments. I appreciate it :]

Go! Go! Parody Rangers T-shirts are now up for Pre-Order!

...on the ever-so-amazing Sharkrobot! Available in delicious Meat & Renaldo flavors! Part of a balanced breakfast, contains Vitamin B for BADASS. Go up to evil's face and go BIZZAM or decorate your torso with the face of the greatest man ever. Makes for a great holiday gift!

BIG thanks to Snafu-Dave for makin' this happen for Psy and I. For my first t-shirt designs I think they turned out okay. I'm really proud of Meat and Renaldo as characters and I know they're some of the big fan-favorites, so I hope the Rangers fanbase get a kick outta these and help support us! :]

Also if you guys who follow and enjoy my animation work have any ideas for other t-shirt that you'd be interested in seeing on the site, lemme know and we'll talk about additions to the store. Hope all's well with people and that your holiday season is kickass. I'm starting off this December with my second recording session, as mentioned last post, so I'm excited to kick-start what's usually my favorite month.

(NOTE TO NEWGROUNDS READERS: My apologies for the last post, probably wasn't a good idea in retrospect. The money situation is being handled and thanks everyone for the kind suggestions.)

So lots 'o stuff has happened in the past month!

I've been continuing with various school projects and I've decided to compile of all of 'em all together at the end of my 3rd year, which will be in early May of next year. After that I'll be going full-throttle with my thesis in the following 4th and final year, but by that point I'll have plenty of material to put into a little reel of various animations I've done over the course of my three years at SVA.

In the meantime, I'm thankful to say I've got another set of shots to color for my freelance job on the side from schoolwork. I've often spoken of Rob Kohr's independent film, "Once and Never Again" (which may be getting a title change to "The Lift") and perfect timing: Rob's been uploading some videos of the WIP
cartoon. This one in particular you can see a bit of the coloring work I've done!

I've also been fortunate enough to double a few of my assignments for Celia Bullwinkel's class with some animation I've been doing on my current super-secret project. I should be able to finish one complete part of it by the time I finish this semester and hopefully production will kick into full gear over the next couple of months. I'll also be officially announcing what the project is at...

MAGFest! The Music and Gaming Festival taking place over 4 Days (Jan 1 - 4, 2010) in Alexandria, VA. I'll be making my first official guest appearance at this convention right at the start of the new year! I'll be there alongside the likes of LittleKuriboh, Jon St. John and the creators of ThereWillBeBrawl...Best...Birthday Present...EVER. All thanks to KROOOOOOOOZE.

I'm also very honored to say that I've just recorded my first professional voiceover gig on a show that I grew up with for over an entire decade. It took a long while before all the stars and planets aligned in just the right pattern to help me luck out...but ladies and gents, I've landed a guest character on the Pokemon animated series! I can't go into any detail about the character until after their appearance in the show, but once I have the exact date of the premiere, I'll post with a bigger update on that. I -think- I should be on around February, we'll see.

Lastly, Christmas vacation's coming up and I've still got so much to do. I really wanted to try and finish Go! Go! Parody Rangers THE MOVIE Part 3 while I'm home and have a spare month to do so...but, I still have a huge desire to finish the original game concept I came up with along with Richie Zirbes, who've been dedicating a LOT of time into the programming of this action-packed adventure. I feel like an original project should heavily take precedence over all else, so I'll be working a lot on the cutscenes for the game during that time instead. Sorry GGPR fans, but hopefully I'll get to the rest of the movie eventually!

P.S. I may have a liiiittle somethin' planned for Christmas. Look forward to that ;]

Takes me another month to make a journal entry, joyous.

But, I'm havin' the time of my life right now, so hopefully it's forgivable. No, I'm not dead! Really! Well, maybe. Wait...no. Okay.

So I promised I'd upload some schoolwork and I figured this'd be a good opportunity to show some of the crap I've been up to. So far we've done three homework assignments for the class and are already working on the fourth. Here's what I got for ya:

Our first two assignments went hand-in-hand; they were exercises in character design, which I gotta huge kick out of. First, we picked an animal of our choice and were asked to draw as many designs as we could manage; typically around 10 from everyone. I had taken some photos of the cat often seen at our local art store and had them on hand as reference. So while a cat is usually a bit generic of an animal, I went more in-depth with it and tried to apply a specific personality to character. After choosing our favorite design of the bunch, we were asked to create at least ten different poses of them displaying as much of their personality as possible. I think I did about 16 or so and put my favorites in the final collage.

Our third assignment was the first piece of animation we produced for the class, which was to have a character carry a heavy object from one side of the screen to another. I went an extra mile and did two characters, with one of the two having two different animations. This was a good exercise for getting me back into the animation spirit, since I hadn't done any -real- movement in quite a while. Not bad for a start, I hope. Our next assignment is to make a fat character sit in order to display a sense of weight in appliance to the character itself, as opposed to them interacting with weight of another source.

In between the stuff such as this, I've been still working on a big secret project, which I've been applying some of the new stuff I've learned. It's not turning out too bad at all and I've got some good feedback, so I'm real excited about this one, oh yes. Also, mostly thanks to a certain class of mine, I've been doing some MAJOR networking...in fact I've gotta little meeting this coming Teusday I'm very looking forward to. We'll see how that goes. Still got other stuff in the pipeline and doing my best to keep track of it all.

Happy Halloween this weekend, kiddo's!

Okay, first and foremost...dear internet:

Specifically everyone who uses Facebook that knows me, anyone who you've friended or has tried to friend you who goes by "Chris Niosi", is NOT me. I DO have a Facebook account, but it's under a fake name, mainly for privacy issues, but also because Facebook isn't really "for me". I use the account for specific purposes, but flat out, I do not have an account labelled with my name. So to the many I've spoken to who're like "why won't you friend me back!?" it's not me. There we go!

ANYWHO. So New York Anime Fest was great yet again. Had a lotta fun as I did the previous two years, did a little bit of networking, made some new friends and hung out with a few I haven't seen in quite a while, though I was glad to have a lot of the same company as last year's con. Good to see Crystal Lonnquist, Lucien Dodge, Casey Mongillo and the like. I also dragged Mike Ruocco along with me on Saturday to see the American premiere of Soul Eater, which is awesome. I met the cast of the show and the director, gave 'em some nice gifts of which they very much enjoyed too!

Aside from that I've gone through about 3 full weeks of school thus far...and I don't mind saying at all that's been freaking GREAT. Truthfully, I've been "unproductive" in the sense of online projects; I haven't touched Parody Rangers or the Po3 game in quite a while now. The only side project I've been doing any work on as of late is the super secret thingamabob, which for now mainly concerns overseeing other people's work until I get going on my contribution. Point is, I like not being tied down to a million things at the moment and primarily focusing on schoolwork and just livin' life. Plenty of close friends living in the general area, or close enough to where I see them on a regular basis. Odd's are, over the Christmas vacation I'll "get back to work" on certain things and I'd dare to say before then I'll be doing work on some stuff, but we'll see. Regardless, I feel great and just wanna keep pressing forward. I've come to grips with a lot of personal stuff about my future and what exactly I wanna do as far as a career goes. Still plenty to sort out, but I'm tryin' to stay level-headed and logical about everything.

I'll be uploading some stuff from school soon most likely. Thanks for readin'!

I've made it through nearly two weeks of school so far.

I LOVE being back in NYC on a regular basis. While I've not quite reached the point where I'm sustaining myself on my own income, at the very least living in a dorm here in NY feels great and gives me a sense of responsibility. I've had all five of my classes for this semester at least once so far, all of which have been very beneficial. Advanced Life Drawing and Layout & Design are workshops for exactly what they mean, giving me crunch-time on major stuff I need to work on. My main class, Advanced Animation Workshop, which I'll be taking once again with Celia Bullwinkel (who's also teaching a 3rd Year class for the first time!), is crunch-time for everything I've learned. Light & Color is my one humanity or "regular school class" as I often slang-term them to others, but it doesn't seem like it'll provide too much distraction. I'm glad most of all to be taking the elective Developing An Animated Series in which to focus on what I wanna do with my art, stories and characters most of all. I'll probably be posting a lot of the stuff I'm doing for school here, so those've you who have any interest can check it out.

I'm starting to have to put a lot of things on hold, but I AM continuing to try to work on stuff on a daily basis and keep track of it all. I'm overseeing a big group project and sending out material for people to work on in hopes that I can that relased at a reasonable time from now. I'm also continuing to work on Rob Kohr's film which is coming along nicely and helping me maintain a small amount of income while at school (it's a bit more difficult for me to keep up a normal job while I'm here). He's looking into showcasing his film at one of the ASIFA events coming up, which is gonna be amazing, so look forward to that...among other things. We'll see.

I also wanna start making more blog entries on specific subjects that hopefully I may end up getting more feedback on. With my thesis coming up next year and a lot of really in-depth things about animation flying around in my brain I'm curious on as getting as many retrospectives as possible. Time will tell.

Later kids!

What a Summer, yet another already come and gone.

I wasn't NEARLY as productive as I wanted to be this season, but what I -did- get accomplished I'm very proud of. I'm glad I got my writing spark rekindled, had a ton of fun with character designing, did a few storyboards and a just a tad of animation. Nothing fully completed, sadly, but PLENTY in the works.

The game I'm working on for Newgrounds' Power of Three Event definitely ain't comin' out at its appropriate time, but Richie and I refuse to give up. We'll most likely be continuing production on it over the Fall in bits and pieces because we think it's a great concept that shouldn't simply be abandoned. I think it'll be something that will really surpise people, especially from the standpoint of a flash game. Meanwhile I've also started production on a BIG new project involving some close and INCREDIBLY talented friends. I'm actually not sure which project will finish and release first, but both are -very- worth looking forward to.

The Summer's been fun AND draining. I've made new friends, lost a few, revived friendships and relations with many people that I'm very grateful and appreciative for. There's been some sickness issues at home between my getting my first cold in a long while, not to mention my mom's condition, but she'll be fine thankfully. Also Comic-con was still amazing. I think the filthy laziness bug will be sprayed off once school starts in a few days. I'm just about to move back to my dorm in NYC and despite some small concerns, I've gotta damn good schedule of classes this year. I'm also glad to have a couple 'o Mikes around the area to hang with, eat with and watch ridiculous amounts of stupid animated movies with.

I've got high hopes for the future and plan on goin' full-throttle with this next year of school at SVA, hopefully doing even better than last year and the year before it. Wish me luck!