Well here we are, 2012.

The "Year of the Doubleleven" was not completely what I expected, nor hoping it to be. I'm not usually the type to be a negative nancy about "Bluhhh this year sucked, hope the next one doesn't suck." if I had to wire down 2011 to one descriptive phrase, it'd be "I tried my best, but it wasn't good enough to so I have to try to do even better". That said, I don't think I'd wanna go back and do it all over again; I'm satisfied with what I have and I'm looking to this new year with a fresh outlook. I want to continue doing what I love and shoot for the god damn stars like a hopeless idiot drawing cartoon characters.

So! That shit outta the way, first order of business:

CLICK TO WATCH "BALANCING ACT"

After a lot of self-debating and the acceptance of film festivals not happening any time this century, I've finally decided to put up "Balancing Act" online. For those of you who missed me posting endless vague info about it throughout the year and the one before it, this was my thesis film for the School of Visual Arts' graduating class of 2011. It's based on the very first series concept I ever made, dating as far back as when I was five years old, which I've developed for all of those year since then. This is the first complete product built from that concept and I spent the better part of an entire year making it. Any and all animation people that take a look at this, I'd greatly appreciate your feedback.

Second order of business: TOME Episode 02 "Mansion Midnight" is released.

I'm slowly but surely working my way through updating and refining the format of the show based on suggestions both from the Official Facebook Page as well as reviews on the Newgrounds submission. For this episode I focused primarily on fixing the "in-game fight scenes" using the sprite-style animations and the battle grid. Starting from Episode 03, I plan on updating all of the "talking avatars" as I call them, for all the conversational scenes. I'm hoping this series will continue to grow as it progresses, as I consider it an exercise in EVERYTHING I've ever done in the field of animation. Thanks everyone for the support and thoughts thus far. I'm aiming to try and get Episode 03 released by Valentine's Day.

Last but not least, I'm returning to one of my favorite conventions ever: MAGfest! This is their 10th year and they're continuing to get bigger and bigger, so I'm majorly excited to be coming back. I know for certain I'll be on the Blue Core Studios panel with Eddie Lebron and company on Friday from 2-3 PM in Panel Room 3 and then making the grand return to Wes Johnson's (of Skyrim fame) "Voice-A-Palooza" on Saturday from 5-7 PM in Panel Room 1. In between doing that, playing old arcade games, partying with TGWTG peeps and not dying of starvation, I'll also be filming Marc Swint's "Super Kirb Stomp II Turbo HD"...why? Because Marc enjoys making movies about me getting almost killed a million times and throwing me on the ground like a ragdoll. Can't wait to probably break every bone in my body!

So yeah, there's a bunch of stuff for ya. Gonna get back to work now. To everyone, I hope you all had a Happy New Year and here's to a great 2012. Ready? Go.

Merry Christmas everybody!

December was a bit of a rough month for me, but I got over the couple hurdles that popped up and got back into the holiday spirit just in time. Went to see TinTin with Mike Luckas a couple days ago, had a lovely Christmas Eve with one side of the family playing Apples to Apples (my Dad is a dirty cheater and won) and then had Christmas morning with another side of the family followed by a great dinner. Got one week left AND my birthday's comin' up!

Couple updates on things. First and most importantly, Martin "LittleKuriboh" Billany and Marianne Miller are doing a charity drive for the wonderful Dan Green. Here's a video explaining what the deal is behind "Card Games for Charity":

Martin and Marianne are holding a large assortment of great auctions for people to bid on with all donations going directly to Dan Green and his beautiful newborn twins. As someone who's met Dan Green before and can say he's one of the nicest people you'll ever meet, I'm personally paying contribution to this by offering an art commission as one of the auctions. If you're interested in bidding for mine, you can find it right here. The rest of the auctions (including the chance to get a Littlekuriboh-style personal song parody of your choice) can be found in the video description. Any and all donations to Dan would be appreciated, so anything you could offer even if it's only a couple dollars, you can send here.

In other news, I'm nearly finished with TOME Episode 02 and it will hopefully be finished in the next week before we say farewell to 2011. I've been making announcements on the Facebook page, but we have three very cool special guests joining us: Jon Jafari (creator of "JonTronShow" on normalboots.com), Lawrence Simpson (MasakoX, host of "AniFile") and Alison Fanelli (Ellen Hickle on "The Adventures of Pete & Pete) will be voicing new characters in the upcoming episode. Thank you all for the viewership and feedback on Episode 01. Starting from after Episode 02 I plan on making some changes to the presentation style of the show, but I also think that 02 has a much stronger and funner story than the pilot. Look forward to that very soon!

Also, I've continually forgot to mention, I've been doing some more voiceover stuff and just recently got into another anime series! "Bakuman", created by the writer/artist duo that made "Death Note" and "Hikaru no Go" is coming out from Media Blasters. Volume 1 has been released (with the first seven episodes) and Volume 2 is coming out early next year. I play Yujiro Hatori, one of the Editors as Shonen Jack. It's a big personal honor for me to be part of this show, since I was a fan of the original comic in college and never thought I'd have the opportunity to be part of it! All artists, especially those that have dabbled in comics, need to check this series out, as the hardship of the two main characters is definitely something you can relate to. Also fans of Berserk will recognize a LOT of the English dub cast.

Lastly, I plan on releasing "Balancing Act" to the public soon, more than likely it'll be up before the end of the year too...maybe even on my birthday. ;]

Hope everyone had a marvelous holiday, now I'm gonna go back to playing Frozen Can-...I mean work.

Remember when I said it's the year of the Doubleven!?

Well if this doesn't prove it, I dunno WHAT will. My 111th submission to Newgrounds, on November 11th, 2011 at 11:11 AM, I've revived my first long-term animation project. Rebuilt from the ground up as an original series, TOME: Terrain of Magical Expertise, has its first episode out! As of this journal, we've got about 70000 views on the Newgrounds submission, over 1600 likes on the Facebook page and fans new and old supporting TOME: Terrain of Magical Expertise. Thank you guys, you're incredible!

I've been really excited about doing this project and I'm glad you guys are enthusiastic about it. I have a LOT planned for the series already and am already working on the second episode, which I can hopefully (if all goes to plan) have out by the next month. I seriously wanna show my gratitude to the people who enjoy the new story I've been cooking up and who are either growing to love these characters all over again, or even for the first time. I've been using the Facebook page for getting feedback on what to adjust in future episodes of show and you've all been really helpful! To give something back to you guys, I've also prepared this:

This is in fact based on an idea from way back during the days of the original TvTome Adventures. On a message board I often frequented, people could paste sprites of their characters to be included as background characters in episodes of the show. I've decided to revive that concept as a way of including participation of the fans into the project to let them feel part of the experience! I'd love to expand out the population of TOME as far as possible, with all of you guys, the viewers and supporters. :]

TOME isn't the only egg in my basket though! 8-Bit Mickey and I are finishing up work on my other secret project that's been in the works the last couple months, "Frame-by-Frame" the animation review show! The first episode of that is looking really good so far, those of you who are big fans of animated series on Television will really get a kick out of it. Bigger than that, I'm goin' out west to visit Los Angeles for the first time! I'll be hangin' with a whole slew of talented people I've had the pleasure of working with the past several years, including the likes of Eddie Bosco, D-Mac, Kimlinh Tran and even Kira (who's just made her big move back to LA, congrats to her!), amongst MANY others. I'm really excited to be visiting and I'll be keeping busy for the week and a half I'll be there. Can't let you guys down. ;]

Seriously thank all of you guys again for all of the support and for continuing to stick with me. Keep watching!

Well people, I think I've teased you all enough, so I'm finally revealed one of the big secret projects I've been cooking up for the past month or so. I've prepared two trailers, one an introduction and one an overview, for a new animation project...
TOME: Terrain of Magical Expertise.

So for those of you who aren't aware of the history behind this, at its core, TOME is a re-branding of the very first big Flash Movie project I ever did on Newgrounds, TvTome Adventures. Back when I was a teenager and really obsessed with "cyberpunk" stuff like Reboot, .hack// and MegaMan Battle Network, I created a series with characters all inspired by friends I'd made on the very first message board I ever posted on. The series, at the time, was using mostly ripped sprites from various video games edited to look like the characters I had designed, as well as some puppeted animation with graphics I had drawn myself.

My original plan from the beginning was that I had always wanted this concept to be a game. However, I had realized that I'm still far too inexperienced to know how to properly develop design for a full-fledged game and instead decided to try what led me to doing animation in the first place...producing it as a webseries! This new incarnation of TOME features all original content, including writing and animation from myself, some incredible music by Kajetokun (the "Over 9000" guy who's a VERY talented musician) as well as some beautiful artwork and backgrounds by Dave Smith (known for GG-Guys and his work on the NiN10Doh! collabs) and Fooly (who's been a longtime artist on Fireball20xl). This version will also be FULLY voiced, by a very stellar cast of actors I'm proud to work with. We even did a cheesy "Theme Song" performed by lead actor Blake Swift (Shadyvox) and myself. From the first episode I've completed thus far, the style of animation is a combination of traditional cinematics and "machinima"-like movements, in the sense that you're seeing the in-game engine of the TOME world with conversational and action sprites. This time however, everything is hand-drawn by myself and the small crew I'm working with, no edited sprites from pre-existing games, no ripped music, this is ALL us. The cast of characters have all been COMPLETELY updated or in some cases totally reimagined, especially the main group of five. Alpha and his friends are all really entertaining and fun from the response I've gotten behind the scenes, so I think you guys will really enjoy what I've done them all now.

The first episode is going to be an officially endorsed Newgrounds project, so major thanks to Tom Fulp, Mike Welsh and Mindchamber for the help. What I would LIKE to do with this project is produce one episode per month and have it be an on-going series, but that will all depend on how the reaction is to the first episode, so I'm depending on all of you to spread the word! I'm going to be premiering the first episode at Youmacon during the "Kirbopher Flashstravaganza" at 9 AM on Saturday. The first episode will then be viewable online for all to see hopefully the week after that and then I'm leaving it all up to you guys! If you were a fan of the original series and are excited about this new incarnation of "TTA", spread the word and support the project! I have a LOT of plans for some cool stuff to do with this series, including a way for people to have interaction with the world of TOME itself, but you'll have to stay tuned on that one. In the meantime, enjoy the trailers, hope to maybe see you at Youmacon and look forward to the first episode being posted this month!

Oh yeah and don't forget to like the official Facebook page! There's some neat stuff on there too. ;]

Hey guys! So I finally got the word from the con staff for when all of my events are gonna be next weekend during Youmacon 2011! Saturday's gonna be Kirbopher day, but I'll be doing a few things throughout the weekend. Here's a quick vidja EXPLAINING IT.

(My schedule for easy reference)
FRIDAY
LittleKuriboh Roast - Main Programming - 10 PM

SATURDAY
Kirbopher's Flashstravaganza - Panel Room 1 - 9 AM
Autographs - 11 AM
LittleKuriboh Movie Premiere - Main Programming - 1 PM
BALANCING ACT: Creating an Animated Short - Panel Room 2 - 3PM

Hope to see y'all there!

WHOA s'been way too long since I last did one of these.

I apologize for the silence on my end the past few months. I've been absolutely SWAMPED with projects and work; all of it is secret stuff I can't reveal until the time is right. What I'll start off with first and foremost since I was finally just announced, I'll be a guest at Youmacon this November! I'll be there alongside some fine folks I've had the pleasure of working with on my animations before, and even Pokemon from a couple years back! Waiting to hear details on a couple panels that I'm trying to set up, but I'll provide details as soon as I can.

I'm hoping that by the end of this month I'll have both of the two big personal projects done and able to be shown to the masses. That said, if I can get them done in time, I also plan on premiering them at Youmacon come November 3rd to the 6th, in which case if any of you guys can make it you're in for a real treat. I can give some basic information about the two projects to whet some appetites:

-The first project is one I'd thought of near the beginning of the year; a concept for an animation review show. Everyone and their mom's doing review shows these days, but I think this concept has a unique "hook" that everyone I've talked has had major positive response to so I'm confident people like this one. I'm thankful to say I have the help of ThatGuyWithTheGlasses' 8-Bit Mickey to help me with video editing while I provide the writing and animation.

-The second project is a...revamp, of sorts. That's probably giving far enough away as is. I was plotting trying to make this project into a game for a couple years after drawing up a whole truckload of character designs at SDCC a while back, but then put it on the backburner. After much deliberation I've decided to give it a shot as a webtoon. Admitedly, I'm not sure if people will "dig" this one as much, but I hope they do because I'd really like to continue the story of this one.

As of now, I'm over halfway finished with animating both of the first episodes of these projects. In my perfect world, I'd love to be able to produce an episode of both every month. That's a tall order, but I'll be measuring the response when they're both finished to see where to go from there. Last couple things, two characters I did a bunch of animations for on the upcoming "Skullgirls" game, Parasoul and Ms. Fortune have both been officially revealed! Search around and I'm sure you'll find some trailers and gameplay footage featuring their sexilicious moves that I helped contribute to these last couple months. Big hand to my fellow animators and clean-up artists that helped bring out the shine in these babes! I need to come up with a "schedule" for myself, but I'll also be going to New York Comiccon/Animefest this weekend bouncin' around doing a million things, I'm sure. Stop and say hi, if you see me!

Balancing Act has been received into its first film festival! Tomorrow night, on Tuesday, August 16th at the Islip Arts Building of Ammerman Campus, Suffolk County Community College in Selden, NY...Balancing Act will be playing at the Suffolk County Student Film Festival at 6 PM alongside a slew of other great movies. If you're a Long Islander and can make it out there tomorrow, please stop by to check out my biggest animation project to date! There will also be a Q&A panel afterward where you'll meet the film-makers, which I'll of course be a part of. All of the details can be found on their official Facebook page, check it!

I'm also currently looking into doing some panels for screening Balancing Act, as well as showing the process of creating an animated short, at a few conventions. Nothing's been 100% set in stone just yet, but keep an eye out! In the meantime, I've still been doing lots of work for the Skullgirls project, which is continuing to get lots of great press and some of my animation can be spotted in recent videos of theirs. I've also been doing a LOT of writing and conceptualizing for some exciting original projects that a few of you out there may know some details about already. All of this is stuff I can't get too in-depth with just yet, but your patience will pay off! Lastly, big thanks again to everyone who supported Waltz of the Forest!

A whole lot can happen in 4 years.

I can't remember what originally compelled me to make the Rawest Forest music video. It was my final project for my Animation class in Senior year of High School, I had a week to do it, and for some reason I just up and felt like paying tribute to what is probably my favorite game of all time.

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars has been a gigantic inspiration to me from the time when it was being talked about in gaming mags, to its initial release, to the decade long after it had come out, to even now. Doing the Rawest Forest animation was not simply my transitional piece from High School to College, it was something very personal and meaningful to me. After its takeoff, the fact that it's one of the first things that pops up when you Google-search "Mario RPG" is incredible to me. Everyone who's ever played the game has seen it and holds some level of appreciation for not just the video, but the song that Märta and XBrav had created.

I knew I wanted to do another Mario RPG music video, in the same spirit as I had done Rawest Forest 4 years ago: to mark my transition from College into the rest of my life...unfortunately the time frame for that has long-since passed as of 2 months ago, due to the song itself being finished very late in the mixing process. That aside though, I'm really happy with how it came out and I owe all of that to Psy for scoring the BGM, Shady for his rapping and mixing and even Musical Mike for lending his last-second element of awesomeness that is his opera singing. Special thanks as well to Mike Ruocco for engineering my recording session on the main vocals several months ago. I was considering taking a different pre-existing Mario RPG song and animating to it, but I'm glad the decision came to doing a song built from the ground up, plus people have a real affinity for the Forest Maze. ;]

I know to most people this is just "another video game Flash Movie" and I get that. For me, it was simply a personal venture. Between freelance work and everything else going on in my life, I wanted to make sure it was done quickly, so I set my aim on two weeks at the most. I certainly wouldn't call it a piece of "art", since I absolutely could've spent more time on it from a visuals standpoint. I almost wish I animated the full-length song, if only to throw more geeky references and tributes to the characters and worlds that made that game so special. All that aside, I'm content with it; proud too. Other people who had a real connection to this game like I did have gotten something out of it and that's what matters most to me here. To everyone that's been telling me about how much this video means to them personally, I truly thank you guys for that.

Also, worth addressing: No this is not my "final animation ever". Some people seemed to misinterpret the Author Comments on the video as this being my Newgrounds swan song. It isn't. I'm working on and developing SEVERAL projects right now, all of which are original concepts. Most of it is secretive, but in the near future I'll hopefully have something to show all of you guys. In the meantime though, I hope you all enjoy Waltz of the Forest!

ONE MONTH LATER.

I HAD A BABY no wait that's nine months. My mistake. Well I may not've had a child, but a LOT has happened in the time since graduation. The first week was a little hard. I went through all of the stereotypical post-college blues and was a bit unsure of everything. I didn't know what was gonna happen from there on, just tried to look around for a few things, most of which didn't seem like they were working out...then I struck GOLD.

I'm very honored to say I'm on board a very exciting project that's been making a bit of a splash in the video gaming world. Along with quite a few other artists I know and respect, I've been hired to work on the very awesome Skullgirls fighting game, designed by the equally awesome Alex Ahad. I've been working for the past month or so as a Character Animator and it's been quite a ride thus far. Very fun and simple, but still challenging. That's been going great thus far and I've been doing a lot of other stuff on the side, as well.

Voiceover has been getting more and more frequent for me in the last year and I've been doing a pretty good amount of professional work as of late! Most of the stuff I've been doing I can't go into too much detail, but I've booked my first pre-lay (where they animate to your voice) as a very cute character for a really endearing project. Been auditioning for and recording for a LOT of indie video games, which is always cool. Then, a gig that's been strange in concept but strangely fun, is dubbing for Turkish television shows for a studio called Everest in New Jersey. Thanks to the awesome, incredibly-talented Michele Knotz, I've started recording for a couple projects there in the last month. One of these projects in particular, I've recorded a LOT of material for and still have quite a bit to finish up in this next week, so I'm lookin' forward to that.

That said, I'm sad to also say I haven't been able to post a whole lot of material online for people to see, since many of the things I'm working on are secret, even the drawings in my sketchbook! Most of what I can show has been on my Tumblr, including one little side-venture that's always quick and easy to produce: music! Not sure where this spurt of Rareware nostalgia's come from, but I just recently wrote and performed a bunch of lyrical versions of tracks from the Banjo-Kazooie series. The first one is of an old song I did back in 2008, where I did an acapella cover of "Witchyworld" and then just a week ago did a vastly-improved version of it. Then followed a lyrical "Gobi's Valley" and then just a couple days ago, "Spiral Mountain", which I'm the most proud of.

Here's one of 'em, take a listen!

Lastly and most importantly, and this ties in with all the secretiveness going on, is that I've been doing a lot of personal creative works. Very happy to hear people are interested in Balancing Act, which I've been submitting to a bunch of festivals. No word on any of them yet, but of course I'll make an announcement when the time comes; most likely through my YouTube page that I'll been trying to make better use of lately. Also, I'm picking up where I left off on a TV series concept I've been developing for the last several years. I've written a pilot script that's currently being reviewed and fine-tuned, then I have a few plans of what I'll be doing next, but let's just say I'm counting my blessing for the people who believe in my work and that want to help me. If any of them are reading this, I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

Sort of related: I haven't talked much about this online, but I really, really think I wanna get out to California. If I can help it, I'd love to be out there within the year. I dunno if that's gonna happen, but I'm playing around with a few ideas and am in talks with a couple people. I realize all of this is very vague and I'm sorry I don't have much to show right now, but figured after staying quiet for a month I should give a proper update. Hope this whets a few peoples' appetites!

Well, I did it folks. I graduated.

This week's been CRAZY. The Dusty Film & Animation Festival kicked off on Sunday night with the screening for all of our films. 4 straight hours of animated shorts by myself and my classmates played that night and it was a BIG hit. Many of which included some of these fine folks.

My film, "Balancing Act" was early on in the screening, #6 to be exact. Hundreds of people sitting in those seats finally got to see what I've been working on for not just a solid year...but in a way, what I've been working on for over a decade. Finally, my biggest project yet, a story I've been developing since I was in Elementary school, has made its first big step into the world. Here's the trailer for my thesis film: "Balancing Act"

I know I've been saying this on all of the last several blog posts, but huge thanks to EVERYONE who helped me with this. Everybody from my thesis adviser Richard Gorey, my classmates and teachers over the last 4 years, the folks that worked on the NiN10Doh! collabs who assisted with some clean-up, coloring and a LOT of backgrounds, my amazing cast of actors and sound designers and everyone who provided helpful feedback in making this thing come alive.

I also wanna congratulate everyone else who was part of my graduating year. You all did a fantastic job and we made a really strong year of students to represent SVA. In particular, BIG congrats to two of my best friends from school, Zach Bellissimo and Michael J. Ruocco (whom some of you know from their work on the first two NiN10Doh! collabs). The two of them tied for "Outstanding Traditional Animation" and Zach won "Best 2D Character Design" Dusty Awards on Tuesday night when the award show took place. MAJOR props to them, as well as Mirella Toncheva who won "Best Production Design" and Zack Williams who won "Outstanding Stop-Motion Animation" and "Best Stop-Motion Character" Design awards. You guys rock!

Yesterday we had the ceremony, took lotsa cheesy pictures, had one more party and headed our separate ways as graduates. Now it's time for the game to REALLY begin. I've got a LOT of things already on my plate, but I'm really excited to start working. I hope everyone who's reading this will stick with me and look forward to some of the stuff I have in store!