Hey everyone, s'been a little while but I've got plenty to update about.

So first and most importantly is that I think I've snagged my first legit animation job! In the past I had worked for a children's computer program company called EduWare, where I did some basic character animation for their mascots. This, however, is a tried and true animation project that I'm fully excited for. I can't speak of it in detail just yet, but essentially I'll be coloring the laid-out animation for a flash-made indie-film. It was a perfect oppourtunity so I rushed to grab it, the guy in charge was very cool and I'm thankful I've gotten this chance! It's perfect timing too, since I've been trying to work a lot more with coloring techniques recently and this'll give me a ton more experience.

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Next up is the unveiling of my special account. I created this back around the end of November to make sure I would at least hold the name, "NEO-C". Before the eyerolling takes place, lemme go out on a limb and say that this is NOT an alt account, nor is it an attempt at abandoning the Kirbopher title or anything typical like that. Both are still under my own name, but the NEO-C account will be where all of my newest original works will go. I will continue to submit the installments of the Parody Rangers feature on my Kirbopher account and certain select projects on NEO-C. For the connections I may be forging with the industry as I continue to move through College and hopefully get closer to becoming a working animator and start accomplishing the goals I have in mind, this special account will be a quick link for people I'd like to see my absolute best pieces of animation I can produce, as opposed to the stuff you'd normally associate under the Kirbopher name.

Also for those've you who don't catch the pun: Neo is "New", C stands for "Chris" and NEO-C sounds like my last name, Niosi (Nee-oh-see). Hahaha I'm so clever not really shut up.

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But anyway, can't have a new account without new content to go with it, right? This lil' indie record label by the name of "Dangerbox" contacted me recently and commissioned me to animate a music video of one of their slick music tracks. A couple other NG artists have been doing so as well, I think specifically from the Radical Wrong Doers, so there's some good stuff in the works for that. Due to my time constaints and blah blah you know the drill, I asked to take one of the shorter songs in their library, of which I was given "Act". Aside from a few specifics, mainly of which came after I started the animation process, the commissioner was cool enough to give me what was essentially free-reign to do what I felt fit the song.

"ACT" the Music Video, Music by Mjoaa & Trone

I quickly came up with a concept, involving some stuff I've been wanting to experiment for a while with. For those've you who've seen Ratatouille, when Remy the rat is describing to his brother Emile about combining different foods with each other in the form of multiple instruments making music together and the soundwaves are "animated" like so, I had wanted to try something similiar to that for quite a while using a piece of BGM from a video game a while back, with literally the entire movie just being the animated soundwaves. With "Act" being a techno song, essentially the same oppourtunity was presented and I tried to implement that into the design of the music video.

It stars a blue guy, who is incredibly hesistent to simply get out of bed and experience life in general, until two singers badger him into taking a long walk. As he ignores his various surroundings ranging from nature, to human life and interaction, he ventures to darker and seedier territories and eventually he's given a choice to act or not during a critical moment. I tried to make use of symbolism and basic colors as I was planning it out, with different patterns and soundwaves meaning different things. It's pretty simplistically animated since I didn't have a ton of time to work on it, but I'm proud with how it's come out for the most part and hopefully you guys will take something away from it!

Oh and just to put it out there, "There Was This One Time" will be submitted to the NEO-C account as well around late April-early May when it's due for my main animation class. It's coming along really well!

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Regarding the Toon Platoon podcast, we WANT to continue working on it and do more of the episode concepts we've got in mind, but a few things've come up. Aside from myself being busy, CZ's had a TON of homework to contend with (SVA Cartooning majors get assloads of work, you have no idea) so we never really got a good oppourtunity to gather all three of us together and record, specifically before Mike Ruocco got briefly hospitalized. He's been out of school for a week and obviously is gonna be busy dealing with some new health problems (wish him the best!) upon his return yesterday...so with all of that in mind, we're kinda up in the air with doing the next episode. Not to mention we still haven't bought a subscription to any podcast sites or anything like to continue putting up episodes as we go along. We'll see how it goes, but I'm not declaring Toon Platoon dead in the water.