So yeah, after a week training at this Gamer Camp, I was kicked off before the actual development cycle, supposedly due to my lack of focus, which sucks big balls. So alas, no Wonchop flavoured iPhone game, accompanied by cheesy sounding trailer. ='( Nonetheless, it was pretty neat learning about the process and learning some new Photoshop skills, including sprite animation (the original kind).
You can read up on the week I did experience here. (May contain some whining and poor attempts at trying to sound clever.)

At least with that out of the way, my week's a bit less packed so I can concentrate on getting Date for One done, and Weebl won't kill me if he comes up with a job for me. (Although I've already wasted a good weekend playing New Super Marios Bros Wii. God bless you, Ludwig von Koopa and your devilish british accent)

In other stuff, some chick on Deviantart crafted some Narwhals on her knees, of all places. They'll stab your shins something fierce.

I'll be attending the Newgrounds Autumn Fling this weekend, chilling out with the crew. If you're also coming along, I'll perhaps see you there.

Last week, I attended the Flip Animation Festival in Wolverhampton. It was a generally small-time thing but there were a lot of fun shorts to watch, ranging from suicidal vegetables to a chubby German kid getting a handjob and all the surrealist shit inbetween. We also had appearances from NG Meetup regulars HappySheep and JPI, the latter of which had an entry to the student shorts segment. I on the other hand participated in a Portfolio Review session in which I was to show my latest demo reel in front of a panel of judges. Was a little nervous upon hearing one of the judges was from Rare (see previous journal), but the demo reel received a lot of praise, with Ms Rare saying it could easily go on the tables of Nick and Cartoon Network (if only I knew where those tables were). The only criticisms it had were a lack of 3D (I kept this one flash-focused) and some slight overcramming, so pretty yay. Also got to hang out with some of the other portfolio candidates and have my annual chat with the Brother McLeod (who btw have just gotten themselves a Newgrounds account so go check them out.)

Oh, and here's that showreel again.

Was a little downhearted on one of these evenings when I got home and heard I didn't get into the Gamer Camp, namely cos it took so long to find out. However, today, I got word that one of the artist blokes dropped out at the last minute, so I get to nick his place! Yay! So over the next few weeks I'll be working with some wannabe programmers to develop a game for the iPhone (which will hopefully be put on the App Store for free when it's done.)

Only other thing to worry about is my uni animation, Date for One, which I have 4 weeks left to work on, having spent several weeks moaning about my tutor's criticism. Doesn't help that I just bought myself Modern Warfare 2 as well. >_> I'd give out my gamertag, but I'm pretty sure everyone will be mean and kick my ass.

And don't forget to check out the Weebl's Stuff Calendar. I did January (preview below).

Ciao.

First up, I submitted a quick 4-second short to Channel Frederator celebrating their 4th anniversary. You can watch it at the 2:17 mark, but the rest of the stuff is worth watching too.

So last weekend, I went to the Eurogamer Expo in London to try a bunch of games n shit.

Of particular interest was an industry fair, so I burned a few reels to take with me. However, going up there, I wasted a lot of time up there on pondering what to ask industry biggies like Rare, Sega and Ubisoft, with just my puny flash reels, particularly since everyone else had brough crazy hot portfolios with them, and all I had were my DVDs and various sketchbooks filled with doodles of Robotnik playing Yu-Gi-Oh!. After a brief chat with a lady from Rare, mentioning that my flash animation could somehow translate towards 3D (since it's got some of the basic principles down at least), I gave some copies to Ubisoft and Rare. It was a bit annoying that the feedback was in the line of 'not Rare quality' (I was aware of that much) and 'your skills don't match our open positions' as opposed to any feedback on how to improve on it and what I should work on, but maybe that's my misinterpretation of the term 'industry fair'. I'll probably get some better feedback when I show my reels at the Flip Festival in Wolverhampton this Saturday.

Here's a quick roundup of the games I played:

New Super Mario Bros Wii: Since it died down towards the evening, I got a go on all the levels on show, and it was pretty fun, if a little hectic with four dudes on screen at once. Stupid Luigi chucked me down a pit. >=U

God of War III: Using the next-gen wisely to realistic represent flesh ripping apart as a guy's head is yanked off. A little out of touch with my God of War games (still need to play II) though ramming through guys is fun.

Bayonetta: Damn, that falling clock tower level is badass. Plus, who doesn't like to kill bad guys with giant boots made out of your hair.

Split Second: Framerate's a little iffy, but it's definitely got the adrenaline factor going for it. Made me particularly jump when a building crash landed like 5cm away from me.

Uncharted 2: Pretty neat. If I had the time for games, I'd totally consider getting a PS3. Just needs a few more incentive buys.

Tekken 6/Tatsunoko vs Capcom: Both suffered from the general situation of 'guy who wanted to try out the game to see if he likes vs guy who will kick your ass with all sorts of h4x combos'

Ratchet and Clank - A Crack in Time: Targeting's a little off, though it's neat to do the spanner chuck on the move.

Red Steel 2: Introduced an odd method of cracking into a safe. Also, combining your sword and your turning controls to the Wii Remote is a silly idea.

Various Indie Games - Lots of stuff to simple puzzle type games, to a neat stunt bike game called Joe Danger, to pixelly stuff like VVVVVVVV and Time Fcuk, to this weird one that asked me to find someone to play and shake hands with him... ew...

nVidia 3D glasses - They kept flicking on and off making them feel more like seizure glasses. I find it a bit odd since they had regular 3D glasses for games like Avatar already. The 3D stuff just looks a bit too stand outy for my tastes anyway.

There's also another Cat Face in the pipelines (still need to remind Weebl to submit the ones missing from the Portal) and my stuck in development hell animation dooflip.

Ciao for now.

Oh hey there folks.

So, in this upcoming Flip animation thingy in Wolverhampton next week, I'll be participating in a portfolio review session, in which people show their demo reels in front of an audience, and a few industry professionals pick them apart. I thought it be best to have a reel with my most up to date work, so I made a brand new one, taking in some advice from MrSimon.

Since the last demo reel I made was only 4 months ago, I probably won't submit it to the portal. Unless you guys really want me to.

In other news, whilst I didn't make it into the NG Calendar, I do have a contribution to the Weebl's Stuff 2010 Calendar, which you can pre-order here. I'm right at the start of the year with a Pixel Shrooms piece.

In other stuff, I'll be attending the Eurogamer Games dooflip in London on Saturday. And I'll most likely be dropping in on that next London Fling a month afterwards.

Okay, so uni's in full swing right about now. What has been a bit of a pisser is that what I thought was gonna be one large project across the whole year is actually two projects with about 2 months production each. Couple this with the general Weebl workage (there'll be a new Cat Face next week btw), and the mountain of games I totally need to be playing in the coming months (is it so much to ask to just skive off work so I can play Brutal Legend with Tim Shafer?), I'm a bit irked. DAMN YOU, PRODUCTIVE ACTIVITIES!

So as far as the project goes, I had originally planned on doing a pilot for Wonchop, but am passing on that for now, namely cos a) my tutor didn't care for it and b) it'd be pretty damn complex. So yeah, I'm going with the Date for One idea, and am currently in the process of asking various animators whom I'm somewhat familiar with for advice on how to improve my ideas.

All updates on my uni work will be uploaded to my blog at http://wonchopmonkeyman.blogspot.com, which still has a gay ass image embedding system. Right now I've got a bunch of doodles and a really crappy animatic to show. If you've got any (mature) feedback on it, please leave some.

I'm also shortlisted for this Gamer Camp thing happening in November, having a phone interview about it the other day. Will hear about that next week. if I get in, I'll producing art for an iPhone game, woot.

In other stuff I'm thinking of going to the Eurogamer convention at the end of the month.
I'll also no doubt be attending the Flip Animation Festival at the beginning of November too.

And now, to make all above text completely irrelevant, YOUTUBE VIDEOS!

First up is all the skits and stuff I animated for Channel 4's 'The Kevin Bishop Show', set to cheery Audio Portal musaks.

Here's a random summary of mahjong anime Saki that I adapted from an Anonymous 4chan post, voiced by Kylee (aka the voice of the girl from that thing what I never animate any more). When I make enough of these short shorts I'll perhaps make another Tidbits compilation for NG release.

Then there's....this....

And finishing off with your obligatory Youtube poop

K bye.

Well he is.

So once again, I fail at remembering to make newsposts.

Talk Like A Pirate Day came and went, and mine and D-Mac Double's entry, Argh Idol managed to win third place. Lords know it was better than my audio entry. Didn't manage to make anything for Madness Day though.

Back to uni next week, where I'll be beginning my final major project. Still have no idea what it should be, but whatever. It'll be busy with that, the Weebl stuff, and, if I can ever figure out what the business side of things, the return of an old partnership. Also waiting to here from this games camp thingy, where you get to learn how to make iPhone stuff.

Now if you'll excuse, I just have to punch Haruhi in the face.

Kbye.

Dammit, I really gotta stop putting off news posts so much that I forget what I wanna talk about.

Okay, so as you may have seen, Weebl's released the latest episode of 8 Bit Pwny Club the other week, which I once again provided additional animation for. Due to popular demand of the mushroom song that featured in that episode, we made a full version entitled Pixel Shrooms, of which I did all the animation. It's neat dabbling in the pixel style once in a while, despite some of the glitches that occur when using the extension.

The guys behind that love-or-hate series known as Sonic Shorts, have done a little stopgap collab entitled Knuckles Briefs. I contributed a small last minute dooflip to it. There'll be a Newgrounds version with extra shorts soon. Or you can just watch my silly little part here.

I've also entered into the Talk Like a Pirate VA contest, despite the fact my mics and noise reduction skills are crap. I'm also thinking of animating one of the entries myself, provided I can pull myself away from Batman Arkham Asylum. :P

I leave you now with this. What is it? Dunno. All I know is that it even has surrond sound.

Oh hey thar, here's my rundown of this weekend's meetup.

Saturday
Since Friday's activities involved a beer festival (I don't like beer), I decided to start my meet on Saturday. Getting there was a pain in the ass mind. I had set the alarm on my phone to go off early, but it was still set to American time from my trip to Comic Con so there was less prep time. Was also a bit annoyed when the convenient subway line between Embankment and my hotel was closed for the weekend, and taking a taxi only to find the roads to Millenium Bridge had closed instead of just taking the Picadilly line was a stupid move on my part, and my lack of direction in finding places fails too. I made a madcap dash to the Millenium Eye, arriving just in time for the last group photo, letting out a few 'wait, fuck, not yet you bastards' whilst getting into position.
Despite it being incredibly sunny out, noone had any better ideas of where to go, so it was Namco Station yet again. It was the good ol fashion hanging out, involving boozing and chatting with some of the meetup regulars (fyi, there was no Fulp or Weebl at this meetup), playing a few games (beat Sqeezy at biking, but got my ass kicked by EddAche on table hockey) and, of course, the motherfucking bumper cars. I think I probably ended up with a slight limp for the rest of the weekend after whacking my knee against the steering wheel a couple of times, but it was still a blast.
Next was Marble Arch, though by the time I had checked into my hotel, foolishly missing the elevator and climbing five stories of stairs, got to the park, realised I hadn't eaten anything but a couple of Drumstick lollies all day and waited in line for some KFC, the party was already starting to leave. Due to my confusion about what group was going where, I got to have a look at the flat the main dudes were staying at, and regailed about lost loves and whatnot. We later went to The Sports Bar where two facts became prominent. One being that Bezman, sporting an awesome Wario-moustache for the meet, is an awesome dancing machine, and the other being that my goggles (new ones I had bought at Comic Con) were quite popular with the chicks in London.

Sunday
Having been woken up by my mum, I was up considerably early than the other NGers, most likely recovering from hangovers (somehow, I never get drunk enough at these things), so I spent the morning potting around Leicester Square. Was a bit disappointed that the random hooker that approached me the last time I went to London (to see an Akira the Don gig) was replaced by some dude asking if I smoked any weed. (FYI I don't, which probably brings up more questions about my general behaviour). But I got myself a massage, played the new Rambo arcade game, went into the Pasaje Del Terror (further proving my theory that my goggles make me a sexy motherfucker), before eventually meeting up with Luis and the gang. We had a little pop in a few stores, where I began to wonder where the fuck was Klonoa for the Wii (found it on ebay though). We later got some more food and were introduced to the insanity that is Jungle Speed, the most frantic card game I've seen since their implimentation in saving the world from Egyptian evils. We played it again at the garden, though a bit of a downer came when Dim (SFB)'s bag went missing. We later went to a pub, where it became rather apparent that my ability of drinking shots was well....crap. I handle the green Castle Crasher shot a lot better though. Afterwards we all went back to the NG flat, where we played some Street Fighter IV and some more Jungle Speed. After playing a little Warioware, I headed back, awkwardly realising the difference between cabs and minicabs (the latter having no clue where anything was).

Monday
On Monday I decided to pop to Covent Garden to hang out with my bro, though I briefly ran into Kayn as well. We had a bit of a drink and catch up, Pizza Hut buffet and a lil gaming (one game being a frikkin pogo racing game from Japan), before checking out one of his friends on a plinth (the guy who followed in being an old guy chucking Mini Eggs everywhere). After that catchup, I head home, where I'm dumbstruck from being told I had started travelling at peak time whilst my return ticket was off peak, and I had to pay an extra £50. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

So yeah, apart from tha whatkindofpieceofshitestablishmentisth isfuckoffandletmebe moment, it was a fun trip. I'l have to try and not be lazy and make something whilst there's still some summer left. See you all at whatever the next NG meetup's gonna be.

Photos: http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v646 /wonchop/nglondonmeet5/

Well, I arrived back in the UK on Sunday after visiting the zoo and then spending two days at the con (really sucks I couldn't stay a little longer and attend the Behemoth party =(). It was a pretty swell time. The zoo was pretty darn awesome, despite its surprising lack of penguins, and at the con I got to see lots of NG people including old ones such as Egoraptor, Skraggy, Rubberninja, Princess Aurora, Tomamoto, Tom, Luis and Swain, to new ones like Lazymuffin, FThreat, Dan Paladin, Johnny Utah, Bluehippo, Anigen and more. It stopped just short of a showdown with Rtil. Shame. I also got interviewed for an NG documentary some guy's filming, so it should be swell, despite my generally twattery both on camera and at the hands of one, evident in the videos below.

Vid of the booth, various NG peeps and Rubberninja's arse.

Tom Fulp is a surefire winner

Me giving Tim Schafer a picture whilst he is slightly creeped out by my choice of words.

Fthreat attempts to down some marinara sauce at TGI Friday's whilst Egoraptor fires lazors at himself.

Games I played: Game 3, Castle Crashers (both PS3 and 360), Brutal Legend, Bayonetta, Tatsunoko vs Capcom, Lost Planets 2, Dissidia Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts 365/2 Days, Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing, Miles Edgeworth: Ace Attourney Investigations, TMNT Turtles in Time: Reshelled, Tekken 6, Spyborgs, We Cheer 2 (lol), Katamari (iphone), Invincible Tiger, Bleach 3rd Phantom, some crappy Ben 10 and Astro Boy games and I-mockery's Adobo game (pickle hats ftw).

Swag I bought: Red Castle Crasher Knight (signed by Tom and Dan), ArtRage Deluxe, Manga Studio Debut 4, MadCatz FightPad, Sam & Max Complete Series DVD.

Quote of the event: "Are you coming out this winter? Lost Planets 2 is!" - Capcom rep

That's all the stuff I have for now. I'll be sure to attend the London Fling in a couple of weeks. Ciao for now.

Oh hey, touched down in San Diego today, ready for the two days of Comic Con I'm attending. My hotel room's pretty swizzy. It's even got a Gamecube built into the telly. Woot.
Course, my sense of direction in walking around San Diego by myself is terrible.
Planning on going to the zoo tommorow too. All the monkeys and penguins! =D

So yeah, I'll be perusing the halls of Comic Con on Thursday and Friday, most likely visiting the NG/Behemoth stand a lot, but also scouting the numerous games they'll be showing off. I should be most likely sporting an obvious piece of headwear.