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Wonchop
Monkeys with goggles, baby.

Ben Smallman @Wonchop

Age 37, Male

Flash Animator

UK

Joined on 1/13/04

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Wonchop's News

Posted by Wonchop - April 27th, 2010


Just finished a last minute entry to Aniboom's Sesame Street contest, making an 'M' themed animation about a monkey finding a magic wand.
Please watch and vote 5 here
I plan to make some presentation improvements before sticking it on Newgrounds.

In the meantime, there's this vid featuring one of the lil animations from the tune that I adapted to one of those Nico Nico Douga fads (y'know, the annoying kind).

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If I can somehow muster up the concentration, there should be a new Cat Face released this week. I say 'should' cos on Thursday morning I'm heading off to Philadelphia to hang out with several NGers for Pico Day (giving the business there probably won't be an animation from me this year), before bussing it over to the Baltimore Meetup, where there will no doubt be booze, laughs, and some slight sexual harrassment.

Once I get back, I'll be cracking on with the latter part of my final uni project, supposedly recruiting the help of some naive 2nd years. Look forward to it!

And now to resume my all work and no sleep routine.

Mischeivious Monkeys, Baltimore Meet


Posted by Wonchop - April 7th, 2010


Well, it's been flipping ages since I've posted anything here. I have a bad habit of saving news until I really need to deliver and then forgetting what I was gonna post. Well, here goes.

Toons, Vids and Stuff
*Out of boredom, I released my Q409 Demo Reel to the portal.
*I did a toon for Weebl, which was basically an animated version of a 'Say Anything' spoof cos Youtube deleted it. I'm kinda annoyed with how long it took me (blame my lack of knowledge about said movie). Also don't expect it on Newgrounds anytime soon.

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*The Sonic Paradox gang released an April Fools toon colorfully titled Sonic Shits. Nothing much to say except OMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOM
*I attempt to sing like brentalfloss and fail miserably.

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Why so slow?
Basically, it's been a naff past month. The fan on my laptop, which I accidentally broke last June and could only get a temp fix due to the obscure manufacturer, broke down again. I decided to man up and buy a new PC. Got one from one of those 'Build your PC' thing, making sure to get one with some powerful RAM and a meaty fan (and a Bluray player for the lulz). That took 8 hours to receive. When I boot it up, the internet won't work for some retarded reason. After various attempts at getting it to work, which took about a week, I eventually find the cause of a problem (a firmware update of all things O.o) and get online again. So yeah.

Meetups
Last month I attended UK Web & Mini Comix Thing 2010. Like last year, I largely hung around Eddache's booth, sat comfortably alongside Eddsworld and the Cakebomb people, though this year I made an effort to check the other booths (including one by London meetup regular ChromeShark. Afterwards we pubbed a bit and I spent the night over at Eddache's, playing some vidyagames, watching some Family Guy and discussing secret projects. It was comforting that they were older than me as it made my general immaturity more understandable.

Surprisingly enough, I'll be attending the Baltimore Meetup at the end of April. That's right! Two trips to America in one year! Boy, making a living is gonna be total shit once uni ends.

And of course, the next London Meetup this August is an absolute cert. If Bezman forgets his Jungle Speed I'll make sure to bring mine.

Projects
Currently doing a couple of things that I'm always procrastinating on goddammit. If I actually do anything, you'll be able to read up about it on my heavily underused blog. After that's out of the way, I can happily get back to making some meaningless crap. (Anyone fancy a remake of Penguins?)

That's all for now. I'm off to have some hot chocolate with Anime Stan Lee.

Holy put-off news post, Batman!


Posted by Wonchop - February 9th, 2010


Me and Weebl have just done a new advertoon for a Poker website. Nothing says welcome to an unhealthy addiction quite like a catchy jingle.

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Speaking of Weebl, a new episode of Cat Face will also be up on the site come Thursday. Hopefully Weebl's learnt his lesson and will put it on Newgrounds swiftly afterwards.

Also of interest is a German Fandub of my Arrgh Idol animation. Finally, I'm cool enough to have something of mine dubbed in another language.

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Onto other stuff, I'm currently working on my final animation for uni, which I've decided will be based on a competition brief to promote the HMV website. How do I make that interesting you ask?

Three words. Radioactive. Ninja. Octopus.

You can read up on my progress on this over at my blogspot, where I've got a fair few scans uploaded.

There's also other stuff, but I'll curb my entusiasm over whether it's okay to mention them just yet.

Other stuff in a nutshell:
-I've booked my tickets for Comic Con. Just gotta figure out what else I wanna do stateside before I get onto flights and hotels and stuff.
-I'll definitely be attending the next London meetup this August. You can quote me on that.
-Ooh, business cards, shiny.

Until next time.


Posted by Wonchop - January 14th, 2010


My rather swell new animation, Date For One, has just been released into the portal. If you want to read up a bit on its creation, check out my blogspot.

Also, if you haven't seen it yet, check out 8 Bit Pwny Club ep. 3, which has a few more segments animated by me.

Now if you'll excuse me, Bayonetta isn't going to play itself.

Date for One Released!


Posted by Wonchop - January 5th, 2010


Merry new 'cade folks. Enjoying the tenties so far?

First off, here's a copy pasta of my 2009 summary journal from elsewhere.

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Last year's goals
-Do something with the Wonchop series. Srsly. - Was hoping to do something for my uni project, but short schedules meant it wasn't to be.
-Learn some goddamn anatomy. Srsly. - Took a fair few life drawing classes. They haven't sunk in that well. =|
-Keep job. This one's gonna be hard. - It was indeed hard, but I managed to survive.
-Attend more meet ups. - Several. And that's just counting the London meetups.
-Get a girlfriend. - Alas, no. I'm hopeful for next year, since I'll probably have more time for socialising, but I won't make it a goal...

Good Stuff
-Became an uncle. Lil Scarlet is growing nicely.
-All the various meetups I went to. There's been like 3 London meetups, that Webcomic thing and Comic Con. You can add one more if you count me visiting Natsu as well.
-A few events, including aforementioned Comic Con, WebComix Thing, Akira the Don gig and Eurogamer Expo
-The phenomenal success of Narwhals. Almost 3 million views on Youtube alone? Ffffffffffuuuuuu-
-No big e-dramas. Or maybe that's one of the bad things?
-The annual USA visit. Had a blast, checked out some zoos and made less enemies by the time I left. Also only tiny smidges of sunburn compared to last year.
-Getting two monthly awards on NG this year (for both Narwhals and Pixel Shrooms). Sure, they're partly cos of Weebl and the prizes have gone down a bit for the second one but meh)
-Good reception on my flash showreel. A chick from Rare liked it. Now if only I knew anything about business.
-Trying ultra fancy surf n turf (sirloin steak and lobster). It was like my tastebuds were trying that suffocatory sex.
-Slowly increasing my range of acceptable alcoholic drinks. They still involve sweet stuff in some way, but it's better than just sticking with alcopops right?
-Goggles becoming an unexpected hit with the ladies

Bad Stuff
-Our cocker spaniel Digby had to be put down.
-Family keep sticking me on dog watching duty, distracting from work.
-Not getting those driving lessons I was promised for my birthday.
-Needing to loan various family members lots of money.
-Not a lot outside the flash zone uniwise
-Not getting to make an iPhone game
-Visiting the Sega forums to support Ristar for All-Stars Racing. So much fail there.

NG Achievements
-Including stuff with Weebl (but not Sonic collabs), 20 Daily Awards, 6 Weekly Awards, 2 Monthly Awards, 1 review crew pick
-3rd Place in Pirate Day contest

Stuff of the Year
-Movie: UP
-Games: Rhythm Heaven/Paradise/Tengoku Gold, Modern Warfare 2, Arkham Asylum, Peggle iPhone
-TV: Harry Hill's TV Burp, Spectacular Spiderman S2
-Anime: K-On!, Tentai Senshi SunRed, Toaru Kagaku no Railgun, Sasameki Koto

Goals for 2010
-Learn to drive
-Visit Japan, maybe around Tokyo Game Show time (just need to find others willing to go who at least have a sense of direction)
-Get to the end of my uni course with something to take from it
-Get something on a (good) TV show
-Do something with my Wonchop series

Awesome People
-Weebl: For continually providing me with moneys
-Natsu: For staying my friend regardless of how much of a dick I can be
-People I've met up with such as Tom Fulp, MrSimon, Eddache, HappyHarry, Eddsworld, Flash Bros, etc.
-People I first met last year who don't completely hate me
-Kylee: For providing me with one set of voicework (I swear I'll try to think of more use for you next year)
-Bezman: For introducing me to Jungle Speed
-Other people I may have forgotten. I've been an unsocial bastard so not many spring to mind.

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Next up, I should have a new animation done for you next week. Emphasis on should, cos uni's gonna get really pissed at me if I'm not done by next Tuesday. >_> Bad enough I'm an easily distracted sod without having to be called downstairs to look after the bloody puppy whilst the others do nice things. And it would have to be the week Bayonetta comes out now wouldn't it.
But yeah, the miniscule amount I have done is looking and sounding neat so far. I'll post some updates about it on my rather unused blog site soon.

Once that's out of the way, I'll finish up the facelift of my poor neglected homepage (just gotta update the animation section, wish I knew how to do that database shit). Also, I'm in talks with Eddache about some possible collaborative projects (y'know, since he actually knows how to write scripts).

I've booked a spot at Comic Con whilst I figure out how I'm gonna go about this summer (never been good at planning future events). Saturday got sold out already but dammit I'm gonna attend that NG Party if it kills me (or preferrably someone else). I'm trying to figure out if there's a cheap way to stay in Cali long enough so I can attend both that and AX (and by figure out, I mean mope about and some internet person will give me suggestions.) I kinda wanna go to Japan afterwards so I can visit the Tokyo Game Show, as well as indulge in all manner of weeaboo stuff. Just a matter of finding someone to go with me since I get lost easily and don't know shit about Japanese outside of Yu-Gi-Oh lingo.

Oh yeah, and I weren't lying about those talking tits. Another fine product from Japan.

Holy Talking Tits


Posted by Wonchop - December 23rd, 2009


Hello there, folkies.

First up, I thought I'd spread the word that Akira the Don is looking for animators to work on his new video. He had initially hoped for me to work on it but I'm just too overwhelmed with uni work to do something in time. I dunno if he's aiming for a specific animator, or is going for a collab dooflippy, but if you've got the motivation to make a music video to accompany the Don's mighty 'where the fuck is the lyrics sheet' lyrics, then by all means contact him.

As for what I've been doing, I've just finished a commission for some pokery thing that should hopefully surface soon (nothin' like Weebl's dulcid tones to get you into gambling). There should also be a new snowy Cat Face up on the site tommorow, which looks pretty special if I do say so myself. Now if I only Weebl would get up to date with the Cat Face's he has on here. XD After that's done, I really need to get the shit out and finish this university animation.

Now that that's out of the way, it's silly video time!

I recently bought a new microphone that doesn't suck and tried it out by reading, believe it or not, a B3n and Wez fanfiction. O.o (I swear I'll get back on this series some day).

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That TV adaptation of Disney's Aladdin was certainly a bit cheeky

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Finally, I remixed Eminem's 'Without Me' with the 2nd Haruhi ending. Just cos I could.

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S'all for now. Have a Merry Christmas (or a similarly pleasant alternative).


Posted by Wonchop - November 30th, 2009


So yeah, unbeknownst to a fair amount of you, besides the most hardcore of BBS lurkers or Facebook nerds, there was another London Fling this weekend as an excuse for Luis to get rid of some extra airmiles apparently. Here's how shit went down.

Friday
Took the slightly lengthier but a bit cheaper train down to London. Had to wait a bit extra to get booked into my Travelodge since I had booked it so late the previous night and it took time to find it on the system. After that, I slapped on my manly Sonic the Hedgehog tie and set off to the Green + Red to meet the general gang, where I had a few Watermelon Margheritas and tried some calamari. After that we headed to the now infamous kareoke bar (ie. the place where Tom Fulp brought sexy back in January) where after some total failure at pool, I sang a rather decent David Bowie, followed later by an extremely outta breath Eminem (trust me for picking one of the faster paced ones). Oh, and a couple of chicks dug my goggles. Bit of awkwardness after closing as scuffles started happening, rain started pouring, and the ever confusing minicab people drew into play.

Saturday
Awkwardly I forgot what time the meetup was and ended up arriving at the London Eye an hour ahead of time, spending a good amount of time shivering in the bloody cold, the only source of amusement coming from a little kid slipping off a wet pillar. As per usual, we aimed straight for the bar section of Namco Station, where I spent most of the day chatting with Eddache about stuff, including beating him at a game of air hockey. Bezman also brought his awesome beard prowess, this month's model looking like some kind of tree diagram, as well as the epic that is Jungle Speed. Oddly enough I never got round to the dodgems. O.o

After Namco Station, we plodded around in the rain and eventually had dinner at a Chinese Restaurant, where it became rather difficult to tell which food was whose. At this point we were also joined by Tom SFB who was flaunting his schmexy BBC pass. I decided to use that opportunity to have him pass on one of my showreel DVDs so yay. After visiting a couple of pubs, during which Luis buggered off somewhere to throw up, Tom took us to a rather spiffing night club where the mighty pulling power of the goggles showed their might once again, getting us no less than 4 ladies to dance with us. Was a bit worried when one of the lens fell out, but we managed to find it.

Sunday
Bit crap, really. Rain was pissing it down. We had initially hoped to catch a movie, but the movie we were aiming for, Harry Brown, we had just missed, so it was either go watch 2012 or bugger off somewhere else. Votes went unanimously to the latter, so we just spent the remainder of the afternoon at a lil bagel/cake/dooflip shop before everyone parted ways. I spent the remainder of my evening visiting various bars and shows, even managing to spot a quick drag act, which surely no person can not go without seeing before dying.

tl;dr, Good fun, shit weather.
Looking forward to whenever the next meetup might be. Maybe Mr. Fulp would like to show up again? :3

NG London Meet VI (the one noone knew anything about)


Posted by Wonchop - November 23rd, 2009


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.

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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.

Lame stuff, Pointy Knees and London Fling


Posted by Wonchop - November 10th, 2009


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.

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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.

Flip Festival, Gamer Camp, Other stoofs


Posted by Wonchop - November 3rd, 2009


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.

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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.