here's a news post i made on december 27th last year, 3 days after i made my NG account, and 2 days after my 18th birthday.

i'm 19 years old now! and 2021 was a lot. in 2021, i became part of this newgrounds community, moved by myself for the first time, started college, started travelling more, and... WOW. how do i even reflect on a year like this? a year ago, i was sitting at a desk in my tiny cramped room, thinking of uploading a cartoon i had made about an alien to newgrounds. a year later, after spending a few months away from home, living on my own across the state, i'm back at home, with a different desk, in the same tiny room, knowing that when i finish my next cartoon, it's going up on newgrounds first.

this year, i met a lot of people, kept the people already close to me, and became part of this big welcoming community of artists. @nokoi was my first real newgrounds friend, i started talking to him around january or february. he introduced me to more of his newgrounds friends, and since then i've just been meeting more and more people and making more and more friends. thank you nokoi for getting me involved in this wacky community, and for motivating me.

@gooberthed , @icy14, and @swagmaster756 are some buddies i've known for years and years. they both constantly push me artistically, and seeing them also become part of newgrounds has been really cool! thank you for sticking with me.

@rumblelurin is someone i've known longer than anyone else here, and as of now i've been dating him for nearly two years! he's also gotten a bit into newgrounds, but i wish more people saw his work. he also made 2021 really great for me. thank you for being you <3

i posted a LOT of art this year, and this doesnt even include the projects i've started and haven't finished yet.

i think my favorite art piece this year is this:

it's from like, the beginning of the year, but it stands out to me a lot. he's actually wearing the outfit i wore on christmas 2020! this was sort of a reflective piece.

i made a fully rigged 3D model of the character from this drawing, but i never did anything with it.

as for other highlights, winning madness day was pretty cool! me, gooberthed, and icy didn't expect to win, but it was a really pleasant surprise. krinkels and the judges on md21 are nice ass people! the response to that cartoon kind of inspired a direction the three of us went in with another project, and i hope soon i can show off some of that.

i would make a list of people who really made my year here, but with how many amazing artists i met, i feel like i could never write enough for that.

with all of this said,

THANK YOU!

this year was hectic and crazy and new to me, i did a lot and met a lot of people, and i'll never be able to write down all my thoughts on this year. just know that it was a really special one, and as it comes to a close and i prepare for the next, i feel more confident about the future, and i can see a few cool things on the horizon. to my long-lasting buddies, u mean the world to me, and i can't wait to get up to more crazy shit with u next year.

my madness day cartoon is out!!

i started work on it mid-august, while staying in an airbnb 100 miles away from my house, waiting to see a red sox game with a bunch of newgrounds pals

after that, it just kept snowballing into a bunch of little ideas for visuals until i eventually thought of a simple "plot" for it to follow (quotes cuz its kinda just nonsense LOL)

after designing a few stylized character concepts, and nabbing a shader from a previous animated project, i spent a whiiile making character models and storyboarding

then, on september 14th, i started animating it. i finished animating it september 21st.

here's screenshots from along the way of me making it (not in any particular order, just stuff i could find while scrolling through a gc with my friends):

and now i know there is a limit to how many images you can put in a news post

its been a while since ive posted an update like this

WHATS UP WITH ME?

im moving for college in just 2 days! that's crazy, right? i've moved plenty of times, but this is the first time i've ever really moved solo, so it's a biiiig big change for me. it's nerve-wracking, exciting, and everything inbetween. thankfully, i won't be surrounded by ENTIRELY new people, since some of my friends are also going to college around the same area, and i've luckily been in contact with a few other students at my school :D

WHAT AM I MAKING?

i'm making a few different things right now

i'm in the early stages of a madness cartoon for the upcoming madness day! i currently have a few character models, concepts, and about a minute's worth of storyboards. it's the only project here i'm not showing footage of yet, mainly because i haven't actually started animating it yet, lol!!!

i'm also about halfway done with a short animation of one of nelward's songs, cosmic relief! here's a look at a few clips from it. these are unfinished lol

https://streamable.com/lpdgkv

AND....... for the past 8-9 months, i've been slowly chipping away at the second episode of XETIS. there's a lot i can say about this. firstly, my life has changed a lot during the development of this, and i'm hoping the finished 13-minute long cartoon will be worth it, whenever it's finished. i kind of hope to put it out on the year anniversarry of the first episode, but no promises! basically, the team and i have been working pretty hard this past 8 months, and i feel selfish for not showing off anything of it yet, so HERE'S A SHORT LIL CLIP FROM NEAR THE BEGINNING OF THE EPISODE!!!! this doesn't really reveal any spoilers, and also editing's a bit unfinished.

https://youtu.be/ZPCjCcrLuqU

episode 2 is working to establish some things and polish up a lot of messy stuff from the first episode. we've got the whole series planned, it just might take a while to finish. we're ok with that though! follow the other people working on this: @rumblelurin @gooberthed @swagmaster756 @D-c-G

and aside from all that, i'm finishing up my last commission from over the summer, and working on a small game project that not much can be said about yet.

thanks so much for reading all this, and i hope the little sneak peeks i've shown off have gotten you excited!

(drawing by @gooberthed )

are you a 3D artist???

are you a NEWGROUNDS user???

are you looking for a place to share your art, talk to other 3D artists, learn new skills, and just hang with other 3D artists???????????? well i've got the thing for YOU!

my buddies @studionokoi @dogl @vlurr and i have started a DISCORD SERVER for any newgrounds 3D artists, and we're looking for people to join!!!! if you're a 3D artist, no matter how good you think you are, and you're looking for a place with kickass people to talk about 3D with and/or just chill with while you share your 3D stuff, then you should join.

here's the link!

https://discord.gg/Kd85JXWsNE

hi!

so the last two things i put up on NG were my funkin jam cartoon and various parappa doodles. people may be wondering: kai, what is your stupid ass up to?

so here's what i'm up to!

XETIS EPISODE 2

XETIS episode 2 has been in development for some time. i honestly expected it to come out late april/early may, but that is certainly not going to happen now. i've been taking on a few animated projects on the side that are eating up all my time, but rest assured, once i'm done with the thing im working on NOW, i'll be right back on that funky alien cartoon. so, what AM i working on now?

ANOTHER BIRTHDAY PRESENT I CAN'T REALLY TALK ABOUT LOL

i'm working on YET ANOTHER birthday present for a close friend of mine! damn my friends for having birthdays so close to each other. this time, i'm working on a birthday present for @gooberthed , one of the storyboard artists on XETIS and a great close artist friend of mine. she knows little to nothing about the present, and honestly even showing off a blurry screenshot of the project would ruin the surprise, so instead of showing something off like i did for @oliverjoaks ' present, i'd suggest you check out her account and come up with your own theories about what the animation may be. what i CAN say is that it's about 22 seconds in length, and that her birthday is the 16th of this month.

PICO DAY????

oh shit, pico day's in like 2 weeks!!!! i'm really not sure what i'll be doing for pico day yet. near the beginning of april, i had this really cool and ambitious idea, and i've even presented it to some other artists with the possible idea of collaborating, and they seem really on board, but again, i'm not sure that i'll make it. i really want to focus on XETIS once i finish greta's birthday present, and i don't want to delay that any longer or stretch myself too thin and burn out hard. so the pico day cartoon is a big "maybe, but likely not". i DO want to make something for pico day though, so if not an overly ambitious cartoon, i will at least create a dope ass 3D model/render. and i might see if i can contribute in small ways to other peoples' projects.

CONCLUSION

so, what have i learned writing this? i've learned that i am doing a lot of shit but also not that much shit. in any case, i just want to make things that i find cool, and pray that others will find cool. be on the lookout for new stuff from me, cause starting on the 16th i'll be posting stuff more frequently again!

and to anyone who's read this far, you rock :)

i just recently released my entry for the Funkin Jam! it took me a few weeks of nonstop work to make, and i'm pretty happy with the results.

i started working on it impulsively while i was bored in class, and instantly filled a huge mspaint document with concept art for the project.

i kept adding onto this document the first week i was making the cartoon, so that's why there's some later stuff on here.

here's the notepad doc i wrote with a basic plan for the toon:

i definitely changed up a few things while making the cartoon, but i kept most of it pretty similar to the original plan.

here's a ton more concept art that i made while making the toon:

the boyfriend's room was designed to be the most degenerate shit possible. the colors were a lot different in the concept art.

i originally wanted to model and pose some mod characters, like whitty and carol, but i ended up just including them on a poster because time was running low.

i hope to make more fun cartoons like this in the future! im super happy with this one, and i hope to only get better and better from here.

it's been a while since i've made a news post on here! so i just wanna write a quick little update post.

i'm working on three animated projects right now! THREE!!!

i'm working on an entry for the Funkin Jam:

im doing some neat 3D animation stuff and making a silly little cartoon about friday night funkin, and here are some sneak peeks at it! i'm regularly tweeting out progress on this cartoon, so follow me on twitter if ur interested in that.

i'm also working on a short animated segment of a song from CATS (the 1998 musical, not the dogshit 2019 movie), but i can't show that off publicly until it's done because it's a birthday present for my boyfriend!!!!!

it's gonna contain funky stylized 3D work unlike anything i've made before, and it'll include original interpretations of some of the characters from the musical. how fun!

AAAAAND i'm still working on Xetis Episode 2. it's taking a bit, since i've taken some time off the project to work on these, but i will be back on that shit SOON!!!!

here's xetis next to TWO BRAND NEW enhanced models!

and that's all i can show off at the moment. my Funkin Jam and CATS animations should be coming out in less than two weeks!

if you wanna hear/see more from me, you can find me on twitter and instagram under the same name. have a great day! :)

Thank you to everyone who watched and rated the pilot of my cartoon XETIS!! I'm beginning development of episode two, and I'm listening to feedback. Here are some things I'll address right now:

• The speech bubble/Animal Crossing style speech is staying, but I will modify it to make it easier to take in.
• A bunch of models are going to be revamped for future episodes. Two big things I'm focusing on fixing for episode two are the alien fauna and the computer dude (whos name is Bernard). Plus, each character model will most likely be updated for each episode based on expressions in storyboards and/or general quality-of-life changes related to animation.
• Storyboards will be MUCH more evenly divided between each storyboard artist, and there may be an extra storyboard artist for future episodes. Also, the other storyboard artist for the first episode now has a Newgrounds, so check her out at @gooberthed !!!

And plenty, plenty more in the future. I'd like to frequently post updates both here and on my Instagram. Here's some concept art I have right now!

Peepless Peeper redesign concepts

I hope to share more updates in the future. Thank you all once again!

HUH!!!!

i started uploading my artwork last night as an experiment thing. i mostly uploaded fanart, but somehow i got to the front page with a completely original piece!!!!!!! that's it, i'm totally posting all my artwork to newgrounds now, that sold it for me. AND i'm gonna upload that cartoon pilot to newgrounds as well!! thank you guys so much, this is such a welcoming community.

i just made this account..... i've been a fan of newgrounds stuff for a while but ive never contributed before.....

i make a lot of stuff on other websites, so i think i might upload them here as well???? how does this posting thing work??????? so many mysteries for me to unravel.