This weekend Lloyd Kaufman and the Troma gang were in town for the Villain Arts Tattoo Convention, to promote Lloyd’s latest movie, Shakespeare’s Shitstorm. If you're in the NYC area, snag some tickets for the NY premiere on April 8th!

Oldschool NG fans may recall NG goes way back with Troma; the first paid game project I ever did was an Ask The Penis Monster game to promote Tromeo & Juliette (directed by James Gunn, who went on to make Slither, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker). 

Troma went on to host Newgrounds from 1999-2003 as part of their Tromaville network. During those years I had a bunch of Troma escapades, including visits to their office in NYC, a location scout at an abandoned asylum in upstate New York, a trip to Park City for Tromadance and most infamously, my trip to the Playboy Mansion, where I got my eyes gouged out in The Toxic Avenger IV.

Speaking of the Toxic Avenger, Legendary Films has wrapped filming on a new big budget Toxie movie starring Peter Dinklage, Elijah Wood and Kevin Bacon. Exciting!

Back to this weekend, I met up with Lloyd and Rocko Zevenbergen for lunch at Monster Vegan, a horror-themed vegan restaurant just a few blocks from the convention center. Rocko has been helping the Troma team but also has his own film, I Need You Dead, available on DVD and streaming via Amazon!

The owners of Monster Vegan were huge Troma fans and were excited to meet Lloyd. They even made a post about it on their Instagram afterwards. I highly recommend Monster Vegan, whether you’re vegan or not! They have great cocktails, too.

After lunch Lloyd and Rocko got me into the convention center to check out the tattoo convention and the Troma booth. I didn’t know what to expect at a tattoo convention but it was indeed lots of people getting tattoos! The Philly event is apparently the largest tattoo convention in the country.

One of the things Troma was promoting at the convention was their campaign to dominate the #oscarfanfavorite hashtag. If you’d like to help, make a tweet that includes #oscarsfanfavorite and #shakespearesshitstorm. You could also re-tweet tweets by others.

For example, here’s a tweet from the premier at PhilaMOCA. PhilaMOCA is also where we celebrated Pico Day 2019, for you trivia buffs. 

Lloyd previously made it to the NG office for Pico Day 2014. It’s crazy how time flies and I’m happy I got to hang out with Lloyd and the Troma gang again. It was also nice just being out in the world, after two years of not getting out much! I used to make so many story posts like this back in the day and it's been nice to make another. Hope you enjoyed reading!

If you've ever wondered what kind of music the characters in Pico's world listen to, here are some examples!

Pico

Nene

Darnell

Cassandra

Alucard

Hanzou

Cyril

@MindChamber gave me the heads up @Ban has been working on a Tricky Mod for Friday Night Funkin' and was hoping to snag some of the Tricky sounds originally used in Madness Accelerant.

While digging around my old 2009 folder, I noticed I had a bunch of songs picked out that I never actually used in the final game. I thought I might as well share them, so you can imagine an alternate experience!

Devoluted was originally a candidate for the start of the game, building up momentum as you progressed.

Sertraline had a fun and creepy Tricky vibe to it, I was picturing it for a Tricky sequence, maybe when he charges down the stairs after breaking through the door.

MachinRAa actually was in the game at one point, for the sequence where Tricky comes down the stairs and then battles you in the elevator. It ended up being Blue brass of the beast, instead.

Systole was another Tricky candidate, maybe for the final battle (which ended up being Dryll).

Smog Step Sanctuary was a banger I never ended up using but it still slaps.

Stimulus was another one that was considered but never found a place.

That's it!

If you're curious about Madness Regent, I didn't have extra songs laying around but I do recall listening to Bassbin Twins - Woppa on repeat while building out the first half, so it's basically in the game's DNA.

There's a lot of ongoing confusion about Flash's role in web animation so I've made this blog post as a reference point when it comes up in the future.

Flash was created in the late 1990s as a tool for animation and interactive media. Projects were exported as SWF files, which could be played in a desktop application or in a web browser, via the ubiquitous Flash plugin.

In 2010, Steve Jobs penned his Thoughts on Flash. Steve wanted to explain why iPhones would not be adding support for Flash but to avoid making it about computing power or competition with the app store, Steve went scorched earth. He had plenty of valid points, though; the Flash plugin was increasingly out of place as part of the open web.

One of the main points was that nothing the Flash plugin offers can't be replaced by HTML5, which is an open standard vs a closed system controlled by Adobe. This has lead to a lot of long-term confusion about Flash animation, however. For the past decade, I've continued to see people say how animators need to stop making animation in Flash and start making it with HTML5.

It is actually fine that animators continue to animate with Flash (now re-branded Adobe Animate). The only difference is now their animations must be shared in a video format (like MP4), rather than SWF.

So Flash animation never actually died, it just had to export to a format that doesn't require the Flash browser plugin.

On Newgrounds, we created Swivel and have made an ongoing effort to convert classic SWF animation to MP4 format. This is why you can view a lot of the animation on Newgrounds via your iPhone.

We more recently unveiled Newgrounds Player (Supporter only beta at the moment), a desktop player that integrates with the NG website to launch SWF files. You still earn medals and high scores in games, too!

Long-term we hope to emulate Flash in-browser but we wanted to have a solution ready in the near-term, since Flash plugin access is expected to become more hidden this July, before being removed from browsers completely in 2020.

In summary: It is 100% fine that animators are still animating in Flash. Don't tell them they need to animate in HTML5 because that doesn't make much sense. Much of the animation you enjoy on the web and even on TV is made with Flash / Adobe Animate.

We just updated the blogs to use the next text editor and tagging system. It all works on mobile now, too! Yes this is my test post.

This is fixed too:

I've noticed a lot of artists have made blog posts in the past day but none have made any on the front page, so I thought I should test it in case that part is broken.

@SushiGummy is a committed Alien Hominid speed runner and he recently broke his record. It's a fun watch, especially if you've never seen all of Alien Hominid!

In semi-related news, this past weekend my cat Charlie died. :(

Charlie made an appearance in Alien Hominid as part of the Norman boss battle, around the 38 minute mark.

This cameo was inspired by Charlie regularly sleeping on top of @DanPaladin's monitor while we were working. This was 2003, before flat screen monitors, so there was lots of room for a cat to lay around and it was warm.

I actually have a photo of Charlie sleeping on Dan's monitor but I can't find it anywhere on my computer, I think it's an actual physical photograph because all my digital pictures start right after Alien Hominid was finished. I hope to find it and update this post but here's an alternate pic for now:

My other cat Sherbert was more well-known around here because he was the face of Cat Dynamics and made appearances on NG during the college webcam days. Charlie was my favorite, though. I've had him since I was finishing up at Drexel and he's been through a lot with me. He was the best cat.

Tomorrow I'll be flying out to San Diego for Comic-Con, where you'll be able to find Nightmare Cops and myself at the Behemoth booth (#229) as part of the Friends of the Behemoth showcase.

This Nightmare Cops demo is the result of years of work, with a big push this month to have a demo build for Comic-Con. I'm the programmer, with @JohnnyUtah and @Spazkid on art and @Oney on music. Nightmare Cops will be an official Newgrounds release.

Guest voices in the demo include @RicePirate, @JazLyte, @RomeoJr and @L0LitsMonica! There's a ton of dialog in this game and it's all lip-synced using Talk Head. We made Talk Head in 2012 for this purpose, that is how crazy this project is.

So yeah, you're cops who fight people's nightmares! It's got a whole fully realized world with tons of people who have different perceptions of each other but more importantly you beat the crap out of lots of bad guys and can drive all over town smashing stuff. Pretty much everything in the overworld is breakable for no reason other than we know people will want ot break it.

Here are some teaser screenshots!

Heads up, I'll be at San Diego Comic-Con next month, showing Nightmare Cops at the Behemoth booth (Booth 229).

Nightmare Cops is the game I've been working on for the past five years with @JohnnyUtah and @Spazkid, along with @Oney on music. It's gonna be a Newgrounds release for console / Steam... SOME DAY! It's by far the biggest project any of us have ever undertaken but it will be worth it.

We've been pretty quiet about it because people seem to get exhausted with games that hype too soon and then have a many-year dev cycle. It's a delicate balance between wanting publicity but wanting to feel FRESH when we launch. Comic-Con is the first time anyone outside of the Newgrounds office will be taking NC for a spin.

Comic-Con is Thursday, July 20th thru Sunday, July 23rd!

So PewDiePie just released a one hour video where he plays our game about The Room.

I made this game in 2010 with @JohnnyUtah and @Oney. I love that people are still enjoying it.

If you haven't already, check out The Room.

I also recommend reading The Disaster Artist, about the making of The Room.

There's also a documentary, Room Full of Spoons! They interviewed me about the game.

James Franco is making a feature film adaptation of The Disaster Artist, so more fun is up ahead.