I am a 23 now. yay.

Good golly, 2023 is almost here! Time for the...

I’m going to keep this one brief, as a lot of what’s happened this year doesn’t really pertain to Newgrounds, and has been pretty well recorded in my previous updates this year.

VIDEOS

Not many videos this year, folks.

Ghost —

This was a lot of fun to do. You can read more about the making of this in a prior entry, but this short helped remind me why I love filmmaking in a time when I was in serious danger of forgetting — making fun creative sh*t with awesome creative friends.

Home —

All I did was add a video background to a four-second scene in this. It’s great, though. Freaking love @idontknowcorp ’s animations, and you should too.

MUSIC

Was a little shorthanded on music this year as well. This is in part due to my larger projects this year, but also because most of my music-working was in service of the In Flight EP that I released this past October. You can check it out on Bandcamp, Spotify, or here on Newgrounds!

Also put together a song based on a sketch @spicybagel posted, and am pretty happy with the result. Bagl is someone whose work I really admire, so I’m really glad to have been able to put this together.

Also check out his new song “Joyce”:

PICO DAY

For this year’s Pico Day, I headed over to Denver, CO to meet up with a bunch of NGers at the residence of @PsychoGoldfish. It was a brief but amazing and memorable trip. I’m really happy to have been able to met so many of these people irl with whom I’ve shared many a VC with over Discord and laugh hysterically as we made Alexa wet fart for a solid minute.

Josh votes in favor of renaming Newgrounds "Poogrounds"

YOUR FRIEND LOGAN

For nearly four weeks, I was on the road with two other guys (my producer Matlock and cinematographer Sean) and filmed nineteen different interviews for Your Friend Logan -- the documentary I've been working on about late artist/musician Logan Whitehurst. This encompassed the mass of the interviews — we’ve filmed three additional ones since then, and have one more planned before we call it quits.

It was extremely tiring, and I think definitely contributed to a major burnout late in this year. I wouldn’t give it up for anything, though. To have been able to meet so many awesome people, see so many great places, and stay in so many sketchy airbnbs was worth it.

I’m currently in the assembly portion of post-production, after which we’ll assess the extremely rough cut and make some decisions. Expect a huge update in the next few months.

You can check us out on Instagram, Twitter, or, if you're a boomer, Facebook.

FILM SCHOOL

The segment that is the majority of my life right now. I’m now in my third year, and honestly things have been pretty darn good. My second year ended in a lot of turmoil, both external and internal, but this year I’ve been fortunate enough to work with some awesome and talented people on our thesis film.

I’m so excited for it; it’s about a romantic relationship gone wrong in 1979 post-punk Manchester. Ambitious for a small budget and crew, but I’m confident we have the resources to pull it off in style. We shoot the weekend before Valentine’s Day, and there’s a lot lot lot to do beforehand, and the shoot itself is going to be a beast of another color, but I’m fully confident in this crew to make a pretty darn awesome movie. Heck, I may even share it here once it’s done.

However, there’s been downsides to this as well. This year is the first time I’ve been burnt out…multiple times. I always figured being burnt out meant you were just tired, but for me, it was an all-consuming negative thought loop that was just hard to break or escape. The best way to describe it is comparing it to Sisyphus; I had done so much work to get to this point, but there's nothing but work ahead of me. I’m just always going to have to roll the boulder up the hill. And at the top of that hill is another hill, and another, and another….

Obviously, this kind of mindset is unsustainable, so I’ve taken steps to minimize this. I’ve started jogging, drinking loads of water, and eating relatively healthy (on a college student’s budget). And it’s actually helped. Who knew that taking care of yourself would be good for you??

I’m definitely not going to act like this is a unique experience and not something every single person goes through, but it was interesting to hit this wall for the first time and really experience it. And as long as I continue to take steps to minimize this, that's okay.

——

tl;dr

In summary: this year has just been a really tiring and exhausting year, one full of a lot of positive change and growth, but also a lot of setbacks and personal blocks. Pretty much the standard whenever you’re chasing down something you really want to achieve, but I just have to prioritize sustaining myself through the long haul.

I completed a lot of the things I wanted to accomplish this year, and 2023 is going to be ever-more exciting (and exhausting).

zzzzzzzz (also a very accurate portrait of what this year has felt like)

Special thanks to @GoodL and @Bitbeak for being awesome. Looking forward to yearlies, bois.

Hello again! How are you? How's the kids?

ANYWAY...

MY NEW EP IN FLIGHT!!! IS OUT ON BANDCAMP AND STREAMING

The past couple of years I've had a handful of tunes I've been going back to time and time again, and I compiled them into a six-track EP that I put out several weeks ago.

A couple of days ago, I finally gave DistroKid my 20 bucks, and voila! My EP is now also available on digital streaming platforms and music stores!

You can now listen to it on SPOTIFY...

(having to hyperlink because I can't embed the album into this newspost. C'mon, Tom!)*

*(jk Tom i luv u)**

**(but srsly)

on Bandcamp...

or HERE on Newgrounds!

I'm pretty proud of how this one turned out, and I'd like to think that other people may enjoy it as well. So if you are other people, give this music a listen.

UPDATEZZ

I've been doing a lot of work since we last spoke.

This past summer I did a cross-country road trip to get a bunch of interviews for Your Friend Logan, the documentary I've been working on for the last three years.

We're currently at a really good point -- we've got a few makeup interviews that we'll be getting at the end of the year, but right now I've been cutting down the plethora of footage we have into digestible chunks that will be stitched together into a movie. I'm very excited for y'all to see what this is looking like.

Also currently back in film school, which means I'm working on a lot of other projects again and getting back into the groove of in-person collaboration.

It's been an exhausting but really eye-opening past several months, and I think some really good stuff is going to come out of it.

Like this:

Y'all take care, and I'll see you around...

...your house...

...tonight.

:)

littlbox

Hello, folks of NG!

My my my it's been a while. Won't you take a seat and stay a littl bit?

These past few months I've been hard at work at FILM SCHOOL. (*lighting crashes and thunder crackles as a distant scream is heard*)

Nearly all of my time was spent working on producing a short film to meet our curriculum. It was extremely educational - I learned a lot on the fly about organizing and collaborating, and was lucky enough to work with some very talented and skilled people.

That being said, I'm not very proud of my work on it, nor the final product itself, so I won't be sharing it here. If you really wanna see it, just keep googling me, you stalker; you'll find it around.

It was extremely difficult work that put me in a new and challenging situation, so it wore me OUT. I spent several days after that doing as little as I possibly could to compensate.

So, to get back in the groove and remind myself why I enjoyed filmmaking in the first place, I quickly wrote a dumb little script and shot it one weekend by myself in my apartment. I then was able to get some excellent animations from @bitbeak, an excellent earrape score by @GoodL, and a last-minute permission to use an old video game animation by FDS old-timer @Kolumbo, and voila! Art.

Now that this project is done, I'm going straight into another big project: my Logan Whitehurst documentary. We're two months out from shooting now, and there's quite a bit of prep that still needs to be done. And once that's done shooting, right back into film school I go.

So, needless to say, NG is not going to be my main priority for a while. I'll probably be on-and-off active on the site for the next two years. After that, who knows?

Thank you everyone who's been watching my stuff and following so far. It really means a lot that people continue to find my work on here.

I also hope that people continue to try and make new, weird, strange, and entertaining stuff on here. It's important to find your voice, and this platform can be a great tool to do so.

Also, thank you to the 100+ people who saw Luckyboy and decided to follow every single person that worked on it. I'm at 600 followers wooooooooooo!

:)

littlbox

Howdy all!

It's half-way through the month, meaning that I've finally been able to put together my littlMix of my favorite tracks from the audio portal for December.

Not only that, but I also made a littlMix for my personal Top 10 favorite tracks from the past year of littlMixes.

You can check both of them out here:

Artists Mentioned:

for Dec 2021:

@TheThirdRates, @Reeez, @nelward, @chiptami, @3xBlastMx, @Breakcore11, @ConnorDeVaux, @Jusu-Tengu, @CameronKane, @slowfreq, @User817sd, @Jatmoz, @Valbun, @triplebarrel, @scottwjsm, @ValentNG, @FOUNDDEADINLA, @jsmallmusic, @thiccburger, @UndervaniaMusic

for Best o' 2021:

@PrettyMuchBryce, @DESKPOP, @cribble, @spicybagel, @tvroom, @ShelbyBryant, @vermeen, @Miyolophone, @BurneMusic, @bitbeak

_______

As school starts back up and my obligations grow, I fear I won't be able to keep up with a littlMix each month (heck, I barely got this one in). So I'm taking a littl break for now until I can find some time to get back at it.

Thanks to everyone who's been listening to these over the last year, and remember to ride the great narwhal.

:),

littlbox

Hey there, you! Look at you! You've grown so much. I remember when you were just a fermented egg. Now look at ya.

I was originally gonna post this simultaneously with the new littlMix, but I'm becoming quickly buried under my other obligations before I can get around to recording it. So I'm gonna do this post now, and littlMix should be done sometime in the next week (hopefully).

So, without further ado, here's...

littlbox's Key Moments of 2021

Ba-daaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

littlMix

In 2020, I started making playlists of some of my favorite tunes on the site and calling them littlMixes. I think I even had a one-off segment on @TheNewgroundsPodcast where I sampled some of my favorite tunes.

This year, I decided to really play around with the idea of making this into a sort-of podcast/radio/audio.

I began by making one every week, which worked initially, considering my Winter Break last year went on til February (thanks COVID), but as soon as studies started back up again, it was apparent that I would not be able to maintain a weekly format. So, I made it monthly instead, which I honestly think was a much better idea.

I've really enjoyed making this show because there really are no rules or mandates for it. I make it whenever I can, and if I miss a month, I miss a month. And since there's no real formula, I can play around with it however I want.

I want to give a special thanks to all the talented music makers on this site, especially @Bitbeak and @ShelbyBryant for agreeing to be interviewed for this wacky experiment. And a particular thanks to those of you that listen to these.

Made a few Lip Heads-es

True to my word in 2020, I made a few Lip Heads episodes in 2021. I wanted to give it some priority to see if I could sustain it as its own show.

I made 5 episodes, and I don't foresee myself making any this year. I'm happy with what I have, and though there is some fun in the making of these, they currently don't hold a spot in my priority list. I'll probably end up revisiting them once I have more time to do so, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.

MUSIC

Music is such an integral part of my life that there won't ever be a year where I don't make some. Unfortunately, like most of goals for 2021, I over-projected how much I would make, but I think a decent chunk came out of it...

• Captainsideway - the short end EP
• GAY ROBOTS - "Promises I've Made" (Emitt Rhodes cover)
• A couple of Ween covers for @GoodL's Chocolate & Cheese Collab: "Freedom of '76" and "Mister Won't You Please Help My Pony"
• A collab with @bitbeak - "Brain of Glass":

• Some instrumental tracks
• My dad's Christmas gift:

Honorable Mention: I opened up for music commissions, and so far I've totaled one whole commission! It was actually pretty interesting - I've never custom-made music for someone else, so it was a good learning experience. I'll have to post the final result here when I get the chance.

(if you're looking for music for a project, hit me up!)

School Projects (Halloween Night & My Microwave & Me)

As school has taken over my life, most of last year and most definitely this year will be spent on assignments and working bit jobs on other people's projects. However, I did manage to get two of my own in this year.

Halloween Night was my Directing final, and it was very tricky to get down this story into three minutes. I don't necessarily think I succeeded the way I wanted to, but I'm glad to have been able to make it and put these ideas into action.

My Microwave & Me was something I made this past semester after realizing that I really had nothing to show of my own. So I pulled out this script from a year ago, got my roommate to act in it and his friend to shoot it, and voila! A masterpiece is born.

LOGAN DOCUMENTARY

The big one.

At the beginning of 2021 I wasn't too sure what was going to happen. The vaccines were just starting to come out, but I wasn't sure when I'd get one, and how this would affect shooting. As such, scheduling was really tricky, and even with vaccines, we definitely weren't able to put aside a month to travel cross-country as planned. Instead, we set aside a week in the summer to interview who we considered to be our highest priority interviewees.

Between July 30-August 4, I was in California traveling up and down the coast with my producer Matlock Zumsteg and cinematographer Sean Pettis, and we interviewed a dozen people for the Logan documentary. The experience was at the same time exhilarating and tiring. It was amazing to be doing the thing I'd been waiting to do for so long, but it was such a new experience, and some things I could only learn as we went along. I'm really glad to have done it. The interviews came out great, everyone was so generous, the guys are so awesome, and I can't wait to get on the road this year and do it again, now knowing what I know.

CHRISTMAS

So about a year ago, I contributed to a couple of projects and completely forgot about them until Christmas, when they increased my follower count by over 100.

One was a Christmas Collab hosted by one @RGPAnims (postponed to this year), to which I donated this very real footage of a boy waiting for Santa Claus on Christmas night, 1999.

The other was something called LUCKYBOY...this guy @BrandyBuizel had something to do with it, and I helped make a 20-second ditty for it with @GWCtheband, @Dogl on vox and @Carmet on bass.

MISCELLANEOUS STUFF

• Co-judged AIM 2021
• Made Some Collages
• Starting a Jonas Brothers cover band

And that's 2021!

2022 is already starting out so differently. My priorities are in a much different, yet much better place starting out, and it'll be interesting to see where they take me this year.

We'll see.

Thank you to everyone who's been spying on me this year. I hope y'all made it through 2021 in one piece, and that 2022 brings you chocolate-covered flowers.

:),

littlbox

It's that time of the year again! Time to hang lights in various corners of the house, have creepy old men with beards laugh at you...and listen to some littlMix by the fire.

Artists Showcased:

@tsuyunoshi, @kawaisprite, @milkypossum, @SilverDogg, @lowpolyuser, @tvroom, @WaxTerK, @CJspellsfish, @Modnex, @Battermilk, @triplebarrel, @Ro-may-o2, @EXT4NT, @ABoyWithABalloon, @Cyllum, @Valbun, @LexRodent, @carbonlad, @PrettyMuchBryce, @cribble, @BulrogTheSorcerer, @BoredKid, @TeslaX11, @bitbeak

______

In other boxy news, some friends and I got together and made a little short film/video/cinematic masterpiece called "my microwave & me". It even has its own theme song! How cute is that, amirite??

As always, I've got a million different ideas bouncing around the ol' noggin, but I'm trying to be more disciplined about what I'm spending my time on. Film school is teaching me that it's not worth half-assing projects anymore, especially when they become as time-and-soul-consuming as a film project. It becomes so ingrained into you that to not give it as much effort as possible would be a disservice not only to the project but to yourself.

That being said, it's still fun as hell to come up with new ideas (especially ones that are easy to knock out), and hopefully some of these might make their way down the pipeline onto your computer screen and into your subconscious...forever.

mwahaha

:),

littlbox

Hey all!

For those of you who enjoy listening to what Newgrounds has to offer in the Audio Portal, I made a mix of my favorite tracks from this past month! I tried to include a number of deep cuts and stuff not posted on the frontpage to showcase some of my favorite and lesser-known artists on the site.

Artists Showcased:

@milkypossum, @bobenshibobsled, @CorruptModule, @Valbun, @jeffandbagels, @scottwjsm, @dyadko, @lowpolyuser, @tvroom, @slowfreq, @bannanalizard, @BurneMusic, @Wilieu, @Yoshiii343, @naytethehermit, @viridityedm, @lukemin, @CameronKane, @F1regek, @killedherself, @thiccburger, @tsuyunoshi, @lotuspath, @bitbeak

I hope you enjoy.

:),

littlbox

Hello,

I've been working the past couple of years on Your Friend Logan - a documentary on extraordinary talent Logan Whitehurst - and recently I've been able to cobble together a three-minute trailer based on what we've shot this past summer for sending out to a couple of different documentary funds.

I honestly am so proud of what's been accomplished so far, and it just wouldn't be possible without my producer Matlock Zumsteg, cinematographer Sean Pettis, and the support of Logan's family, friends, and fans...not to mention Newgrounds itself!

Thank you.

:),

littlbox

Hey there, compadre! (That means "broccoli" in Italian) So it's been a busy past couple of months...

For about a week at the end of July/early August, I was in California and interviewed a dozen people across the state for the Your Friend Logan documentary. It was so much fun, but also very exhausting, in that I was barely work on anything when I came back home other than get ready for school.

And now I'm back in school, and I'm barely able to do anything except catch back up with classes and remember how to socialize with people irl. Fun stuff!

That being said, there's a lot of half-finished food on my plate, and I intend to slowly finish eating it over the next few months.

Oh, and I also have some half-finished projects that I'll put out eventually.

Right now I'm trying to catch up on all the Newgrounds I've been missing, and it's rather daunting. I'm going to make a littlMix DOUBLE FEATURE to make up for the lack of a mix last month.

Aaaaaand...that's about it. Not much else to this, really.

How have you guys been? I want to know!

:),

littlbox