As cringe as it may sound to any one who's a full on millennial (as opposed to a "Zillenial" like me) and older, I'm excited for Deltarune Chapters 3 and 4 and I will probably go on hiatus from the Internet as a whole when it comes out (June 4th in the United States) to avoid spoilers until after I finish both games, as I'm well aware at this point the Undertale/Deltarune fanbase is the absolute worst when it comes to keeping secrets and not at least waiting half a year after a game comes out before obnoxiously spoiling crucial parts of the story in their fan art/kink art.

Of course, I'll probably temporarily return on Newgrounds' First Low-Poly Day to admire other people's work plus respond to any questions or comments on my own submission, but other than that, see you in July (hopefully earlier since Toby Fox's games are refreshingly short compared to AAA Leviathans like Persona 5 and The Witcher III).

On a related note, 2025 has been a surprisingly-decent year for turn-based RPG fans so far. I just wrapped up Lunar Silver Star Story in the recently-released Lunar Remastered Collection, and after Deltarune Chapter 3 and 4 I want to finally get around to playing Lunar 2: Eternal Blue (also included in Lunar Remastered Collection). Of course, I HAVE to play Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 by the end of this year since it looks and sounds like what I had hoped a modern Final Fantasy game would be like, as opposed to the uninspired FF7-milking and poor attempts at re-creating Kingdom Hearts II's excellent action RPG mechanics that we actually get from modern Square Enix. It's also a fantastic example of what the French gaming industry is still capable of, if only more people escaped the "Ubislop gulag" to form their own studios and make their own AA games. Still, while Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth didn't exactly "click" with me, I wouldn't mind squeezing in the mobile "Ever Crisis" mobile game in between all this turn-based RPG goodness for some freemium nostalgia--at least until the game gets TOO aggressive with its FOMO microtransaction tactics, of course.

On the Front Page of the Movie Portal as of this typing, there's a pilot episode for a new series called...Get Fatter Now.

On a scale of 1-700 pounds/317.514659 kg, how much am I going to regret watching what clearly sounds like DeviantArt fetish content during my limited free time?

UPDATE: I saw it. Thankfully it wasn't anything near what I thought it was going to be. I guess the title was just an extreme example of "clickbait" (it clearly worked on us). I don't want to be too harsh since the description says it was a 12-week college project (I learned in my own 12-week college projects that 12 weeks is not nearly enough time to make a polished animation, particularly one as long as an actual TV episode), so I'll say it was alright, had its comedic moments for me.

A sampling of a few of the images I will share on June 6th on the Art Portal:

I am going for authenticity with my stuff--in this case, working within the N64's limitations. Punk's entire single texture here, for instance, is only 32 x 32 pixels and specifically saved as an 8-bit PNG file instead of the bigger file sizes we use today, and I am avoiding any post-processing (not even basic color correction) like the plague. Game devs don't know how good they have it these days with real-time post-processing and the ability to make advanced shaders within the game engine itself...

Anyway, stay tuned on Friday, June 6th for my own submission to Newgrounds' first Low Poly Day!

CW: Political satire; pretend-fascists getting what's coming to them. You don't have to look at this particular blog post if you don't want to...

T. A. C. O. in this case stands for:

Trump

Always

Chickens

Out

Based on this latest assurance that the wannabe dictator is WEAK

The image above is also an updated take on this iconic Looney Tunes scene where Daffy whacks Adolf Hitler in the head with a mallet and Hitler cries like the man-baby he was:

In all silliness, people like Trump are only powerful if people fear and respect him, which is thankfully becoming less and less the case after he promised lower prices to Americans, only to actively raise the price of literally everything within his first 100 days of his Second Term. It is literally my patriotic duty for the next 3 and a half years to clown on this joker and thus do my part to take away his power over the "Neville Chamberlains" of America--as if he isn't doing that to himself by even screwing over billionaires who just want their tax cuts, that's all. Comedy and satire has not only been our species' "Copium" since the dawn of the human race, it has also proven time and time again to be a genuine weapon against those who command unflinching fear and respect, and without such they have nothing--at least until/unless certain dictators squelch free speech and humor in their country entirely. Just like in his first term, Mr. Trump will not have that privilege to stop us from laughing at him.

Don't worry, though, if you fear my newfound boldness against a weak coward my fellow countrymen are increasingly regretting voting back in will mean no more purely "escapist" comics and animations from me. For one thing, I am sooooo slow at solo animation (and I only get to chip away at animation projects at all on weekends) that I can't afford to make editorial cartoons based on an event that will no longer be relevant by the time I finish the storyboard animatic. Heck, the news moves so rapidly these days, even spending an entire afternoon on an Art Portal illustration lampooning US politics is a risky move--gotta stay "timeless" with my long-term art projects, at most satirizing human nature in general, not current events that just zip by.

Also, another crucial part of protesting MAGA is still being able to find joy in life regardless of whatever upsetting news we read on any given day. It's no secret that the self-proclaimed "anti-woke" crowd lives for "owning the libs." Who cares if we lose our healthcare and retirement money, so long as the man who took away all that stuff from us annoys the hell out of Californians and New Yorkers as well? By just living my life as I always have, regardless of who's currently in charge, drawing funny cartoons, getting my beloved workouts/naps--that has proven to be a surprisingly-effective way of making terminally-online Neanderthals feel angry and powerless, especially if I just "woke" up from a nap--maybe even obnoxiously live rent-free in THEIR heads instead of them even getting a discount into my brain. And I'M supposed to be the overly-sensitive one that can't handle opinions different from my own, if simply continuing to do what I do and believe what I believe causes certain sad individuals to lie awake at night?

Still, it's a tricky balancing act between "not giving my opponents the satisfaction of killing my vibes" and "not being complacent in the face of injustice that even affects me somehow." The man not only affects the price of groceries, he affects the price of my escapist video games--or at least, he gave Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony the "in" they need to start charging $80+ for broken, unfinished "triple A" video games. I am literally not allowed to ignore the crimes happening in the White House because they are making my distractions from such stuff too expensive. I just want people to know that my fear is actually at an all-time low now that I am reminded how weak wannabe bullies can be in the face of even the slightest resistance and, to quote Zach Hadel--I mean, Kevin from Home Alone:

"I'm not afraid anymore! Do you hear me?? I'M NOT AFRAID ANYMORE!!"

Yes, I know the irony of quoting Home Alone considering the Chicken made a prominent cameo in Home Alone 2. Elon Musk also made a cameo in Iron Man 2. Ohh, if only we knew back when these movies came out what we know now...

So I've been experimenting more with the ultra-memory-efficient gradient map texturing technique I told you about a couple blog posts ago and found even the 64 x 64 map (singular, not plural) I used in This Recent Art Portal Submission for almost the entire scene (the Cityscape backdrop is of course a separate, much-large image) is a bit overkill. I've now found a way for my bright, cartoon-y artstyle to get away with an even smaller 16 x 16 pixel image map texturing everything:

Feel free to right-click > Save As the tiny image above if you want to try out gradient map texturing for yourself, which I'm sure you do if you want to participate in Newgrounds' first ever Low-Poly Art day. It's not copyrighted work or anything I would prefer you not steal.

Here's an updated version of my Gunk model (from Punk and Gunk) using the tiny 16 x 16 texture above:

As before, the trade-off is that with a single, almost excessively-low-res texture, I can more comfortably and efficiently use the slower-but-more-realistic Blender Cycles, as opposed to Eevee (though this technique still looks decent enough in real-time renderers and engines) and much higher poly counts in the final render, without having to wait AGES just for one frame of animation to render. It should be noted that other optimization techniques are necessary--for example, 4096 samples for a default Cycles render is WAY too high and slow, especially if you use the Denoiser, and even then, the default values for the Denoiser are set unnecessarily high for this rendering style by default.

All this experimentation from me as of late sort of brings up an interesting question: Why aren't more indie and AA games with similar un-textured, cartoon-y looks optimized this way? It's more understandable with AAA games with realistic graphics and much-more detailed textures, where it seems like 4K texture sizes and tile mapping (both EXTREMELY hard on a computer or console's GPU) seem to be the absolute minimum for avoiding the dreaded "blurry texture" on massive 4KTVs and monitors these days, and obviously this technique which only uses basic, un-textured colors is not even feasible for such art styles. But this technique has truly sped up even my Cycles renders and is generally much easier to work with on my aging laptop, to the point where I feel if more indie games with simple, colorful graphics would have comfortably run at 60 FPS even on the notoriously-dinky Switch 1 or laptops most people can actually afford.

Of course, it's not the only way, and I guess if you get REALLY into Blender and 3D, geeking out about all the many different ways you can optimize your textures while ensuring it still looks amazing where it counts is all part of the nerdy fun of texturing 3D models. Perhaps instead of this, you would prefer the more artist-friendly approach of just hand-painting textures, but not using bigger image sizes than you need for simple cartoony art styles. I personally find only 128 x 128 texture maps, or 256 x 256 images, are the bare minimum I can get away with and it certainly allows for more detail than 16x16 color gradient images and you wouldn't have to spend quite as much time modeling every separate part of your character like I do with the gradient map workflow, since you can just fake details with texture paints.

All in all, I hope the fun I have in figuring out cool and bizarre new techniques continues to show through somehow by ensuring you find my future animations and renders fun, as well!

The FrontPaged art in question:

Spank you very much for-a enjoying my Art!

First of all, I feel all better now from a nasty flu and can return to my day job on Monday, among other things, which is of course good news for me, but it also means I no longer have time for responding to that AMA (Ask Me Anything) blog post, since I regained my energy and would rather spend that time working on a new Punk n' Gunk cartoon. Sorry.

Speaking of my future Punk n' Gunk efforts, you may have noticed I recently uploaded a sort of "test animation" with Imabunny recently, where in the description I said I basically managed to use a texture map the size of a Super Nintendo character sprite for ALL the assets of the scene to save on render times.

This tutorial that went somewhat-viral a couple months ago was my inspiration for trying a weird new technique that involves using EXTREMELY tiny gradient image maps and overlapping UVs:

The reason I bring this up is that I basically had an epiphany while working on this. It took me far less time to make, particularly texture, than if I had used the more "triple A video game"-inspired workflows I learned in college with software like Maya and Unreal Engine 3 and 4. My cartoon designs look perfectly fine with simplistic gradient textures with basically no detail (e.g. a fur texture or a normal map bumpy texture), and it fact it looks better this way--it avoids the dreaded "This Will Be Graphics in 2013" look that particularly plagues live-action remakes of once-cute children's characters, the most recent examples being the uncanny-looking dwarves in Disney's recent Snow White remake or the Minecraft Movie (though the latter seems to be doing well despite how much people mocked the initial trailers).

It's like how I recently played Spyro: Re-Ignited Trilogy, compared it to the PS1 originals, and thought that, while Re-Ignited undeniably looks a million times better on a purely technical level, the original PS1 Spyro games look and, most importantly from a graphic design standpoint, READ better with similar less-noisy gradient maps making up the textures and the fact the originals didn't have dynamic, triple-A realistic grass literally obscuring the collectibles you need to complete the game. To be fair, the remake added some new mechanic as a sort of band-aid to the common modern-day gaming problem of the graphics being TOO detailed to make it clear what you can and can't interact with, and it's at least a little less hokey than the "yellow paint on interactive objects" you always see in modern games, but it's a good lesson for me (especially as someone who doesn't seem to live in an area with other artists I can call to make a small indie team, and has to basically make everything myself to ever get any projects done) about the importance of readability and clear composition over adding extremely fine texture detail that most people won't be able to see, especially in the likely event they are watching the heavily-compressed YouTube version of my latest animation on their tiny phone screen. Now if I had the privilege of finally working with a ginormous VFX team on state-of-the-art computers that let me add as much details as I want, and my CG efforts are ultimately best seen on a giant 8K Imax theater screen, then yes, I can and should be spending months on end just "pixel-fucking" each 16K-32K texture to near-perfection, but I've finally figured out as an solo animator that not only should I simplify things for the sake of my sanity, or the fact that you are unlikely to see such fine details in web-optimized videos anyway, but because, as the cliche goes, "limitations breed creativity" and I seem to get more appealing results (at least for cartoon-y characters) if I DON'T use the full grunt of my hardware and its RTX 3060 GPU, just because I can.

Speaking of my hardware, learning this method also seems to have alleviated quite a bit of my personal anxiety about the frankly nonsensical "tariff" situation right now in the United States ensuring that GPUs and 3D-capable computers (among many, many, many other much more important expenses) are needlessly expensive and I should put off any plans I originally had about upgrading to faster hardware. Not only does making my texturing workflow more "solo-artist-friendly" help with the readability of my future 3D animations and my ability to get anything done in a reasonable time, but it makes me less reliant on hardware-damaging (but faster) GPU renders and I will hopefully be able to make my current setup last much longer, ideally until about 2029, and ride out this unavoidable political nonsense--AND reduce the amount e-waste I add to the environment if I can learn to make my hardware last 10+ years instead of just 4 or 5.

It's funny how even in CG animation, having a skilled human behind the screen is still extremely important. I thought I always needed the latest and greatest GPU to get faster and faster renders, but no, it turns there's plenty I can do to optimize my 3D scenes and not rely on "brute force" rendering. The interesting trade-off is that I am actually now using the more realistic (but slower) Cycles render engine, as opposed to the faster-but-less-realistic Eevee, and relying heavily on proper contact shadows and global illumination to help light my scenes, yet it is still faster than what I was doing before because I optimize my scenes, AND it's all on my CPU, no GPU needed. It's like having my cake and eating it too, and I don't need to worry about misguided tariffs against China until or unless my current hardware literally disintegrates out of existence in the near future (I think Americans currently have to pay an extra 145% or 245% on anything remotely made with Chinese parts, last I checked. Good job, Americans, voting for a guy that seems to understand even less how the economy works than in his first term was TOTALLY a smarter choice than voting for the scary brown woman).

I guess, TL;DR, my whole point in saying all this is that if you want learn 3D and Blender, but are worried your computer can't handle it, there are ways to make it work at least for the sake of simple solo animations, and you don't need to make your first 3D animation efforts look "triple-A" or "Hollywood." In fact, if all these hideous Disney remakes, live-action video game adaptations and so-called triple-A video games with immersion-breaking "yellow paint" that refuses to run on your PS5 (even if it was exclusively made for your PS5) are any indication, it may actually be BETTER for your art style development to make something simpler and more stylized that does not require faster GPU rendering at all. It's gotten to the point where standard "Pixar"-like rendering and character designs tend to look "cheap" to laymen audiences nowadays (even if that's the exact opposite of the truth, PBR rendering is EXPENSIVE), and people crave more stylized, 2D-like CG animation, such as the ones found in Flow or the Spider-verse movies. Don't let the fact that your computer is unlikely to be a $4500 fancy CG workstation stop you from at least dabbling in Blender. At worst, you may have to download an older version of Blender (2.79 seems to still be the most popular version) and render with the Blender Internal render engine instead, but of course earlier Blender Open Movies were rendered with BI and still look a million times better than 1995's Toy Story, it's all about the skill of the artist, even on outdated versions of Blender.

So right now I'm about 5 days into a nasty flu (not COVID-19, mercifully)--or as I like to call it, my "Biannual Reminder That I am But a Mere Mortal Who Shall Know Mine Insignificant Place." Can't really do anything remotely resembling work right now because it could prolong the time it takes me to recover, but at the same time I'm bored out of my mind the few times I'm awake right now, so now I thought it would be a good time to set up an AMA (Ask Me Anything) Blog post to pass the time.

Any burning questions weighing you down, lay it on me! You can ask me anything...ANYTHING! I will answer any time I happen to awake and on Newgrounds, until I feel all better and can go back to my day job + working on my next idea for a Punk n' Gunk cartoon episode!

...I will be rating this blog post "M for Mature," just in case.

I swear, I don't need drugs to come up with this stuff, it's just how my brain naturally works!

"I'm not Clifford the Big Red Dog! I'm Blifford, the Big Green SNOT!! HA-CHOO!! HA-CHOO!!"

Random animal sketches. I think I channeled my inner Shel Silverman (Fairly OddParents, Kim Possible, Danny Phantom) with the shape language. Don't get used to it, but it was a fun one-time experiment.

"Roronoa Zoro" Donald Duck came out looking way more "badass" than he had any right to look. Also, realistically he probably should have played a Marine character, not a pirate.

I think I meant Daisy Duck to cosplay as Nico Robin here, but coincidentally she looks more like Magica De Spell from DuckTales--like, how that character actually looks in the proper Disney show. Daisy would probably be more fitting as Princess Vivi, or possibly Boa Hancock.

You have no idea how hard it was to come up with a "Mickey Mouse character" equivalent of Sanji. I eventually settled on Mortimer Mouse, who I think tried to steal Minnie away from Mickey in one old Disney short. Naturally I had to mock the butchered 4Kids dub while I was at it, too--Mortimer Sanji has a funny lollipop hanging out of his mouth, not a cigarette. Coincidentally, Mortimer was also known to have a huge Cuban cigar perpetually hanging off the side of his mouth, too.

I should have used Buzz Lightyear as Frankie, not Baymax. I could not care less about Disney after 1999's Tarzan (I was 4 when I saw that in theaters). MAYBE the original 2001(?) Lilo and Stitch if I'm being generous. But at least Baymax is still a "Walt Disney Animation Studios" OC, not from some other studio Disney bought (Pixar in Lightyear's case).

For more proof I kind of rushed this and don't really care to polish this up in the future (eyes Disney's lawyers getting ready to break my knees), I should have done the bare minimum "Google Image" research on how both Pete and Jimbei are typically supposed to look. Or at least Roxanne. That is supposed to be Roxanne next to Max at the bottom of the image, by the way. Also, that is supposed to be Max next to her, dying of embarrassment because his Boomer father is trying SO hard "get" anime.

Naturally, I have other ideas of similar Disney and One Piece characters:

• Piglet would be Koby (at least in the earlier episodes)
• Whinnie the Pooh would be Beppo
• Uncle Scrooge would be Admiral Garp
• Current Disney CEO Bob Iger would be Buggy the Clown
• Big Mama from The Fox and the Hound would be Big Mama from One Piece
• Elsa would, of course, be that psycho J-Pop girl from One Piece Red
• Jimmy Neutron would be Dr. Vegapunk (Stella). Wait, Jimmy Neutron is Nickelodeon...
• Patrick Star would be that one angry pink starfish with the Bob Marley hat...
• Gregorio from Punk n' Gunk: Gregorio the Has-Been would be Helmeppo many years later, after retiring from the Marines and putting on like 500 pounds.

I uploaded a "Making Of" for my latest little animation on YouTube:

In case you are wondering what software I used, I basically used IbisPaintX for the whole thing (it has basic looping GIF animation capabilities) on my iPhone 14, I used the watercolor brush for coloring all on one layer, and I painted with my thumb+used HEAVY line smoothing features in IbisPaintX because I'm too cheap to even get a disposal stylus for drawing on my phone.