Most Christmases, I'm too busy with my family to even check Newgrounds on Christmas Day, but I'm letting them sleep in this year, so Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of you, too! I have also been told that this year, the first day of Hannukah also falls on the 25th, so Happy Hannukah for those who celebrate it, as well!

I don't know if it was intentional or planned in any way, but I am particularly grateful this Christmas for the sheer amount of top-notch indie animations I've been seeing this past month on both Newgrounds and YouTube--whether it was the excellent 4th episode of Monkey Wrench (currently my favorite indie cartoon of them all right now--please support the show!), the equally-excellent and too-relatable 4th episode of The Amazing Digital Circus, excellent music videos from Miles John and Chris O'Neill/Zoukeau, or all sorts of other amusing indie efforts that I can't remember at this moment, I was eating GOOD this December and all this quality entertainment genuinely did wonders at keeping my usual seasonal depression away this year! I even managed to squeeze in one more short, experimental cartoon myself (Pibbles the Panda Eats a Lemon) to bring my total self-made Movie Portal submissions this year to a record 6 animations!

I'll go into it a bit in my New Year's Eve post later, but despite certain anxieties about real-world issues that are out of my control (and frankly irrelevant to this art- and animation-website), this past year has been a much-needed turning point for me and my art efforts, finally being a bit more focused in my studies (recognizing I can't truly be great at any part of the animation process unless I picked a specialty and stuck with it for at least an entire year) and I have some promising and hilarious new cartoons in the pipeline for you to enjoy throughout 2025. Now that I FINALLY have a consistent workflow and art style, I might even start work on a longer, more-ambitious video (at least 3-5 minutes long, with multiple backgrounds and characters) this next year! Hope your "TikTok"-length attention spans can handle the longer video lengths, and Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, and Happy Holidays to all, and to all a good night!

For posterity's sake, I decided to show you all a very early animation I made when I was only 16 and just started uploading on YouTube (I would not re-discover Newgrounds and finally set up my own account here until almost a decade later). I used Anime Studio Basics 2010 or something like that for the wonky animation, which has since been renamed to Moho Studio (I like the old name better). I had no proper training on animation when I made this--I was still just a kid, and YouTube tutorials weren't quite as prevalent as they are now, and free alternatives like Blender were still borderline-unusable for dumb children like I was. Tell me what you think! But hopefully you're not thinking "Wow, 16-year-old Jeffrey was so much better than 30-year-old Jeffrey"...

...Horrible, horrible things happen.

"Waluigi clown" is my favorite.

I can't seem to actually find it on the Front Page myself, unfortunately, but apparently it was on there long enough to drastically improve the amount of views, Favorites and 5-star votes of this particular Art Portal submission (by Newgrounds Art Portal standards, at least). Thank you, @PBot and/or @TomFulp, for (allegedly) boosting the visibility of this particular 3D render of mine for a bit, much appreciated!

I knew just making cute girl characters was a quick and easy way to get FrontPaged--even if the cute girl in this case is a worm...

In all seriousness, though, this is the second time an Art Portal submission landed me Front Page honors (allegedly), the first time this happened was that "Triple-A Chair" render I did over a year ago. A lot of the comments under Wormoliana seem to suggest I went quite far with making it look like something you would see in a triple-A video game or a major movie (particularly the high polygon count in the wireframe render), so this seems to suggest people seem to be more drawn to my more detailed, hardware-pushing 3D renders (especially if they're just plain interesting to look at on top of all that). That does mean I should probably spend quite a bit more time polishing my 3D renders to a truly-professional standard before deciding whether to post them on the Art Portal at all, but on the bright side it seems I hit a "sweet spot" in my online art efforts now where people now seem more than happy to wait as long as it takes between my posts, so long as when I DO post, it impresses them about as much as Wormoliana and, uh, "Triple-A Chair" did.

Obviously, chasing clout, even on a small, cozy website like modern Newgrounds, is not a healthy goal for myself, and "Internet success" rarely, if ever translates into people actually working full-time at a major studio, finally getting paid for doing what they love. The teenagers that tend to front-page cute girls (even my worm-girl, Wormoliana) on social media sites are a completely different audience than the "mainstream" audience that keep SpongeBob, modern Disney and the concept of constantly remaking or rebooting movies and TV shows that didn't even originally come out that long ago on life support.

But considering that NG is not run by an unpredictable algorithm and the Front Page stuff seems to be simply decided by someone important at the Newgrounds office REALLY liking your particular submission that day, stuff like this does really help me decide where to focus more of my efforts and limited art-making time on. Plus, I just live for the amusing comments and reviews I always seem to get here, and more people making jokes and calling them reviews under my goofy pieces can only be a good thing!

So basically, thank you for whoever decided to (allegedly) front-page Wormoliana and thank you for those that keep this small little site interesting for me with your amusing reviews and comments, much appreciated!

How's that for a shocking click-bait headline?

But yeah, I saw the recent Wicked movie with some of my family. It was actually pretty good, despite the actresses engaging in needless controversy on the Muskrat site (the lady who plays the Witch/Elphaba apparently didn't like the poster fan-edits on Twitter where they gave her red lips, like in the original play poster, even somehow interpreting it as racism).

...Whatever, that stuff doesn't remotely affect my decision to watch movies at this point, and as for the movie itself, it was a quite impressive, faithful adaptation of the play I actually saw in San Diego back in the late 2000's, and I forgot how catchy a lot of the songs of this particular Broadway Production were. Fun fact: Idina Menzel, who played the Witch/Elphaba in the original run of the Wicked play, went on to be the singer and voice actress of Elsa in Disney's Frozen franchise. Better yet, despite the inevitable gripes from the likes of Critical Drinker and other right-wing drama queens about the diverse casting (compared to the original Wizard of Oz about 90 years ago), it really did feel like an old-fashioned Hollywood musical in the vein of Music Man, Singing in the Rain or Grease, where the director seemed to have acknowledged that the best part of ANY musical was the actual music, dancing choreography and sets, and focused on that instead of spending too much time with story and exposition--although Wicked in particular was always a pretty solid prequel story to The Wizard of Oz.

Of course, this is sort of a review, so I should mention it isn't perfect. I genuinely think Universal could potentially get sued for some false advertising, because I went in convinced I was going to see the entire play in a single movie, only to learn this movie was only "Part 1" and there is going to be at least "Part 2" a few years from now to wrap up the story--essentially, like Beyond the Spider-verse, it seems to only end at "Act 2" and we're going to have to wait a long time just to see the Third and final Act of this simple story. As someone who still waits in vain for a Mega Man Legends 3 or a Shenmue where Ryo Hazuki final gets to at least land a single punch on Lan Di, I've grown to absolute DESPISE cliffhangers in stories, but again, the director seemed to have wisely focused more on "musical vibes" than the story, and I found myself not caring too much by the end that I was getting an incomplete movie, as the amusing, old-school dancing and set-pieces sufficiently distracted me from that fact.

That's all I have for my "cons" list, really, a minor gripe that ultimately didn't turn out to be a huge issue at all, definitely one of the better Broadway-to-Hollywood adaptations in the 21st century, along with The Greatest Showman, Les Miserables, and, um...I REALLY wanted to like Disney's Into the Woods, just because it was so morbid compared to what you would expect from the House of Mouse, and a rather lovely Taylor Swift as I think Rapunzel, and even Chris Pine in that particular movie making me question whether I am as "straight" as I think I am. But I digress...

The casting is also the absolute best I've seen in a long while--basically the polar opposite of that Borderlands movie, unlike that movie everyone in Wicked seemed BORN to play that specific role. For example, it may be eyebrow-raising to see Ariana Grande get ANY role considering some of her controversies, let alone a lead role as Galinda/Glinda the Good Witch, but who better to play a vain, petty, virtue-signaling attention seeker like Glinda than someone who is a vain, petty, virtue-signaling attention-seeker in real life? Also I'm biased because I've always had a bit of a crush on Ariana Grande since she played that squeaky-voiced character in the TeenNick show, Victorious--of all the painfully-awkward Cuban Americans she had to date for a while, why did it have to be Pete Davidson and not me?? Ahem...

But yeah, pleasantly surprised by this movie, puts its likely $200 million+ budget to good use for once, but hopefully I'll regain some of my testosterone levels back once the Sonic 3 Movie comes out and I watch it. Keanu Reeves as Shadow the Hedgehog, YEEEEAAAUUUHHH!

Remember when I made the animation, The DogSh!t Boys, for SirJeffofShort/NorEastaProductions? He was a great guy to work with, and now he's working on a cool new game called Radventure:

In fact, you can play the demo right now on Steam. I personally played it on my Steam Deck, and it ran beautifully on that handheld device.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3318680/Radventure_Demo/

If you like the demo, consider spreading the word about it and keeping an eye out for its crowdfunding campaign in the future, so we can hopefully turn it into a full game. Yes, I just said "we," if enough people show interest and support the development of the full game in the future, SirJeffofShort could hire me and others again to contribute unique art assets for the game! Jeff (SirJeffofShort, not me or the "Ugh" Jeff--kinda a common name, Jeff is...) is perhaps the nicest producer I've worked with yet, and he makes sure to pay me on time and accordingly to my efforts, so even though I'm not directly involved with this project (yet), I would fully appreciate you all giving the Radventure demo a try and support it any way you can if you enjoy the demo!

I really hate being a downer here, even when my anxiety is fully justified, and luckily I just remembered I have a fun, experimental low-poly cartoon that I scheduled to release this weekend on the Movie Portal! I'm quite proud of the unusual look I was able to achieve, even with baked-in lighting (as opposed to the full dynamic lighting we've become accustomed to), not only reducing the carbon footprint of this particular animation and allowing me to chip away at the project even when my laptop was not plugged in at full power, but encouraging me to do a bit more with the cartoon-y character movements, since I couldn't rely on motion blur or other expensive effects in order to hide my weaknesses in 3D animation! See you Saturday for:

I was SERIOUSLY hoping to type a blog saying that my cautious optimism was proven correct, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz would win just for being so darn likeable, and I would never infect my blog posts here with my political anxieties again and just keep it fun and light from now on!

...Well, it pains me to say this (especially to those of you from less-fortunate countries or East European countries who will undoubtedly be most affected by our foreign policy and climate change-related decisions), but the absolute worst-case scenario is almost certainly going to happen at this point: Donald Trump will be gifted a second Presidency (and through the popular vote this time, too, can't blame the Electoral College this time, and my sympathy for the less-fortunate in my country was sorely misplaced if they rejected my apparent "white guilt" in favor of voting for Donald Trump). His fellow Republicans will likely also sweep the House and Senate, so it's not even like he will have to moderate his positions in any way just to get laws passed, and the most immediate and likely way he'll affect my life personally is adding punishing foreign tariffs that will drastically raise the price of electronics like my next 3D rendering laptop or game consoles--if you think the PS5 Pro is over-priced NOW...

I am not like the crazed people that attacked the Capitol on January 6th--I will accept that an overwhelming majority of Americans simply are less afraid of Donald Trump than me and work to deal with the cards I've been dealt. Kamala Harris ran the absolute most perfect campaign I've ever seen, possibly even better than Barack Obama's back in 2008, and is objectively doing better than Joe Biden ever would have done if he had decided to stay in the race, but it seems like even women and Latinos and other so-called minorities actually wanted Donald Trump and the more 1950's-esque way of life he represents, who am I to judge? While Donald Trump will almost certainly make these problems worse, in retrospect we liberals have been underestimating how disappointed the vast majority of the country felt about our still-high gas and grocery prices; the undeniably preachy, patronizing and, dare I say, "woke" writing that has pervaded Hollywood movies, shows, and triple-A video games due to our entertainment industry being located almost solely in Southern California; and how frustrated young men in particular felt about a social culture that seemed to make it harder than ever to even date, let alone get married and start a family like our parents. Again, especially after literally going through a Donald Trump Presidency the first time (and that was when he at least had advisors moderating his worst impulses), I have zero faith he will even keep our economy on the mend, let alone avoid bringing back inflation and the truly high-prices of 2022, but no use crying over spilled milk, I have to deal with it.

As unfair as it sounds, besides essentially having to limit myself to cheap older games like @miamidesantos has long had to deal with in Brazil, and possibly deal with censorship I've never had to put up with before as someone who will continue to disagree with my government as long as I can, my life PROBABLY won't change that much--it's my sister I have to worry about for a while, and who is already trying to get us to leave this country the same way our grandparents on our Mom's side left Cuba when Fidel Castro took over, since Project 2025 clearly has it out against unmarried young women in particular. I will also continue my original plan of cooling it with the political talk that no one on Newgrounds wants to hear after this (although I'm probably no longer joining BlueSky or other social media sites where I'll likely have to hear about Trump's shenanigans for another 4+ years, just to make my art reach a more "mainstream" audience I'm frankly disappointed with). At least the election is basically over, and I learned from this to just tune out the news and polls that clearly doesn't know what it's talking about for the sake of my sanity, even on future election years (if we still have elections).

I'm extremely sorry things had to turn out this way, and I am especially sorry in advance that the US, a country that has the second-highest carbon emissions behind China (and the highest emissions per capita) has chosen once again to actively get in the way of the world's attempts at saving the planet yet again, possibly for good this time, and our actions from here on out will certainly affect your country, too, to some capacity. I don't know what else to say...

Gave my main portfolio website a much-needed upgrade. I narrowed the focus of the site (now it's specialized in 3D modeling specifically), used Wix's portfolio-making tools, updated to my most recent Animation-industry-specific resume, and overall simplified navigation, since at the end of the day, it's just an image gallery and nothing more.

Take a visit for yourself and give me some feedback on both the PC and mobile user experience of my new-and-improved site:

https://jeffreythrash.wixsite.com/jeffrey-thrash-anim

I've noticed a ton of announcements on my NG feed where people I follow or befriend here are announcing they're moving over to BlueSky. Now I'm well aware of Elon Musk's latest effort to scare away every last sane(-ish) user of the bloated corpse of Twitter, but personally I left Twitter long before Musk considered buying it (2021), and BlueSky often seems to be described as that version of Twitter, so admittedly I'm going to need some extra convincing to ever try a Twitter-like again.

Does it support video uploads up to two minutes long, like Twitter did? I want to do more animation and short cartoons after practicing making so many still images the past couple of years. How is the phone app? Admittedly, since I do a lot of 3D art on my phone during my breaks at work nowadays (technology can be amazing, sometimes!), it would be nice to have a more mobile-friendly website to post WIPs and quick projects to than Newgrounds.

Are the blocking features really that good? Maybe I was a bit lazy to fully explore Twitter's now-defunct blocking features, or too open-minded to the opinions of strangers/bots back then, but the main reason I left Twitter (and Facebook around the same time) was because checking such websites even on occasion and especially their oftentimes-political "Trending" tabs became too much for me. Seeing the excellent art from people that insisted on exclusively posting in a walled garden like Twitter was not worth being constantly reminded of EVERY stupid Internet "culture war" happening all around the world at any given moment. Either way, I think I should hold off on signing up for any social media website until the conclusion of the most recent US Election--the last day for in-person voting is November 5th, but in the supposedly-likely situation this election proves close, I might have to wait until mid-November until the dust settles, we know the final results, and the campaigning season is FINALLY over). The last thing my nervous wreck brain needs right now is MORE opinions thrown at my face.

Perhaps most importantly, is BlueSky REALLY filling a need I can't already get from posting on Newgrounds (my main hub), YouTube, (a more "mainstream" place to repost my Movie Portal submissions) and BlenderArtists (a forum that gets me more Blender 3D-specific help)?