It was called “Story XPeriential” and is an online/remote class run by X in the Box, which includes many alumni from my favorite childhood animation studio, Pixar.
Here is the story reel/animatic I made for the class since last March, on YouTube. It has funny chimpanzees!:
For those wondering about the class itself and whether it would be right for them, here is a link to the website:
https://www.storyxperiential.com/
It is a paid class, about $250 US for adults (there is a cheaper version for children, and wisely they separated the “minors” version of the class from the “adults” version, though of course the kid’s version requires your parents to pay for it), but I personally feel it was worth the extra money for the California industry career advice from people actively working on Pixar’s upcoming movies or movies for any of Disney’s other studios, especially the more “realist” presenters who recognize how exclusionary Hollywood can be and how much extra work we may have to put in if we don’t already have industry/celebrity connections to easily slide us into a posh Hollywood career. It was certainly more structured than 99.9% of free YouTube tutorials.
So yeah, as you can see, I have been intensely productive on art for basically the entire first half of 2023, and as much hard work as this class was, it didn’t stop me from uploading weekly on both Newgrounds and YouTube. On one hand, this was simply because I’ve been unemployed for quite a bit since finishing up “The DogSh!t Boys” for SirJeffofShort back in January (although I have been constantly looking for jobs on top of all that, ultimately getting one that starts in June), so be prepared for me to slow down a lot on the content as I get back to work next month. On the other hand, disappointingly my Switch’s battery basically died and now I could only play my Switch games on TV, meaning once work starts again I could basically only play my current gaming obsession, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom once a week at most (at least until I make enough income to justify buying a refurbished Switch Lite or something), so you might be surprised how much I’ll still post out of sheer boredom (my iPad where I do my illustrations and sculpts has a better battery life than ALL the Switch models combined).
On the third, freakish, AI-generated hand, I think I’m finally ready to start working on a massive, possibly year-long project again after recovering from “The DogSh!t Boys” and the storyboard class, so regardless of how busy I’ll be or how much time I’ll get to play Zelda I might slow down on posting so much simply because I want to work on something that takes more than a single Saturday evening to fully complete. Can’t make any promises, but I am dabbling in RPG Maker 2003 after being inspired by the “Octillery” games here in the Game Portal as well as simple pre-rendered 3D sprites similar to Golden Sun or Moon (which I’ve always found to be really charming). First, I want to prioritize getting the game design right, first, because the last thing we need is another “style-over-substance” video game, even in the indie space. It is EXTREMELY important that the game doesn’t have annoying random encounters like the RPGs of old. I’ll try to get a demo done soon, maybe upload it on the game portal here plus a downloadable version on itch.io, but the demo will have to be about 90% complete before I can feel comfortable showing it to the public, I don’t want to over-promise and have this become the next “Cube World” or “Yandere Simulator” and destroy all the goodwill I’ve accumulated online.
Whatever happens, stay “tooned!”
TheMiamiDeSantos
yo jeffrey boy thats cool, when i watched the chimpanzee i did lmao when i see the fat one did remind of a brazilian dude luangameplay lol if it was in portuguese some brazilians would have cracked up with that too.
I think you should do an animated series too, through eofs is how i get mostly of my customers and donations, like 250$ ? i would rather pay that for relatively famous people talk about my stuff then grow it's visibility, growing it's fanbase and rising the chances of getting more customers and donations. How you americans say "advertising is everything" day by day i get more convinced of it
Also working on a game look very complex, i tried to do smw rom hacks as well edit some gta cleo mods but i couldn't understand shit about the codes and ting lol, not wanting to sound like an annoying hag mother but it would be more profitable to put that time and work on an animated series
jthrash
I’m doing the game strictly for fun and as a change of pace from focusing on animation, don’t worry. I went with RPG Maker 2003 because the coding is more visual and therefore easier for me to wrap my head around, plus the severe limitations of 2003 compared to the newer versions will force me to keep things simple, so I don’t feel tempted to make some “triple A” game that requires a team of 500 people just so it gets done this century.
I do have several animated series ideas, but I feel like I need a team of at least 5 paid animators to do most of my ideas justice, so I just do really short cartoons like Tappy Toe the Tappin’ Penguin or Imabunny for now. I do have one adult cartoon idea that might work as a series that I can practically make by myself, at least. Hopefully if I end up working at a job a long time, I can justify the cost of hiring at least one more person to help me make things.