I took a bit of a break here for no other reason than to give myself more free time to watch the Olympics, I love sports, especially the long-distance running and cycling events. But I've finally been broken all the AI-techbro commercials, weirdly-mean-spirited Nike commercials, and of course the schmaltzy fake-inspirational commercials and introduction to athletes that either win drama-free (the US Gymnastic team, specifically Simone Biles) or actually end up losing horribly in their big event, defeating the purpose of the inspirational videos shown before (basically everything else). The Kamala Harris for President ads are cool, though, in my totally biased and partisan opinion. The Summer Olympics have basically become my once-every-four-years reminder as to why "traditional" cable TV is dying and pretty much only watched by Boomers nowadays.
But anyway, I'm ready to get a different and more genuine form of inspiration from the creative and out-there stuff that seems to regularly flood Newground's Movie Portal, even if I still squeeze in some time in the next week for the Olympic events that I actually want to watch and the Closing Ceremony.
I have been still chipping away at some pre-production for 5(!!) short animations I would like to start officially animating once the weather cools down and putting out sometime in 2025, so it's not really even a hiatus so much as a break from time-consuming-but-less-productive stuff like answering questions in the forum or taking the extra time to actually type reviews and praises for artwork and Movie Portal submissions that I especially resonate with.
It's a tricky balancing act, because I do think part of the reason my art does surprisingly well on Newgrounds and no where else is because is because I engage with the community a lot and form online friendships here, something I couldn't do on the website formerly known as Twitter, YouTube or Instagram due to the sheer amount of toxicity and political doomerism those websites seem to encourage--not to say the NG community is perfect, but it sure beats the all-too-common situation on most bigger social media sites now where you'd watch a funny, harmless video of a dog being cute or an especially funny and lowbrow OneyPlays episode, only to then scroll the community comment section see it is poisoned with unrelated vitriol of people calling each other racial slurs over their differing opinions on the Federal Reserve or something. On the other hand, I've gotten a LOT of pre-production work done all by myself by taking a break from being social, though of course I've been rather lonely the last couple of days as a result.
ANYWAY. How about a little test render I did for one of my future animations, titled "Punk n' Gunk Meet Gregorio the Has-Been," to hold you over until I have something more substantial to show? All assets are custom-made by yours truly this time in Valence3D (iOS app), Nomad (also iOS) and B4Artists, no pre-made stock assets this time!
TheMiamiDeSantos
yo my friend, welcome back, good luck with your projects, hails from brazil. Interesting how you did the green on the image, i think i would have made it like gta san andreas or something, just some grass or leaves texture, but you know 3D ain't my thing
jthrash
Yeah, it's not actual grass particles, but still, actually sculpting individual grass blades will ensure the final animation will take forever to render, but I think it's worth it. I would simply do things like GTA San Andreas or other PS2 classics and simply use grass textures, but people seem to prefer it when I at least attempt to make my stuff look more PlayStation 3 quality, even though it's a ton of extra work for one guy and ensures they have to wait even longer for my stuff to finally. 3 of the 5 projects I'm chipping away at are attempts at an appealing low-res/low-poly art style, though, so eventually I'll figure out that balance between artistic quality and actually putting out new stuff in a reasonable amount of time.