As Christmas comes around the corner, so does the end of 2022… and good riddance! I think this year in some ways was the most difficult I’ve faced in a while, I lost some friends and I gained new ones as well as a slew of personal shit in real life and I expect that 2023 will follow suit and kick my ass all the same cus some of these things still haven’t been resolved. I’m pretty resilient though so I think I’ll be fine. 

However, it wasn’t all horrible cus I think I had some of the best times of my life this year! So I reckon why not recap my year with Newgrounds like I did last year. Hopefully, it’ll be a fun journey :o]

At the start of the year, I provided cover art for @dungeonation's Pico VS Bear DX and @SlickRamen's Peter's Quest! The Peter's Quest drawing was actually done in 2021 but ahhhh fuck whatever.

While working on those, I also signed up to help with the NG Winter Fest Opening. I’m still pretty proud of how my part came out!

At some point, my break was over and I had to return to my school duties but it was a nice warm-up to get a start on my year! Still, I managed to find ways to work on anything else but my assignments 😅

In February, I participated in the CapSteve Zine (Google Drive ver). I remember thinking to myself, "Well, if I'm going to be in this gay ass zine, I might as well lean into it." So I drew Steve and Captain holding each other and singing karaoke to one of my favourite songs, Take Off Your Pants by Planet Booty. I almost animated it but I didn’t have enough time to do that.

@VoicesByCorey asked me to make a Twitter banner for him, I'm still pretty jolly about how it came out.

Earlier this year, I used hold twitter spaces (they were chaotic and scary so I don't do that anymore!) and during one of them, @itsreddqueen said she had an idea for an NG collab where artists draw a tarot card with each card being based on an NG character/property. This was turned into the NG Tarot Card Collab!

I celebrated my one year anniversary on NG! I hope there are many more years to come.

Pico Day was moved to June 11th and on that day Fulpware was released!

@RGPAnims asked me if I wanted to be a part of it somewhere in April and of course, I accepted even though I was pretty sure I wouldn't have the time to do it. Alongside animating a microgame segment, I was tasked with the job of working on the cutscenes. Here’s a Twitter thread that goes more in-depth into that. 

I also asked Jeff to voice for the after credits two days before Pico Day. I'm pretty sure I got the lines the morning of the release. I just remember in my drowsy tiredness laughing at the lines before sending them over.

(Screenshot of my original Fulpware microgame concept. Sadly, I got anxious about it and ran out of time. I'm a jittery, busy fella!)

From then on, things got sort of quiet because I was still trying to finish school. From mid June to September, I was focused on doing (barely any of) my schoolwork. Despite my massive (and VERY IMPORTANT) workload, I still didn't want to do it. I animated a bit during this period but most of the stuff I made were short, rough or unfinished.

But at least I still managed to get some proper-ish drawings out!

I contemplated even mentioning this but I guess if I’m recapping the whole year I should recap this. @redtailfins, @bigferret and I run a Twitter account called Real Newgrounds Facts. Over the past two years we’ve used this account for heinous and immoral activities (spreading rumours and lying). 

In late September, we ran the Newgrounds Ship Showdown. When making the brackets, I jokingly suggested that Joey should add Tom and Jeff as competitors because I thought it would be a FUNNY GAG. 

Instead Tom and Jeff ended up going aaaaaaall the way to the finals in a battle against Sanford and Deimos. To be honest, one of the reasons they got so far could've been because we had to shuffle the brackets because we put a heaping total of FOUR Friday Night Funkin' ships. It's ok though, thank god Sanford and Deimos ended up winning. We live to see another wonderful day!

Starting off October right, I was crowned User Of The Day! For some reason I don't have a screenshot of the actual UOTD feature on the community page. Whoops!

I participated in Nightmaretober, a drawing challenge similar to Inktober and Drawtober but completely centred around Nightmare Cops. It was organised primarily by @GhastlyDungeon and @Rendezvousramen, the latter of which I didn’t mention in the original posts because I forgot :'o[ I didn’t do much except make the prompt sheet so props should go out to those two!

(I feel like I can't say enough thank yous to @TomFulp and @JohnnyUtah for promoting Nightmaretober! Even though I didn't organise anything, I still feel super grateful about it. Also, thanks for getting the NC twitter account to follow me lolol)

I tried my hardest but at some point, I just couldn’t keep up and I gave up by day 24 (which is the longest I’ve ever lasted in one of these). Still, it was super fun and seeing everyone else's Nightmare Cops drawings made me feel like a kid on Christmas!

Here are some of my favourite Nightmaretober pieces from other people!

Also in October, Dungeonnation released the Faces Of 2022 Collab! Not only did I draw Tom from Castle Crashing The Beard but my own face was drawn with a completely accurate description to boot!

(@Marccelothepinter made me very handsome! Thank you!!)

By the time November rolled around, I was completely dead. A drawing I made at the tail end of October was uploaded to Catboy PhantomArcade Daily! That account is… freakish... but I’m good friends with one of the people who run the account and he's drawn me tons of stuff so I just had to pay him back. Not my proudest moment though, I'll be honest!

You can also view the drawing in better quality here!

Another thing that happened in early November was the release of Toy Story 2 Redialed! My part was made last year so it's pretty outdated. I drew the characters pretty cute so whatever.

The rest of November was almost completely dedicated to me preparing myself for the NG meet in Sydney which had been in planning since a little after Fulpware was released.

QUICK RECOUNT OF SYD NG MEET UP!

@nexketch did one of these already but I still wanted to write something up!

I went with Joey (@redtailfins) and Ethan (@CrabFunk)! I was incredibly nervous about coming to this meet up (@Luis had a very stern talking to me about it!) so it definitely made it easier to go with people I already knew.

I think when we were all meeting up it was a little awkward however while having brunch at Pancakes On The Rocks I feel like we all started warming up to each other! I had myself a big meaty steak with salad, both of which I absolutely fucking DEMOLISHED with BBQ sauce. It was all pretty cordial and we were talking about art, animation, Newgrounds, Bluey, blah blah blah.

(@Crashtroid asked me to shake Benny @Plufmot's hand on one of Luis’ Twitter spaces and I made sure I kept my word on that. Hopefully you don't mind the @ man!)

One of the coolest things I noticed was even though there was a sort of generational divide between current Newgrounders and people who went to the meet up a decade prior, everyone got along extremely well! It was intriguing watching Joey and Colin (@Chag) talk in-depth about dinosaurs in media and reviving extinct animals.

After that we moved to the Opera House where we took some photos and danced. Then we sat on some grass underneath a tree and chilled out for about an hour. I watched some people surround Colin as he shared his extensive knowledge on the animation industry in Australia. NG meets are very educational!

(Exposing our pure unfiltered Newgrounds aura to the Sydney public.)

When it hit around 5pm, we got up and walking to our next location. While walking, I was talking to Colin about Supernatural and Doctor Who (I've never watched either) but my train of thought was completely ran over by this roofless car with the tackiest bedazzlements I'd ever seen. In the front seat was a guy with a cowboy hat and in the tiny backseat was a tiny dog ALSO with a cowboy hat. I swear there were these hot pink accents all over the car but I can't remember all too good. I wish I had caught a photo or at least got a better look of the car. I freaked out and I couldn't even let poor Colin finish his sentence. I was genuinely entranced.

Anyways, we got to the docks by the Crown Hotel and while everyone was goofing about, I took this time to doodle a little.

When it was between 6pm and 7pm, we went to Strike Bowling which had Daniel (@D-SuN) art all over the place! It was so frickin' sweet. I watched Joey get his first drink which he described "like juice but worse". We bowled for a bit before hitting the town again.

(Not my photo, just grabbed this from the internet. I believe that being surrounded by his own drawings maxed out Daniel's bowling stats giving him the ability to absolutely slam all of us at bowling. He must of had some higher power that had his back cus Colin was the only one beating him and his lane got abruptly shut down.)

Next stop was this area in Sydney near Haymarket where they had a bunch of these eateries opened till late.

While walking there, this guy came up to us doing this thing called "freeline skating" where you got these mini skateboards for each foot and you skate around. We chatted to this guy for a sec before he gave his skates to Daniel who absolutely fucking shredded in the damn things (also got very close to hitting a tiny white dog). Turns out he's actually freeline skated before. That combined with the bowling experience made Joey and I flabbergasted by the existence of this guy.

Ok, so we get to the Haymarket area and we sit down cus some of the fellas want to get some alcohol from their hotels and Taco Bell. Benny said "we'll be 30 minutes, tops!" It took them 2 hours. It wasn't all bad though, we used most of the time to draw and talk but we kept going back to the phrase, "where ARE THEY?!"

They came back at around 11pm maybe. A few fellas had to go because they were busy or buses stopped running at a certain time. A little disappointed cus there was a plan to do karaoke but oh well!

Some rando asked us to sing Happy Birthday to his sister (or cousin, I can't remember actually) and of course we did. After that we split up into two groups. One group went to one of the bars around the area but I went with the group that went to the docks to smoke weed (I don't smoke weed, I just wanted Benny's soda goon drink). When we got back to the bar and it was around late 12am. I hung around till 1am before calling it a night.

It was honestly a little bittersweet, even though it was an awesome day with some of the coolest people I've ever easily clicked with, I was sorta sad cus I wouldn't see these guys till the next meet up which I hope will be next year. Still, a super cool day and I'm super glad I went!

Anyway, you can check my instagram highlight thingy on the whole day and the few days after when Benny, Alaric (@Orkork), Sean (@Tacopug) and I hit up Bondi Beach in the late late hours of the night.

(This is the only photo I have of Sean's horrid sandman creature he made while we were at Bondi. Benny might have some better images I don't know lolol)

That leads us to now! Damn, typing all that out made me realise a lot more happened this year than I thought did.

For the sake of random comparison, here’s two Tankmen drawings I did, one from the end of last year and the other I did a few days ago. I think it’s fun seeing how I’ve improved over the course of a year, and hopefully next year I'll be even better :o]

I got a few plans for next year. Other than the things going on in my personal life, I'm also planning on making a Nightmare Cops comic (some people were asking and I fold in half easy). I do have an idea of what to do but I honestly don't know how it's going to play out, might as well just wing it 🤷‍♂️

Also next year I'm studying animation! So maybe I'll finally upload more animation stuff, or not! We'll see...

Before I end this newspost, I want to thank everyone who’s had my back this year, friends, family, people who have been supporting my art and, of course, thank you to the Newgrounds Staff for taking care of the website and the community. I wish everyone a happy holiday and Happy New Year!

Finally, here’s one of them art summary thingies. I did it last year, might as well do it this year! Now, I'm gonna take a piss and watch Die Hard. Take care, everyone!

(I based the template off of the Street Fighter 6 character select screen. Excited for that game!!!)