It may just be May! Ha ha ha! Well, it is May.

Progress on the cheerleader video is a bit slow, sadly, but I'm trying hard to get it done. It's coming out okay, I guess. My deadline I gave myself is May 23rd, the day school ends for me this year. Will I get it done by then? By the way it's going, more than likely yes. But we'll see. You now how it is with me making deadlines.

But yes, a whole lot planned, a lot I want to do... just so many software/hardware failures, lack of motivation, annoying crap happening outside of my little enclosed animation world, etcetera. But don't worry, it will all be fine in the end!

-T4k

I have a couple shorts that I wanted to make for a bit, and one of them which I have been working on for about a week now will be called Sparkle Pom-Pom Squad. POM POM, not PORN PORN. Geez. Basically, the first half takes place in a cheerleaders' locker room, and the second half takes place out on the football field. Probably going to be about 2 minutes, plus credits. Saminat and I have written and voice acted it. It will probably be done by mid May, but if not then, certainly before June. My deadline I gave myself is the day school ends for me, which is around May 23rd. That's all I will say. For now.

In other news, my next big project I have currently decided will revolve around pirates. You know, the 1600s ones. Or was that the 1700s? Beats me. But you know, those stereotypical ones. Yes, I've decided to make my next big video with a plot involving them. It was either that, 19th century England, or pre-World War II United States. But ultimately I went with the pirates, since I love the idea of them going on an island, the ocean, the colors, creatures like giant squids and mermaids, etcetera. Now I just gotta write up a script, get the voice-work done, and YAARRH!! Pirates!

That's all for now... stay tuned.

-Twisted4000

Well, if I haven't said this, or if you haven't guess this already, Dual Force was a huge disappointment for me. Collectively, it took about 7 months to complete, and as I've stated in the past, a lot of that was due to scenes deleting themselves, and some of it was because I was working on 2 other shorts during some of the time (Fake Wedding and Merry Roachmas). So let's say none of that garbage happened and I was working on no other things. I'd say the whole video would've taken me perhaps 5 months total. And I was lucky enough to get it on the front page of Newgrounds for about 5 days, but sadly it garnished only about 5,000 views with that, which is literally nothing to me at this point. Most of it is due to a lot of the traffic on NG going down. But then again, there were other videos on the FP at the same time that got like 90,000 views, so I dunno.

But all of this was extremely disappointing and discouraging. StarNova which took me 2 months got about 55,000 views after being on the FP for about a week, Freelance Police which took 3 months got around 20,000, that Halloween video that took me under a week got 15,000. And then this video, 7 months of time, 12,000. Very sad for me and made me lose my already extremely low morale.

They say that "no one has ever regretted spending a lot of time and effort on something"... I think that's just a lie, I've never spent so much time and effort on anything in my life up to this point, and it didn't pay off in any way for me. When people spend a lot of time on something, people love it and they go "well it took forever, but it was all worth it". I can't say the same, sadly. I'm glad it got the front page and even a weekly award on NG, but I simply can't believe it didn't get more views than it had. It just leads me to believe that it was probably just a bad video, which may or may not be true, but I guess the views speak for themselves.

So, I made Teemo's Birthday, which used League of Legends characters. Not really just to get views or anything, but to make something in a short amount of time and hopefully get a bit of reward out of it, to make up for all this crap that happened. This morning, I was delighted to find out that the video was on the front page of Newgrounds after being on the site for a couple days! I certainly hope it actually gets some views, not like last time. And if it doesn't, then well, I'm kinda gonna be out of hope or really anything to look forward to in the next couple years or so animation-wise. If even a parody video gets on the front page and STILL doesn't get watched, then that's pretty pathetic.

Bleh, discouragement and disappointment, it seems to be the only thing that has been happening to me in recent years. I'm trying to get to a break-through point, but it seems no matter what I do, no one really seems to watch it.

-A very sad and beat up Twisted4000 :(

So I finished a little League of Legends thing, you can watch it on YouTube right here. Also on Newgrounds here.

Took me about 6 days I guess, not too bad. I have so many plans for future videos, I'll have one more short one out hopefully by next month. After that, it will be Summer vacation (which for where I live is right at the end of May), and I'll make a Summer project, like what I did last year, The Freelance Police.

Then, I'll make a couple things for the rest of the year, and then probably around Summer 2014, it's basic training time for the Army, graduate, then get deployed, work, AND animate some more in my free time! Very excited about that, honestly. I can't wait. One more year, one more year...

So yeah that's that. Toodles.

-T4k

It is finally finished. I don't even believe it. You can watch it here on Newgrounds, and here on YouTube. I will never be making anything this long ever again.

-Twisted4000

Still on the final battle scene of Dual Force, which is pretty much finished now, I just have to clean up some parts and add a couple of effects, and then this thing, after nearly 6 months, is finished. It WILL be done by the end of this week. Stay tuned.

-Twisted4000

Hey. Progress is immensely slow, due to trying to get a job some more, school of course, practicing drawing, life stuff, whatever. It's still coming along though and I'm working on Dual Force every day, and I'm officially on the last scene, every other scene in the entire video is 100% complete, coloring, shading, backgrounds, faces and lip-syncing, it's all finally finished. I just have to do it all in the last scene now, the final battle scene, which I know will take some time. But I'm going all out. I'll try to get it done by the end of the month.

-Twisted4000

Spriiiiiiiiiiing's coming!

Lately I've been feeling extremely down. Very unmotivated, very unhappy AS USUAL, unfortunately. BUT I'm still working hard on this video and trying to get it done.

By the way, did you know that this is the first year's anniversary of when I started my YouTube channel? Sure is!

-T4k

So it is Valentine's Day today. You have a Valentine?

But yeah we're here to talk about updates. Of course. Well, for starters, I'm constantly drawing all day pretty much. And as I've said last post, I'm not uploading much, and honestly, it's working, I feel a bit better than usual. Enough of worrying over comments and favorites. They're not a big deal, but if I work really hard on something, upload it, and get like no reaction on it compared to other crap out there, I begin to base my work off of that: people's reactions. And that's pretty much how we all are. But you have to realize your own strengths and weaknesses at a certain point. People can be very stupid, people can have horrible taste... it's not worth listening to them all the time. Unless of course it's a really talented person, that may be a different story.

But yeah, still practicing, still improving. Working hard on Dual Force, and honestly, the sketching is pretty close to being complete. I just realized recently that I'm actually on the final scene, finally. Now once the sketching is done, I have to do the line-work and coloring. Gonna take a bit. I may or may not reach my deadline (February 24th) that I gave myself. I'm guessing I may not. But I'm shooting for at least the very end of February. If not that, early March.

I have tomorrow and next Monday off from school, so yey, 4-day-weekend! Let's hope I use it productively. And ya know, something I noticed lately. When I just spend a lot of time working, for hours, staying focused, not being distracted, I get A LOT done, like, a huge ol' hunk of progress. A LOT. I can say "I spent all day working on this", but in reality, it's probably only like an hour-and-a-half of total work time, a lot of the time I spend checking messages or doing something else around the house, or outside of the house. But I'm on the program all day.

Some days I actually just go all-out, and a lot gets done. If I continue to do this for the next few weeks, I'm confident I can get this finished. And wow, am I excited. I want to start so many other projects, I love creating little movies. Can't wait!

Wish me luck.

-T4k

Yo, it's February.

So basically I've been feeling super down, discouraged, unmotivated for a lot of things. The animation is still going, and I really want to get it finished by the end of the month. But as far as drawings go, haven't been feeling well. So for a while, I won't really be uploading many of my drawings to DA, won't be really active there. Getting fed up with lots of people's attitudes, personalities, people acting arrogant and full of themselves because they have watchers. It's doing nothing but giving me negative feelings, so I figured I'd take a break from it all. Just settle down and do my own work and stop worrying over people's comments and what other people are up to. I hope to get a lot of work done.

Also, I had an interesting and inspiring conversation with my older cousin last night. He's a pretty fantastic artist, it's crazy. I told him I was pissed with how people who do that horrible, ugly, Cartoon Network-style artwork get all this attention for it, simply because it's "clean" and has "bold lines". And basically, he told me that the only reason people like that sorta stuff is because it's been "proven" to be "good" simply because it's what you see on TV. Does that truly mean it's good? No, not at all. But people are used to seeing it in these "professional areas", therefore, they see it, as "good".

If you have a whole lot of followers, watchers, fans, subscribers, whatever, the numbers mean nothing. They could all just be people with terrible taste. It's nothing to be proud of, hey, you got lucky enough to get some person who knows nothing about anything to click the "follow" button on your page because they see your exact style everywhere from everyone else, you blend right in. Great work!

What DOES matter is truly good artists, who actually KNOW what's good and what's not, to like what you do. My cousin even said he showed some of his pieces to one of the creators of the Scott Pilgrim game for the XBLA and they loved them. He never advertised or showed off his stuff to everyone, but just a few comments from some great people is all that mattered.

What am I trying to say? Don't get all full of yourself because you have the numbers. If the stuff you're making looks like what's in the "industry", it doesn't mean it's good. It makes money. Everyone knows that the industry sucks though.

So yeah. Back to work. Very busy.