The sequel to everyone's least anticipated series of annual reviews on Newgrounds.com!

This is

MONTH-TO-MONTH MIDGETSAUSAGE 2022.

JANUARY

I began the year with not one but two frontpages! The first one is actually my entry for Tankmas 2021, which was pushed all the way back to January 1st because of a lot of constraints.

FEBRUARY

February is mostly just downtime for me. At this month I published probably one of my proudest art pieces yet because of the amount of time and quality I put into it, a dramatic drawing of @Kilomatter's Milo.

It was also around this time that I released MIDGETSAUSAGE 64 on my Spotify, which is a compilation of tracks that I had wanted to also feature on my Spotify page.

MARCH

Lots of things happened in March!!! Before my birthday, which fell on the 15th, I showed off some busts I made for @beenibroh's game Time Can Tell.

I also released this cover of the Lupin III theme, which went through so many changes as I kept on tweaking and tweaking it, even months after its release.

March was also the time people started uploading fanart of @Stepford's 360 Degrees, which was a really fun game! I had made two decals for the game itself, but I also earned another frontpage for this piece I spent tons of hours on.

As for my actual birthday, well, among other things, I celebrated by having this thing as my banner all month, which was an extension of the banner I made for my 15th birthday.

This month was also when I started posting the music I made for @zachs234's (canned?) game Adam's Taxi Service! Of the 5 tracks I posted on NG, three of them got frontpaged.

APRIL

I went as a furry for April Fools', which meant I was now stuck with the absolutely egregious username @furrysausage and now had a FurAffinity account to my name.

April is also the time I first used this profile picture, which has become my standard profile picture for just about every account I still actually actively manage (Twitter, Newgrounds, etc) because of its versatility.

To top it all off, I released my first animation of 2022, an entry to a failed collab @Joe-Mega had planned to make.

To date, this is the only animation I've made that has actual genuine hate comments because of the joke in the video.

MAY

Shit REALLY starts ramping up in May.

I mentioned the Lupin III theme cover I made in March because I eventually got around to releasing a full length version, which went on to be frontpaged and even get a Weekly User's Choice award.

I also started to make more animated stuff, beginning with I've got 50p, an animated version of a video by kmlkmljkl and was one of the videos where I demonstrated being able to shit out an animation in only 4-5 days from conception.

May is also when I released the first 8 pages of my comic Cooper Bullet! Finally, Jennifer Austere and Arthur Brooks are now real! Though I sort of cringe when looking back at these pages, I still think it's one of the best things I've done that month.

Check out the Cooper Bullet archive!

May was also when @smallphroge's birthday was, so I made this short animation of two frogs fighting under the rain, which both made her really happy AND won me my first solo Daily Feature, 237 days after I tried getting daily first with that A Waste o' Time trailer!

MAY

FulpWare.

I didn't forget.

@RGPAnims' shining gem of a Pico Day entry. It's still the 4th in the list of best of all time submissions in NG! I'm glad I was with it from the beginning up until the end, from coming up with the name FulpWare to making a frontpage banner for it with @pommisc's art after it released.

That Sublo & Tangy Mustard part I made for the collab is pretty cool, sure, it's pixel art in Flash. but that Wii menu in the start (which nobody asked me to make by the way) is still hands down one of the coolest (and also most insane!) things I've ever done with Flash CS6 and in general.

And here's how I made it!

This video has been on my backburner of shit I really needed to upload, so here it is. I'm not sure if people can even understand what I wrote in the video, but I think I've shown what I needed to show in it.

I had also done animation for @BigTexasTony's Pico Day cartoon.

@Graeme also released The Life and Death of Boe (Kill Boe 3) and I'm proud that he chose my part as the game's thumbnail!

I really liked making my part and how weird it turned out to be, and I'm just glad I was part of that project.

It was also around this time that I had gotten 900 fans, and so I celebrated by releasing a sort of sequel to two frogs, the aptly titled five frogs.

It was not as successful as the first frog video and is one of two times I ever actually celebrated NG follower milestones.

June is also when I released Jackstone Jam Zone, which is a Sonic 2 and Michael Jackson-inspired track that uses the Sonic 2 soundfont! It performed pretty well, getting a frontpage when I least expected it!

I need to also mention Watch This Number Go Up, which is a really stupid game I made very quickly with Scratch 3 to test medals, and somehow it managed to get an Underdog of the Week award, so there's that.

Lastly (and also the least) I released yet another album on Spotify, the weirdly named Does This Album Even Have A Name...?, containing a bunch of tracks.

JULY

July was when classes started, so I had noticeably slowed down a bit. But that really didn't stop me from making two more art pieces, which I think still hold up pretty well, and Newgrounds thought so too, which is why they frontpaged my JSR-inspired birthday gift to @NatnatGaming101.

In this month I also began my "...revisited" series, which are a series of recreations of some of my old tracks, and were done because I felt like I had improved so much that the original versions just didn't represent my new skills well. The title of the series is taken from the Queen song In The Lap of the Gods ...revisited.

The first track to be given the revisited treatment was Wibbie Shrine, a track I still really love because of its mood and simplicity, and I guess Newgrounds loved it too, which is probably why they frontpaged it and gave it a Weekly 5th.

The second track to be given the revisited treatment was the track I made for @Kraikein and @Tacopug's Monster March Collab last year, called Godzilla's March. Unfortunately, despite having the wickedly talented @Jumbs on board, it didn't really do well, and is one of two revisited tracks that were not frontpaged.

For this month I made an entry for @BrandyBuizel's Summer Lovin' Jam. It did not get into the final collab, which I was honestly kind of okay with because besides, at that point in time, all I really wanted was to just see myself in a beach with my beloved.

... I also drew this thing. I like it. It's one of a few Sonic art pieces I uploaded in Newgrounds and I'm including it here.

AUGUST

it's big hoss time.

thank u lots @heyopc

What was he cooking?

I didn't win anything for that jam but I sure am hell glad I was in the honorable mentions!!!! I'm happy Chris loved my entry as much as I did lmao

August is also the month I released An Ordinary Adventure+, at least, what remains of it. It was intended to be a remake/update of the original game, but because of a lot of technical issues and the fact that I had a falling out with the game's creator and his friend group, this is all that remains.

I also released its soundtrack here as well.

@migmoog also commissioned a banner from me for 50 Steam dollars!!!! which meant I finally got to play Sonic Mania lmao

If anyone wants to commission me for profile pictures and banners and is willing to pay in the form of Steam gift cards (I am dead serious) then feel free to chat me up!!!

August also saw the release of a new addition in the revisited series, Jackstone Jam Zone (yes, just months after its release). It like Godzilla's March didn't perform as well as I hoped it would, and honestly I kind of dislike this version.

But I quickly made up for it with the scrapped AnotherGuy boss music intended for AOA+, which is the only AOA+ track that got frontpaged!

SEPTEMBER

September went as quickly as it arrived.

There's only two things of note, one is that I made a quick entry for @Taka's Cute Cat Collab, which received some flak because it was essentially just a slideshow with no animation, but that was a long time ago.

Another entry in the revisited series (though it isn't explicitly named one) is NON DESISTAS NON EXIERIS...?, a remake of the music used in the AWoT trailer and, consequently, the game's actual boss music.

Sketch Collab 2022 signups! This time, it was hosted by @Ozone, myself and Ryan. It was finally open and we had initially wanted to cap it to around 100 members, but at the incessant deman- uh, request of Brandy, we lowered the bar of entry significantly and allowed more people in.

OCTOBER

October is like the calm before the storm. Because of schoolwork, there was lots of downtime around this month.

I made this quick shitpost mocking Chris Pratt's part in the Nintendo Direct showing the first Super Mario Bros. Movie trailer using the same techniques as my actual part in FulpWare.

October was also when we announced that Sketch Collab 2022 is now closed for signups. We had accepted more than 140 people.

I also started playing TF2. Oh no.

NOVEMBER

And this is when shit starts ramping back up, but it's still the calm before the storm.

At this point everyone had finished their Sketch Collab entries after we had extended the deadline by a week, so it was up to Ozone to compile it all up.

I released a full version of a cover of Sublo & Tangy Mustard's main theme, which did pretty well!

Pages 9 to 14 of Cooper Bullet was finally released after being long overdue! It was also at this point I was starting to reconsider how to actually approach this comic, so I once again put it on hold.

Also at this point I was practically buried under a mountain of schoolwork, which thankfully I was able to burn... wait, no, keep up. I was able to keep up.

DECEMBER

*clears throat* alright

Now I wasn't able to join Tankmas this year for one reason or another, but I was able to make up for it by basically having the most shit happen this month. I'll start with the little things, which just so happens to be this Christmas Charlie profile picture I made. It's a recreation of an old drawing of mine from 2020 and I'm proud of it honestly.

December saw the release of another entry in the revisited series, this time of Peasant-Mocking Pleasantries (or In Clubberpub, There Is A Bouncer) which is now my second most viewed song as of writing.

Sketch Collab 2022 finally released on the 21st!!!!! I'm glad it's many people's first exposure to lots of wonderful new artists, who hopefully would all be as successful as I have become for the past 2 years ever since I had my big break with Tankmas 2020. It was the biggest Sketch Collab ever hosted, 15 years after the original.

For SC 2022 I had made two teaser trailers for it, and the first one (which had so many views on Twitter) featured a cover of This Horizon that I had made but never released. I decided to actually release the damned thing and ended up with my fifth consecutive frontpage in a row, breaking my previous streak of 4!!!

That's not all for December, because there's still one more project waiting to be released: @ayofern's film, Girls Night!, which is gonna be released on the 26th. So stay tuned for that.

wahashashahsah im on the fuckin credits!!!!!!

nyeheheheheheheheh

So, weirdly, despite not being part of the main cast of artists drawing gifts for every day of Tankmas, I still appear in the game in one way or another. Funny how life works.

... OKAY, NOW WHAT?

We may never know.

I'll stick around hopefully, but I'm not sure. After March next year I'll be attending senior high school classes, and I have no idea how batshit insane those are gonna be (probably even more hellish than what some of my friends are experiencing) and the future does not look bright for me.

But I'll try to be around. I can't guarantee I'll be, but I'll try.

It's weird I end a year review post like that, not being sure if I'll even be around next year, because to be honest with you I don't know if I really will be.

OFFICIAL NEWGROUNDS ARCHIVE

Last updated Aug 10 2024

‎ 

VISIT THE OFFICIAL PAGE!

AROUND THE TURN OF THE CENTURY...

if you knew the right people and called the right numbers, a small secret contract killing agency called Bloodpool can have someone killed for you, provided you can pay the price.

But COOPER BULLET isn't about Bloodpool. It's about the two idiots you PAY to have someone killed.

COOPER BULLET is an ongoing comic by yours truly (@midgetsausage) and follows the lives of two hitmen named Jennifer Austere and Arthur Brooks as they both take on different contracts, deal with all sorts of strange targets, and subsequently slowly rise to infamy at the behest of the agency that employs them.

Mixing black comedy and a sketchy black-and-white art style inspired by Lupin the Third (among other things), this is one of my two long-term projects alongside my game A WASTE o' TIME.

— STATUS ———————————

File 3's been out for a few months now and

File 4 is in pre-production.

————————————————

‎ ‎ 

CHAPTER 0: NEW AGE RETRO HITMAN

This was made before Newgrounds' multi-image update.

Now, retrospectively, this sucks, and I urge everyone to disregard everything in this chapter. I've kept it online for archival purposes, and you're welcome to shit on this chapter, because I have.

Other media related to Cooper Bullet

‎ ‎

twitter | my site

oct 16 edit: it's closed! ty

hey baby......

sorry i was gone for long......

i was busy touching grass with @smallphroge.......

dw baby i got a present...........

::: SKETCH COLLAB 2022 IS NOW OPEN :::

YEA BABY YEA BABY YEA BABY YEA BABY YEA BABY

READ THE OFFICIAL POST FOR MORE INFO

https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1510804

‎ ‎ 

‎ ‎ 

For the meantime, enjoy these I guess.

NOOOOTE! - Most of the stuff I go through here is perfect if you're someone who uses Scratch as your game engine to export to Newgrounds, and maybe other platforms like itch.io and whatnot. Because, let's be honest, are you, someone currently on NG, really gonna devote your work to Scratch and Scratch only?

CHAPTER 0

The basic process of putting your Scratch game on Newgrounds is literally as simple as 1-2-3.

1. le grab scratch .sb3
2. le export thru HTMLifier and put in le .zip
3. le upload to Newgrounds

That's the best way for a Scratch game to go on Newgrounds... if you don't care. Or if you're bored, or unimaginative, or if you were just forced to upload the damn thing on this site.

So how do we spice stuff up? Well, I present with you 2 ways, among some other notes to implement on your Scratch project before uploading here on NG.

Without further ado, I'd like to introduce to you...

CHAPTER 1 - A stupidly brief intro on TurboWarp

I don't just mean the packager, though we'll get to that later. If you can, get the TurboWarp Desktop application, which is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Or, if not, just use the web app. Either way, both come with most of the addons on ScratchAddons which you can turn on or off (!!!), and it also has said packager built in. For the rest of this newspost, I'll be talking about the Desktop app.

Now why do we need this? Well, for starters, it's actually nice. An offline (desktop-only) editor for Scratch, complete with some quality of life improvements and a built-in packager. And also, to quote our dear Doc Marty, we get to see some serious shit.

CHAPTER 2 - Cool additions

Now, obviously none of these work on Scratch (the site, not the programming language btw), which is why I added a disclaimer above saying this is for people who want their Scratch games outside of Scratch. If you were hoping to use these for Scratch projects to be uploaded on the actual Scratch site, boy I have some bad news for you.

CHAPTER 2.1 - USB GAMEPAD SUPPORT

For this, you'll need... a gamepad. Wow! But seriously, of course you'll need a USB gamepad for this one, because you literally can't add gamepad support if TurboWarp has nothing to map stuff to.

Firstly, when you have TurboWarp's editor open, go click that Addons button on the top. It'll open up a window; on the search bar, type "gamepad"; it'll greet you with the "Gamepad support" addon. Turn that on.

Though you can change these mappings anytime, I recommend you do this once you've finalized your Scratch game's controls. Plus, these map keyboard keys to the gamepad, so if you mapped the A key to, well, the A button for example, your Scratch game/project will do just about everything you've programmed it to do when you press the A key.

When the time actually comes to export your Scratch project as an .html file or whatever, go to Input and check the "Support USB or Bluetooth gamepads/controllers" box. This allows the packager to, well, support gamepad controllers.

Now, for the other cool thing I want to show you that you can do:

CHAPTER 2.2 - SCRATCH + NEWGROUNDS.IO

NOTE: YOU NEED TO EXPORT THE PROJECT WITH THIS SPECIFIC VERSION OF TURBOWARP PACKAGER

For some reason, newer releases fail to connect with the NG API. BIG SHOUTOUTS TO @s-zenmode FOR THIS

If your game looks like it could need some medals and scoreboards, then let's add some medals and scoreboards, baby. Oh yeah. If you're unaware, and I don't know why you would be, Newgrounds.io is the NG API which makes medals and stuff happen.

Now, almost a year ago, @lajbel made a newspost teaching everyone how to hook up your Scratch projects with Newgrounds.io, even writing a whole bunch of custom code for it. The instructions are pretty simple, and if you're too lazy to click that link above, don't worry, because to summarize:

1 - Make cloud variable titled "eval"

2 - Somewhere on your Scratch project, add a When FLAG clicked event and add a set ☁ eval to Newgrounds.Init("appid", "enckey") block, replacing "appid" and "enckey" with your game project's App ID and Encryption Key, respectively, in API Tools

3 - TO ADD...

MEDALS - add a set ☁ eval to Newgrounds.UnlockMedal(medalID) block, replacing "medalID" with respective medal's ID

SCORES - add a set ☁ eval to Newgrounds.PostScore(boardID, score) block, replacing "boardID" with respective board's ID and "score" with the score for posting, e.g. "1234"

4 - EXPORT TO HTML

At this point in the tutorial, lajbel tells you to export the thing in HTMLifier, which is understandable because for some reason apparently TurboWarp wasn't able to process cloud variables at the time he made the post.

But now it can, I literally just tested it today. And here's how I made that happen.

As you package your project that very much has a cloud variable, go down to the Cloud Variables category.

Now this is important. Set mode to "Store in local storage." That's the first step.

The second step is to check both "Special cloud variable behaviors like HTMLifier" and "Additional unsafe cloud behaviors."

"Oh God. 'including the ability to install viruses'?" Yeah, I know. But the reason we still have to turn that on is because eval cloud variables don't work if you don't check that box. Seriously.

And don't cry about eval being used because honestly, 1. I don't really care, 2. there is afaik no other way to do this and 3. see point 1 but more aggressive

That's all for cloud variables, now it's time for the last but very much not the least step.

Originally, in HTMLifier, you just add this link in a section that says "Include custom JavaScript". It works there, but for some reason, it doesn't work in TurboWarp; hell, it only causes the loading screen to never go away, therefore freezing the game. But I managed to find a solution.

The third last section, find "Advanced Options". And instead of copying "https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/lajbel/reversion-newgrounds@1.1/newgrounds.js" and putting it on "Custom extensions (one URL per line), you need to actually go to https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/lajbel/reversion-newgrounds@1.1/newgrounds.js, copy everything, and paste it on "Custom JS" down below.

CHAPTER 2.3 - CLOUD SAVES, REDIRECTS, ETC

@s-zenmode made this kewl new Scratch guide (that's three Scratch guides on Newgrounds now!) talking about how you can do cloud saves, redirects, and some other tweaks like 60fps!

https://s-zenmode.newgrounds.com/news/post/1300067

CHAPTER 3 - Some notes

CHAPTER 3.1 - Dude, where's my sounds?

Now, as demonstrated in the NG release of An Ordinary Adventure 1, since the flag is automatically clicked, for some reason the project plays out fine, but the sounds don't start unless you actually click on the project.

TurboWarp can't do anything about it; it's a limitation. The easiest solution for this--and it's something most of everyone here on NG has been doing for a long time now--is to simply just program a screen to show up first before anything at all. And when you click it, it quickly goes away, and the game begins as normal.

A black screen that just has "click screen to start" does the job. Please don't do anything fancy, like have waiting music playing or something, because that just defeats the whole purpose.

CHAPTER 3.2 - MY EYES / TURBOWARP DARK MODE THEME

One other reason I switched to TurboWarp: dark mode! But, yikes, these default colors are honestly still too bright.

Worry not. Here's a solution.

1. Copy all this lmao https://pastebin.com/NTthGBhZ paste it into Notepad or something
2. Save it as a .json file
3. On TurboWarp, open Addons, scroll to very bottom, click "Import settings".
4. Import that .json file baby

CONCLUSION

In the end, it's the game itself that matters.

The stuff above are all just enhance the experience, especially if you're bringing said experience to Newgrounds. If it sucks, it sucks, no medals or gamepad support can save that.

It all returns to nothing.

A while back, I teased about doing more animationwork, and I gave off a list of stuff I probably was gonna be making.

Well, that's all of it.

So... what now?

Oh yeah. More of this I suppose.

There's also a really big update coming to this ol' game. ;)

For now, have a happy Pico Day everybody!

In case ya haven't seen yet,

I've released the sequel to Log 2 called, well, Log 3.

This was made in March, where I was just fresh out of school.

And for a long period of time after that, I was just sitting there thinking to myself.

"Hey, you know, for the past 4-5 months or so, I've only done shitpost-y animations. Sure I liked making them but I'm not gonna be the guy who keeps on making shitposts forever, am I?"

So I'm proud to announce that there are

at least four things coming out soon

featuring somewhat more serious animation work from me. Of course these three projects are currently secret right now and the people working on them very much don't want me to spoil them, so I'm just gonna tell you that

out of the 10 things on this list, I'm working/have worked on four.

• something Lupin III related
• something Sublo & Tangy Mustard related
• Toonami Collab
• Kill Boe 3
• something Kirby related
• something Duncan & Jones related
• something Pico related
• AIM 2022
• something based on existing audio
• something with Charlie in it

see u soon :)

Hiya. I just wanted to write this quick and dirty... guide thing, which are all pretty important lmao. I spent like 4 years learning all these from random ass sources, and I hope anyone learning Flash might take a thing or two out of what I wrote here.

I don't care if you know some of these already, I just wanted to write these down somewhere. There's still some people who might benefit from these more than you and I will ever do, anyway, so who knows? Also I stole some of them off Alan Becker lmao

but anyway

1.) Actually exporting a video in high quality and not making it sound like garbage

Go to your Properties panel and click Publish Settings. Then...

• Set JPEG quality to 100 (idrk what it does but I just do it for good measure)
• Click Audio steam/Audio event and, please, for the love of god, PICK RAW COMPRESSION. Don't pick MP4. idk what kind of monster still picks MP4 and it always irritates me when someone picks that shit, so please select Raw.
• Don't also forget to turn off Convert stereo to mono and set the sample rate to 44kHz.

The reason why those default settings existed and were the default settings is because .swf files needed to be nice n compact to load easily back in the wild west era of the Internet. We don't live in that era anymore, since we share our animations in nice and safe .mp4s instead of .swfs, which means we don't have to compress this stuff that much and it can be as high quality as we need it to be.

After that, just publish your movie and fire up Swivel, yada yada, done.

Keep in mind that you have to do this every single time you make a new file. Tedious, yes! So if you don't like that...

1.5.) Making those settings the default settings

Now that you've done the above steps, don't close the Publish Settings yet. Look up. You see that cog icon?

Yeah, right there, click it. It'll bring up a menu. Select Export Profile.

Right off the bat we technically can't change the default settings, because those are the default settings after all. What we can do however is delete "default.xml", which is, like, the only file there, and then just save YOUR settings as "default". That's it.

The next few sections will be all about stuff I wish I knew sooner.

2.) Keyboard shortcut for classic tweens

Boy, you don't want to keep on right-clicking and all every time you want a classic tween! Classic tweens are the bread and butter of Flash animation (at least, for a lot of you) so having to click two buttons rather than just one shortcut for such a ubiquitous action is maddening.

Go to Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts. The first thing you need to do is, if you haven't already, duplicate the default set of shortcuts by clicking the first button on the left.

It'll prompt you to give it a name. Name it anything you want.

The reason we have to do this is because much like the Publish Settings from before, Flash doesn't want you altering the default set. This time though, that's okay, because that means if you ever set your own shortcuts into something godawful, you can always revert back to Default.

Go down to Drawing Menu Commands > Insert. There it is, "Classic Tween." Click that, then go down and click the Plus button. I recommend setting that to Ctrl+M, so press Ctrl+M if you want to, and click Change. That's it.

Now every time you want a classic tween, you just click on the frame and hit Ctrl+M. Neato.

3.) Centering literally anything

This is a very basic thing but I had to struggle with this for 3 years before I finally found an actual working answer.

Meet the Align window, with a horizontal bar graph as an icon. If you don't have it, go to Window > Align, or just hit Ctrl+K. Whichever option gives you the same result: the Align window will open.

Select whatever thing you want centered and just hit these two. The former centers your selection to the stage horizontally and the latter centers it vertically.

4.) "Add Outlines To Selection"

Because there are just some moments where you want to put outlines in this one big thing with lots of individual parts, and you don't feel like ink bottling every goddamn part.

So how are we gonna add outlines to our selection? Simple. Open up your text editor of choice, and copy paste these two lines of code.

fl.getDocumentDOM().selection[0].x+=0; 
fl.getDocumentDOM().setStrokeSize(1)

Save it as "Add Outlines To Selection.jsfl", do NOT name the file something wacky.

What you wanna do next is open up your file explorer and go to this location:

C:\Users\[ur computer name]\AppData\Local\Adobe\Flash CS6\en_US\Configuration\Commands

Drop the JSFL file in there.

Now, when you open Flash, just select the things you want an outline on, and go to Commands and select "Add Outlines To Selection" (the command name is based on what the name of the .jsfl file is, which is why I asked you not to name it something stupid). It'll give everything you selected a nice outline.

5.) FLASHWHIP - Frames to Symbol

I showed my list of commands above and yes, Frames to Symbol is there, so I might as well go along and talk about that too. It was something PhantomArcade showed off in an old tweet, and Jesus Christ it's incredibly useful.

Basically what it does is that you select a group of frames you want to turn into a symbol, and you run the command, and it does exactly what it says; frames to symbol.

I'll save the speech for later; this is where you can get the plugin. It's only, like, a few kilobytes big. https://mega.nz/file/2fx1waBD#YJT5ooKfZ4-wjibIEhglRcxsq7QM6f_zx9JjcXLcVx0

Install that shit and boom. Now you can select some frames, open up Commands > Frames to Symbol, and run that thing for yourself.

6.) "Symbol Nesting"

Whenever I show the AWoT trailer I made for Round 5 of the 2021 Summer Animation Jam several months ago, one of the most common questions I get is "HOW THE FUCK DID YOU DO THAT?"

The other question is, of course, "HOW THE FUCK DID YOU DO THAT IN FLASH?"

None of that would be possible without the help of a thing unofficially called "symbol nesting", a.k.a. one of the reasons why I haven't left Flash for Toon Boom yet. (the others include Flash's lovely timeline, its versatility in motion graphics and general ease of use.)

Basically, you have a symbol inside another symbol. Like in the example above,

• Symbol 1 is just a ball.
• Symbol 2 is just Symbol 1, except it's tweened to bounce vertically.
• Symbol 2 is being tweened to go left to right, making it look like a ball crappily bouncing from L to R.

You can even combine symbol tweening with FlashWhip's Frame to Symbol above to make even cooler shit. It's especially useful when I don't want to use a V-Cam (which is like... all the time?) wherein I just put the entire animation in a symbol so I can add camera shaking, panning, rotation and all. Pretty neat :)

This one is something you need to learn more how to use rather than learn more about. Master using symbol nesting and boy you can make something good.

I might get some flak for this one, but...)

7.) Learn art first before animation. (please)

This is one I learned completely from experience.

Yes, I am aware, drawing for animation is different from drawing for illustration, but that doesn't mean the two are completely different; a lot of the same principles of art still seep their way into drawing for animation.

In 2020-2021 I took a long break from animation because of... reasons. My computer broke, and in that time I only had an iPad and a phone, and that iPad had ibisPaint in it. Instead of just lamenting like a little bitch, I took the time I had and poured it into learning digital art and, you know, art as a whole, and it just had a big effect on me.

And I still like doing it.

Figure 7: 2020's Red-Brick Assault, compared with 2021's fake trailer for A Waste o' Time.

Getting the hang of art does wonders. I don't know why the hell I didn't think of doing that sooner, probably because I was so focused on animation that I forgot I still have to learn art too.

Learning art helped make my animations look more visually pleasing (at least, the more serious ones, I’m not talking about obvious shitpost-y garbage like that Mall Santa video) and learning a little color theory along the way really helped not make my stuff be as badly colored as Lincar Rox’s fugly portfolio, though now that i think about it, that’s a real low bar to clear.

Please. I tell you this as someone who wished they did this when they started animating all those years ago: Take the time to learn the fundamentals of art, learn how to draw better... yeah. That sort of thing.

I can't upload anymore pics so I'd like to leave you with

7.) Some kewl plugins/commands/things :)

• ChenSmooth - the brainchild of Michael Shiao Chen. Smoothens your brush strokes. (Download)
• Boiler - Megacharlie's beloved plugin. A plugin that automatically "boils" a selection of keyframes.
• FrameScrub - Ajar Productions made Keyframe Caddy Pro its bottom bitch by allowing you to slide through graphic symbol frames instead of picking from a clunky gallery.
• Tween2Keys - turns frames in your timeline into keyframes by 2s.
• MultiSwap - swaps multiple symbols in your document with another symbol at once.
• AS3 V-Cam code - for AS3 projects only. idk I felt like putting this here. Instructions are included as comments in the pastebin

aw schweet a schizo thread!