It was awesome, kickass even.

I would give a list of my top picks this year but honestly the official ones align with what i would have chosen pretty well this time around, so I recommend giving those a look.

That aside, here's the stuff I took part in this year:

• MPN ANIMATED
• SCOPEHEADZ DX: CITY SLAYERZ
• Incident:064S
• Me and Eastly's yearly co-op that I forgot to post here earlier

I also did some very minimal work for the duel that kRyy and Buran have been working on for years at this point, which unfortunately didn't make it in time. So have this video of me doing a shitty Pyrocynical impression instead.

As for what's coming up now, I am or will be working on:

• Rozpierdalation 8
• Cellification 2
• Mangoman's next project(s)
• Madness Classic Extreme
• and a few other solo projects that are in the background, though I'll probably never finish them (lol)

and as a quick life update:

I'm now finally living with my wife, RavenTheLemon after a very intensive visa process, but we made it. I should be able to relax a bit more going forward, which also means more time to work on the funny-grey-people-who-kill-each-other cartoons.

Happy belated Madness Day 2024, have a good one. ☕

I don't do updates nearly enough on here anymore.

Okay so... fuck, where to begin? Well, it's my birthday today; so I guess I'll rapid-fire things so that I'm not here for the entire day.

Last year in May, me and some of the boys got to go see the Newgrounds office in person which was awesome. Meeting my pals in person for the first time was also wild. I'm almost an entire year late to even mentioning this on the home turf of the place we visited so I apologize for that, but I promise that I never shut the fuck up about this visit to people because I finally went outside.

Tom's a raw mf you guys got no idea he pulled out a pulse rifle from the movie "Aliens" and started shooting us after this pic was taken.

As for projects, there's been stuff here and there I've released, with the more substantial ones being posted here. (As to not clog up the movie portal with shorts)

I've got big plans for stuff but it's proving hard to put that into big action lol

Roz 8 is also still in progress, I've got no idea when it's coming but I intend to finish it eventually.

Then we get to recently; I got married. Yeah, I actually got married. It still feels surreal but in a good way!

Shoutout to my wife RavenTheLemon, go vote 5 on her art and all that jazz, it's pretty cool.

Now how the fuck do I tell people that I met my wife because of an internet series about grey people shooting each other?!

Anyways with all that said, here's the sprites:

https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/65e1b8ce15d0532cfdcc0ada76d76803

Enjoy

I was in this:

but if you want to skip straight to it, here's an isolated YT upload of my part:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlGoOe-DI44

Unfortunately that's all I've got to show for myself this time around. Life's been getting in the way a bunch.

Roz 8 is still in production though and is just over halfway finished.

Guys look at this fucking bird

I just wanna make a quick post to talk about something that's been a small peeve of mine for a while.

In some circles there's been a sentiment that if you want to have any sort of legacy or respect in the madness community then you need to make a solo project. To some extent it's true, you'll obviously gain more recognition from making a project entirely by yourself. But where I think that stops being the right way to think is when people act like

your overall work or reputation is devalued if you only take part in collaborative projects. (Be it as the host or as a member.)

There is no shame in not wanting to make a huge time investment into something you're only doing as a hobby. We all have work, families and ambitions to take care of outside of madness content and collabs are a great way to both bring people together, refine your skills and get larger projects out the door without sacrificing a crazy amount of time that you might not even have to spare in the first place.

Creative vision is important too and there is no denying that solo projects are much better for staying true to one. But that's why direction is important. A project that stays true to the organizer's vision can be realized so long as it's directed and managed closely. This is pretty common knowledge but for whatever reason it seemed to escape people in some parts of the Madness community.

It's likely because the "You HAVE to make EVERYTHING by yourself!" mentality comes from a time when the only collabs being put out were usually test or clip collabs with no story or cohesion to be found outside of themes or gimmicks. But ever since Madness: JAILBREAK and Whitehank 2 showed up on the scene a few years back, story driven or connected collabs have become the norm. So the aforementioned "solos only" sentiment is no longer accurate.

In conclusion:

Solo projects are great and you deserve more praise for putting one out, but collabs are valuable in their own way.

The reality is: working on something for that long just isn't fun or realistically manageable for a lot of people.

Nobody should be shamed for only wanting to participate in collabs or co-op projects.

Or at least that's my personal opinion.

I don't mean for this to come off as a negative post or anything either. I just want to put out something I've been thinking about.

Man, I don't feel "old" but I certainly feel like 2013 is part of another universe at this point. lol

I'll be doing a livestream on my youtube later today to celebrate the occasion if that interests any of you.

I was planning to touch-up a bunch of the old animated scenes I did and release them in March 2023 but as the image says, I don't feel like I can or want to.

Sorry if this disappoints any of you.

"Contract Omnipotence" works better as a origin story for my blue boy "Zach" regardless, so he's still going to get his time to shine.

TL:DR

R.I.P. Madness Liberation (2017 - 2023) But stay tuned for the few scenes I feel okay posting still.

Wassup, it's me again.

I hope you all had a good December and New year.

I'll just get right into it:

What's happening in 2023?

Well I'm glad you asked, Charlie.

As it turns out, this year is actually going to be the ten year anniversary of my Newgrounds account!

Which by extension means that it's technically the ten year anniversary of me joining the Madness community too.

I have a few ideas for things I might post when the day rolls around, but the one that seems the most likely is a short animation featuring Zach (my blue OC guy) engaging in some classic madness action and progressing through each iteration of his sprites as the video goes on.

Projects???

Currently my main focus animation wise is getting some work done for Jsoull's "Madness Maxification 2".

It's ending up taking a lot longer than I expected due to the amount of characters I need to animate, real life events getting in the way and me trying to animate in a way that doesn't stand out too much from Jsoull's own style as it would make what I'm doing seem out-of-place in the final product.

But besides that I'm also working on Madness Rozpierdalation 8. People seem hyped for that one so I hope I don't disappoint you with a mid movie when it comes out lol

The premise of it is Roz hunting down Kokkare's OC and fighting through the city's Russian mob to reach him.

(Also the movie started production with the same premise before any stuff between Russia and Ukraine happened so please don't try to associate the movie's tones with politics or real wars at all)

Right now you can see the James Bond esque intro I whipped up for it on youtube if you want a quick teaser:

There's a few bits an pieces besides those two I'm working on, namely a part for the now revitalized Project Felony 1.5. (if it doesn't get cancelled again)

What a nice wall Zea is looking at, I sure hope nobody breaks through it as their theme song plays.

(ALSO PLEASE DON'T TAKE THIS AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO BOMBARD THE COLLAB HOST WITH REQUESTS TO JOIN HE'S BEEN GETTING THEM NON-STOP)

And finally, there's the topic of Madness Liberation.

A lot has changed with this project as time as passed, namely the fact that the story is ENTIRELY different now, to the point where Abnormis: Departure doesn't really fit into it anymore. So depending on how things play out, that movie may (probably) be retconned story-wise.

But trust me, this new story I've been cooking up is way more interesting than the wibbly-wobbly dimensional bullshit I had going on before.

David is still going to be a somewhat pivotal character too, so if you liked him then don't worry I guess lol

Another important thing I should mention is that the name has changed too. Mainly due to another project called "Madness Liberation" showing up in Madness Day 2022.

So the new name of the project is:

CONTRACT OMNIPOTENCE

(I hope you like it)

I've built this up to a story I genuinely want to tell now.

None of that "Omg madness faction #1 fight faction #2" type stuff, I've tried to make something that even somebody who knows nothing about Madness could enjoy too.

Though I don't really have anything to show right now so have these new designs I guess:

(The 2nd one was done with help by Raff)

However I have adult responsibilities now that need to be my higher priorities.

THIS IS THE BORING PART WHERE I TALK ABOUT LIFE AND MY ONLINE EXPERIENCES FEEL FREE TO SKIP:

In all honesty I don't even know if I'll ever finish this project since life only seems to be getting more complicated as time goes on and my motivation for animation is pretty damn shaky right now.

I know I'll never "quit!!!" animation entirely since I do enjoy it and it only takes like 30 minutes to make a small test for fun but things are definitely going to slow down a bunch compared to say, 2018 Zapchon.

Right now me and RavenTheLemon are doing our best to make living together work, so that obviously requires a lot of my attention. The UK being in a financial disaster also doesn't help make things easier so there's that too.

It's interesting to think about how all of these people in the Madness community that I've followed for almost a decade now have either grown up before me or with me now. I dunno where people like Delamortes or Stagnate are now but I hope them and the rest of you are doing well.

Also, quick shoutout to my boy Anterdox for being the first person I ever spoke to on Newgrounds.

I've gotten some awesome opportunities to get to know people I look up to in this community and loads of people I want to thank and am glad to have met.

There's also people I'd want to apologize to if given the chance.

At this point I'm just done with any and all squabbles people have with each other in the community. (I shouldn't have cared before either lmao)

So I want to apologize to anybody who got caught in the crossfire of the weaponized autism myself and others threw at each other a few years ago.

Being isolated in real life can do some crazy things, caring way too much about online community politics is one of them.

I just hope everybody else in involved in it moved on like I have now. (You'd be surprised by how long some people can keep going with trivial shit like this)

Anyway, that's a whole can of worms and I want to keep this post as positive as possible so I'm gonna end this off by promoting some animators who I feel like deserve more attention for what they put out:

https://www.youtube.com/@aetic5408

https://twitter.com/Nekromanzer1

https://twitter.com/SameMax_

https://twitter.com/Oplegene17

There's no shortage of talent in the newer madness community. Most newcomers would be seen as madness-animation-jesus back in 2013. Keep up the good work, you lot!

Anyway that's all folks, have a good day.

It's that time again.

This year's Madness day was fucking awesome, I hopped into a big voice chat with other animators yesterday and we watched as many uploads as we could. I was expecting some bangers but not this many like DAMN you guys got good.

As such, I'll be doing a top 8 list instead of reviewing every single upload because I don't want to still be writing this by next year's madness day.

Also keep in mind that this is a TOP 8.

So no matter how low something places on this list, that's still me saying that it's a great upload.

And as you'd probably expect, Zapchon Tries Energy Drink won't be on this list for the simple reason that I'd be too biased to fairly judge it.

That said, I fucking love that movie and Gabe really outdid himself this time.

You can check it out here:

With all that said, let's get started.

#8: INTRUSION

HOLY SHIT A RAFF MOVIE?!

But in-jokes aside it's a banger movie.

It's nice to see a solo with a bigger focus on melee than guns, especially when it's this satisfying.

Raff's artstyle really adds to the theme of this too, giving it that dystopian pseudo-cyberpunk kinda feel.

Also, I've said it multiple times to people already, but that music at the end fits the scenes it plays over SO WELL.

My only nitpick would be that it can be a little jarring to have the regular line tool agents and grunts right next to the differently styled robot enemies we see in this, but that's really it.

Overall, a solid ass melee movie for this year, excellent work Raffert.

Originally this list was just going to be seven entries but it didn't feel right not including this one on there too, so it's now a top eight lol

#7: Krinkels.mp4

THECE SOLO FUCK YEAH!

He's back with a new short and sweet project starring the man himself, Mr. K

As you would expect from a Thece animation, the choreography is solid as fuck with a focus on impact.

It makes for some hard-hitting fights that really makes you feel the "POW" when somebody gets hit.

The lever-action shotgun was definitely my favourite part of the overall animation, excellent work and I can't wait to see what you make next Thece.

#6: Operation: District 14

Jeremotas is back again with a whole 15 minutes of Madness.

The combat as expected, is pretty solid. It's cool that we finally see Jere's OC in action this time around too.

The background work is also pretty good, stellar at times. No doubt this is due to the ever-improving hispanic madness community that's been absolutely tearing shit up recently. (A.K.A. they're REALLY good.)

The only reason it's not higher on the list isn't because of any fault of it's own, it's just every pick this year was so good that it's pretty damn hard to choose.

#5: Madness: Ghostification

GARY MY MAN YOU'VE DONE IT AGAIN!

Although the backgrounds and sprites in this are pretty basic, that's kinda the charm of it.

This animation is so reminiscent of older madness stuff while still having amazingly smooth yet snappy animation with unexpected moves showing up the whole way through.

Every time you think you've seen it all, the main character will turn into a stretchy agent or have his head puff up into a cloud of orange-brown smoke (or whatever that stuff was).

Not to mention the choreography itself is unhinged as fuck and really entertaining.

My only complaint would be the sound effects, which are pretty unfitting at times.

An easy top five choice for me.

#4: Madness 4:20

The action is satisfying, the colors are pretty and the backgrounds are fucking beautiful so massive ups to Zhou and Tuvster for setting examples to strive towards in that department.

I didn't think animations where the plot is "LOL DRUGS" could be this entertaining in 2022 but RainbowUndead and his crew did it with shining colors. (not a pun)

The whole "guy gets high" thing is more of a setup for the action than an ongoing theme through the whole movie and that kinda works here. It lets crazy shit happen like the main protagonist literally dying before a clone of him walks right through another door like nothing happened. And the crazy face dudes, I love them so much. They're easily my favourite enemies in this collab.

(Also, I swear this being placed fourth was a coincidence)

#3: MADNESS DEATHWISH 3

(These numbers really aren't being kind to me today with these fucking coincidences lol)

Kickass.

Right out of the gate this movie's hitting you with snappy and to-the-point action scenes that border on being too fast to be readable but manage to keep the balance just right.

It's of course also nice to see the "Deathwish" series of games getting some recognition from newer blood, the oldschool drum n bass in the soundtrack really adds to it.

My only complaint would be that although the ending with the blue glasses guy was seemingly supposed to be abrupt and surprising, it seemed almost too quick. By the time I realized what happened it was already at the credits lol.

This doesn't really detract from the movie at all though so go give that shit a watch right now!

Rodan outdid himself with this collab and it's nice seeing the guy raise through the ranks with a recognizable animation style.

I know not everybody will agree with me putting this one so high up on the list but I just know this was one of the most engaging madness movies to me action-wise so far.

#2: MADNESS | THE POINT

I'm so proud of this little green shit you have no idea.

Shadz has been hard at work on this solo for the past few months (or maybe longer) and it clearly paid off.

The combat is slow and focus heavy which perfectly compliments Shadz's newer more grounded animation style.

That part before the elevator with the fists and machete choreography is my favourite fight out of the whole thing.

And on top of all of that, the main character "Shawn" feels like an actual, regular guy caught up in some crazy experiment rather than a jumped-up bullet-dodging death machine like most madness OCs (my own included).

It makes me actually care about his journey to get stronger and fight his captors.

All of this put together makes for some intense ass scenes despite them being slower than some of the previous entries on this list.

Excellent work Mr. 64 and I'm looking forward to the next installment.

#1: Project Creber: Extrication Part 2

Now I've gotta confess:

The first Project Creber really didn't interest me much.

People yelled at me for it but to me the first installment showed potential and had some cool props but overall was kinda forgettable to me.

Which makes me really glad to say that THIS SECOND ONE KICKS ASS!

Where do I even begin?

The music gives off a dystopian yet persevering vibe, perfectly reflective of the actual movie as well as just being a nice track.

The actual animation is great too of course.

The clones are constantly finding new ways to use themselves and each other to make sure at least one of them gets through and it makes for unique choreography that I've not seen in another madness movie so far.

There's a four-handed MAG Agent that shoots a fucking minigun out of his face, THAT'S AWESOME and is easily my favourite mag design out of any movie so far, past and present.

There's also tons of cool little details you might miss on your first watch like the clones having permanent injuries if the last one alive gets hit before making more.

I was engaged the whole way through this time around, stellar work Potke. I'm looking forward to part 3.

Honorable Mention: GRUNT UNDERWORLD

Cyriak if he was a Madness Animator, cool shit.

And there you have it, my top eight for this year (unless there's a surprise banger entry today or something lol)

Keep in mind this is my SUBJECTIVE AND OPINIONATED list, not a definitive "these are the best ones" list so please don't assassinate me if I have a different opinion to you.

I hope you all had a good Madness Day and until next time!

EDIT: I was right, this just came out lol

I've not got much to contribute this year unfortunately but I'm still really looking forward to some projects I've gotten previews of earlier in the year!

As is tradition I'll also make a follow-up post later on about my favourites this year.

Also I may have lied before I do have something, though I don't consider it big enough for NG so I'll probably include it in my 2021 - 2022 compilation video when I post that here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMC_kFM3fU4

EDIT: Fuck it I'm posting it here too