Hi folks,

I've been teasing an animated pilot for a while now. After having to put it on hiatus for most of 2024 due to financial issues, I'm now confident enough to share a bit of info on my animated project: Powersaurians!

Voice talent from left to right:

@JCaluger @VoicesByCorey @NickSenny @Stanpai Designs by @shenaniganza and zekeyspaceylizard

These boys might look familiar if you grew up in the 90's. As a kid I watched all sorts of "animal action" shows like Street Sharks, Biker Mice from Mars and Extreme Dinosaurs. Revisiting them as an adult, I still think they're fun, but missing potential. It's been a while since these kind of shows were prominent (sans TMNT), so it's time to revisit the concept with my own personal approach. This isn't designed as a parody, satire or mockery of those shows, but rather explores the missing potential with things like stronger characterizations and growth, a different overall plot and very different stories to tell, giving it its own legs to stand on. VERY character driven all around.

It's not only a love letter to my eight-year old self, but something I'd love to watch as an adult.

There's reasons why each character behaves the way they do and they all have long term goals. If they fail but learn, that growth is reflected in leading episodes (if I get to do them). The pilot's a simplish story used to introduce the characters and concept, and we'll dive deeper if given the opportunity to do more episodes. Every episode will have a least one character's past explored, and the past hasn't been exactly kind to them. But how do they move on, and do they comprehend there's anything they need to move on from?

I'm a coder first who's still learning the development process. Mistakes were made but I've learned from them. However the team is made up of amazing talent from both inside and out of the animation industry. There's tons of great indie animation out there that looks even better than TV cartoons, and I don't know if Powersaurians can hold a candle to them, and it hasn't been exactly the cheapest project for me to produce, but we're all giving it our best shot! I have a lot of stories to tell about these guys, and I hope you like what they have in store! The animatic along with a 39-page series bible is done, but we have a lot more work to do. At this point, it'll be done when its done, but when I have more concrete dates I'll let you all know.

Some art pieces:

Backgrounds by Joanne Lee-Jung and Allison Nantes

Hi folks,

The animatic for the pilot is nearly done. What's left is trimming, sound effects, adding in new lines/retakes from the voice actors. What I also need is voice actors for minor and incidental roles, and I'm reaching out to see if you're interested in trying out! It will be paid, but they will only have one or two lines.

The roles I currently need:

• Two male construction workers
• Confused grandma
• Upset little girl
• Three firemen
• Three angry people stuck in traffic
• Harsh sounding male police officer
• Angry man
• Four people in a crowd cheering at a celebration

The idea I have here is one person per role, to help many people get their names out there and Newgrounds has plenty of talent going around! @VoiceByCorey, @NickSenny, @Stanpai and @Jcaluger voice the main characters, with @ChelseaMKrause and @JoshDytonVO voicing minor (but important) ones.

If interested, send me a private message here or email me at adam@adamvierra.com telling me which role you'd like to try out for and we can try to figure something out. Feel free to ask me any questions you might have.

I'll have more info on the pilot later, but I've decided to go towards the crowdfunding route to produce the whole thing, because of something important affecting my financial situation, which I couldn't have seen coming. But we've got a great cast and crew and we'll give it our best, and will give you a few minutes of content for the campaign as a solid example of what this show's all about! For now, I'll leave you with one of the backgrounds done by Allison Nantes

Hi everyone,

Last week I wrote a post while I was dealing with some personal issues involving a friend of mine, and I took it out on myself and my viewpoints towards my pilot project I was in a poor headspace. The situation my friend is in took a toll on me emotionally and financially, but I really have no room to complain when he's dealing with so much worse. Regardless, that jaded my perception of why I did the project in the first place. After reading it again, I decided to take it down and offer this apology to anyone who read it, and to myself, because I think I said stupid things in retrospect.

First of all, this is a passion project. I went into this with the understanding that this might be the only thing produced with these characters and I'm ok never seeing the $10,000 ever again, and I was good with it. Over the last week or so, I was spending way too much time thinking about the future, and having unrealistic expectations of defining it as a "success". I defined other pilots I really liked as "failures" for being unable to produce anything more than that, which could be seen as insulting, and that's the last thing I'd ever want to do to those who's produced such amazing pilots.

This cannot be further from the truth, because those other pilots are indeed, successful, and it actually took me much longer than a week to comprehend what "success" means to me in this context. Success and failure was never either-or to me, "Ok" can fall inbetween those, but the last week I hammered into my skull "this must be a huge hit, otherwise you've failed, period."

I understand the definition of "success" could be subjective, but just getting your project finished and out there for everyone to see, that is what I and many others would consider "success". Getting my pilot done to me, will mean its a "success". I suppose I've always felt this way until last week, but now I think I understand, if that makes any sense. It's not easy producing projects, even if it's out of a labor of love like this one. Many things go wrong, it's easy to get discouraged, and real life gets in the way, and I'm no stranger to any of those. The only way I could consider it a failure, is if I abandon it, which isn't going to happen. 

Additionally, I was way too harsh on myself. I went into this understanding that I had a lot to learn, and there would be mistakes made (and have been made), but I've learned from them. I've been working with so many incredibly talented people who've also helped guide me through this fun, fulfilling experience. 

If I'm able to produce more episodes, that's great. I have contingencies to keep the "franchise" going in smaller ways if I can't. However, I can't overthink about what happens after the pilot. I need to keep my mind focused on working with the team to make the episode great. When the time comes and the episode's out (and you hopefully enjoy it!), I'll see what kind of next steps I can take.

That's all I really wanted to say. It was never a "do or die" situation like I implied, just looking at it the wrong way from outside stress. I hope whatever project you're working on now, you'll feel its successful just by getting it out the door for all to see. I hope if you're feeling uncertain about your work, that maybe my words could help you out a bit.

You made something that you're proud of, and you are successful for doing so, regardless of what others (or even what I) think of it.

Just keep trucking along!

Hello, I'm producing a cartoon pilot as a passion project. It has a self-funded budget of $10,000 at the moment, and I'm looking to bring more people on the team.

Currently I'm looking for:

 - 2D Animators (Toon Boom Harmony)

 - Background Artists

The project's been in development for a while and we are at the animatics stage. If interested, either email me at adam@adamvierra.com or send me a private message here. You must be at least 18 years old, and make sure to include your portfolio and rates.

Here's a storyboard shot, done by @StoryByErnesto

The Wu-Xing, heavily inspired by ancient Chinese mythology, as well as China's neighboring countries, takes place in a world ruled by all kinds monsters! But an evil being from another dimension has stolen the five elemental sources (orbs) (Fire, Water, Earth, Wood and Metal), and hid them away, leaving the world in chaos and imbalance. It's up to you and your monster clan to take down the monsters guarding them, bring them back to where they belong to bring back peace to this world!

This is a large scale project, developed in Unity, and targeted for home consoles. At the same time, I have a full time job and this is a hobby for me, but I put as much time as I can into this project. There's already a few talented people on board and their contributions have been fantastic. The three monster artists, Shenaniganza, Zekey Spacey Lizard and RacieBeep have all done incredible work and really brought my concepts to life. About 20-25 designs are done, I am to have at least unique 100 monsters you can play as!

Now, I am looking to build up the team even more, to help with other aspects of the game. I am looking for three people to fill three roles at the moment for paid contract work:

Map / Environment artist:

Each map would be an overlayed 2d image, with a top down perspective that you see in Zelda and many RPGs. Maps will greatly resemble ancient Asian paintings, but with a twist and "flair" applied to make the style of the maps one of a kind, which we will discuss and decide which would be best for the game. I will map rough designs of the maps, while you will bring them to life!

Music:

I'm looking for high energy, ancient east-Asian "war music", but with a bit of modern flair. The music should always keep the player on their toes, the world is at war after all! Each landmark (Aiming for about 25 at the moment) will contain a unique track to best represent the area.

Overworld monster artist/animators:

Using the finished designs, you will develop the design and animations for the monsters from a top-down perspective. Monsters can face 8 directions (can be mirror-flipped to have 5), and represent several "states". Such as idle, walking, various attacks, etc. but we'll just focus on idle and walking for the time being.

These are all incredibly big tasks, so I will be bringing in even more people to help with these roles later on.

Newgrounds has an incredible pool of talent, both new and old, and I know there's people here who could be incredibly valuable assets to the game. If you are interested, please send an email to adam@thewuxing.net along with samples of your work, we can start chatting and see if you're a good fit for the role!

Lots of fun last year!  Excited for this year!

If you're also going and need somebody to split a hotel room with to keep the costs down, let me know and we can arrange something.

Looking forward to the 7th! :)

It seems like everyone's going to Pico Day this year, and that includes me!  :)

I'm flying out Friday morning and arriving in Philly Friday evening. I look forward to meeting everyone there, whether it's people I've talked to before or people I'm meeting for the first time.

On an unrelated note, Google decided to end plugin support for Unity which sucks.  If the API doesn't work for WebGL versions of games, I'll push an update to support that.

If you want medals and scoreboards for your Unity game, look no further.

https://github.com/AdamRVierra/NewgroundsAPIUnity

Feel free to report any problems that you experience, it's still a work in progress.  Included is an example scene on how to interact with the Newgrounds API.  There's documentation included as well that serves as a step by step guide on how to get medals hooked up.

I also encourage others to help add support for the rest of Newgrounds functionality.  Most notably save files and the other unfinished functions that show up in the example scene.  So if you think you can contribute, go give it a shot!

I currently have medals and scoreboards working.

If you want to test out the API on your Unity game let me know and I'll give you the source.

Here's the current progress.  Not all functions, notable save files are working at the moment: http://www.newgrounds.com/projects/games/797004/preview NOTE: You must click on "Connect to NG" button before doing anything else.  If you try the other functions without registering your session first then it'll cause problems.

Hey Newgrounds,

If you don't know what Jump Tanks is, it's a Unity game I did some programming for. Read up on my previous news post:

http://coolboyman.newgrounds.com/news/post/891499

If you're in LA and want to play Jump Tanks, come to the MIX at 7:00 PM PST tonight to play it as well as other indies. http://www.mediaindieexchange.com/ 

If you miss it (and I understand since I'm kind of posting this a little late), you can still see the game in action this Wednesday on the Samsung Stage. It will begin at 4:40 PM PST. Here is the link to the stream: http://www.gamespot.com/e3/samsung-stage-2-2014/

However you feel about this game, whether you love it, or hate it, feel free to tell me what you think.  I'm always aspiring to do better and every comment helps.

Edit: If you missed the playthrough, watch it right here: http://www.gamespot.com/videos/e3-2014-jump-tanks-stage-demo/2300-6419632/

- Adam