So I finished my latest game some time last month, and I've been super reluctant to submit it to NG. But after talking to some friends I decided to submit it because I haven't submitted anything in aaaaaaages. So yeah, http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/
488300. Hope you enjoy it, but I seriously doubt you will. The game may function well for a school project but that's about it.

So now that that game is finally finished does that mean I have time to make more sprite animations?
Hopefully. I'm leaving school at the beginning of June and I don't start University until September, I need to do something to occupy my time. :)

Ciao!

I've been messing around with the homecoming remix DJ Nightmare made way back in the 08' to come up with some kind of new intro music for my movies. I eventually ripped (poorly) the opening lyrics to Kanye's Song and edited them into the awesome remix. I eventually came up with this. Feel free to give any opinions on it!

As far as actual project go I'm not really working on anything right now, I'm too busy trying to get the grades I need to get my ass into university.I am still working on that jRPG game. Since it's a school project I'll need to finish it by the end of this month. So at the end of this month I'll release some kind of preview for that. For school I'm only making the battle system. But after that's done I'm wanting to make it a full game, so get your hopes up now so I can shoot them down when my game sucks.

So yeah, I hope you like the new intro and any comments are much appreciated!

Hey there, just wanting to share with you a webpage I made for my friend theWaveS.

http://thewaves.psy-city.co.uk/

theWaveS is an awesome musician whom I am a big fan of. You may have heard his music featured in my movies "Do You Like Salmon Ok?" and "Two Slices Of Pie", and from my game "Bounce Coil"!

It's only one page with a simple music player, but I hope you do check it out and enjoy the tracks that are there, hopefully we'll be adding more features to the site later on.

Peace!

My last couple of main flash movies (Thwomps the Movie, Spittin' Narcissism, Awesome Guy and to an extent, Two Slices Of Pie and 1up-Pursuit) all had a personal goal.

With Thwomps The Movie it was to try a develop sprite characters and give them my own backstory. And to keep a movie interesting for a long period of time. I feel I achieved the goal, it's my most popular movie to date.

With Spittin' Narcissism it was just to make a flash movie that was similiar to a hip hop movie video, with quick camera movements and keep it interesting from when the beat starts to when it ends. I still watch this movie and love it, it's probably the only movie I have made that I can still stand watching from start to finish.

Awesome Guy was to make an interesting character without any dialouge. So the user knows what Awesome Guy is like and how he'd react to different situations. My design was originally based on Kirby from the Kirby anime Hoshi No Kaabii (Kirby of the Stars) but then I changed it so Awesome Guy is not the brave type, he's afriad of confrontation and of any companionship.

1up Pursuit wa-, oh god damn it guys, I made this in 2 days and it got #2 of all time, what the hell is wrong with you.

The reaction to 1up Pursuit was so annoying to me, it was so overrated (it still is) to a point where I'm starting to question my efforts to make interesting sprite movies, is it worth it?

I hate it when the wrong movies get popular. I'm not proud of 1up Pursuit, yet it's sonehow extremely popular, and for a while had a better score than a movie I spent 8 months making. I'm proud of Two Slices of Pie, yet it no-one noticed it, it faded away. When the wrong movies get popular, your credibility is shot. If all my sloppy sprite movies got popular no-one would take me seriously, I'd just be 'that sprite animator', I'd be the reason for the sprite movie hate. Or even worse people accuse me of just resting on my so called 'fame'. Someone reviewed Spittin' Narcissism saying it's obvious I'm not trying anymore, I'm just resting on the popularity of Thwomps The Movie. People expecting every movie you make to be better than the previous, despite the time put into it.

Sure I'd love to make a Thwomps the Movie 2, I'd love to take part in this scary halloween competition using a Mario sprite movie. They'd be great challenges and ones I wouldn't back down from. But is it worth it, knowing that I could make a stupid movie in 2 days, and it'll get more praise than anything I put actual effort into.

New movie out now, feels great animating again, even if it is only sprites.
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/
459988

I hope you like it!

Well Bang boom Splat has been released, it's the game I've been working on since 'Two slices Of Pie' was finished, and I can't wait to get back into animating after so long. :3

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/
450778

So I thought I'd be nice and put the 4 codes to unlock stuff here:

whysoserious - Unlocks 'Silly Mode' (changes the sound effects in the level intros, changes the reload text)
chrisbingbong - Unlocks 'Bing Mode' (play as Chris 'Evil Director' Bingbong from Eddsworld's movie 'Spares')
telford - Unlocks 'Unlimited Ammo'
callumhowarth - Unlocks all Levels

Well I hope you have fun, my favourite level is Level 6, I had so much fun playing Hogan's alley back on the NES and it was great to try and recapture that awesomeness in this game.

Peace!

Ok first things first, sprite movies will never ever be the same standard as drawn movies (well, at least the good ones), I'm trying to bridge the gap slightly by introducing more and more techniques. Despite me going this a lot of people still do certain sprite taboo's that I personally despise*, I can't force you to stop doing them, but it will help in there being better quality sprite movies.

*I used to do all of these, and hated myself for it.

Clashing bits
What I mean by this is having 8-bit sprites in the same scene at 16-bit sprites or 32-bit sprites. Just don't do it, it makes the movie feel really tacky and very inconsistent, if anyone actually needs it, here are the different bits-

8-bit:
The Atari consoles (2600, 5200)
NES/famicom
Sega Master System
Gameboy /Colour (to an extent)

16-bit:
SNES/Super Famicom
Sega Genesis/Mega Drive
Turbografx
Neo Geo

32-bit:
Gameboy Advance

Those are the most commonly used consoles in terms of sprite movies, the difference between 16-bit and 32-bit for most games aren't that different, but still, it looks weird.

Clashing styles
This is similar to the previous taboo, but is far more limiting. In the most extreme cases, you should never EVER use Super Mario RPG sprites with Super Mario World sprites. Or ever use Metal Slug sprites with Sonic, or Mortal Kombat with A Link To The Past. The clashing styles are very apparent in these cases and look really weird. There are some styles that do work together, however, Super Mario World and Sonic 3 for the most part are similar, and Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter is acceptable when pulled off the right way.

Clashing sizes
Again, things clashing just look wrong, this is no exception, yet I have found this is a hard one to avoid with a big project. If you have two characters at the same resolution, yet one is half the size of the other, it is tempting to just double the size of the smaller sprite so the characters are the same size. This is, however, a bad idea. by doubling the size of one sprite is means that the pixels of the other sprite looks too detailed, therefore losing the consistent sprite style that sprite movies should have, I mean seriously if you are still making sprite movies that's obviously what you want to do, have the sprited style in your movies. Anyway, this is an easy way to destroy that style.

Same goes with ground sprites, enlarge them to the same size as the characters, backgrounds on the other hand, can get away with it.

Clashing sizes II: Revenge of the Sprite
Now this is in a similar vain to the last taboo, but this is about it taking place on the same sprite. It's tempting to edit the sprite in half pixels (by doubling the size and editing it that way) this also tends to destroy or at best hinder the sprite feel. Even though this means you can create a more precise edit with the sprites, it makes the sprite look inconsistent in places.

Make Your Own God Damn Sprites
No-one cares if you found a sweet flipping Mario animation, it's just lazy to take edited sprites from someone else and just using them in your movie. Now granted even I suck at making custom sprites. I only use other people's sprites if they aren't from the game. So I'd happily use 'Bowser Out Of His Koopa Car', but I wouldn't use anyone else's Mario fighting sprites. I mean come on; it's bad enough you're stealing the original sprites, now you want to steal already stolen sprites?

Separate limbs
Unless this is a style you are aiming for (see: Awesome Guy Adventures) having an arm separate from the main sprite and tweening that around does not look good, it's much betting to just sprite the arm moving rather than going the lazy way for tweening it around.

This one can't be easily avoided I know, I still do it with certain movies, conveying emotion in an 8-bit character is not the easiest thing to do, easier to tween the head to look down to suggest depression. Avoid where you can, anyway.

Black Box Of Lip Syncing DOOM
You've all done it, you need the character to talk, why not just put a block box and shape tween it around to show the mouth moving. Why? Cause it looks cheap. Lip syncing is the most annoying part of an animation for all movies, but you can always just use the simple '6 mouth' technique, this involves 6 different sprites for the mouths each with a different position for each sound. Closed mouth, Open mouth, Teeth clenched mouth, Circle mouth, Tongue mouth (for 'th') and Lips Together mouth (for 'ff'). Putting each of these on a different frame in a graphic means you can switch between them using the 'single frame' function the graphics have. I used this technique for 'Thwomps: The Movie', and it works so much better than a black box.

Hey look he hasn't even animated the waterfall
This is a common taboo, basically a lot of games, in the 16-bit era at least, the backgrounds are animated. Now not animating the background is stupid, in some games there are a lot of things going on in the background (Street Fighter 2) and having one image for it looks really tacky. You need to animate backgrounds to make the overall product look good. Now if you don't have access to an emulated version of the game that might be harder said than done, but if you make the effort the movie will look better.

Now that that is done, here are some pointers to make your movies better:

3D
Let us get this out of the way right off the bat, 3D effects look awesome if pulled off correctly. To pull it off correctly may need some practise but it's a great addition to a sprite movie. My latest movies (namely Spittin' Narcissism, Awesome Guy, even Two Slices of Pie) all have subtle 3D effects (SN backgrounds) and some not so subtle 3D effects (Awesome Guy.); yeah the basic 3D effect is made by skewing and rotating. It's hard to pinpoint what works and doesn't, so some experiments are needed with the backgrounds/items you want to make look 3D. Obviously skewing and rotating won't work with the characters or anything like that, for that you need custom sprites.

Custom Sprites
Speaking of custom sprites, these make the movie look overall better. Sure the movie works with Mario's basic jump sprite, but it'd look so much better with a custom crouch and jump animation.

Don't Use Mario
Yeah most of my recent movies are in the Marioverse, but it's still a bad idea. All popular characters (Mario, Sonic, and Megaman) are overused; it's really more fun for the viewer, and most of the time the animator, to use slightly more obscure characters like the Ice Climbers, Kid Icarus, and Bomberman. Sure these are still popular characters, but at least they're not that overused. A refreshing change. If you need to make it in a popular universe, the main character in the game doesn't have to be the main character for your movie. The Thwomps are a good example of this, taking a minor character from the games and giving them personalities is a good way to be that bit different.

I'll add more things when I feel like it.

Bear in mind this list is strictly for sprite movies, so it doesn't include my tastes for humour or anything like that, but since I brought it up; farting is not funny, and neither is animating Family Guy sound clips.

So yeah, that's really it, I know I can't stop people doing these, but in all seriousness, only like 5% of all sprite movies are actually good. People probably don't hate your sprite movie strictly because it's a sprite movie, it just isn't good, I seriously believe if people can make sprite movies of high quality then some of the criticism against sprite movies will be eliminated. Call it naive if you will but I don't care, sprite movies can't be as good as the high quality drawn movies and I've accepted that, but that doesn't mean EVERY drawn movie is better than EVERY sprite movie.

Also who else is there 'cept me? Like Alvin is still doing his thing I know that, Bigfoot3290 is apparently still in it. Then we've got the new kids on the block Araskin and PTHouse, they totally came out of nowhere.

~Psycosis

Hey guys, I released I Would Like Two Slices Of Pie Plz (Two Slices Of Pie), and I hope you enjoy it!

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/
429400

Fell free to leave comments about the movie here. :D

Hey, just posting to say my site Psy City now has a phpbb3 forum, as I've been asked about getting one a few times I thought I may as well get one!

Well you can get to it by clicking here, hopefully it won't be totally deserted soon.

Well flash movie-wise, I'm still making my ICe Climber movie and it's going pretty well so far, noting really new to show, exams are very soon here so I don't know how much work I can get done on it. Other than that I'm making a game called 'Bounce Coil' which is really just pong but in a circle, it was originally made for a friend at school for his psycology class but I've decided to add a few bells and whistles and release it on NG. Both of these feature music from the talented Sonic Sight. And finally work has begone on what I've just decided to call Project T.I.T.A.N, so yay for that.

Also Team Fortress 2 is awesome.

Peace.

ello 5 people that care, my website (Psy City) recently got a new look! Click here to check it out!

I hope everyone had an awesome christmas, I got a PS3 so yay for that. I've got Heavenly Sword, Rachet & Clank, Uncharted and Assassin;s Creed. My username is predictably enough Psycosis91 so feel free to add me!

As for flash movie news, I'm currently only 15% completed my Ice Climber movie, hopefully it'll be finished soon but I don'teven know at this point.

Also ending of Assassin's Creed so so annoyingly cliffhanger'd :<