Some of you may remember the Moss Punk I,WZL I made for Luis's competition earlier this year. I recently stumbled upon a Munny Advertisement video with remarkable similarities. Check it out.

Below is Moss Punk, for those who don't remember.

The following animation was completed for my Time and Motion class at the University of the Arts. The assignment was to use any medium to convey a story artistically. He didn't want anything obvious to happen, and wasn't exactly supposed to make sense. I wasn't really happy with the assignment...it was too open, and many of my classmates didn't take it seriously. I chose Flash as me medium and here was the result.

The song is Don't Save us From the Flames by M83.

Please excuse the quality, you how youtube does things with Flash...

I had to write a paper about a famous animator for my Freshmen Animation class at school so I chose one of my favorite animators. Adam Phillips. It's not a great paper, and I did it between the hours of 12:00am and 4:00am. It's very factual and gives the background of his life and how he got started doing what he does so good. It might be worth the read, or not. Either way, I'm sure someone out there will find it interesting.

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Adam Phillips was born in 1971 and was raised in Narromine, New South Wales. From an early age he was an alarmingly good artist and he became comfortable at expressing himself through visual art before he could do much of anything else. He says, "my mother recognized my talent for drawing when I was a toddler, and she maintains that I could hold a pencil correctly before my two legs could support me. I would sit on the floor for hours drawing spiders on my fingers and toes, and filling sheets of butcher's paper with doodles and scribbles." Phillips grew up drawing and exploring his artistic abilities.

In 1989, Phillips moved to Queensland to look for work. He found work operating machinery in a steel factory. In an accident his arm was sucked into the machine and both bones in his forearm were shattered. Adam recalls feeling very lucky that his arm wasn't torn off and he somehow reached the emergency shut-off button before that result happened. During his six-month recovery time, Phillips refined his drawings style and really focused on art. He spent his days sleeping and his nights drawing and wandering the beaches of which he lived on. With all of the newfound time he had, he learned all he could about story telling and anatomy and how to convey a story through art. He tried going back to work at the factory but realized it was no longer the place for him and soon quit. It was right at this time that he discovered Disney was hiring. It wasn't until right then the Adam Phillips actually considered animation as a career. He had always loved to draw and was quite good at it, but it was now he thought to himself that he could really go somewhere with it. He was really into comic books and inside he knew he wanted to be the next Simon Bisley who was an extremely successful British comic book artist.

Adam Phillips used much of what he drew and created during his time off from work to form the best portfolio he could to show Disney. In 1993, he was hired as a full time Tweener in Sydney, Australia. Adam Phillip's talent quickly and easily shown through and he rose in positions very quickly. In 1995 he was promoted to character animator and he was promoted once more in 1998 to effects animator. Many attribute Adam's talent as an animator to his long years spent effects animating. He has discovered and invented countless ways to animate some of the most difficult, and time consuming effects in quick and effective manners.

During his time at Disney, Phillips worked on several movies. His Sydney-based studio was the only branch of Disney pumping out "direct to video" sequels of prior movies so not only did they get a lot of jobs but they studio had plenty of money, too. Adam Phillips worked as an in-between artist on the film A Goofy Movie (1995). Phillips also worked as a special effects animator on Aladdin and the Kind of Thieves (1995), The Little Mermaid II: The Return to the Sea (2000), Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure (2001), Return to Never Land (2002), The Lion King 1 ½ (2004), and Looney Tunes: Duck Amuck (2007).

Phillips did not think that Disney had his best interests in mind. He had been animating other people's stories, and other people's dreams for ten plus years and he thought it was time for him to pursue his real interests and aspirations. In 2004, Phillips left Disney to work full time as a freelancer and explore and create an animated world of his own.

When Adam Phillips is not working for himself he does freelance work. He's written articles and chapters in many books about animation and about the program Flash. He works as a freelance animator, a writer and a special effects designer.

He's gained international fame in the online community for his works revolving around the story of Brackenwood. Phillips had been developing the story behind Brackenwood for a long time before leaving Disney and it was now that he could pour all of his energy into it. Since it's conception, Phillips has released seven movies involving characters and stories that all take place within the magical land of Brackenwood. Brackwood is a world covered in lush vast forests and massive volumes of water. Phillips' movies revolve around the inhabitants and their interactions with each other. They main character of the series is Bitey, who looks like a half man, half goat. Bitey is a mischievous character who finds pleasure in others harm. The only reason he can get away with it (some of the time) is because he also just so happens to be the fastest creature on the planet. The world Phillips created has inspired many amateur animators and the ability to view all of the Brackenwood creations for free has helped Phillips gain the popularity of virtually the entire Internet. Another reason Phillips appeals to so many people is because of his openness to talk to people about his stories and about animation. Anyone can go to his online forums and talk with him, and there are many like-minded people who will converse about his techniques and styles. He has written many online tutorials explaining the inner workings of Flash and he writes about his methods behind making some of the complex effects that he does.

Adam Phillips has one a handful of prestigious awards over the years for his work in the animation industry, and on his own. While at Disney, he was nominated for the DVDX Award for the Best Visual Effects in a DVD Premiere Movie. Since then Phillips has one nearly every online animation award there has been. Phillips has won the Flashforward Award six times over the course of four years. Flashforward is the largest film festival for works created entirely in Flash and it has the reputation of being the largest gathering of Flash developers and designers to date (Ambur). In 2003, he won the Flashforward Award for The Hitchhiker: Part 2 in the Cartoon Category. In 2004, Bingbong of Brackenwood was a finalist in the Cartoon Category. He won the award in 2005 for Prowlies by the River and again in 2006 for littleFoot, both in the Cartoon Category. At another conference of Flashforward of 2006, the Yuyu won. Most recently, in 2007, Phillips won the peoples choice award with his 30 Shorts: 30 Days. In 2004, Phillips got runner-up in The Greatest Story Never Told (TGSNT) competition for his masterpiece Bitey of Brackenwood that was his first major movie to gain worldwide recognition. TGSNT is "a digital storytelling competition that seeks to recognize and reward emerging and established 2D/3D animators, comic book artists, filmmakers, independent storytellers and students worldwide who produce original stories" (TGSNT). The very next year Adam Phillips took the Grand Prize for Prowlies at the River in the same competition.

The future holds a lot of possibilities for Adam Phillips and he's expressed interested at turning Brackenwood into much more than a short online series. Phillips goals are to eventually make Brackenwood a feature length movie, publish books revolving around the stories he's thought up and possibly a television series. As much as Phillips would like to keep Brackenwood free to the public, he's been living off of award money and supportive donations for the past couple years and he's going to need to start producing larger works under bigger names. Adam Phillips will continue to work in Flash and amaze people with his ability to use the program like no one else does. He takes 2D Flash animation to an entirely new and seemingly unreachable level with his careful attention to detail and drawing. The most captivating part of his life is his ability to be so humble about his work when he is so very clearly one of the most influential and gifted Flash developers of the time. His background in Disney has helped grow and produce what has come to be some of the most beautifully animated Flash movies to date and he is an inspiration to all amateur animators, alike.

Sources:

http://www.brackenwood.net/blog/
http://news.deviantart.com/article/289 08/
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0680185/
http://coldhardflash.com/2005/06/adam-
phillips-part-1.html
http://www.tgsnt.com/
http://www.biteycastle.com/

Over the weekend I met up with Luis and The Swain. We were headed up to the NG Office to deliver the I, WZL's from the recent competiton. Tom and April picked us up from the hotel and we had a nice breakfast and drove out to the office a little while later.

The office looked great and it was a blast meeting Tom, April, Stamper, Jeff (JohnnyUtah), Jose (Mindchamber), Tim, Bob, and Mike.

Then a little later on in the day Afro-Ninja showed up. THE WHOLE GANG

After a couple hours at the office which consisted of a full tour and plenty sneak peeks of awesome and beautiful things to come for the site and community, we headed back to Philadelphia for some Cheesesteaks and good times.

Tom had the quote of the night too. The situation was him and I standing on the balcony of this bar. I'm not 21 so everyone else was drinking their heads off and I'm standing there kinda mingling kinda just looking around. Tom comes over and after a little silence he says "Sooooooooooooo, uh, see any movies lately?" thankssssss Tom, as if I don't already feel kind of out of my element with you all. The beer he bought me later cleared it all up though. <3

The coolest part of the trip besides meeting all these fantastic people was seeing what it is like to work in Flash and game development on a professional level. See, I am at one end of the spectrum as a lowly amateur animator and seeing more or less the peak of web development and animation as a career is really inspiring. It gave me great insight on what working on that level is like and how they more or less started out where I am. It was definitely cool to have that inside look and things.

pixoritdidn'thappen

EDIT: LOOKS LIKE I WON. Yehy. More pictures and critiques here.

(from left to right) Bob, Mindchamber, The-swain, and Luis checking out the Munny's. They turn out was awesome and they all looked great set up together.

Moss-punk is the "ying" to Rust-punk's "yang".

Check out the rest of NG DIY Munny Competition thread!

I decided to try my hand at the second installment of Luis's Pass-My-FLash series. I came up with a short little animation for the third section to Pass-My-Flash 2 and sent it off early this morning after two days of very little sleep. I was up against Squeakytoad, AloneInTheDark, and nathanielmilburn. I had my work cut out for me.

Nathaniel took the cake and his part will be featured in Pass My Flash 2! Congratulations!

I haven't decided if I am going to try again for another part but if I have an idea I most definitely will. I am going to be in Vermont for a couple days next week and then I leave for second semester of school soon after that. We'll see how it goes.

Here was my part.

I finally finished my I, WZL for the NG DIY Munny Competition hosted by Luis. I'm happy with the way it came out.

My original plan was to make character spawned from grease, oil, gears, and metals and contrast that with a character of nature with water and trees and leaves and moss. I'm not sure if I'm going to get around to finishing that second I, WZL but I will try to.

If you'd like to purchase your own you can do so at My Plastic Heart .com. Check 'em out. They're rad.

I got my I,WZLs the other day and I'm now ready to go on this competition. You can check out the thread in the Art Forum for more information.

I have a TON of left over paints from my Warhammer 40k days so I am hoping those will come in handy when I am home over Thanksgiving break. I have a couple ideas for each WZL and since I have two I am considering doing a ying and yang thing. Where both of them are opposites of each other. Something like that. It's all TOHP SHEKRETZ until I start though.

My only worry is that I won't get them done in time before the contest is over on the 30th of this month. Fucking time constraints gettin' a brutha down. :(

Happy Halloween Newgrounds!

Best of luck to all those participating in this years Halloween contest!

-Senti

Senti is 19 on the 19th!

Happy Birthday to me! Who knows what crazy plans are in store but I know at least that I am seeing the Canadian DJ duo MSTRKRFT in New York tonight. I can't wait.

Wish you all the very best for my birthday and I hope you all have a good one.

Werd.