Hey all, I'm Shadscott81! I'm new around here and not quite sure how this all works. So I'll just explain my story and see what happens.
I'm a creative type, mostly filmmaker, but I like to dabble in all sorts of creative stuff. About 13 years ago I wrote a seven episode animated series called The Boom Boom Happy Fun Yum Yum Hour (which was the most ridiculous and clueless title I could think of, which is the sort of thing I gravitate towards), but I never got around to animating it. There it sat, in my desk drawer for 11-ish years, until about a year and a half ago when I was going through old material looking for inspiration and I found it. Reading it amused me greatly and I thought it was such a shame I didn't know any animators, or knew how to draw more than a stick figure, because I'd love to release this animated show to the world. Then I thought, I was somewhat of a better artist on the computer, and so the idea to flash animate The Boom Boom Happy Fun Yum Yum Hour was born!!!
I went and bought a program called Anime Studio 10 Pro, as that was where they were at the time (several months later they released the newest edition and changed to Moho) and I started reading, learning, animating, and generally just having a good time. The only problem was I'm not a great animator, I'm somewhat limited (you'll see soon enough) and some of the things in the episodes of The Boom Boom Happy Fun Yum Yum Hour would be quite complicated to animate with my skills at the time. Then I had an idea, what if I wrote up a bunch of short 3-5 minute promo episodes and have them lead up to the actual written episodes. That way I would become more and more skilled as I went and after 20 or so of the short promos I'd be ready to animate the actual episodes.
I began writing and animating the promos and releasing them on my YouTube page once a week (Wednesdays around 7:00 pm). I was having a lot of fun doing them, but the returns were...limited. I didn't start with many viewers, and each promo got fewer and feweer viewers until I got down to a hardened fan base that tuned in every week. I think the problem was getting the word out. I'm not a huge presence on social media and so my YouTube page only reaches about 60 people or so, and I don't know how to get the word out. I animated about 30 episodes in total before I gave up beause I didn't know how to reach a larger audience.
Cut to yesterday when I learned about NewGrounds. How exciting!!! A place for creative types to share their creations, with an emphasis on original animation? I thought I'd give it a shot! So here I am, hoping this takes off. I'm going to take those 30 episodes I already have and rebuild them from scratch. I've come very far since the first 20 and I'd like my work here to reflect my current abilities. I'm still not great and I have a thing or two...or twenty...to learn, but that's why I'm here. I'm hoping for some constructive criticism, maybe some guidance, and hopefully a home for The Boom Boom Happy Fun Yum Yum Hour.
So I'll take those 30 episodes and write a best of set, sort of compile the scripts together and excise all the parts that I didn't like so much and come up with a 'best of' series of episodes that I will write and animate from scratch and share on this site. This process is going to take time so I won't be uploading any episodes for a while, but until then I'll keep you posted with posts like this one to let you know how it's going. My next post will be in a few days and I'll explain a little about The Boom Boom Happy Fun Yum Yum Hour, although I might change the title to Two Guys, a Panda, and a T-Rex Head on a Saucer. I dunno, haven't quite decided yet.
I hope you tune in and I hope you enjoy yourself in the months to come!!!