Like usual, it's been a while since my last blog post, but lucky for me, and possibly you too, I'm in the mood for a blog.

So! What's happened since I last blogged? Mario Kart. Oh yeah! I actually quite excited when it came to the lead up. And, let me tell you, Mario Kart Wii fixes some of the flaws that were made in Double Dash.
OK, OK, Mario Kart is old news. It's been out for more than a month everywhere. But yet I'm still pleased with it. Mario Kart is certainly a game I'm going back to. When I turn on my Wii with plans on playing Mario Kart, when I arrive at the menu screen, I'd ask myself: "What shall I do this time?". It's great! I haven't yet completed the Grand Prix, I'm actually making some Time Trial times thanks to the ingenius idea of online leaderboards, whether it be against your mates, your continent or the world, the fantastic Wi-Fi, unlike Mario Kart DS, you'll actually find some opponents, and competitions organised by Nintendo as well! Fantastic!
Oh, and my thoughts on the Wii Wheel? I like it quite a lot! All you need to do is get the hang of it and you'll be having a great time! Some might find it a little unresponsive, in the fact that when you wheelie on a motorbike or attempt a trick in the air, nothing will happen, but honestly, it's won't annoy you too much. It's still very possible to be pro with the Wii Wheel!
There are a lot of little awesome things about Mario Kart Wii, but I think that they're the main points.

Now what about The Wii Club? Well, things are going smashingly! After releasing the forum, I advertised it two places, both receiving negative responses. The first one was the Bit Blot forum, where I foolishly signed up under the false hype of Aquaria, which, sure, is still on my computer, but has only had 45 minutes of playtime. But that's not the point. I'd already tried to get The Wii Club more publicity on there beforehand, but it didn't aquire much interest, and was neglected quite quickly. But I returned, hoping a forum would insight more interest. WRONG!
You see, the users on there were a little hessitent because the forum looked as if it were inactive, when it had merely just started, but then they decided they'd pick on the font. What the?! The font I use for the headings on The Wii Club, known as Freshbot, has 4 "prong" things for the w's and m's. For some strange reason, they decided they'd have a sook about that. Seriously, what the?!
Then, I decided I might try here at Newgrounds. BIG MISTAKE. I was confronted with THE most imature forum users I have EVER seen! Even worse than the spammers over at Buziol's old forum! 'Course, I did what I typically do and ignored any comments I saw as unconstructive, and by the end, I just wanted the topic to die, which it did, eventually. Which brings me to my next paragraph explained later...
But the forum was successful, regardless of the two failed advertisements. In fact, we received a great oppertunity to expand the forum too! After doing some work, I closed the forum saying that the new one would be open soon.
And that's where things got even better! After contemplating over the forum header, my inovative inspiration kicked in! Man, and this was an idea I just couldn't just leave fermenting in my mind! After contacting Krusha and discussing it with him, I went ahead and started the project! I'd say more, but this is a public blog, and I can't just blab about my plans when they're supposed to be secret when the entire world can read this! Ah, but looking back on this post, I'll still very much know what I'm talking about. :P
But there has been one setback. Our new host had some trouble, and, as a result, all our data was deleted. Not a big deal, since I make and keep backups of The Wii Club. But what is a pain is that I can't put it back up. Like before, I would go into more detail, but I can't / won't.
Yes, good things are happening to The Wii Club! This big idea will certainly give us an identity, and I'll be sure to update you on its progress and show it off here as well when it's done! I'll show as many people as I can! And this time, I don't think it'll get that bad feedback I got from here and Bit Blot.

But Newgrounds! I must admit, this place ain't as happy as it once was. I'm well and truely in my "not that interested in Newgrounds" phase again. Last time this happened was sometime at the start of 2007. I've tired of Newgrounds. The low quality "Flash" that gets passed in the Portal give me less reason to go there, there aren't many good Flashes out there for me to review, a few submissions have purely disgusted me (I'd explain more on this matter, but it'd be controversial and awkward for both sides) and the fact that Newgrounds has got a whole lot more uninviting, imature and unfriendly, places I don't hang out in. Sure, where there's good on Newgrounds, it's fantastic, but there just hasn't been enough of it. Sure, I'll still be around, just not as often as before, when times were good.

In general? I recently got word that Nintendo had released the details about the Australian Connection Tour '08, and I'm seriously thinking of going. If I do, I reckon I'll go with one of my best mates, oyer. 'Twould also be awesome if I could take a video camera or digital camera to imortalize those awesome memories! Truth be known, I need a lot more Nintendo fan-gear, show a bit of the Nintendo fanatic on the outside, eh?
And speaking of Nintendo, are we Aussies thankful or what?! We finally have the release date for Super Smash Bros. Brawl! :D It's the 26th of June for those who've managed to avoid it. Will the wait be worth it? One thing's for sure, that wait has punished the game a bit, losing its hype from all the time back in 2007. Ever since the US release really. And, strangly, I read in NGamer that it only got 93. What the?! Especially considering that both Super Mario Galaxy and Twilight Princess got 97. Ouch! But then again, who knows? It's even more stange, because Famitsu gave it a 40/40, or four 10/10's. Very strange...

Well, that should wrap that up! Ah, refreshing to make another long post. Too bad very few people read them! And no, no stats this time, I haven't achieved much on Newgrounds since my last post anyway. Time to sign off, so see you later, have fun and keep gaming! :D

Mush Man

This is no doubtably my largest Flash project ever! And now it's done! I'm quite proud of myself to be honest, but that's almost taken without saying!

Man, it's been quite a long way, so why don't I take you back to the start. This project began as an assignment for my ICT class. We only have four people in our class, which made things pretty comfy! We were told by our teacher to make a 30 second animation using Flash. That was the only requirement. After thinking for a while to think about what I was actually gonig to do, I decided to make a trailer for the website I was making, The Wii Club. The Wii Club itself took off rather fantastically and I'm already very proud of it. And so, it began, the Wii Club Trailer.

I can be quite inovative myself when I commit myself. First up, I wanted to make some dramatic text effects, because I saw no other way of being able to communicate what I wanted any other way. Thanks to my last animation, I was introduced to filters. I'd played around with them a short time before and found them to be quite powerful. Thus, I put what I'd learn to the test, expecting to learn more about these great tools.

A short while in, I realised that there should be more effects just so the audience didn't get bored of watching the text do the same thing, over and over, the only difference being the text was different. I had to think of another effect. This reaction was kept throghout the rest of the movie, which certainly keeps things fresh.

Here is when I ran into my first setback. I was changing the computers I was working on when I was making it. This usually woudln't be a problem, the versions of Flash were the same after all. But the problem was that the school computers would not let me install the font I was using. That font is called Freshbot, and is used for the headers for the actual website. I'd give you a download link, but my site isn't open yet so a search on Google is your best bet. So, what happens when you've made the Flash use a font that the computer your on doesn't have? It asks you to use a different font. Problem is, if you create a symbol using a font and manipulate it to look right, when you get back onto a computer that does have the font, you need to re-create the symbol. Why? The registration point is not centred (I put the registration point in the middle so I can easily align it on the page) and the text isn't exactly how it should be. I ended up overcoming this by using my laptop at school that did have the font. Pity was the school computers are so tight they don't let you install new fonts... or give you access to the C: drive either!

After that, it was smooth sailing. I only struggled a little to dream up of new effects but that was solved quickly.

Finally, it was ready for my teacher to give his own opinion on it. What was my mark? 26/30. Nice!

But I knew it wasn't ready for Newgrounds. No, no, no! Due to time constraints, I left out the bit boasting that we had an active community, there were no credits, the end needed remaking, I needed to give a link to our new forum and there was no pre-loader! I actually wrote down what needed to be done in a .TXT file and "crossed" them off as I completed them.

I noticed that the animation ran slow on some computers. That was because all the filters I'd used were too intense. I decided I'd decrease the quality from High to Medium just so that I'd get less complaints from anyone. While doing that, I managed to iron out a few bugs that I didn't intend to be there. They're gone now.

Next up, the active community. I decided to make a completely different .FLA file just so that if anything bad happened, I'd have a backup. But the biggest problem was dreaming up an effect for it. I thought about creating an effect where there were points and they'd all join up. After a bit of experimenting in a completely different .FLA file, it succeeded, so it was implemented inot the movie. Great!

I was originally intending to have the Final Destination track of Super Smash Bros. Brawl to be featured in the movie. However, after thinking it over and using LimeWire to obtain X - Tunnel Scene, a track from the same game, I changed my mind as it was more lively and upbeat, keeping the spirit of the Wii Club.

Next was the credits. it took me quite a while to think of an effect to use. One of my classmates had sent me their Flash they submitted to the teacher and I watched it, frame by frame, noticing he knew about filters too and realised that I could blur in a different way by unlocking the blur constraint. That done, it was merely doing the animating. Easy.

Halfway through, it occured to me that I should put in the pre-loader. After adding it in, I wanted to customize it so that the yellow and... light yellow, were blue and... light blue! That wasn't that hard once I'd waded through all the symbols in it to find the bar and background. Now, I really wanted it so that when the movie loaded, some music would play. I took a daring leap into the ActionScript that the people of Newgrounds had coded... and realised it wasn't necissary. Why, all I needed to do was create an extra layer and put the track in on frame 2 there! Simple!

The rest of the movie was completed and now was a task I hadn't done before. Edit X - Tunnel Scene to fit with my movie. For some strange reason, it repeated once and then faded out. I cut out that bit with ease. But there was a bit in the middle that disrupted the upbeat flow of the movie. I edited it out as best I could, but it skipped rather bad. Deciding that it couldn't be helped, I sent the movie off to my good mate and co--founder of the Wii Club, because it was his idea about creating the website and it was him that actually started the forum, Krusha, known as Krusha80 here on Newgrounds.

After having a look, his requests were that the credits should run slower. Easy. But he picked up on the fact that the music skipped. Darn. So it was back to the drawing board, but I was smart enough to cut out the bit a little differently that last time and the skip isn't as bad now.

But! I had one last minute problem! The music wasn't playing at it's intended quality in the animation! After fiddling with the many settings, once stage getting the music up to it's intended quality but realising the Flash animation was 13.6 MB and the .FLA file was 46.8 MB, I went back to Audacity to investigate what could be the problem. Finally, it came to me that it mustn't working like the music at the start because perhaps I'd encoded it with the wrong method. I saved it again, this time using ID3v1 instead of ID3v2 and, what do you know! It works like a charm!

And now, it's done. Finished. It managed to make it through the Portal with 2.51 and is now at 2.53. I was hoping for a higher score, but in the end, I'm still proud.

And that is that! In the meantime, why don't you check out the new Wii Club Forum! I'll see you there!

Have fun and keep Flashing... and gaming! :D

Mush Man

Hello again Newgrounds!
I would've liked to post this sooner but Newgrounds decided to stamp on my whistle and turn it into a Garbage one. Hoo-ray. Fact it I decided I'd try and flag a few reviews that I thought were useless. Seems like Newgrounds is very blind. I bet they won't delete a review that has scored a movie 10, even if they've written "BBBBBBBBBB[...]" for lines and lines.
Truth be known, I think I'm sorta losing my liking for Newgrounds. This happened around January last year and I wasn't around for a while. It just sucks that so many authors are spamming the Portal with crap "Flash" and the same crap doesn't get blammed. This leads me saying that the system is corrupt.
But enough of that.

Here's something! I've started to actually learn Animation at school! Yes, so many Flash authors here on Newgrounds have had their animation careers start at school.
I am working on a movie that is practically done but needs some polishing, which will take a while but, rest assured, will be done! My hope is that it will be rated 3.00+ and get a green highlight. That would really make my day. And if crap can be passed with scores of 2.00 - 2.75, I can't help but wonder what score my Flash will get, 'cause it's certainly better than those ones that feature a mere two music tracks, an introduction and the actual movie that is so bad that it could be a .GIF.

So, what's up with the Wii Club? Well, there's not much I can say 'cause I've still got the vails tightly around it. But I can say that there are two very special surprises in store! I remade the site's header too! Now it's not a crappy one that I made in PowerPoint 2007. That one was really standard. This one is unique and I'm really quite proud of it!

Me and my gaming life? I'm proud to say I've pre-ordered Mario Kart for Wii. It's gonna be awesome, I can tell you! It certainly is going to keep the Brawl hunger pains away for a while, possibly until Brawl actually comes out in Australia!
I must say, those Americans are SO DARN LUCKY that they have already gotten Brawl. It's annoying because I am doing my very best to keep away from the many many spoilers that are plaguing the internet. I have to avoid watching Smash Kingdom Melee 'cause it reveals Brawl's roster!
And it's a pity. You can't just stand around and speculate the characters in Brawl anymore. They're already out there. It's going to be a long few month before Brawl DOES arrive.
After re-reading my previous blog entry, I realised I had almost forgotten to post how The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is like. It's really quite smooth. The stylus controls works a charm and the game, at times, can be a bit of a laugh. I'm dong the typical thing I do and attempt to 100% the game and do everything I can do before moving on. Prunning the game, if you will. A title I'd recommend? Yes, but not fiercely like Twilight Princess or, more importantly amd non-TLoZ / Zelda related, Super Mario Galaxy.

Recently, I've been asking how to make buttons using ActionScript 3, and, I tells ya, the members on the BBS are not that helpful. They don't take the time to walk you through it step by step. They merely assume you know how to do it and that it's really simple. I can't believe that I've made 11 posts trying to figure it out. I'm sure to make a tutorial on it once I actually know how. Even my Flash teacher doesn't know how to make a working button with ActionScript 3!

I guess that's all that's on my mind at the moment. It's quite refreshing to update my Blog here. Gives me a change to materialize my thoughts. It's just a pity people don't reply much and when they do they don't have much to say, but I guess that's alright. You can't expect them to write out a full response. But, in a way, it might seem like you're talking to yourself!

Good news! I updated my avatar! It's really good now. It's Fire Mario in a Super Mario Galaxy pose. I think it's quite nice. Also, another good thing! I now know how to make high quality .GIFs and full quality .JPGs! The .GIFs are so good that you might think they're 16 bit rather than just 8! Or maybe at least 12 bit.

In any case, I am continuing to record my stats here.

Level: 15
EXP: 2,690 / 2,840
EXP Rank: 7,012 th
B/P Rank: Police Lieutenant
Blams: 1,293
Saves: 229
Total: 1,521
B/P Ranking: 3,532 nd
Voting Power: 5.81
B/P Added Power: +14%
Total Power: 6.62
Whistle Level: Garbage
Reviews: 150
Posts: 13

Light Effect Tutorial stats, whcih may be replaced by my new animation if it passes LET in score.

Score: 2.52
Votes: 285
Views: 812
Reviews: 17
Favourites: 6
Score Rank: 75,842 nd
Popularity Rank: 98,232 nd

We're at the end of another Blog post! But it's been nice. So, as I sign off, I hope that you have fun, stay smiling and ask you to keep Flash and gaming! See you later!

Mush Man

Heh, almost 3 months since my last post. It's been a while, but I'm still here.

So, what has been happening? Well, I've been working pretty hard on the Wii Club, though I've been a little distracted throughout the holidays. I've been down the beach and surfed quite a bit. I brought my Wii down too, so there were plenty of action packed, fun filled days there when there wasn't anything else to do. And when I wasn't on my Wii because I was bored and there was nothing to do, I was on my DS playing Mario Kart. I'm actually trying to get 3-Star ratings on all the Grand Prix races in order to unlock the rumored and probably inexsitent 200cc. Meh, it's always something to do.

It's been quite a while since I've been working on the Wii Club. I've managed to get it around one third done. Yes, I may be slow, but there's effort being put in there, a lot of it, and Krusha, who's helping me with the site (though I do most the HTML ;) ) says he thinks it's at a stage where I could release it. Well, he could be right, I mean, it's not a mess or code or images like my last site (which was really just a mess of images really), but I want to finish it completely. It'll give people more reasons to "Wow!" the site.
More good news, we've started a forum for the Wii Club! It's currently un-released as well, but I think it's possible to release the forum before the site is ready. I'd just need to eliminate all links to the Wii Club. :P
Also, I came up with a really good "motto" for the Wii Club. "The Wii Club - Gaming just got Personal!" Everyone seems to like it, as do I, so I'm really glad it turned out perfect!

Here's something interesting. Around the start of December (2007), I was doing a little bit of Work Experience at a computer retailer. Funny thing is, the job really wasn't difficult at all! I walked in and my first task was (gasp!) play computer games! 'Twas really surprising but one of the reasons I was assigned to play computer games was because they wanted to test the speakers out. Other tasks I worked on were opening up computers and repacing the Power Supply, ghosting hard drives, which means you us a program to copy all the contents of a drive over to another one because the previous one has a bad sector, installing Windows from scratch, transferring all the parts from one computer's tower into a different one and building a computer from scratch!
My workmates were also laid back. Funny thing is that one was obsessed with make adult jokes. It wasn't exactly appropriate but you can't just say that. Another funny thing was that one of them changed the person who kept making adult jokes' desktop to... a rather rude and disgusting picture. Natrually, he was very annoyed and in the end, the person who changed his desktop must've placed some kind of batch file preventing the desktop from being switched back. That was deleted.
Then, there was revenge afoot! I was really enjoying myself as I saw him getting back at the guy who changed his desktop. Though, he didn't do a good job at getting back at him. He said he was going to put spyware on his computer but ended up putting on joke programs instead. It wasn't very effective.

Now to Christmas. Of course, a great time of the year. One that actually saw me spending way more money than I usually would! After I arrived back from Work Experience, everyone had bought presents from me for me. So all the money I had earned from Work Experience was gobbled up. I wasn't very happy. In fact, the total amount I spent on Christmas gifts was $100! I can see a hole forming in my wallet next year...
But it wasn't in vain. I got some really good presents myself. Here's the complete list.

Wii Zapper + Link's Crossbow Training (bundled)
Wii Remote + Big Brain Academy (bundled)
Wii Nunchuck
$120 of EB Games Vouchers
$50 in Cash
Monopoly Australian Here and Now Edition
$30 Gift Voucher for Local Newsagent
$20 Coles Myer Gift Voucher
A bag + Lynx products
LED Keyring Light
Another LED Light
2 pairs of board shorts
Brain Games pocket thing
Parishooter toy thing
Bouncy Putty

Ah, the Wii Zapper and Link's Crossbow Training really rule! It was given to me by my bro and it was the gift I didn't know I wanted, which is rather strange. Why? Fact is, at the start of 2007, I was no TLoZ or Zelda fan. I was an undisputed Mario fan. But since I bought TLoZ: Twilight Princess, things changed a little. TP is a phonmenal game. One of the best games of all time in my books. Though I really still am a Mario fan, it really seemed strange for the Zelda series and it's hero, Link, to get my attention, for one, and for me to be really impressed by it, for two. Then, I got Link's CT. For the first time ever, Mario had a rival in my game collection (disregarding Ty the Tasmainian Tiger, sure it was alright, but not that great). TP was the first Zelda game I bought (not played, because I use emulator. Unfortunatly, Wii's Virtual Console came too late for me). But really, there's no denying they're great games.
Next up, Wii-'mote and Big Brain Academy. BBA is alright and a little better with friends. Plus supports up to eight players with a single Wiimote! Nunchuck is also good. I can play 2 player Wii Boxing! :D
I really liked the $120 worth of EB vouchers I got. I spent them on two games. Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games for Wii, and, dare I say, TLoZ: Phantom Hourglass for DS. Which brings me back to this important discussion. So, why do I buy these games? I know they're quality. Plus, I'd heard a lot of good things about TP and PH. I only bought PH a couple of hours ago and I'm still yet to play it. I wonder who it'll be... But it is really a baffling topic for me. How could games of this quality not become part of my collection over the years? Good question. Mario started waaay back. I played the original Super Mario Bros. when I was 3 years old and was entranced. Mario has far more titles than Link and the TLoZ / Zelda series, but anything that had awesome box-art and bright colours would've convinced me back then. But I was a very narrow minded gamer. Mario games seemed to be the only good games. It's a puzzling subject for sure...
$50 cash. Hey! Money's always good! :D
Meh, the rest I'm not as fussed about honestly.

So, Flash. What's up with Flash? Not much at all. Though I did start fiddling around with filters. They can make some really nice effects! And I've been bored over the last few days. Once I was asking myself whether I should open Flash and make something. In the end, I didn't. I went to play on my Wii. Fact is that I don't think I'll be making anything for Newgrounds until the Wii Club is done. Well, that's the truth!
Good news though, I downloaded Gimp, a really good image editor (like PhotoShop, but free, and not PhotoShop ;) ). And with Gimp, I finally updated the image for my Light Effect Tutorial to full quality! Party time! Alright, no party time. :P

I'm not that happy that they've taken away my priveledge to post this on the front page. I'm one who actually has something meaningful and interesting to say. Groan.
Bah, NG sucks with it's amount of Flash spammers. Don't get me started on them...
Heh, I pissed of Zekeyspacylizard. He blocked me on his blog and his PM. What a sook. He didn't even answer my question on his blog and when I sent him a PM saying that I though what he said was funny, he blocked me there too. What a sook. I haven't blocked him on my blog OR my PM. He's one who can dish it out, but just can't take it. I can't believe how much of a sook he is! It's funny!

Oh, and I might put up a new avatar soon! Keep your eyes peeled!

Finally, I shall write up my stats. Natch.

Level: 15
EXP: 2,620 / 2,840
EXP Rank: 7,062nd
B/P Rank: Police Lieutenant
Blams: 1,274
Saves: 228
Total: 1,502
B/P Ranking: 3,497th
Voting Power: 5.79
B/P Added Power: +14%
Total Power: 6.6
Whistle Level: Normal
Reviews: 151
Posts: 2

And the stats for Light Effect Tutorial

Score: 2.51
Votes: 284
Views: 714
Reviews: 17
Favourites: 6
Score Rank: 73,898nd
Popularity Rank: 101,165th

Well, that about wraps it up! Thanks for reading, keep gaming and blamming and have fun!

Mush Man

I haven't posted in a REAL long time. Heh, I'd better let you know what's happening.

Well, I'm still around doing my best to blam all the crap in the portal. There is a lot of it. But it gets a little annoying. Occasionally, I'd just come here to pick up my experience and go. I sure hope I level up in Blam and (not so much) Protect soon. I s'pose I'll be a little more enthusiastic about getting out there and doing damage on the many crappy submissions out there.

As a Flash author, so far, all I have is ideas. I have a really good idea for another tutorial but I haven't got off my arse to do anything about it. The only thing I've opened Flash for is to make some graphics.

Which brings me to my latest project. I'm starting a Wii Club. That's right, the best next gen console out there, according to sales and the public and also being said to be the only console that brings in the next generation of gaming rather than making an upgraded version of the previous one, is going to have it's own user managed site that you'll be able to thouroughly enjoy! It has Wii News, profiles for Members who have joined up, so far there's 8 members, Highscore lists for games like Wii Sports and Mario Party, Player Progress lists showing who's furthest in the game, Reviews on the many great Wii games available and our version of Everybody Votes, which includes the questions from Everybody Votes by Nintendo and some of our own polls. We're working very hard on it to make it the best it can be. I'm coding it with raw HTML so you can be certain it will be of great quality. I'm also testing the site as I go just so that come release time, there are no annoying unprofessional bugs and code glitches.

Now I'll keep up my beloved stats. :P

Level: 15
EXP: 2,390 / 2,500
EXP Rank: 7,638th
B/P Rank: Police Sergeant
Blams: 1,240
Saves: 222
Total: 1,462
B/P Ranking: 3,424th
Voting Power: 5.72
B/P Added Power: +12%
Total Power: 6.41
Whistle Level: Normal
Reviews: 149
Posts: 2

Yes, that's right, I made my first post in the Forum not too long ago. I entered the Treasure Hunt contest. Did you see Scary Page that was featured on the Front Page? I saw that when it was going through Judgement and I remembered it and I thought I had a good chance of winning the $200 up on offer. I ddin't win, but at least it was up there.

Now time for my one and only submission, Light Effect Tutorial's stats.

Score: 2.51
Votes: 277
Views: 592
Reviews: 17
Favourites: 6
Score Rank: 69,772nd
Popularity Rank: 102,488th

Anyway, that's all I have to say for now. Have fun and keep blamming!

Mush Man

Heh, it's funny. Flash is one of those words that if you say over an over, it doesn't sound like a real word anymore. And for that reason, I'm sorry for the title.
But anyway, I'm bored and don't feel like playing my Wii yet, so why not rant?

Well, my newest, and only submission so far, Light Effect Tutorial, I'm proud of for getting through in the first place. There's a lot of encouragement from the reviewers, with the exception of those Flash artists, the Flashers, who say they didn't learn anything from it, to who I say that the tutorial was not made for the people who already did know, but for those who didn't. But the reviewers were positive, asking for more. The fact is that I'd like to make more, I just don't have the motivation.
Yes, submitting flash to the portal and getting it through is a great feeling, unless you're a crap flasher, or if you ask me, a "dog" of Newgrounds. But since my friend oyer gave up on his movie, which was going to be a sprite movie entitled Mario v Luigi, he doesn't ask me for help with Flash. I've thought of what a good flash skill I could teach through a flash movie, but I can't think of one. I don't spend a lot of time with Flash anyway.

Now here's my rant. Anyone who sits in the portal in wait of movies Under Judgement will know what I'm talking about. The many many flashes that are of extremely low, and just low, quality that get submitted, and saved into Newgrounds. It's deplorable. I mean, there is almost 400,000 movies submitted to NG in total, with around 100,000 that passed, but when you look at Blammed and Saved yesterday section, the saved outwieghs the blammed. This could mean two things. 1, that the quality in movies in general are increasing. 2, more users who don't vote on the quality of the movie, nor vote on whether it should be on Newgrounds, are joining up and voting. By having a look in the portal, I think it's the second one. But then again, look at my blams and saves. I have WAY more blams than saves. Does this mean I'm a tight-arse? Well, yes, but it's us who do our best to clean out the portal from the crap that gets submitted. Sure it's a hard job, and we miss out on a lot of save points, but hey, we don't want to be powerful, we want NG to be a quality site. It's just some people are making our job hard, and the quality site that NG should be, more out of reach.
And there are some terrible flash spammers. Has anyone seen the Adolf Hitler Around the World in 80 Days series? Well, all are just plain crap, and the last one has a NG user saying that they posted the 80 movies and none of them got blammed. Disgraceful. The star syndicate too. Their DailyToons are of extremely low quality. Other flashers only submit their flash to the SS because they know their own work is too crap to get it in by themselves. So why not use someone else? Well, to those users, and to all flash artist I will say this. The key to flash, and life in many cases, is effort. Put effort in to make your flash high quality, and it will get through no doubt. Your flash might even get highlighted in green. And we want to see more of that. Sure my flash didn't get highlighted, but it's got a score of 2.50 and I'm quite happy with that. If your flash is scored less than 2, that it should be blammed. I know there are some small time flashers out there like me who would object because they believe they did put in the effort, and sometimes, I think they shouldn't be dragged down if effort and quality both were their goals, and it's most likely the flash with the effort and quality won't have low scores anyway.

Well I think I've said what I think needs to be said. All that's left is my stats. :P

Level: 14
EXP: 2,050 / 2,180
EXP Rank: 9,043rd
B/P Rank: Police Sergeant
Blams: 1,182
Saves: 199
Total: 1,381
B/P Ranking: 3,561st
Voting Power: 5.61
B/P Added Power: +12%
Total Power: 6.29
Whistle Level: Normal
Reviews: 145

And my Flash submission, Light Effect Tutorial.

Score: 2.50
Votes: 270
Views: 486
Reviews: 18
Favourites: 6
Score Rank: 67,561st
Popularity Rank: 104,312nd

Why do I love stats so much? I like to look back and see how far I've come.
And I'm posting this on the front page too!
See ya's all later!
Mush Man

Hey Newgrounds!
Well, I'm now offically Level 14! Not that there's too much special about that, but it proves how long I've been around here on Newgrounds. Flash artist beware!
Also, I submitted a Flash tutorial today. If it passes I'll post a link here and it's stats. Ah, don't you just love stats? :D
Well, not much else to say, but here are my stats!

Level: 14
EXP: 1,960 / 2,180
EXP Rank: 9,497th
B/P Rank: Police Sergeant
Blams: 1,159
Saves: 189
Total: 1,348
B/P Ranking: 3,673rd
Voting Power: 5.59
B/P Added Power: +12%
Total Power: 6.26
Whistle Level: Normal
Reviews: 142

Update! My movie passed! :D :D
It's called Light Effect Tutorial, if you'd like to see it, click here! I'm so proud of myself. Here are the current all important stats!

Score: 2.44
Votes: 239
Views: 313
Reviews: 9
Favourites: 5 :D

Anyway, see yaz later!
Mush Man

Hey Newgrounds!
It's my birthday today! :D
There hasn't been much that's exciting but I did get some good presents!

$260 (AU$) in Cash
Mario Party 8 (For Nintendo Wii)
Some Chairs for my Room (quite comfy :D)
A Jumper and a shirt (Horray! I need some clothes! ;) )
Harry Potter and the Deatbly Hallows (7th and the last Harry Potter)
Cadbury Favourites (Yay for Choccies! :D)
Birthday Cards

I might decide to post on Mario Party 8. And as for Harry Potter, I'm going to read all the books before I read this one!
It's strikes me funny that Clock Day comes on the same day as my birthday. The Clock Crew is good and all but there's one thing I don't like about it. The hundreds of crappy flash movies (and some games) that get submitted and passed through the portal with rediculously high scores that they really shouldn't deserve. And even if a good author submits a flash through the portal, it is likely it will shoot unfairly straight to Number 1 in the portal. It seems the dogs really take over the portal and do a great job of absolutely trashing it. Personally, I think people like me, the Blammers, have simply given up.
So please, do something not only for me, but for the Portal and blam as many crappy movies as possible!
Oh, and to flash artists who I class as "the dogs", there are far worse out there than the star syndicate and jerry jackson. They are just some of the well known offenders.
But let's leave here on a happy note shall we? I will Level Up in around 3 days time. I'll probably make a post here a little after that so this post gets it's needed attention.
Oh, and here are my current stats! I love stats. :P

Level: 13
EXP: 1,850 / 1,880
Exp. Rank: 10,285th
B/P Rank: Police Sergeant
Blams: 1,143
Saves: 171
Total: 1,314
B/P Rank #: 3,691st
Voting Power: 5.55
B/P Added Power: +12%
Total Power: 6.22
Whistle Level: Normal
Reviews: 139

Anyway, see yaz!
Mush Man

Hey Newgrounds!
I'm Mush Man! This isn't likely to be viewed by many people, but hey! At least I went to some effort! :P
I think I'll use this as my honorary blog. But I'm likely to rant about the happenings of NG. Such as NG going to the dogs. Who are "the dogs"? Well, "the dogs" are Flash "artists" (they're not artists because their flash SUCKS!) like the star syndicate, kitty krew and jerry jackson. Please note that none of those names have capital letters. It's people like them and their followers who have turned the Portal from a place where quality Flash roams around until viewed to a place where you might get some entertainment, but end up with crap instead.
I'm thinking of one day starting up a blam club so NG can become a place of quality flash again. But that's a long way off. Of course, if I had some followers I might get some more encouragement. ;)
If my mates are reading this (Krusha, Stipe, I'm looking at you! :P) please feel free to comment! Wanna say something anyway, comment away!
I must thank Tom Fulp for the great site re-design. It's real smoothe. :) I might just come back a little more!
You want to know a little about me? Well, I'm a Super Mario fanatic and will usually love anything Nintedno, though I don't have Sony. They're PS2 has some good games, but the PS3, well, if you have $1,000 AU$ to spend on one, you're getting ripped off if you ask me. The PSP sucks too. With a Wii and a DS, you're day will be filled with many Nintendo Moments (extra points for anyone who knows where I got that from! :D).
In closing I just would like to say NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! jerry jackson has made it onto the Newgrounds Portal banner! This is living proof that NG is going to the dogs. Please help me stop it! NOW!
Well that's about it. No pic this time. I'd have to find a decent one. :P
Mush Man