Let me fill you guys in:

I have this weird tradition where every year I would go into this little journal that I had since 2016, and I would write the different things that happened in that year. I thought it was a neat little review of that year and a nice little time capsule. And now 2022 is approaching, and I thought it would be cool to bring that tradition over to Newgrounds! I did a lot on this site in this year, so I think it's only fitting.

To start, I made 8 cartoons this year! Yeah, I'm pretty proud of how many cartoons I pumped out this year, especially compared to 2020, only two cartoons. (Granted, I was just learning the ropes of animation and a lot of my entries were blammed, but still.) I made a couple Lock Legion cartoons, some dumb comedy sketches, and even porn!

Speaking of the Lock Legion, this year was a very strong year for us! To start, they made the Slums collab (which I totally missed out on), an excellent collab which everyone did a good job on, both OG's and newbies. I ended up making my first Lock Legion animation for Lock Day (and first cartoon in 2021 in general), which is pretty shit. But people seemed to like it, so what do I know? Then Zteagh hosted the Bad Dreams collab, which I DID join this time around, and I'm pretty proud of my parts still, despite them having some technical errors (like the vcam briefly popping up for a frame or two). Zteagh and Arrow completely blew our parts out of the water though, which I'm positive is what earned the frontpage we got. Whenever someone asks what we make at the Lock Legion, that is usually my go to collab. And then I made the intro for the Halloween collab, a pretty lame collab if you ask me. Not to be egotistical, but I'm pretty sure everyone agrees when I say that my part was the best. (And it was a parody of the Simpsons Halloween special intro, so that is sorta doing all the heavy lifting.) It was so much fun working with everyone, and everyone did great! Lets keep the legion strong for years to come, guys!

I'm gonna cheat a bit for this story, because it technically started back in 2020, but it lead into 2021, so fuck you. When I started animating, I originally picked the software Krita because that's what my friend recommended. It worked okay, but it crashed like crazy, the layout was a bit confusing, and the audio sync was absolutely shit. I moved on to Adobe Flash CS5.5 next, because that's what I was recommended by the folks at the Lock Legion. It worked amazing, but there was an audio glitch where it would warp and distort the audio in the project (a little bit on that later). I then moved on to Macromedia Flash 8 to see if that would fix my problem, but unfortunately it did not. After that, I tried countless animation programs, TVStudioPaint, 2Dpencil, even FlipAClip. I finally stopped at Wick Editor, a great animation program (with a bit of flaws), and is how I made my first few cartoons (everything until the pride month cartoon). Then one day, as I was messing around with Flash CS5.5 a bit more, turns out it was my converter that was warping the audio, and there was nothing wrong with flash. So I did all that searching for nothing. ABSOLUTELY. NOTHING. And that's the complicated and nerdy story of how I use Flash CS5.5, thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Finally, what does the future hold for my dinky ass cartoons? Well, not to reveal anything major, but I have a series planned out for 2022 which I am excited to reveal to you all soon. I don't have anything actually animated per say, but I have the concept down. I'm gonna start writing scripts as soon as I can, finding voice actors, etc. I want to get this out as soon as possible. Also, maybe a new webcomic! I have been wanting to make a webcomic for a while now, but it's not really what I want to focus on at the moment. However, if I ever get around to doing it, I literally have pages apon pages of comics I would love to share with you all. I'm also planning on starting a Lock Legion collab with a friend centered around commercials, so look forward to that soon. But with all of that said, I will keep making cartoons as usual, nothing to different. I realize that a lot of my cartoons center around certain events happening (Pride Month, christmas, etc), so I will try to stray away from that for more freedom to do whatever I want in a cartoon, and not stretch a stupid joke.

And that's sorta it! This year has been so much fun, and Newgrounds has been so amazing welcoming me. I couldn't ask for a better community to be in, and it's so much fun making cartoons with my friends and showing them to the world! I always try to improve my cartoons, so hopefully I improve on my art skills and animation skills a bit more next year! I want to give a huge thank you to my friends and family for supporting my weird hobby, and I want to thank you all for watching my weird ass cartoons. It means the world to me that people find enjoyment out of them, and I hope I can keep providing that joy for years to come. Happy holidays folks, and have a happy new year.

~Jonah G.