I'm back with another yearly review!

(If you don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, click this)

If for some reason you are too lazy to click the shiny red link, then I'll save you a bit of time. Basically every year I do a personal review of how my year was and what I did, so that's what I'm doing now on Newgrounds. So without further ado, let's just get into it.

So let's start with how many cartoons I made this year, because apparently this is the formula I have for these. Well, I made a lot of cartoons, big and small. In total, I made around 11 cartoons! 2 for collabs, 5 for school, and 4 for personal stuff. And not one of these cartoons have been blammed, so that's progress! ...I think.

You're probably asking why I made so many cartoons for school this year, and to that I say... it's complicated. See, earlier this year I had a lot "Free Choice" assignments. This basically meant that I could do whatever I wanted as long as I did the assignment requirement. So you can guess that I basically did animation for every assignment I got.

For example, Attack Of The Flies was a project for my pop culture class, where we had to parody something from the late 50's to early 60's. I decided to choose movie trailers from that time period, mostly parodying the movie tropes from that time period, including the announcer voice actor dude, the character dedicated to sex appeal, the epic score, etc.

But the other reason I had so many school animations is because I have an animation class this year! My school has a separate program where I can take a college class, so I am taking a class in animation, both 2D and 3D (though we haven't done much for 3D yet). I mostly just did tiny little test animations like walk cycles and punches and stuff, but I don't mind. It's honestly a lot of fun, and I couldn't ask for a better class.

Now let's talk about what I did for the Lock Legion. I was pretty active in the Lock Legion last year, given the revival and all of that biz. But early this year, the legion had a bit of a drought. Whatever attempt at a group project pretty much died immediately. In fact, I tried to start a collab earlier this year with Nameless Octarian called "The Commercial Collab", a spiritual successor to comedy skits we made in middle school. The collab gained no traction, and I had to pull the plug.

Now I'm not pointing fingers of course, but it's no secret that the atmosphere in the legion was... weird, to say the least. Not that anyone was toxic or anything (mostly), but drama would occasionally break out and people's motivation's to make any cartoon were just kinda dead on arrival.

This all culminated on Lock Day 2022, where only ONE PERSON submitted something. (Thanks MarioLock!) To be fair, I missed Lock Day by one day, so I made up for it the day after, but it's still pretty embarrassing. I think that's when something clicked that the Lock Legion needed to be revived again. So in an attempt to bring the Legion back to life, I decided to revive a format that the Legion did best; music videos.

There was just one problem: Copyright is a bitch. And the fun work around I found was that I can use a non-copyright cover of the song instead of the song itself, which was given the A-OK from the Newgrounds staff (thanks!) and I started The Weird Science Collab! A collab based on the song "Weird Science" by Oingo Boingo. And with the help of Zteagh Lock, and high enthusiasm from the Lock Legion, we got the collab done in nearly 2 months! We had low standards because Lock Legion collabs usually didn't do all too well, but we were pleasantly surprised when we woke up to a Daily 2nd trophy from P-Bot, and a Underdog of the Week award.

I genuinely cannot thank everyone enough for their contributions to the collab, it makes my silly little heart swell up because of how everything turned out. I hope in 2023, we can make even more of these! Let's make this a reality, people!!

Aside from the Legion, I also participated in "The Life and Death of Boe" collab, a collab based on a classic flash game about a character named Boe dying in random ways. I was fortunate enough to receive a part in this collab, and it is probably one of my favorite things I have made all year. I'll go as far to say it's one of my favorite things I have made ever. I just love how it turned out, and it's one of the few cartoons I show people that make them laugh, so I must have done something right. The collab also did really well, receiving a Daily 2nd trophy, a frontpage, and a Weekly 3rd trophy. Bling bling, baby.

I also had the pleasure of showing my cartoons to hundreds of people this year! For those familiar with 4H, I got to do a technology showcase this year, and I got a little booth to showcase a highlight reel for people to see as they walk through. I ended up getting hundreds of people a day looking at my cartoons, which was a really cool experience. To those who passed through and saw my shit, thank you a ton. You made my week. I'm supposed to be doing it again in 2023, so I'm really excited for that. Next year if you're in the Washington area, come say hi! I highly doubt any of you actually will, but it would make my week if you did. I'll specify when the time comes.

As mentioned earlier, I also made cartoons for my school, which I then showed for my classmates, and that was really cool too! It was awesome whenever they laughed at a joke I made or someone pointed out the work I put into it, it was awesome. I even got applause after it was done, that felt really good. I'm sort of known for my cartoons at school now, I'm the "cartoon guy" as people put it. Which is a way better title to have than "crack head", so I guess I'm moving up in the world.

Anyways. let's talk about my goals from last year. Did I achieve them? ...mostly. While I did move away from context centered cartoons, I never actually got around to announcing my show, let alone start it. Whoops. I also put a hold on the comics for a bit, though I have actually started making them again. I have found that I am much better at making comics than I am actual cartoons, which is probably because comics take less effort to make, and I can just make jokes for the sake of making jokes, and not have to worry about much else. I do enjoy making cartoons a lot more though, I think they are a lot more satisfying to make.

But let's get back on topic, what are my ambitions for this year? Let's start with negatives: I most likely won't get to my show this year. As much as I hate to admit it, it would just take way too much time out of my very busy schedule. I MIGHT work on it during the summer, but I'm gonna try to save it for my other goals.

Speaking of which, the main priority I have this year is to make shorts. I feel like I stepped in the right direction when I made the decision to make less context based cartoons. so why not take it a step further and make straight on short films? I have tons of ideas in my stupid brain that I just want to take out and slam into my computer. I feel like short films are the way to go if I want to grab someones attention with my stuff, music videos and collabs can only take me so far.

I also really want to work on a documentary I'm making. This is my first dive into a full length feature, and I have no idea how it will go, but fuck it, I think I am capable of doing this one.

And of course I'm gonna get some of that Lock Legion love in there too. I'm gonna host another music video collab because the last one went really well. What song will it be? I guess time will tell.

I'm gonna wrap this review up with a thank you. A big BIG thank you to everyone on this wonderful site. I hate to get sentimental. but I seriously struggled this year with my mental health and legitimately considered suicide at times. But wonderful people like all of you have helped me push through. Thank you all. So so so so so much.

I wanna thank Newgrounds for letting me post all of my stuff here censor free and being so supportive of me and the dinky cartoons that I make.

I wanna thank Nameless Octarian for being one of the best people I have ever met and being a fun person to be around.

I wanna thank Ethan for being so so so amazing, and just being a lovely and wonderful person in general, as well as getting me through my struggles.

I wanna thank the Lock Legion, for being a wonderful group that makes me feel like I belong.

I wanna thank BizzareEmerald for being the best buddy anyone can ever have, and for sticking with my ass for god knows how long.

I wanna thank Maspen15 for being a cool ass dude and keeping me in check.

I wanna thank my dog Duke for keeping me sane and calming me down on days I feel stressed.

I wanna thank my teachers and classmates who have supported me.

I wanna thank NakeyJakey for making ROMCOM. (I don't know him personally, ROMCOM is just really good.)

And of course, I wanna thank you for doing what you do. For watching, sharing and talking about my weird cartoons. I wanna thank you all for showing me that people DO care about the things I make, it genuinely is the greatest thing. I'm literally about to reach 100 followers on Newgrounds, and that means the world to me. Thank you.

I probably missed some of you because I'm writing this at like 3:30 in the morning and my brain is slowly dying as we speak, but just know that I thank you all.

I think that's a wrap for this year, thank you for reading this long ass blog and taking the time out your day watch my shit. Thank you all. I can't wait to see what 2023 has in store.

~Jonah G.