SAMV 7 target release date: Nov. 2013

Hey! I'm going to write SAMV 7 this year! I miss you guys, and I miss those guys! It's going to be fucking awesome.

In the meantime, I'll upload stuff here and there. Stuff that I've done over the years that hasn't seen the light of day. Plus I'll post more blogs. I have a lot of stuff planned you guys.

I even updated my profile picture. HOLY SHIT I am old but I wanted to prove I still existed.

Love you guys in a manly football way.

GO SPORTS!

How's it going?

Sorry guys, it didn't happen this year. I can blame it on a lot of things - new job, long hours, zero ambition, not on speaking terms with some of the voice actors, drepressing experiences involving long time friends. All would be pretty valid.

I don't know, sometimes I wonder if fit in on this site. I'm getting fucking old, and I refuse to draw anything with Mario or that fucking hedgehog the kids are so fond of.

But, that doesn't mean I'm done. I submit news stuff like turtles screwing. It just takes forever.

I once challenged myself to complete a SAMV movie before I was 30. HAA HAA HAA HAA.

Happy New year to everyone who likes the series. 2009 will be a more productive year.

Oh, and here's a dragon I'm doing.

I am feeling pretty good about getting things started on SAMV 7. The script is near done, and I have a clear sense of how I want it to play out. I can see the scenes in my head. It's going to be really awesome.

I don't have much to say, except thank you guys for the support. It means a lot to me. Giant thanks to Tom for making my series page. I feel totally validated. It's a really amazing feeling. Thanks times 1,000,000.

Ok guys, it's back to work for me!

(Rolls up sleves, pops open a Guinness)

Hey all...

If you haven't sensed it, my motivation pendulum has swung in the wrong direction. Nothing to worry about too much. It's a pattern that develops. Like this:

1. Make Cartoon
2. Burnout period
3. Video Games
4. Regret
5. Motivation
6. Go back to 1

I am firmly in phase 3 right now.

I'm not gonna lie, making these cartoons is far from plesant. I get consumed to the point that I forget to eat, and the dogshit piles up in the backyard. I get to be an irritable prick around the house. I work 40 + hours a week in a sterile environment for the government, and when I get home I spend every waking moment working on the cartoon. It's a burden on my wife, and I feel guilty.

But, making cartoons is not a choice. I don't do it for daily awards, and I don't do it for money. I do it because I have to. It's like a cold sore, it will go away for a while, but it will come back eventually. There's no getting around it. I have been making cartoons since I was 16 years old, and I am now very nearly 30. When I am shitting the bed in a damp, sticky nursing home I will still be making these. Maybe by that time I'll be up to SAMV 9. Lol.

Starting up a cartoon is like dangling my toes over the edge of a bottomless pit. Once I fall in, there is no going back until I am finished. And... I am not close enough to the edge of that pit yet. It's a scary feeling starting this thing up, because I know it will take up my life.

But I will start again. I have a feeling that it will be soon.

Throw me some motivation. I am getting a little low.

I think I'll attach a picture since that option is availible. And I love to waste Tom's server space =P

Now that SAMV 6 is done, I am going to spend some time building up my website. I have so many ideas for little cartoons to put up there. I am going to start by fleshing out the "Awkward Moments" section. These toons will be featured at random on the front page, and will be 20-45 seconds long. They're gonna be like these one joke things that will be updated weekly. After a few of those, I am going to launch a spinoff SAMV on the site as well. I have 4 different spinoffs planned in all.

Last but not least, I am going to work on SAMV 7 and 8. They get dark. But, I think you guys will LOVE them. They are going to be awesome. If you know the characters well enough, you guys will really appreciate them. You'll be standing up and cheering for the guys at the end, and that's a promise.

Ok guys, keep checking on SAMV.NET!!! LOTS of awesome content!!!!

PS- if you're an experienced, dependable actionscripter- gimmer a holler! I need your help with something.

ADD THE SAMV MYSPACE PAGE AND GROUP!!!

http://www.myspace.com/samvcartoon <------official myspace page!

http://groups.myspace.com/samv <--------official myspace group!

First off, like I always do - I want to thank the good people at Newgrounds for having such an awesome site. There is no other place where a guy like me can toss up my creations and have it exposed to so many people. It's amazing, and has truly changed my life. Also - thank you to the fans!!! You guys always give me a boost and help me keep doing what I do! I can't say enough about all of the great responses I've gotten throughout the years, and I'm hoping to have some new fans with this release.

This was such a hard thing to make. There are so many factors that come into play... the backgrounds, the characters, the dialogue... it's such a hard thing to sustain motivation for months on end. I started SAMV 6 waaay back in June of '05. I was fresh off of part 5, and was drained at that point. I remember very vivdly releasing part 5, then going into my backyard to do some yardwork. The grass was all dead and yellow, and it was a humid, crappy day. It was like this blanket of smog was settling on me, and making hard to see. That's where I got the idea for the setting for the guy's house. It's barren and isolated, and lifeless. I just imagined one of those old, boarded up houses that's way out in the country... one where it's not clear if humans have set foot in it for many years.

So, with that in mind I began to design the backgrounds. I had just watched "Garden State", and decided it would be awesome to give Percy a WWII era motorcycle with sidecar.

After Percy walked into the house, I started drawing a blank. You see, the old way that I used to draw the characters was with fixed facial expressions. They couldn't emote anything, and I had to rely heaily on the voice acting. With as much story as I had to tell, I was getting discouraged with my limitations.

So I stopped. For a long time.

I finally wanted to get back in the saddle, but I wasn't ready to get going on SAMV just yet. I had a new idea for a series... and it would give me an opportunity to try my hand at a new way of animating.

Shame by the Slice was born out of this frustration. I thought it was a pretty good series, but man, was it ever missing the soul of SAMV. It was kind of a thin, one dimensional, overtweened cartoon that people were kind of "eh" about. I poured so much work into it, but at the same time I wasn't getting the satisfaction I wanted out of it.

Well, in August I dumped SBTS onto the portal, and it did ok. It was funny, yeah... but again that soul was missing. It was a cartoon, and the characters were shallow.

So, as much as I liked it, I dug it a grave. I kissed it goodbye, and buried it in SAMV 6'es preloader.

SAMV 6 was a strain on me. I would stay up all night getting little facial expressions right... drawing and redrawing arms til the cows cam home. Adding gloop and gunk to the backgrounds... Making the characters human. They are very human, and while people are going to think it's a pure comedy, they're going to see where I want this project to really go in the last 45 seconds. No spoliers, but I think that this time everything has fallen right into place.

To all who have waited so long, I hope you accept my apology. Consider this a late Christmas present from '05.

And stay tuned for part 7!!!

Ok, here are the songs used:

Mars Volta: Asilos Magdalena

Mars Volta: Day of the Baphomets

Radiohead: How to Disappear completely

Radiohead: No surprises

Joe Satriani: Just look up

Tin Hat Trio: Bill

Cocteau Twins: Fifty Fifty Clown

Harold Budd: Dark Eyed Sister

Why in the hell did I choose to make this thing 30FPS? Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

I've exceeded the magic number of 16000 frames and playback stops. It sucks fucking ass. I scoured the net for ways to get around this, but nothing I've tried works. So I have some choices:

Reset the FPS to a lower number. Doing this means I have to go back to every scene, recalibrate every symbol, reanimate every fucking facial expression, resync all of the dialouge, retime all of the background animations, time adjust all of the mouths, etc etc etc. This will not be happening.

Cut the file in two parts. Fuck that, kills the continuity.

Hack away at the scenes, trimming them down and cutting out tons of dialouge to fit the Flash into one file. Sigh. I guess I have no choice.

I am going to delete about a minute and a half to get this thing to fit. There will be some kind of director's cut down the road.

This blows my mind. I'm beside myself with anger. But what can I do?

Life goes on. Fuck you 16000. Fuck you very much.

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Ahh... finally. It's done. I hacked away enough to make it fit into one timeline and it actually flows better. I was going insane trying to get it to export, but it finally did. I did it. This cartoon is amazing. I am so relieved. It's 6:20am so I should probably go to bed. I hope you love it.

SAMV 6 will not be out on 11/24, but it is almost done. Honestly, I would say 2-3 more weeks. I am sorry it's taking so long, I really am. All I can tell you is that it most definately will be worth it. This is definately the best work I've ever done, and it blows away the previous chapter by far. It is going to be a rather huge file, though. It will be a Christmas miracle if I can squeeze it in under 10 megs.

I've been trying to give this one a deep emotional center, and I really hope I got it right. There are some really complicated emotions I've tried to portray in this cartoon. Not in a melodramatic, superficial manner - but I get into some deeply troubled relationships. It's not a tearjerker by any means, but I really hope that I strike a chord with my audience.

And don't say "emo" unless you want a ruptured testicle.

Well, enough of this blab. I just hope everyone enjoys it.

Peace out, yall!