Piggybank12

Hi everyone!

I wanted to leave a journal saying thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday this year.  You people happened to be the only ones who left me a message online on my birthday this year, and I really wanted to make sure I got some sort of thank-you to you all.

As for me, here's a quick update on what I've been doing lately:

• The first-ever television show I worked on started releasing episodes this year!  It's called The Garden, and it's directed by a guy named Butch Hartman (Fairly OddParents, Danny Phantom, etc).  I helped out by creating animation for the show, and also got to do some storyboarding later on.  It was a real blast to work on it over the past year, and it ended up giving my animation career a much-needed kick start.
  
• I also did some work for Pencilmation, which is a channel on YouTube that makes a bunch of animated shorts.  The first one I created animation for just came out not too long ago: 
• I helped out with art on a mobile game earlier this year, called Picross My Heart.  It's out exclusively for Android devices right now: play.google.com/store/apps/det…
• Thanks to all this work I've got now, I'm now a full-time freelancer!  No more cashier job for now, thank goodness.
• I've also been helping out Sonic Paradox with getting themselves back out there again, starting with the Sonic Seconds short I made for them in Volume 1: 
• 
  
• I've been also trying to post stuff on Newgrounds again.  After getting to catch up with the community again, I think I've found that I missed it more than I realized.
  I started by posting Keev, which ended up being seen by the head of the Pencilmation series and got me that job I mentioned.  Almost ironic that after all my effort to build up viewership on YouTube over the years, this thing that I happened to post on a whim at NG was what happened to get me a job.  Probably a lesson in that somewhere.
  

As for the future, that'll be the next thing I'll need to figure out!
I know it would be rad to work for a studio in person somewhere full-time, but I don't know if that'll happen yet.  There's also game dev stuff, which could also be fun to help with on the art side of things.  I'd love to come back to making a new webcomic again too.  Lots of possibilities.

Anyway, thanks for reading!



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Links for my other work:

Newgrounds: piggybank12.newgrounds.com

Twitter: twitter.com/MarkandFlops

Tumblr: nkalmar.tumblr.com/

Instagram: www.instagram.com/kalmar.nick/

YouTube: youtube.com/markandflops

Vimeo: vimeo.com/nickkalmar

Hey everyone!

I just wanted to leave a big ol' thank you to everyone who took the time to wish me a happy birthday this year.  I haven't been keeping up with people here all that well (or much of anywhere lately, for that matter), but I do read every single one of the messages you send my way, and I really do appreciate all of them!

As for an update on my end, things have actually been going much better for me this year compared to last year.  I've been getting back into the swing of things, finding more work, and I even finished and published my first game this year!
Actually, I should just put a link to the game here while I'm at it: www.newgrounds.com/portal/view…
The game could certainly be better, but after experimenting with prototypes all these years, it really does feel great to show that I've actually got a finished game under my belt.

I think it's also safe to say that I've been rather dead around here lately.  I haven't been good at updating much of my social media stuff either, but if you're interested in keeping up with whatever I do manage to post, I've got a few other places I've been trying to keep up with as well:

Tumblr: nkalmar.tumblr.com/
Second account for reblogs, but I dunno why you'd ever wanna follow this one: piggybankstomfoolery.tumblr.co…

Instagram: www.instagram.com/kalmar.nick/
(actually had this account for years, but decided to give it another try this year and have been really enjoying using it!  Great for posting loose sketches without feeling like I need to be too formal with them.)

Twitter: twitter.com/MarkandFlops
(made this one just a couple months ago. I originally avoided twitter for years, but it is nice being able to keep up with friends and folk on there more easily.  I guess it's kinda obvious, but Twitter and Instagram also have a ton of awesome artists you don't currently find here on dA!)

YouTube: youtube.com/markandflops
(haven't updated this one in years, but just like with my Instagram account, there's always a desire to swing by it again.  I've never really stopped kicking around ideas for how to bring this back.  Those videos I made before going quiet are just a real tough act to follow. )

Vimeo: vimeo.com/nickkalmar
(also a rather young and slim channel, but Vimeo makes for a good place for me to host videos that I felt wouldn't fit in with the audience MarkandFlops has on YouTube. In other words, mostly original content and demo reels.)

Thanks again for your support!  I say it a lot, but it really has meant the world to me, especially with how rough things have been for me in the past couple years.  I'm really excited for what's coming next!

Here's to the future!

Hey everyone!

I'm way late with this, but I just wanted to leave a big ol' thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday this year.  You people are pretty cool in my book!

This year's been rough for me, but that just makes all your birthday wishes and your support in general mean even more to me.  I'm not sure what the future holds right now, but I'm sure I'll figure out something eventually.  I probably said that before, but maybe if I keep saying it, I will figure something out.

Thanks again!  Hopefully I can share some more stuff soon!

Hey, it's time for an update!  I've got quite a few huge things to mention, so let's get right to it!

• I'm now a college graduate, complete with a BFA focused on animation!  The job hunt is well under way, although I may end up getting a job in an unrelated field for now.  We'll see how things pan out, but I'm excited to be done with college either way!
  
• I've finished my senior film, which is called Keev!  Due to running out of time to finish the film, I ended up going with a different concept that was much easier to complete on time.  You can watch it over here:
  
  
  Since some of the crew who helped on this film are on DA, I'll link to their pages as well:
  handled the excellent soundtrack,
  and helped with animation!
  If you like what you saw and heard here, feel free to check out their work!
  
• On a similar note, Keev! is also the first film I've made that actually won an award, winning Silver (2nd Place) at the 2015 Edinboro Fall Film Festival!  Considering Keev! wasn't the senior film I originally wanted to make, it caught me off guard to see it win anything, but I'm super happy about it regardless and can't thank my team enough for their help!
  
• I also had the privilege of being able to attend the CTNX expo this year in Burbank, California!  It was an amazing experience getting to not only meet quite a few friends and inspirations in person, but also get to show off my work at a booth in the expo and get loads of wonderful feedback from some amazing people and studios!  In fact, the entire event was full of a lot of firsts: getting to go to California for the first time, getting to make my first art book before the convention started, getting to visit a Fry's for the first time, all that good stuff.  It was, with no exaggeration, a life-changing experience that was a big reality-check for me.
  

So, with that out of the way, what's on the cards for 2016?

• My main goal for 2016 is to get back into a regular habit of making my own animation and artwork.  More specifically, I want to get my YouTube channel running again, as well as post more work on DA, Tumblr and any other social media sites I could stand to post work on.  Working on Keev revealed to myself that I've been growing rusty with making my own animations lately, ever since I started slowing down with making my own work.  After going to CTNX, I also learned that there were quite a few people there who really loved my personal work and wanted to see me keep going with it, while the studio life ended up not gelling with me as much as I thought it would.  It's got me wondering if going toward an "independent artist/animator" route would actually be a good fit for me right now. The only way I'll know if that's true, however, is if I take the time to get a second job, make more stuff and see how things pan out!
• This one might be the reason a lot of you follow my work, but I'll be upfront about it: I also want to step away from making MLP stuff for now.  MLP's been the source of some of my most experimental and popular projects, but at the same time, I know I don't want to be making MLP stuff forever.  It started out well, but has increasingly felt like a leftover and a burden from a previous point in my life, and with me graduating from college, I feel it's fitting to leave MLP behind as well.  It might be nice to do some sort of send-off with those characters before dropping them for good, but for now, I'm going to try winding down those kind of projects and do some new stuff.
  
• However, this doesn't spell the end for other fan works, especially Sonic stuff.  I'm still trying to decide how to kick things off, but I've been heavily leaning toward making a new Sonic Short to start with.  Would you folks be interested in seeing something like that, or would you be interested in something different, perhaps even a different subject or franchise that's popular right now?  I'm not interested in just doing what's popular for the long term, but I am interested in using those subjects to help me quickly get back into a good habit of working regularly.  I also know Steven Universe and Undertale are fun to work with and popular right now, but I'm worried those things may be run into the ground by the time I get there.
  
• After making Keev, I also want to keep developing original projects.  I'd love to go back to the original concept I had for my senior film and finish it, but I've also had some other stories sitting around that I'd love to bring to life as well.  Most likely, I want to have two different projects going on in a week: a few days that I can devote to original projects, and a few days that I can give to fan-related projects.
• Lastly, I want to keep learning TVPaint and Toon Boom throughout the year.  I love knowing Flash like the back of my hand, but I've been finding it to be holding me back on a lot of the animations I want to create.  TVPaint has a more traditional approach that makes it really appealing to me, while the visual styles possible with TB are amazing as well.  Getting a better idea of how those tools work would be a huge help for me in the future.

Alright, that's enough updates for now.  In general, this year was a pretty great upturn for me, and even though things aren't as clear-cut for me in the new year, I'm rather hopeful for it as usual.

Take care, everyone!

Hey everyone!

I finally got around to the VERY long overdue act of cleaning up my gallery, putting a lot of the older and/or awful entries I've made over the years into storage.  I didn't get rid of all the old stuff, but hopefully it's enough to put more focus on my latest work and make room for newer entries.

I decided to also keep as many of my animated works as I could, storing the ones I felt weren't really up to snuff by today's standards.  All of this was inevitable, as I want to make it easier for people to find my more recent and/or better work.

Please accept this lousy attempt at putting fur on Sonic as compensation for this unexpected act.  In the meantime, I'll see all you alligators later!