Got my letter from the good ol' NG. You know, the 'hey, you got fifth place, thumbs up man' letter. Yep, good times.

One particular part of the letter caught my attention, though. A part where Tom's mentioning his work shirt and tie wearing habits to show the team he has big plans for this year... a year of big changes and whatnot.

...and what do we find on the front page? Shapes. lol

I know it's some kind of inside joke, but still... makes you wonder. Wonder if the whole shapes conspiracy is some kind of signal of the changes to come, them getting away with crap while they can, or just a simple joke of abusing their popularity, taking a small jab at the community. Yes, it's the latter. But it's fun to imagine it's more.

PS: DODECAGON AND FREEHANDED SHAPE OMG.
PSS: This picture means nothing.

EDIT: Holy crap, tWHYlight got fifth place in the month! This is bloody awesome! I'd just like to thank, you know, Mr. Fulp for the frontpage, the fans who watched n' enjoyed, and the people who helped me make it. Yes!

Welp, happy new year. Yep, I'm a few days late. Look how much I care.

Although I am anticipating 2010. Why, you ask? It's because we'll finally be in a decade I can easily label. We had the 80's, 90's.... but this whole decade has been difficult for me to refer to. The 00's? The 2000's? It's lame as hell. I can't wait for the 10's to get here, it'll rule. And don't pull out that "WE LIVE IN THE FUTURE, SO WE CALL IT TWENTY TEN" bullshit.

Enough of that, though. I have something for you guys. Mainly the ones who kept asking me to spoon feed the location of all the secrets in tWHYlight. Yeah, I was waiting for it to get off the front page before I made the walkthrough. That way, only the obsessive fans will have access to it. I don't want to give it away to EVERYONE, that'd be dumb.

So go here to find the secrets...walkthough? I dunno what to call it. Secrets giveaway?

Also, I'm participating in another collab. I'm trying to get back into an animating mood so I can finish THATH in time, so I figure the collab will kick my ass in gear. Who knows, though.
And yes, this is a different collab than the other one I mentioned a few months back. This one actually has a deadline, whereas the one mentioned a few months ago didn't. I finished that one, like, super early.

Before I get started, happy holidays. Also, this has rambling. Beware!

Welp, I'd say tWHYlight did well. Sure, certain people keep complaining about my apparently fast dialog (I'm too used to it to notice), the parody binge I've been on, all the screaming, or the fact that I'm not totally reinventing the series every couple of entrees I do. There's more critiques, I'm sure, but these are the ones that come to me first.

First of all, I'm comfortable with the current condition of the style. Regardless, I am actually improving it little by little, but it isn't as drastic as it was when I reinvented everything for episode 5. Plus, I don't really try much new stuff for mini-episodes. Most of the changes I make are only noticeable to me, anyway. Engine work, really.
Second, I like screaming. The next couple of episodes will involve a lot of it. Someone mentioned that the screaming loses its power after awhile. I personally find the screaming funny, so I'm gonna keep doing it. If you don't like it, too bad, it's been a part of Siblings since day one and it isn't going anywhere.
The only critique I agree with is the fast dialog. Sure, I never noticed it and I totally understand everything said myself, but I wrote the damn thing. I basically memorize it by the time I'm done making it, so it's never a problem to me. I'll work at making it slower, but I'm not going to totally take the fast speaking out since that's another thing I just find funny. Maybe watching too much Zim has messed me up or something... that show is notorious for having dialog that is spoken at the speed of light sometimes.

And those are my afterthoughts on that. I'm going to start working on the next part of 'The Heart and the Hand' soon. I have to get that one done by February. I can do it, I just gotta get going on it.

I've also updated the game at the website. Added a few more enemies and lengthened the level again. I gotta update the background and shit soon, as well as make more enemies. Still feels pretty empty and all. All in due time.

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Okay, that's all my project news. Now for other news...
I recently got a XBOX 360 and I'm enjoying it. Mainly cuz of the games I downloaded on it... including Castle Crashers. That was one of the reasons I was psyched about getting the 360 at all. That game is damn awesome. Easy as hell, but still awesome. Can't help but feel like the levels could've been fleshed out more, but they put a lot of work into it, so kudos to them for that. It's awesome as it is. Now that I've beaten it, I gotta get back to playing Ninja Gaiden II... I'm only on the second level, heh. Damn me and my already busy schedule. And that game's insane difficulty... heh.

EDIT: While I do have a 360, I have satellite internet, so I can't play games online.

If you made it this far, congrats. You know all the stupid news on me up to now. Happy holidays, you bastards! ENJOY YOUR SHIT.

Hey. Siblings mini-episode 3, 'tWHYlight'. Parody of some movie. Rob yells for awhile. Watch it or don't.

I stuffed it with secrets. Loads and loads. Huge scrapbook too, but you can only read it if you unlock the pages via secret split second buttons. And the secret skull unlocks 'version B', which changes how certain characters look. Gives Rob a Lincoln beard, for instance. Makes it more visually accurate, basically. I guess.

Cat's got my tongue.

Hey guys. Now that I got my 41st post out of the way, I wanted to let you in on a preview of Siblings mini-episode 3, "tWHYlight". Yes, not the best name, but it'll have to do. It's better than the original name, "How Rob got tricked into watching Twilight". Yeah.

So yeah, the preview, I put it on my website. The 'preview' part is misleading since the cartoon itself is pretty much done. I still have to finish the main menu of it and redo some of the graphics here and there, but it's mostly done. I'll put it here on NG when I completely finish it, most likely in a day or two. Saturday at the latest.

So check it out if you don't mind spoiling it or whatever. It'll be on here soon enough, in completed fashion and all.

Watch it, and let me know what you think here. Oh, and feel free to give me constructive criticism if you want, though I don't want to spend too much more time on it, so keep revisions small.

As some may know, the number 41 has long been an important number to me. So of course I'd set aside my fourty first news post here as a special one, devoid of anything but praise to the conspiracy number.

BOW DOWN BEFORE THE BLUE SKULL OF CHAOS!

Okay, I've got a bit of a predicament here, people. The aforementioned Siblings mini-episode 3 is almost done... but it's much longer than I assumed it would be. I added a scene with Johny at the end for a few extra jokes about the situation, and with all the scenes already in it, it's running at roughly 3 minutes in length. That's practically a full episode.

Here's the thing, though: I don't consider it a full episode. It was a very spur-of-the-moment kind of story and that has the feeling of a mini-episode. Of course, it's too long to really think of as a mini-episode, right? I mean, Runesuck (episode 1) is only like 2 minutes long. Sure, that's back before I knew how long a typical episode would end up being, but still...

I'm at a loss, peeps. Should I continue to refer to it as a mini-episode, or just make it a full episode due to length? I'm leaning toward mini-episode, mainly because the episode 6 I'm making now feels right as an episode 6. Making it episode 7 just messes up the order in my head, and I don't know if I'm cool with that. Gimme yer thoughts on it, would ya?

And a preview of version B (a version that will change Rob's facial hair), for the hell of it:

WHY CANT I JUST STOP?!

SOME FRIENDS OF MINE TRICKED ME INTO GOING TO SEE TWILIGHT WITH THEM, ONLY TO LATER FIND OUT IT SUCKS ASS. AND NOW I'M PROBABLY GOING TO MAKE A PARODY OF IT INVOLVING ROB AND SAID FRIENDS. OTHERWISE THE UNUSED SCRIPT WILL DEVOUR MY SOUL.

WHY CANT I JUST NOT DO IT?! I HAVE 50,000 OTHER PROJECTS ON MY PLATE RIGHT NOW.

BLAAAAAAAAAAAH.

Of course, it should only take a week, so yeah. It'll end up being Siblings mini-episode 3, I guess, since it involves Rob. Johny doesn't show up in it, so it'll be the first Siblings episode that just revolves around one brother. Odd, I know, but it'll be alright. Incredibly half assed, yes, but it'll be funny. I think.

Okay, so I've been updating the game a fair amount. The game runs at 25 fps now instead of 20. It was 20 because that's what every Siblings episode has been since I started it. Of course, I think the game feels a lot better at this faster speed, so I think I'll keep it. What do you guys think? Same url, http://games.bobert-rob.com, so if you want to check out the slightly updated version you can. The new keys are 'Z' for attack, 'X' for jumping.

I'm also thinking of taking out the combo system altogether. Yeah, if you press Z with the right timing, it does a two hit combo sort of thing. I'm not really sure I want this to be a button mashing game, I'd like to put more strategy into it than that. So I'm considering making it so that different combinations of buttons can do different attacks instead. For instance, in the demo if you hold 'Up' and attack, Johny will strike upward instead of forward. Down + attack would become the lower attack, etc. I could always do both, of course. The Up + Attack combination works right now, so check it out and let me know.

EDIT: I've made the attack collisions transparent, perfected the jumping how I want it, and have added the jumping attack. And now the starting screen is full of evil bubbles to test these various attack styles. AAAAAH!

I'm drowning in projects again, it seems. I'm going to verbally vomit more information, so I'll start with the most interesting shit first, I guess.

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Basically, I started trying to make a new game a week or so ago. My past attempts in video game design would always be plagued with bugs I could never fix and were thusly abandoned, but I have high hopes for this new game due to it being a flash game. It's a Siblings game starring Johny. It'll be a typical side stroller akin to Castlevania in the sense that you primarily fight enemies and maybe a boring puzzle here or there. He uses a guitar axe as a weapon. Original, I know.
Anyway, I'm mentioning this because I'm hosting a gameplay demo of it at games.bobert-rob.com, so if you want to check it out, you may. I'll continually update it to fix stuff, so check it out once in awhile. I'll update it everytime I work on it at the end of the day. It's just a gameplay demo, so no story elements will be spoiled by trying it. Check it out and let me know what you think. I know it isn't much, but hopefully it'll become much better.
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Episode 6 of Siblings hasn't been touched in awhile (about two scenes have been started out of 9 or so), I've made no progress with The Heart and the Hand p2 besides putting audio together for it, and I'm practically done with the collab entree I've been working on. Of course, who knows when the collab will be released, but I'll keep you updated as I get information on it.

Oh, and the video games video I mentioned in the past post hasn't really been started yet, but it'll probably be a series of three or so videos, each focusing on different game making programs I've used. I have no idea when it'll be done, but it'll happen I'm sure.

Stick a fork in me, I'm done. HARDY HAR AHR.