TL;DR VERSION:
-MN4-
It will be made someday. I promise. And it will be amazing.
I was afraid that Krinkels/rest of the scene would steal all the cool ideas, but I'm confident my ideas are fucked up enough to remain original and un-trodden-on for a while to come at least.
The sequel will conclude- and even though I wrote down a bunch of my ideas in the last post, MN movies are made pretty much 90% on the fly. I just make shit up as I go- thats the best way ;)
I really appreciate all the emails/comments I get.. Whether they praise me for making the series, or condemn me for not making more- the fact that I have influenced people to go to the effort to internet-yell at me makes me happy.
If it will ease some of your tempers/excitement, let me explain a bit about my situation now, and my situation when I was at my peak of Madness animation. It might make you sympathize with me a bit.
Bare with me if I go a bit overboard here and give you my life story (edit: looks like I did :/)....
When I first discovered Madness, I was around 12 years old (possibly younger) and just starting highschool.
I disregarded most of my highschool work, failing to see the point in it, or just being caught up in my own little world most of the time. I managed to get through most subjects based on general knowledge, though I did excel in creative or computer-related stuff.
Considering the only thing I was doing in life was highschool, combined with the fact that I spent no time focusing on highschool, this left me with 99% spare time to spend wherever I wanted.
I had 2 computers which my family shared. One of them was a shitbox iMac which could go on the internet, but freeze at the simplest task.
The other was a shitbox PC which had no sound or internet, and would freeze at the simplest of tasks (I inherited this from my grandfather, because my dad wouldnt get me a computer). It couldn't really run any games due to its lack of working CD drive, combined with the fact that it had about as much processing power as my calculator did.
Earlier during primary school, I discovered the wonders of Microsoft Powerpoint, which gave me the ability to transform my shitty classroom comic-doodles into crudely animated movies, which I scored disgusting soundtracks to using the Fruityloops 3.5 demo. The movies revolved around the crime-fighting adventures of a suave, tophat wearing turtle and a flying pig who shot lasers out of his eyes and penis.
I had been lurking Albinoblacksheep.com and other old Flash sites like that in primary school- so I was eager to get my hands on Flash, though I had no idea how to, considering my knowledge of the internet didn't really extend as far into piracy and P2P as it did years later. Anyway, one day a friend of mine gave me a copy of Flash (MX6), and I practically shit my pants with excitement.
I spent many hours alone in my room trying to figure out how to work it. I think it took about 3 weeks for my group of friends to figure out that 'F6' creates a new keyframe. Once we got over that hurdle, I began ejaculating countless shitty stick-movies and other fine productions similar to my powerpoint adventures.
I have a few of them still, I might upload some somewhere because they are so tasteless and awful that I feel I need to share them.
After a brief collaboration with a friend of mine on "Drater FT", an animated series that featured retards fighting eachother to the death in an epic tournament, I stumbled across the madness series, and my shit was officially fucked up with how amazing I thought these movies were. The first one I saw was MC3, which still say wholeheartedly is my favourite of the series.
During this time, I was writing shitty comics in the style of happy noodle boy, I would sketch these out during classes when I was especially bored in order to entertain myself and my friends. Also because a girl told me to draw more. When you're 13 and a girl tells you to do something, you do it.
(Funnily enough, this is very similar to how happy noodle boy came to exist)
This comic was called Maximum Ninja, and involved a stickman ninja going to great lengths to retrieve a magical emerald. I still have all these comics in my year 9 diary somewhere, I should scan them sometime, cause they are pretty lol. There was about 25 of then in the end.
Anyway.. I was furiously watching and rewatching Madness movies in my spare time. That was quite literally one of the few things I did.
I got onto watching some of the fan made vids, and felt at the time that I could do better. The main motivation for this was because I practically worshipped Krinkels. I can't really state this any better, I was really fucking obsessed with this man.
I'm not happy just absorbing some creative media and enjoying it... I have to actually demonstrate how much I like it by proving my worth as an artist to whoever created the media. I need to not only become their equal- but I must also work with them on something to prove it to them to my fullest extent- also proving it to myself, and others in the process. This hasn't really changed nowadays at all, come to think of it.. There is a terrible emptiness within until I prove my worth. Im sure there is an official mental disorder which describes it pretty accurately.
But anyway back on track- off I went to seek Krinkel's approval.
I found my way to mc.net back when it was run by a dude named Simon, and started spamming the forums with my n00bchatt3r.
The first post I made was about 30000 words explaining the complex storyline of my Maximum Ninja comic, and how I planned to adapt it into a Madness movie.
I sent Krinkels about a bajillion emails asking for his "Permission to make a tribute", and eventually he replied to one. I saved every single one of his emails and read them over and over, I probably still have them in my old hotmail account (as Ive had it since I was like 13).
A moderator on the forum, Liam aka "Madman" agreed to help me out and give me some pointers after I sucked up enough so he would add me on MSN. (now known as Deville666/Deadbeat666/whatever his most recent alias is.. Not to offend you man, I just cant keep up..)
I bugged him for advice and told him my ideas, and showed him my early demo clips- which involved me trying to recreate the exact MN comics using awfully executed motion tweening. It wasn't very pretty, and he wasn't very impressed, so I retreated back to the drawing board and tried a different approach.
Around now the Madness Interactive game was pretty fucking huge- and I went and grabbed the sourcefile from the old Flecko.net site. Just cause it was a really good way to see Krinkel's artwork up close and get an idea of how it was put together. Prior to this I was using terrible self-drawn graphics which looked vaguely like madness sprites- though in retrospect it probably would have been a hell of a lot more original to use them, rather than just copy sprites from the interactive source.
Moving on- something was very different about the original Madness movies which wasn't replicated by any of the tributes. Eventually I figured out this was because they were animated frame by frame- when I first discovered this, I didn't really believe it. The idea that someone could hand-animate 10000+ frames was just too rediculous.
With the basic character sprites from interactive-source, I drew my own costume over the top (the very first one I did was the MN1 outfit), and drew up some sword I thought looked cool (those early ninja-blade things). I decided to give fbf a go, I split the character up into individual layers, and just sorta... Did it.
I wont get into the technicalities of animating right now, cause thats a different blog altogether.
Though I will say that this first experience with FBF was pretty bizarre- there was zero learning curve. It just happened instantly.
Anyway. MN1 was made, and so was my debut as another 13 year old animator on NG. It got a lukewarm reception from the public, but most importantly, it caught the attention of Krinkels, who complimented me on my efforts, and voiced his liking of my animation. I feel that whatever I type here will be unable to explain how awesome that was for me. Seeing an opening- I immediately emailed him and asked for some pointers.
He gave me a few helpful tips on the use of Flash (really basic shit like the use of symbols), but more importantly, him acknowledging my existence fuelled the production of MN2. Though I had earned his recognition, I would not rest until I was in his innermost sanctum of internet social-circles and working on shit with the man himself.
I remember one time he was online on MSN (this was after I added his account about 500 times so he would accept the invite) and I was talking to a friend of mine going "OMFG HES ON! SHOULD I SAY HI? HOLY FUCK WHAT SHOULD I DOOOOOOOO"
I literally went in circles trying to think of whether or not to say hi. I seems rediculous, but I mean.. This dude was like my hero, and few kids get the chance to interact directly with someone they respect that much. (Oh and after the hour I spent deliberating what to say, he went offline lolol)
After MN2, I started getting internet-famous. It all got to my head pretty quick, as that's a fair bit of praise and attention for a 14 year old to absorb. I generally acted like a dickhead and treated people who emailed me with questions or added me on MSN like shit. Looking back now, I can clearly see I was being a terrible person- but I guess I pulled my head of of my ass after a short while and learned to be nicer to fans. If you are one of these people, I apologize profusely!
With MN2's release, I was promoted to moderator of the mc.net forums, which was a duty I carried out with pride and vigilance.
Actually I think I just went around the forum and talked down to everyone like a dick and verbally masturbated constantly about how great I was.
Apologies, again to any involved.
Back to more substantial matters- I emailed Krinkels and gave him some rediculous proposition for MN to actually be the prequel to madness combat where the Ninja's friend was actually Hank in the past or something. Krinkels politely refused, and I went off to continue trying to breach his friendship circle with more MN. I should also mention I was periodically sending him pointless emails, all of which I treasured and saved the replies to.
For some reason this part of the story is kind of foggy. I think its cause I was doing other things with my life other than madness. MC.net went down and I stopped posting there. Actually, I was around 15 now, so I guess I was kinda growing up and my imagination was focusing more on girls that I wanted to put my penis in and around, rather than animating Madness.
Its a transition that happens to all guys I think- going from blood and violence, to PORN and the persuit of sexual adventures.
Around this time school started to get a bit more involved, and I wasnt able to pass without doing assignments- I also started doing a sound-engineering course at some college on the coast, which ate up more of my time. Production on MN3 was very slow due to these things. I also discovered music, which offered me instant gratification for my efforts. It took a few seconds to fuck around with a synth and make cool sounds- but it took hours in Flash to animate something remotely satisfying.
I moved interstate at the end of 10th grade, which was another setback on production for a while. Though being a lonely, angsty teen in a town void of friends, but chock full of rednecks and other human garbage turned out to be great motivation to sit in front of my computer and animate stuff.
After I finished MN3, I started getting more heavily into actionscript. I had attempted small games before, but never got really far because I wasn't very stimulated by typing lines of code and thinking about things logically. Though in year11 I took a software dev class which forced me to focus on my programming skills. Once I got into it, I actually quite enjoyed programming- this is where my game Alpha Sector came from.
Another appeal of games was that there was only a relatively small amout of visual work required compared to something as big as MN3, because of school getting more and more time consuming, I found that my motivation to animate would be snuffed out when I wasn't able to spend uninterrupted months consecutively animating.
With any creative thing I undertake- with the exception maybe being music- it takes me a while before I get warmed up into a project. For example, if I am animating- it takes a couple hours before I really get into it. But once I'm going, oh shit- then I'm like a boulder rolling down a mountain... I just sorta keep going... Seeing my progress motivates me to make more, and its a self-perpetuating thing. Though if I have to keep stopping, my flow is wrecked and my animations end up being stunted and lifeless. Its really no fun. Ironically, one of the best parts of the actual acts of animating is where my brain turns off, then 5 hours later I come out of a trance and I've created something.
Its kinda like sleeping. sleep would fucking suck if you were only allowed to LIE in your bed but never actually sleep.
(By the way- this is just the way I experience it.. It could be totally different for other people.)
And now-
Now I'm in university. I spent alot of time during highschool messing around with music/sound design, and eventually had a folio which I used to get into uni.
I go to uni 3 days a week, and only have a few hours worth of lectures per week- but they expect a great deal of work to be done in our own time.
I still do alot of visual work, but it has to be smaller, bite-size portions of work that I can fit around my schedule. Thus lately games have been my focus- along with music, cause its always nice to be able to compose my own soundtracks and make my own sound effects.
I guess this is kind of the end of the story. Sort of an anti-climax, huh?
As for Krinkels, we still haven't worked on anything together yet- though I still plan to. I talk to him now and then, but rarely ever about madness. So I guess I'm in his circle of friends like I wanted to be.
Im not sure how chronologically accurate this account is, but I'd say it's pretty damn close at least.
Jeez, summing up your teen years like this is pretty depressing. For the record, plenty of other shit was going on in my life at this time- though this post only deals with the stuff that's madness-related.
Anyway, going back to the point of all this. I'm going to make MN4 one day, I guess I have to for my own sake more than just for the viewing pleasure of it's followers. Its kinda unfinished business I need to conclude. I've got 2 years left at uni, then I'm going to go find a job where I can focus on my music, art and game development as much as I can whilst still keeping a roof over my head. That will be when MN4 is made. It won't be now, unless someone is willing to sponsor the production?
Wait, does that mean MN4 will be made in 2012? Im too tired to do the math
