Hey fellas. It's been a week and a half since Silikon came out and I wanna thank everyone for watching and leaving a lot of really nice comments. That week was a little rough for me for real life reasons so I'm sorry i wasn't responding to all comments with exuberance, but I have read all the comments so thank you guys so much. And thanks for the fan art like holy shit that really made me smile. This is just gonna be a post-modem rambling about Silikon. I'll divide it into sections so you can bounce around and at the end there'll be some stuff for you guys to check out. We ride.

Section 1: CONTEXT

Silikon took a while to come out huh. Around 4 years I'd say. Parts of it even predate that time, like Sierra herself was a side character in a comic thing I never made way back in 2018. Now, as is per usual, did Silikon take 4 solid years of straight work to do? No. I had large gaps of inactivity while working on it. Sometimes for actually good reasons and other times cuz I like playing video games and doing stuff. Not to mention I've been an animator at titmouse full time during the whole process. It really feels like an era of my life has just finished. I moved to Vancouver the year before i started working on it and I feel like this project, the one that's been scrapping my mind, the one where I would have this constant guilt over not working on it. It really kind of defined my early 20s I guess. I'm not early 20s anymore. I turned 26 this month. It's time for some changes, some growing up.

I'm honestly really ashamed it took 4 years to make this, especially since it still turned out a little half baked. If I was really focused on it, I could've had it done way quicker (This past year I've been making an effort to limit time wasting. Fuck you to whoever invented For You pages.) At a certain point I was so close and just wanted this thing out that I cut an entire ending scene and didn't go back to correct some of the earlier animation (The NPCs early on were way over the top looking lol). A lot of it had to do with this being a super ambitious thing I wanted to do. The smart thing would've been to start small, start short. But honestly I love longer-form storytelling so I wanted it to be long. Even with the ending scenes cut it's actually 4 minutes longer than the animatic i made in 2022.

SECTION 2: So...was Silikon good?

Silikon came out...alright. It's something I can be proud of, especially since I did it 99% myself. And it does get better as it goes on which makes me think okay the next thing I make will be better. There are a lot of problems though. I've gotten some comments about poor audio mixing and yeah that's totally my fault. Not testing it on multiple audio setups and just not listening thru it enough (I was in a hurry to put this out). I do intend to go back in and maybe fix some of the problems. The audio mixing and also some rendering errors i noticed too late. When the screen fades to grey static, it's supposed to fade to black but i added the film grain effect very last and forgot to check all of it. Not sure about YouTube but i think here on NG I can upload a new mp4.

One of the other big problems for me was voice direction or lack there of. My intention was to be in call with the VAs while they record but the first person I asked said they don't like being in call while acting so I was like well I guess I won't. There were short tone instructions written on the scripts (stuff like "A little cautious sounding here") but really it wasn't enough. The actual voice actors did a fantastic job with what they had, no criticism to them, it was just lack of direction that made some lines kind of awkward. That's gonna be a priority for me going forward. I guess I can just say hey it's a throw back to old anime dubs and nobody will be the wiser.

I guess audio and voice direction being my two biggest problems is actually kind of nice like oh well im an animator not a sound guy so I was doing my main job right. I obviously have problems with it visually, again there's lots of early stuff I wanted to go back and fix but didn't, and there was some obvious rushed parts near the end of production BUT I think I did okay. I liked the slower parts and I honestly wish I made it a little slower. One of the advantages of independent animation on the internet is that it's such a loose format when it comes to runtime and scope, but I honestly like the formats of TV and movies so I wanted it to feel more like that. I really wanted to do a cool ED animation but...maybe next time.

SECTION 3: What now?

So it's out there in the world now. The response on Newgrounds has been great. Thank you all so much. I saw that the front page had Silikon as the big banner for a bit and that was INSANE to see. Thanks Tom...or whoever's in charge of that. It's the kinda thing I was thinking about while making it like wow maybe MY cartoon will be in the banner or on the wall art or something. Maybe that's a little conceited of me to think.

I was hoping for a little more attention on YouTube but they prolly saw a 20 minute original cartoon not based on anything and went yeah let's let this die. I've never been one to care about view numbers or marketing what I make but considering how long this took, I think I'm allowed to a little this time. Should probably get around to adding subtitles like I wanted to.

Okay let's cut to the chase. I've seen lots of comments saying "this is a great first episode" or "can't wait for more!" Makes sense, it feels like kind of a setup for more. I did intend this to be a first part of a larger story and I have tons of ideas for where to take it and everything, BUT I'm honestly not in a rush to get goin on another one. I'd like to get back to drawing every day and really trying to improve my art which I feel has kinda stagnated recently. And y'know make smaller stuff again. I had plenty of ideas for animations that I can now do now that I'm done this big ass thing. I just wanna have fun making things. The next project I have in mind is a 2nd episode of Bucket Lad (if you haven't seen the pilot uhhh don't. It's not very good.) which I actually fully storyboarded before starting Silikon. I'm gonna change a lot about it but I'm excited to do dumb comedy again. Bucket Lad is way more tied to me and my high school buds and not this cinematic shit that I tried to do with Silikon.

I don't ever want to stop making things. There's so much I wanna do and Silikon, although troubled, has been a BIG BIG BIG learning experience. I'm sure I'll come back to it eventually but for now I'm gonna use what I learned to make stuff BETTER and more EFFICIENTLY

EXTRA SECTION

I'm gonna close out this blog post by giving y'all some shit to click on. I tweeted about it already but I know twitter doesn't like links being in tweets. I uploaded all the Silikon flash files for people to dig around in. I always liked when other animators did that. If i was smart, this kind of thing would be behind a Patreon wall but I like being dumb. They were made in Flash 8 so they SHOULD work with any flash/animate version past that.

Now I know some of you might be like "what the hell, Postboy! You mean Silikon 2 isn't coming out tomorrow? Where am I going to get my stupid anime robot action from now?" Well my dear viewer, I have made a list on Anilist with all the stuff that inspired Silikon (or at least the most obvious ones) so you should totally CLICK HERE and watch them all cuz they're all very cool.

And let's close out this blog with another huge thank you all for watching and also posting some awesome fan art like seriously guys that you so much.

https://x.com/SoiiMenta/status/1900292368135262256

https://x.com/HimejoshiSlim/status/1900156601979515298

Okay I'm done now THANKS AGAIN