This is an open letter to Newgrounds:
I was lucky enough to know from the time I could make scribbles with crayons, that I wanted to tell stories.
Eleven years ago I started coming to this site. The internet was fairly newish - I was still on dial up. Newgrounds was a place full of mischievous celebrity assassination games, stick figure fights, and experimental animations. I was in 6th grade and making animations on reams of post it notes or "flip books".
I was there as Newgrounds grew - creating an incredibly interactive community of people. I watched animations like Genryu's Blade, Xiao Xiao, and 8-bit DnD soar to the top of the charts here on NG. I watched as artists like Legendary Frog and PikanJo became kings of the portal and witnessed the first of animation collabs.
In 2003 I downloaded my first trial copy of Flash (flash 8 I think). I finally decided to start posting my path as an artist here on Newgrounds. This was my first account. I remember watching as the my first animation got over 1,000 views. An unreal feeling at the time.
I started growing up - high school changed every part of my life. I started to feel comfortable in my own skin. My art and focus began to develop. Newgrounds was changing. They redesigned the portal from the floor up - making it more accessible for the public to create a name of themselves. I made amends with a rival, that turned into my best friend and began an incredible journey in creation. I watched as the super stars of the old newgrounds stopped posting as much. Suddenly new celebrities like Adam Phillips and Egoraptor began gracing the portal with amazing new content. I made my new account and started a bigger project - a bigger hope at something new.
As I was growing, so was Newgrounds. Suddenly a site that was used for a young-man to posts his experiments with the program flash - became a living community of artists. The audio portal was born (along with A-Bot). Newgrounds branched out and created the sister company "The Behemoth" and produced a console version of Alien Hominid. I graduated high school - and watched as Newgrounds graduated to an even bigger league.
Animation, Games, Audio, Art, Writing, Forums, Collabs... So much change.
I started going to college - and found out the traditional path wasn't for me. I began working on animation and film as much as I could. As I worked on dozens of projects crewing, developing, writing, shooting, editing - I realized just how much I loved it all. The long hours - the grueling debates - the amazing moments when things finally click. All the while - Newgrounds orbiting the creative growth of my life.
And now - Newgrounds has changed again. A new look - new features - a new day and age.
Myself and a team of incredibly talented people have spent the last 10 months developing a live action web-series for Newgrounds. No doubt, a new venture for this ever-growing company.
Two months ago we revealed our work to the public - and started a fundraiser to make this incredibly ambitious project into a reality. To our humble amazement - we have received an overwhelming positive reaction. Already with the help of almost 250 amazing individuals we have been able to raise over $12,000. But work of this professional quality is expensive (even with all of us donating our time without expense). We are down to the last 5 days of this project and have an $18,000 gap to cover. This is a project has the unique opportunity that could help push Newgrounds into the next era of creative media.
What happens if we don't make it? We haven't given up, but it's a reality that could happen. Going into The Forsaken City we decided to make a project the way it deserves to be made. Not half assing the production quality - not rigging together bubble-gum and duct tape to keep things cohesive. Without the means to create this epic - we don't want to fall short of the vision NG deserves. Does that mean it will never happen? No, we hope that one day - should this project not come to light - when we have the means to do it ourselves - TFC will live again.
But we don't want that. We know that this project has the chance to make it and we want to show you. So now I have a question. Can we do this? Can we come together as a community and get this thing out there? Can we let the internet know that Newgrounds is ready for the new age of online media? Can we raise the funds to make this project a reality and start something new here and now? And if you can't donate there are other ways to support the cause! It doesn't matter if you've never posted on Newgrounds before or if you have a fan following and a collection of daily first trophies you can help us by just raising awareness!
Thank you guys for reading this - and thank you all to have already given so much! Excited to come full circle on this journey towards something more. 5 more days.
We can do this.
-Chase
