I am really bad at doing recaps but here goes!

emizips kitbashed 2023 recap

I wanted to do blog updates more regularly but i realized quickly im bad at these so its gonna go back to being pure sporadic "dump my thoughts into this word box" kinda junk. This was the year where I really feel like I've hit my stride with making stuff and being a part of this big ol Newgrounds community, I've made so many friends on here and created so many memories with them! I am incredibly thankful for the opportunities this corner of the web has given me and im always trying to find ways to give back!

I wanna share some highlights of the year! I don't wanna write for a billion years so its not gonna be literally everything, either way it'll be nice to have a recap post of sorts to look back on in the future.

Creepypasta Collab 2023

I feel like it'd be a crime not to start off with this, esp since it was the most recent big-thing I've been apart of. When I first started hanging out in Newgrounds spaces, a joke spawned in a massive discord VC that resulted in the hosting of the original Creepypasta Collab. It was extremely messy, thrown together, and poorly handled BUT it was extremely fun and so so so much cool art came out of it! It was a very enjoyable learning experience but I sorta left the whole event not expecting to do it again, That was until people that participated started reaching out to me about it. Because of how open ended the whole thing was, it was a lot of peoples first ever Newgrounds collab! It felt like a total honor to have hosted a bunch of folks first ever collab and just hearing that really inspired me to toy around with the idea of doing another one in the following year!

I concepted a lot of ideas with friends on what a proper non-jokey Creepypasta Collab would even look like, If any of you reading this were at the TMG Philly Meetup (more on that later) you might even remember me discussing it with you! (shoutout @droid esp our convo about it really motivated the hell out of me to make the collab a reality) Eventually the idea to have it center around actually writing out stories with music and voice acting came about and it just felt so damn obvious! I wanted to do smth special with the presentation, making it an actual game where you find peoples submissions, just to really help it stand out. A large part of me really wanted to just go all out to make up for how messy the 2022 Creepypasta Collab was, and I feel like we totally succeeded!

If you havent checked out this years iteration of the collab I totally suggest you do! Its a bit janky but man am I proud of what me and the team accomplished with this! It was my first time making a game in almost 7 years!

https://emizip.newgrounds.com/news/post/1389684

Here's some of the ""concept art"" I did for the game!

I really wanted to do an original location and an original character cause I thought it would be really fun if the Creepypasta Collab had like, its own original mascot beyond the fucked up tankman we put everywhere (Which I do love mind you lol) Her name is Samantha! and she was designed to be like, a basic representation of a young kid. I wanted the game to sorta have the vibe of when u wake up in the middle of the night and want a glass of water but ur scared cause ur home alone or smth. Its really loose but i feel like that sort of thing works well for an event themed around internet Creepypastas, which nowadays really feel like a relic from the Internets younger years.

Massive shoutout the entire devteam! I could not have released this without yall!!

Heres everyone and what they did for the project!!

@thecakewasalie - UI/UX

@mandariin-exe - Game Thumbnail

@Frosty - World Props

@Readykk - Inspect Screen Art

@Conundrym - Tileset & BG work

@Pollyanoid - Menu Art

throwing some love to the amazing Menu, Banner, and Thumbnail art that was made for the event! yall killed it!

alpha sc lol

Some fun development tidbits:

• During the entirely of Development the game was called "Kitchenworld" as some sort of weird placeholder name, this is the reason you can find 3 tapes in the fridge.
• Github almost destroyed the entire project 5 times due to issues with the repo saving over itself incorrectly.
• Without @thecakewasalie this project wouldve never released on time so SHOUTOUT HIM!!! me and him were in call like every day grinding our asses off.
• Before the idea to make it fully original came about, it was gonna be set in a locked tank, youd play as tankman of course. This got scrapped really early. (i think it was pitched in January??)
• this is less of a tidbit and more of a shoutout, SHOUTOUT GODOT!! I LOVE YOU GODOT, GODOT IS THE BEST ENGINE I LOVE YOU GODOT!!! SUPPORT GODOT!!!
• Within my social circle i setup a bug bounty for a bug i couldnt find where id order whoever found it doordash lol (shoutout @kunishiro ty)
• The protagonist is named after the girl from Cod Zombies because when i was taking a break from coding i would play the map Origins with a bunch of pals (shoutout @lizziesdrawer for the initial name pitch)

TMG Philly Meetup!

I already did a full post about this event so this will be rather brief (check out that post for more cool junk!) but I couldnt NOT bring it up here!

I went cosplaying ENA and it was totally worth it, the amount of times since the event people have referred to me as "OMG u were the Philly ENA cosplayer!" is insane. Im totally cool with that being my legacy LMAO

@hollowlugia is a real one

@deepfriedgpu

please do check out the full post i did cause that one has way more juice to it LOL

https://emizip.newgrounds.com/news/post/1369350

i never did frame my poster tho... i gotta get around to that

VOICE ACTING DUMP

This year I did a surprising amount of voice acting for a surprising amount of cool projects!

I voiced Alix Russel in @pollyanoid 's live action jam submission!

I was in @deerrytetv 's Unturned Curated Map 'Buak' as the character Anthe Grim!

I voiced the protagonist in @frosty 's Threat != Contained!

and a lot of other random stuff! Esp random youtube stuff

a lot of my VA stuff has yet to actually release cause of production time etc etc u know the drill if u work in that space LMAO

Its been very fun doing random Voice Acting stuff, Its really enjoyable for me! If u like my voice and/or performance feel free to hit me up for ur projects. Im always down to lend my voice!

this demo reel is shit but its all i have up rn so here ig

MISC STUFF

I participated in the MS Paint Collab 2 !

with these submissions

I also participated in @sageisreal 's Loss Collab !

with this submission!

this was also the year where i redesigned my sona proper, now im this cool zombie lady! heres my first art of her and some cool art friends have made for me!

I love you guys u are way too nice!!!

btw u should totally follow my forever bestie @mandariin-exe

her art is rad

also @judsmile is my truest realest inspiration for everything i do ever (i am not being forced to write this)

WRAP UP

Overall, this has been my best year on Newgrounds yet! Ive made so many friends, grown so much, and I have so many cool projects to show for it! I'm gonna end this post with some of my favorite art pieces from this year, I am still very proud of these:

To everyone whos made it this far in the post, thank you for taking the time read all this junk, I am grateful that there are even people out there who would wanna keep up with what ive got going on! I love you, I love newgrounds, and I can't wait to see where the future takes me!!! 2023 fuckin ROCKED!

I didnt get to do everything I wanted to, nor could I even mention everything I did in this post, but the stuff that did make it to the surface made all the hardship worth it. Shoutout WE, Shoutout my fellow worms, shoutout the Deerman, shoutout RIBS, I love you guys!!!

btw @conundrym you a real one for showing me chiprock

buy picayune dreams

goodnight!