Updating my NG page! Kind of forgot to update here since I was on a break throughout most of February, but it was fun posting on Newgrounds since I started in November. I am back now and will be working on more of my original animations as a full-time priority, I've uploaded the backlog of stuff I've made since my absence and there will be more on the way. More Cold War spy girls with guns and cool stuff, aiming to animate a promo trailer and pen a comic in April...

Eh... what else? Maybe a retrospective blog? I spent like the last 6 months straight from August 2024 to January 2025 with 10-20 hour days doing nothing but producing those three sponsored animations for a total of like... 9 minutes of animation that I did all of work for. Like basically all of the key animation, colouring, and backgrounds despite the projects having a budget and I could've probably just hired people to help but I insisted on doing everything myself to my complete mental & physical exhaustion. Aha, well it was fun and the sponsors were atleast an excuse to dedicate myself fully and learn new stuff but yeah... At the pace I was working on those Hoyoverse animations, with the Jane one taking 4 weeks, I expected myself to be able to finish a new Cold War animation from Jan to March, well unfortunately not. I am a bit burnt out, but after a stint in Japan last month, I think I'm good to go and ready to get back to speed on more Cold War girls with gun fun stuff, and I am genuinely excited to be working on my own art and animation for the first time in a while... But yeah for now, I'll be aiming to release a new "We Love Cold War!!" comic and promotional trailer with original animation in late April.

Part of me kinda regrets doing those sponsored animations since they ate up time I could've been dedicating to my own ideas, the Wuwa one did bomb so hard that my career as a "mainstream" commercially-viable sponsored animator is pretty much over lol, but hey, another reason to start fighting again and I'm feeling much better.

I'm still rather conflicted on whether I want to do short and cheap gag animations for WLCW or more longer story serial stuff, and I honestly want to do the latter even if it's insane for one person to take on that much work but I feel like I gotta while I have the time. I've been penning some storyboards and visually they look great, but I realize when it comes to writing and continuity, there's alot I've gotta figure out if I want to make longer animations with coherent stories and dialogue. There's a difference I think when it comes to animating a "sequence" like in a music video as opposed to a "story" or script, and I've always been accustomed to a more frenetic music-video/commercial/anime OP methodology of animation, but for the story ideas I have for We Love Cold War Season One, I realize I need to work in a very different "TV" anime style manner to just tell the story I want clearly and coherently without obsessing over every little shot and piece of animation/motion. To be honest, the first thing I learned after finishing the Calydon Halloween animation, which absolutely wrecked me in terms of work hours, was that "animation isn't everything" when it comes to the appeal of, well, animation. The story, characters, script, and subject matter... The Calydon Halloween animation is so excessive in terms of its pacing and audio-visual design that it's overwhelming and there's only so much I can really do with the characters and premise I'm given. The Jane Doe animation, while at the time I found it embarrassing or that it could've been better, had more appeal in that it was simple, didn't require alot of knowledge of the game already, had decent execution, and people liked the character more lol. The camera moves and flow in that animation also does just work alot better, which is something I largely neglected when working on future animations since I used more hard cuts in both the Montelli and Calydon animations.

Eh... I've learned alot from those sponsorships from me just experimenting and pushing myself, but I need to get back into the groove and start working on an animation that's representative of me and my writing, animation, and style, and not corporate interests. I'm still a bit short on music and female voice actors for the planned WLCW Season 1 in the Summer of 2025, but I will be locking in and working on WLCW as my primary full-time focus now. I am pretty much just living off of the savings that the sponsorships gave me, but otherwise, WLCW doesn't really make any money by itself right now, so if you enjoy my work and want your name in the credits of any future major animations/comics, you can support my Patreon since I recently added a "Name in Credits" perk. Well, if you want, anyways I'm going to get back to work and hopefully will have something to show for it in a week or two~ Thanks for reading!

Just making a quick update for myself on this NG page, did another art/animation archiving action here so most of the stuff I made in January is up now lol. But I'll be moving to work on We Love Cold War 2.0 as my primary focus now, 2.0 basically just being a series of web shorts that'll hopefully be developed in sure time now that I have more experience, it's also this inherent desire I have to make the work better and "reboot" it since I feel like I've developed significantly in the year since I released the animation and I don't like the idea of just making more of the same thing endlessly, it needs to be better.

But yeah! Naomi and Valerie will come back soon with some extra flairs and facelifts and cooler gun action shit as ever. I have been trying to balance my health and work a bit more so the current GOAL is for a PROMO vid to be released is in early March, and then hopefully a full ANIMATION aka a short with a self-contained story, at least the first of many, to be released in April. Having produced just over 9 minutes of animation in 5 months has really given me some valuable experience but also showed me my limits and the need to work a bit smarter...

But yeah, otherwise, I'm back on my own again since the sponsorships are over, no corporate backing or funding, total freedom which is cool, but also scary. And stressful. No deadlines is kind of a curse to be honest since there's always just something I want to fix or change before release. In anycase, you can follow my work on Patreon or the other socials and I'll figure it out from there, 2025 will be a make-it-or-break-it type situation for We Love Cold War because I don't have infinite time and I've improved alot but I can't spend like a year per animation, two months each for the sponsored animations already feels like a lifetime, so I need to figure things out to make this series work as an independent venture or else it's just not going to happen.

But fingers crossed, see y'all around when I have some more art to post.

Nico

Hello! Just writing a quick update after uploading all of my animations here. I didn't actually know that NG restricted anim uploads to 2 per day so the Halloween animation had to be delayed til yesterday. To be honest though, personally the Halloween animation I put in more heart and effort into it than the Jane one, so it's a bit of a shame that it's not the one to be featured on the daily list, oh well, diamond in the rough. I tried to change up the thumbnail and titles since it didn't perform well on my YT either, but too late. I also don't know if it's like bad form to spam my work here, but besides some 10 second commercial teasers I did for Phase-Connect and PixelLink, those 3 animations are the entirety of my animation catalogue for now~ There's another animation commission I have in the works which should be finished in December and out in early January hopefully, same production style and I own the rights to post the animation on my channels.

Now addressing some internal thoughts, the Zenless animations are commissioned commercial work, yes, but the production pipeline used is the same as We Love Cold War!! and personally I believe that you can put effort and pride into commercial work even if it's not your original IP. Since my workflow is that "I do everything myself" I do have alot of pride and attachment to my work in this regard... I would implore people to check the Halloween animation out even if you're unfamiliar with the game, tbh I was too until Mihoyo contacted me for work lol. The next animation commission I'm working on isn't for ZZZ or Hoyoverse though, different gaming company, but still a similar style so we'll see~

I've been having fun posting and seeing people's reactions to my work on here, other social media sites it gets way too cluttered and busy... So yeah, I'll probably be slowly uploading my backlog of illustrations on here + any future stuff. I am personally still a bit mentally burnt over the failure of the Halloween animation because it really was something I grinded away on for every day for like 2 months, and it did not do well on Youtube or Twitter or here on Newgrounds lol... There's some more context that I'm reluctant to share right now since I do want to still potentially work with them in the future, but I am still a bit upset with how muted the post-release reaction and support from the client was back then.

I think in retrospect, the theming for the Jane animation suited my niche better, but I really tried my best with the Halloween animation to add as many cool action shots and I did so much in-depth research on the characters and tried my best to create a charming fun animation. Even though I poured so much sweat and tears into polishing each sequence and going overboard with the whole three-act structure of the animation, I think ultimately I realized that there are other considerations when it comes to the "appeal" of an animation beyond just technical quality. The theming, the setting, the characters, and what genre you're trying to appeal to.

I've grown alot as an animator since graduating, and the Halloween one was the first animation where I explicitly tried to focus on a more limited and eccentric style of animation inspired by old Gainax shows like Kare Kano or the legendary works of Yoshinori Kanada (there's a few Birth 1984 references in it...) I think when it came to WLCW or the Jane animation, I was more concerned with just doing whatever and throwing filters on stuff, while the Halloween one was very carefully planned out and had a specific style I was going for. But while I am very happy with having pulled off all of these ideas, I think the theming and overall pitch of the animation is maybe just too weird and eccentric to appeal to my usual fanbase. After all, I kept changing the damn title and thumbnail since it was a bit confusing to even explain what it was to people other than "Halloween Spooktacular Grand Prix Rally"

But all and all. I'm rambling and gotta go back to work on my next commission, which is much more neo-noir and less comedic/satirical in tone, there's a few funny parts in it, but hopefully it turns out okay. The reason why I do these commercial gigs is because yeah, it's less risk on my part if it bombs, and I do find enjoyment in the technical side of animation and trying to imprint my creative signature onto said product when I'm given creative freedom. I do plan on returning to my personal projects in 2025, but we'll have to see~

~Nico

Hey, so I'm not actually new to Newgrounds, this account's been sitting dormant since I was a kid, but since most social media sucks nowadays and people are stealing and reposting my art and characters. I figure I might as well upload all of my original art and animations here myself. They're set to auto-publish in the morning since I'm writing this at 3am lol. Idk, see y'all in 7 hours but I have a whole line up of my animations and illustrations that I have on my Youtube and Twitter already set up to release~