Today, December 5th, is the 5th annual Day of the Ninja! I really wanted to have a Sandwich Shop Ninja-themed desktop wallpaper done for today, but Flash crashed and I lost half of my work. So, it will probably be done tomorrow. However, that doesn't stop any of you from celebrating this day of total awesome! Go sneak around, dress in black, do back flips and share this wondrous day with random people who have no idea what the heck is going on!

I haven't had a chance to work on the next episode of The Sandwich Shop Ninja since mid-October, but I hope to get working on it again soon. I'm currently stuck on one fight-scene that has a huge pseudo-3D effect done entirely in Flash, a 2D-based program.

And here's a screen shot of some un-finalized animation I had on my website, but hadn't shown here:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/
408239

I guess I was able to "finish" it. If you can call that finished. Not entirely pleased with how it came out, but didn't want two-and-a-half weeks-worth of insufficient sleep to go to waste. So, it is here for your amusement. Someone's amusement. Somebody's got to find it amusing.

Fortunately I've already got a solid plan for the Christmas competition and I have enough time to actually put effort into it. :) But first, I'll finish up a bytesized I've had sitting around and then probably do some strange animation that is the result of my mind trying to recover from the last two weeks of whatever it is I just went through.

The next episode of The Sandwich Shop Ninja is still in the works, though I don't know when it will be done. If the Halloween toon actually helped me get into the habit of making good use of the little free time I have, then it may actually get done in two or three months.

I also need to finish this if I want people to actually consider hiring me for freelancing work:

Will I finish it in time? Only time will tell. I still have yet to find out if I can animate an entire fight scene frame-by-frame in just three days.

The next episode of The Sandwich Shop Ninja has had some setbacks due to life getting in the way, but progress is being made. I'm currently working on a very complicated scene involving a pseudo-3D camera effect done entirely in Flash. This may see a November release if things go well. I'll upload an Alpha by the end of October if I'm not done with the core animation by then.

For now, I have a t-shirt survey going on at my website to help me find out what kind of interest there is for TSSN-themed merchandising. Don't worry, I do not plan to make significant portions of my animations into advertising. If anything, it will be a still pic at the end of the animation. If I do sell shirts. That survey is here:
The "Ninja Skills" T-Shirt Survey

In other news, I got accepted to BYU where this January 2008 I will be starting the pre-major courses for my degree in computer animation!

And here is a background showing the quality of work I am putting into this next animation:

Finally, I can show off my Bytesize movie now! It's only been sitting on my hard drive for what, four or five months? I'm actually surprised with how few there actually are.

I'm currently working on the next episode of The Sandwich Shop Ninja, and I'll probably add an Alpha when it gets closer to completion. Until then, the updates will be found on my website.