As I stated in a previous News entry, Newgrounds Jam was a project I organized and headed up to create a collaborative project. The idea behind this project was to have different authors work with a shared theme, this would demonstrate the diversity of creativity found online and Newgrounds in particular.

The Project Title

As far as the name goes, the source of creativity would be coming from authors I found on Newgrounds (specifically the top entries on the Portal where animated Flash movies were featured), so "Newgrounds" appeared in the title.

The "Jam" part of the title has origins with an older usage of the word in connection to musicians who "jammed" together, utilizing shared elements of music to create a song. This impromptu method of creating music opened up ways to create music that they may not have readily experimented with alone or while composing in more rigid restrictions.

Hence the title "Newgrounds Jam".

And this musical influence is what also prompted me to decide on what the theme would be for the project: A single piece of music which would serve to be used in developing the design and animation of each segment as well as the only audio that would be played with each animated segment.

New for 2022

I've been composing some music again as of recent (with much better audio tools) and came across some old songs I composed back in Newgrounds Jam #1 days, so decided to start uploading some of them to the Newgrounds Audio Portal.

Then I came across an mp3 file of the original Newgrounds Jam song and thought this would be the perfect to start things off ...

Sadly, when I uploaded my song that I composed for the collab project I got "banned".

you r bannz for composing and uploading original music lol sux2BU

Audio Portal Issues

The automated "ban", its wording, and associated angry face (as funny as it may be) may need reevaluation for today's user.

In my case, I don't recall ever listening to or hearing of the song mentioned, "Flutzenburg", or even of the author of that song, "CHICKENBOX!", but I did a search on it and came up with a song by that exact title created by an author of the same name.

This song was apparently created/published after my Newgrounds Jam #1 composition. My song came before, so if there was a copyright infringement it could only reasonably mine that was infringed upon LOL.

I find most of this ordeal to be (mildly) amusing, but I also think it is quite a hassle to go through so much in order to resolve. Filling out an "appeal" and waiting days, all the meanwhile without any kind of response (even an automated response) is rather deterring.

Surely there's got to be a better way to handle all of this - other sites don't seem to need such drastic and deterring methods.

Final Thoughts

I've been wanting to be more active and help create content for this site again, but thinking about moving on to someplace like Soundcloud where I never have any of these unique upload issues found here.

I think it's in the best interest of @Tomfulp to look into these Audio Portal issues I stated above - And I'm not saying it needs an overhaul or to be anywhere as nice looking as other sites, but just a minor tweak or two could help out - as funny as it is to see a big yellow angry face, I think replacing it with Newgrounds icons and changing the language of being "banned" which carries heavier meanings in today's culture than early 2000's audiences could be a very simple change that could yield immensely positive user experience results.

Update:

After this blog post my song was cleared for publishing to the NG Audio Portal.

You can find the song here:

Was working with @piconjo to come up with a theme song for one of his characters.

I am happy with the results.

Hope to see it in a project soon<3

Hey @tomfulp the NG Wiki seems to be missing any mention of Newgrounds Jam while promoting the Time Trials series @luis and "some friends" produced. Newgrounds Jam debuted in 2003 whereas the earliest Time Trial was April 2004. I'm fairly certain the never-fully-realized NG Jam #2 in July 2003 that Luis was a part of was probably a very big part of the "idea" he had for making his own collab project.

From: https://www.newgrounds.com/wiki/about-newgrounds/history

In this "history" section of the NG Wiki detailing the history of collabs, none of my works that helped establish and shape the popularization of collaborations were mentioned at all.

Maybe you might have forgot these gems I created, organized, produced, and worked on as a contributor:

And then there was another series I created* - this series aimed to pay Newgrounds artists for their work:

* I did not upload the Newgrounds Versus movies with my main account and instead opted to utilize a "Newgrounds Versus" account to upload with, because the project wasn't for my own exposure - the goal of the series was to help get artists exposure as well as compensate them with a cash prize since there was no real monetary compensation at the time - an accomplishment I managed to do in an early age of internet where tools were not available to make such a process easy.

The amount of work and time invested into organizing and producing these projects was considerable; the goal I had was to help both compensate the artists while bringing more content to this site, so you can understand why I am dismayed to not even have a footnote in the history section... and the only movie of mine listed happens to be part of Luis' Time Trial series, a series which may never have been realized without his direct involvement with my Newgrounds Jam series.

Ideas don't come from nowhere.

My inspiration for Newgrounds Jam came from a classroom animation project I helped put together where we rotoscoped a video clip and we each animated around the rotoscoped image to create a flow of ideas set to original music. I thought that idea could lend itself to an online project, and Newgrounds was a meeting point of many talents so I reviewed many movies in the Portal and contacted the artists who created the movies inquiring if they'd like to be part of a collaborative project. The movies in Newgrounds Jam was the result of all of our works and a defining point in Newgrounds collab projects and "Roto-Jam" is the seed from which NG Jam sprang from to inspire Time Trial and many future collabs.

The Newgrounds Wiki may be missing a lot of pertinent history, so I thought I'd help fill in some holes with this post.

I got +42 followers after I came back for Piconjo Day.

I'm at 66 followers now.

Kind of funny I spent a few years here and made 12 movies and got 14 awards (daily features and review crew pick) but relatively unfollowed.

Ok, so Follower goal:

69

Gearing up for the next Piconjo Day: Europ3n0r Vacation!

Let's go!

Update:

We did it!

He may be dead, but his message lives on <3