Smiling Friends - did u smile

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did u smile

  • yes

    Votes: 1,793 93.3%
  • no

    Votes: 218 11.3%

  • Total voters
    1,922
I wasn't too huge on the last episode but the halloween ond made up for it and then some. Mr Boss putting the witch in a neck crank at the end was one of the funniest bits in the whole show.
 
Solid halloween episode. Dare I say that the entire series so far has been solid with a bit of everything for everyone? By this time in Rick and Morty's lifespan it had already become gay. And we aren't there yet, delicious penises aside.
 
I wasn't sure where exactly to post this as there's both Smiling Friends and Oney/Sleepycabin-related content in it but I figured the Oney stuff was more significant. A couple weeks ago, several Newgrounds artists put together a zine and a fair bit of it is dedicated to mocking Chris and his general sphere of people.

Here's some choice cuts:
You can peruse the whole thing here: https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/pjorg/newgrounds-zeen-issue-001

Reading through this, it comes off as extremely bitter and angry that Chris and Zach are more well known than what the individuals involved with this were making under the thin veil of satire.
i have to address this because these are really fucking me off 1762397096318.png1762397247878.png
The attempt at gotcha-ing Pim's design in that it "doesnt make proper use of perspective and volume" just misunderstands character design. I mean, NeoNewgrounds people trying to tell those influenced by John K to work more on model is ridiculous in itself, but Pim literally has anatomically larger eyes. It's not a perspective thing, one of his eyes is just bigger than the other. In real life some people have hands or ears or feet that look bigger than the other noticeably even when further away and especially in cartoons this is commonly used. In fact the drawing the person makes literally looks exactly like something the Genie does in Aladdin where one of his eyes gets bigger and juts out to look at something. This is a very common trope. Cartoon characters can have weird anatomy that's internally consistent: Mickey Mouse and Sonic have a conjoined eye, many characters don't look at eachother directly and instead face three quarters to the side because that's where their model is and in animation language characters will do things like pick up items with two fingers instead of a full fist so the pose is readable. the only cheating is that charlie's eyes are always on one end and pim's larger eye is always behind him instead of picking for example the left eye and having when he switches to his left side it becomes closer to the camera, but that's an incredibly common trick in cartoons and especially sprites

This also just misunderstands what the design of Pim is trying to convey about his character: the bigger eye is on the outside of his head so his silhouette is immediately readable as two balls and a string at the top, if you made his closer eye the bigger one you wouldn't be able to read his silhouette as well, and having the big eye be the one that's closest to the edge of the head means you can read eye and mouth expressions without needing to pay attention to the back half of his head, where typically other characters WONT be behind him. this also conveys to the audience that the character is a wide eyed idealist, but without making the character so bug-eyed he stops being cute. it also conveys that the character is not particularly young, as we often associate massive eyes with childish characters. you make the larger eye closer and those kinds of expressions tend to bring to mind madness or shiftiness

It's amazing for someone to try to rulesfag Zach and Michael, who like it or lump it are experts at understanding what animation can be used to deliver a joke, by literally not understanding why a character looks the way he does and instead just thinking they "drew bad because they're lazy". hell the toons these guys worked on employ similar techniques and have HORRIBLE use of perspective:
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why is this woman's rightward cheek jutting out? it's further away after all. why are her eyes and nose placed on her right cheek? To make the character's expressions readable doofus!

this is the same thing with the brian and charlie page, that having a specific pose is what makes family guy "badly animated" - which isnt even true anymore there's a noticeable bump in the animation, but with smiling friends i notice every episode a new pose and perspective having to be drawn for the characters and how zach and michael talk about putting all that into a database so they have reference for what all these poses should look like for the future. you just see a lot more unique drawings in smiling friends than in family guy. to me this starts to come off as people who got into newgrounds via zach and chris who now are like "dude I thought you guys were different man!" and taking all their criticisms of family guy and such as gospel. It's this weird oedipus complex

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I mean, as said before: comparing smiling friends to family guy and then literally doing the family guy cutaway with quagmire killing the simpsons

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Like the criticism of weird cartoon character designs and furrybait is so hypocritical coming from the ratbasterds and bridge kids people. It's so stupid, but I like again that their idea of OG Newgrounds is 2007 (before all of the people here started the site) but also that it was better because they gave genuine critique to a bouncy ball animation, unlike now where they glaze the furry bait... but like, of course the fully drawn, fully animated, fully colored cartoon would get MORE praise. Is the idea that objectively superior things are unworthy of praise because bad media got critiqued almost 20 years ago?

And i did some looking and literally none of the people who worked on this comic had joined the site prior to 2008 - in fact, half of them joined 2012, 2020 and as recently as 2023!! Say what you will about Zach and Oney "abandoning Newgrounds", they can reference obscure shit they were watching pre-9/11. These guys are all zoomers and millennials who watched the Awesome series on youtube and then found the site through there. Or, god forbid, from fucking Animated James. These are people who copied Zach, Ego and Chris' work and are now acting like their heroes betrayed them. These aren't OG Newgrounders, they're Trannygrounds. Notice the zero negative mentions of JohnnyUtah's BLM cartoon or FNF making 2 million on kickstarter for a game that still isn't finished? No, because they're NeoNewgrounds who want to be seen as the slayers of the sellouts. They think they're Alan Moore calling Chris Claremont a hack

This is completely evident by how many times Smiling Friends and LS Mark are referenced. These things aren't Newgrounds, the people making this claim they aren't Newgrounds, but they know and care more about these things and are in circles where they're referenced more often than anything Newgrounds so this becomes the Smiling Friends magazine. Hence they don't even know FNF is more popular than Smiling Friends, both offsite and on the site, because they don't really go on Newgrounds they watch it all on youtube and on youtube for zoomers and millennials that's what you're gonna get recommended
crossposting from the oneyplays thread
 
I can relate with Pim, not gonna lie
Uh huh
I wasn't too huge on the last episode but the halloween ond made up for it and then some. Mr Boss putting the witch in a neck crank at the end was one of the funniest bits in the whole show.
The Boss is the most consistent character. Mark M is great and needs more exposure. The chokehold and him being ready to visit violence on a those who would see his employees harmed is heart warming.
 
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Massively late to the party, but just caught up with season 3 so far.

Curse of the Green Halloween Witch > Le Voyage Incroyable de Monsiuer Grenouille > Silly Samuel > Mole Man.
 
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