At the beginning of the year, I made a blog post

This post was supposed to be a motivator for me, a way to get me to keep using Newgrounds. So I laid out what I was planning on doing this year, and proceeded to do none of it LMAO. So if I didn't make that shooter game, draw way more than last year, make that comic, or voice act more for free, What did I do? Audio Collabs! This post will be dedicated to looking back at the collabs I hosted, along with other notable times involving collabs on Newgrounds.

NG Audio Portal 20th Anniversary Collab

I saw the banner on Newgrounds frontpage and joined the associated discord on February 1st, I thought it would be a good time! I partnered up with lilyyan, I did the vocals while she did the backing track and submitted it to ThatJohnnyGuy. I didn't know it at the time but joining this collab would help me not only gain followers, but gain friends, confidence, and a new passion for hosting collabs on Newgrounds.

The Intergalactic Radio Collab

Shortly after the 20th anniversary collab went up, Johnny converted the discord into an audio collab server where anyone could have a platform to host their own collab. That got me thinking: What could be a fun collab theme to get a bunch of people to goof off and have fun? Answer: Aliens. I put an elevator pitch into the server and it got some decent engagement, enough to give me the confidence to get to organizing it. Originally I planned for the set up to be a group of fictional Newgrounds Scientists trying to find signs of alien life through radio frequencies, leading them to find the Intergalactic Radio Station. The plan was for it to end with the machines used to capture this frequency exploding, ending in static. I was pretty dead set on this being the story, until Johnny suggested it be hosted by two alien hosts in a spaceship and I was like "Hey, that's not a bad idea". So I wrote up a script for two alien hosts, had Johnny voice the co-host, put in the script that the alien's names would be improvised and then Kelvar and Floorgan were born.

While waiting for the deadline and putting together the submissions I was already given, I thought back to a crazy idea me and MH4 thought of: What if the collab debuted on the NG Radio? It would make sense thematically, only question is if we could make it happen. So I contacted Tom Fulp, "he made Newgrounds surely he controls the radio" I thought to myself, I was wrong I had to talk to Shal. So I messaged Shal on Newgrounds, waited a bit, remembered I'm in the NGP Discord and just dm'ed the same thing on Discord. We got to talking and the date was set: April 28th at 12pm EST, perfect! I sent him the final mix of the collab two days before the 28th and anxiously waited until that faithful day, The first collab to debut on radio! A niche landmark, but one none the less. But the collab didn't go up on April 28th, Tom put up a frontpage banner but no collab, uh oh! Turns out the automated debut Shal set up just didn't work randomly, so we set up a new date: May 7th at 12pm, the day after Pico Day.

Side Note: Speaking of Pico Day, I organized a collab for Pico Day: The Newgrounds Era Collab. It was fun, got two submissions for it because I did a poor job explaining what the theme was, and launched it.

Anyway, back to what I was saying:

May 7th came around, I was messaging Shal about the collab, double checking to make sure this was the first collab debuting on radio (It was). Then 12pm rolled by and I heard the all too familiar static followed by my gravely voice, it worked! I let out a sign of relief, then muted my computer, I was happy it was up I'd just heard it too many times while editing I was sick of it LMAO. Shal got it to loop a couple times to let more people hear it live, I posted it to the audio portal, and Shal sent me a discord message I should really get around to framing.

It was my first organized collab (Ng eras was my first released) and I think it went pretty well!

Pass the Mic Collab

Before I was finished with The Intergalactic Radio Collab, I was thinking about my next collab to host. I was putting in ideas in the server before, I just didn't know what I wanted to do next. That was, until I was listening to my playlist while driving and Doomsday by MF Doom came on. It just kinda clicked for me, I wanted to do a Hiphop collab and when Doom said "Pass the Mic like Pass the Peas like they used to say", I already knew what the name of it would be. One thing I was iffy about, I wanted this to be in the server but I also wanted it to be a mature collab. I didn't want the submissions sounding like they belong on 2K, I wanted it uncensored and M-rated. So I asked Johnny "Is it ok to host a M rated collab?" That became a lengthy formal discussion which created the Mature Collab Center part of the server, which led me to organizing Pass the Mic 5 days after Intergalactic Radio went live. At first, engagement was slow, so slow in fact that I pushed back the deadline for the collab. You see at the time, I was participating in DJ Chidow's Jack the Box collab and its deadline being far out helped me realize that my original deadline was too soon. After a bit of not many people engaging, I put out a Blog Post promoting it. Thankfully Tom saw the post and put Pass the Mic on the calendar, perfect! So I waited for the tracks to come in, and they were straight head bangers, except Aalasteirs, it made me laugh so hard when I first heard it (he literally sent it to me a day after I started Pass the Mic, what a legend). When I got everything edited together, I sent it over to Shal to have it debut on radio, and had a really fun time chatting with the contributors while listening to the collab.

Pass the Mic sits at my highest rated collab and it deserves it, I sometimes find myself humming the songs put on there. I'm very happy with the track list and how it all came out!

Shrieks and Screams

Pass the Mic debuted August 23th, so naturally I was thinking about what collab to do next. In the background, I had a project cooking up for the collab server that was put on the back burner because my schedule was getting kinda hectic. My special project is VERY involved so I needed a nice, simple collab to have some fun with. It was nearing September at the time and what's after that? Halloween, perfect, I could host a goofy little audio collab with silly songs and play a silly host to connect everything together. On August 27th, I made a post in the server about my idea and got 9 people reacting positively to it. So I made a thread in the server to host the rules and made a blog post advertising the collab two days later. The very same day, Tom put the collab on the calendar and a small swarm of people came to my post to join the collab. I was excited! This silly little collab was getting a lot of positive attention, even brought Thetageist to the server who I've seen everywhere on NG. I soon got my own channel after enough people showed support and had some fun talking to people and seeing them plan out their parts for the collab. We got a bombshell on September 13th, Thetageist told the chat that TeffyD got TOMAR to be apart of a submission, I. Was. Hyped! Unfortunately, 5 days later, another bombshell hit the server and not a good one.

September 18th 2023

I've mentioned ThatJohnnyGuy throughout this retrospective, that's because he was the admin of the server I was in to make all of these collabs a reality. He and I also collaborated at times, I can't say I knew the guy personally but when I woke up that day, I knew way more than I wanted to. I'll keep this brief since I want this post to be Rated E, just know that he was exposed for being a certain "discord stereotype", it's funnier when phrased like that but man that morning was a gut punch. He went offline that morning after vaguely apologizing without saying what he did, then he began the process of transferring ownership to Ahri (An mod of the server). Later in the morning, Ahri told the server that they need a new admin and more mods. So I applied as admin and ended up getting it 2 days later, along with Tritnew and Ahri herself, forming a nice little admin team. I remember there were talks about trashing the server and starting fresh, but that was short lived. That was an odd couple of days to say the least, but let's get back on track.

Shrieks and Screams Continued

I was in "Commander Mode" going back into hosting, I was admin now and weird day one discord accounts were dropping in to try and clear Johnny's name. "Commander Mode" is when I get weirdly focused on getting everything on track and under control, don't know if an ADHD thing, Anxiety thing, what have you, it happens and I give it a silly nickname. The next day I remember seeing Uriel talking to Monika about collabing together, Monika only took commissions (Her family wanted her too) and I offered to pay on behave of Uriel. I'm not really one to offer to pay, funds are tight as is, but I was in a mindset of "everybody getting on this" that I paid anyways (in the form of a steam game). The road leading up to the deadline was fairly smooth after that, the chat was filled with works in progress and Tomar memes, it was good vibes. I had little moments of helping people out, tagging different roles or calling on specific people to collab with others, it was fun and relaxed. When the deadline passed by and I got a few of the late submissions, I was blown away by the amazing tracks that were submitted, nothing but Home Runs. I loved it, you just know I had to bug Shal about it, THIS NEEDS TO BE ON THE RADIO! The date was set October 20th 3pm EST, I originally wanted this to be on Halloween night but decided against it because A) I didn't want the contributors to wait 10 days and B) I didn't want people to discover these spooky bangers AFTER Halloween, I wanted them to do what JoeSketch did

This was my longest collab to date, my most viewed collab to date, and the most amount of contributors I've had on a collab. I was so glad everyone had a good time, I even started seeing contributors post their parts and get front-paged, it was amazing!

What's Next?

We've reached the end of remembering the past, what's up with that future? Well I'm in the process of putting together that secret project I told you about, it's a murder mystery audio drama with a script, voice actors, and an original OST. It's coming a lot nicely, I am nervous about it but that's to be expected because it's a first for me, being a director that is. Other than that, I'm running the server, I'm drawing occasionally, and I'm doing my best to work on some games! I can see my focus in the future being on the NGAP Collab Center Discord and making it the best it could be, also I'm not the only one making collabs on there:

I suggest you all check them out! Give them a listen and support!

That's about enough outta me, crazy to see how far I've come from the beginning of the year! Like to Thank everyone reading, everyone whose contributed, everyone I followed, The NGAP Collab Center Server, Tom Fulp, Shal, Ahri, MH4, DJ Chidow, Tritnew, and everyone else, y'all are the best!