Despite its name, the JUNKYARD is a field of progress displaying exercises and learning experiences. This is the kind of behind-the-Stage stuff you don't usually see.

Follow my Flash 4/5 rebirth and amuse yourself with what I put together to either figure out new techniques, or, at times, to amuse myself!

YEAR JUMP: 2001- 2002 - 2003 - 2004 - 200V - 2006 - 2007

2001

Mariko! [10-2001]
Mariko Tokiwa (a beloved character I've been nurturing to growth since spring 2001) marks my return to Flash! Here is where I experimented with Trace Bitmap, Motion Tween, and sound implementation. CastleVania just had to be thrown in. One verbose description for this read:

NYDemo [10-14-2001]
Practicing a crossfade and more bitmap tracing.

Gaibon Transformation [10-18-2001]
The things you consider while scrubbing your scalp... Would it be possible to transform (Super CastleVania IV, CastleVania Symphony of the Night)'s Gaibon into the Rondo-remixed "Dracula's Ghost" form, thus proving my theories on G's design roots for all-time?

This was my first attempt. I originally used the trace bitmap technique for the sprites, and even attempted Shape Tween, rather than simply using alpha percentages. As you'll see, this test would be eventually turned into a glorified demo skit.

Richter's A WUSS! [10-18-2001]
Upping the ante on the previous, I give it context. Richter Belmont is the most widely used character in CastleVania Flash movies, and to ruin his rep I make him chicken out against the growing gargoyle.

Elysion Slideshow [10-18-2001]
Still figuring stuff out... I tried to make a slideshow of scenes from my favorite H-game, Elysion ~Eternal Sanctuary~. I remember having a difficult time with the horizontal scaling... Note the sudden jumps during the maid's closeup and the return of the first slide.

Osamabase [10-27-2001]
Vic Viper's BBHood vs Bin Laden movie/game inspired me to the max. As I result, I planned an awesome AYB/9|11 tribuparody in which characters from my favorite shooters go after All Osama's Base for revenge. I hardly got far, but it's okay.

Those who didn't make it here made it in ParoVadius.

The Skeleton of Ukyo Tachibana [11-2001]
In one of my all-time FAVORITE games, Samurai Spirits, Ukyo Tachibana is a sickly samurai whose infamous attack involves tossing an apple into the air and slicing it dozens of times before it hits the ground.

Suffice it to say SNK's game had been extremely influential on my artwork at the time, and in this case, the Skull Knight from CastleVania III aims to do Ukyo and make an example of CVIII's hero, Trevor Belmont. The bait in this instance is a food item. VICTOLY!

To give the Skull Knight the shakes, I split his sprites into 3 sections. Motion Guide practice here, too. Sound effects from CVIII and Samurai Spirits IV.

2002

Mariko's Hair test [1-13-2002]
It was around 5AM when I decided to try this animation test of Mariko's windblown hair. Within the spree of watching great, inspiring animation, I had just finished seeing Anastasia.

Grass [1-13-2002]
...and according to File->Properties, I attempted to make field of grass one hour after Mari's doo.

Eric Roman walk test for CVOnline [1-18-2002]
An online CastleVania game? It's being done, and you'd better believe that some of CV fandom's webheads are getting in on it in sprite form.

I was putting together a sprite set of myself for a hidden area of the game, and to test the sprite's walk cycle, I imported the frames into Flash and trace-bitmapped them, rather than wasting time generating an animated GIF. As this is an older sequence of the walk, it appears a bit abnormal. It would be fixed later.

Eric Roman whipping animation [1-27-2002]
I wanted to test a near-complete whipping sequence for my pixellated personna. Also included are three voices I performed for my character, CVIII sound effects, and a target; any target would do. Maybe I should've pointed myself at the pansy behind me...

WTC [3-13-2002]
Experimenting with multi-planar scrolling (a.k.a. seperate motion tween speeds) with the dead buildings. The changing sky gives this animation a sense of time-lapse.

Snow Demo [3-14-2002]
I must have been thinking of Donkey Kong Country when I was creating this attempt at snowy animation. In the second scene I attempted to give the illusion of looking at the falling snow from above. Putting a sidewalk or other floor surface would help pull it off more.

ParoVania [4-23-2002]
A CastleVania fan known as Master Librarian posted a scrolling mountains GIF on a CV message board, another named Anapan restyled a flying Slogra I had made years ago, and I decided to put them both to use. As a shooting game mockup. This little joke eventually became a big joke...

Slogra's hadooken (button test) [4-27-2002]
On the way to finishing up the Gaibon Transformation to make it more palatable, I experimented with buttons. The animation of CV's Slogra performing a hadoken is pretty irrelevant. I just wanted to see the kinds of poses I could make with the Slogra parts Anapan ripped out of the Saturn game.

Bloody Trevor [1-12-2002, 5-8-2002]
A very hastily done demo, put together in about 12 minutes to see if I could make this guy dodge daggers.

Blow up Sloggy! [5-15-2002]
I think I originally worked on this silly skit late in 2001. I finally understood the button-making process on the way to ParoVadius, so I made the everlooping skit slightly more interactive. Someone suggested a full version in which you choose from a number of weapons to put Slog away with.

Richter's a Wuss, and Gaibon is NOT gay [5-17-2002]
It's the Ultimate Edition of the Gaibon Transformation demo. It was fixed up for submission to Texas Mafia and given a result to further besmirch everyone's favorite Flash movie Belmont.

Richter Crashes [5-19-2002]
An absolutely kickass demonstration of Richter's hyper combo for the extinct Konami vs Capcom project. Razoric wound up using a variation of this in his Final Fantasy Trilogy and credited me for "timing".

Konami vs Capcom test 1 [5-21-2002]
Within the work period of ParoVadius, inspiration came to me for a Flash remake of a comic submitted to my CVIII site. Konami vs Capcom would pit icons of the two top-notch game companies against each other. This sprite animation test runs at 30FPS.

Gamma [5-22-2002]
I began to build the last master of Mega Man 3 in 3DStudio Max. I had gotten only as far as the completed head and an arm before I put KvsC on the dusty shelf. In this test, KvsC's final challenge abuses Simon, MM3 style! I was also testing the Swift3D plugin.

Kumulo & Nimbler [5-24-2002]
I intended to use both sprites and vectors for Konami vs Capcom. Here I was tracing Kumulo and Nimbler from CastleVania II: Belmont's Revenge. They would partake in Soleiyu Belmont's "Cirque d'Soleil" 90something hit attack, stabbing the movie's main character multiple times from both sides.

SotN Bar [5-25-2002]
After much practice with masks, I perfected this CastleVania: Symphony of the Night-style dialogue bar which I'd use to improve the authenticity of ParoVadius' look.

Gaibon's Death [6-10-2002]
A dynamic death sequence for Gaibon, in which you see his flesh burning away, followed by his bones.

Slogaibon Animation Testing [6-16-2002]
CastleVania Dungeon forumates endured preview after preview of ParoVadius up to the last weeks, and they saw the stiff-winged Slogaibon (on the right) flap every time. Before ParoVadius' release, I actually went back and added several of Gaibon's flapping sprites for a more natural look.

Galamoth Animation Testing [c. 6-16-2002]
Animation test of a most tedious/diffcult to animate creature! Galamoth, the largest master in CastleVania: Symphony of the Night, is composed of over 30 seperate pieces! My bud Anapanman (WHO CAN!) ripped the bits and colored them, while I gave them life.

An early scene in ParoVadius involves a heated chase between Galamoth and Slogaibon. Since the former never did much running in his game, I had to originate the animation on my own, using myself as a model.

In retrospect, Galamoth's arms should've been thrown back more.

Bone Dragon King segment animation [6-19-2002]
An attempt to give life and character to the fossil CVIII master, the Bone Dragon King.

Destruct of the STAC Ship Test [8-22-2002]
The point of this glorified junkbit, testing a dynamic destruction of the ParoVadius villain's headquarters, eventually made its way into After ParoVadius over two years later.

Mariko Blinks [9-16-2002]
Trying the Wacom after a long spell of not, this is a basic character blink featuring Mariko.

Shin ParoVania: Richter Uppercut Test [c. 9-21-2002]
In Shin ParoVania, Richter Belmont tries to defend the citizens of KonamiWorld City by using his Whip Uppercut move to smash incoming rocks from the recently broken Moon. This scene practices that sequence.

As the story goes, Richter eventually uppercuts his way into space (since, in his game, you could use this move in midair and reach new heights)!

FREAKIN' IT!!! [10-4-2002]
Mazinger Z & friends jam to Change of Life, from the H-game Majyo no Ocha Kai. SEGA!

Spinning Weapon [10-7-2002]
Just trying that beloved "echo" effect so prominent in Flash movies attempting to be The Matrix, using a CVIII weapon as part of the medium. The Banshee Boomerang sprite is flawed; the transparent pixels other layers are peeking behind should actually be filled with black.

3DIsh [11-5-2002]
Using skewing and scaling, a slight sense of depth is presented with otherwise flat images. I was also testing a theory on the faux 3D door opening presented by CV:SotN. The realism of the door's opening and closing may merely be a matter of scaling 2 graphics; the edge and the face.

Unless Konami says otherwise, I learned I'm right.

Practice [11-12-2002]
I wanted to try fleshing out a rough animation of an enemy character getting the crap slashed out of him. I traced over most of the original (white) frames using lines instead of fills, but I didn't get far enough.

Jump Up [12-17-2002]
I helped my friend Bert refine the jumping animation for the biomechanoid toy in his 3D animation, "A Little Carnage".

The creature's original leap didn't have much more to it than its appendages slowly setting up for its landing. I began to demonstrate how it could still menace while still flying through the air.

In this animation, a cheap reproduction of his star leaps up and taunts in midair just before dropping. Since I had free time in the computer lab that night, I decided to round it out into a pretty potent frame-by-frame confrontation. I love how the baddie burns out in the end.

2003

F-Nothing [c.2-9-2003]
An attempt at creating the scene of a high-speed race course with 3dsMAX and the Swift plugin.

Of course, with the lack of track markers and scenery, you can't really tell you're moving much at all...

Slog sees you... [3-11-2003]
In this frameframe practice with the Wacom tab, Super CastleVania IV's Slogra notices you, gets back to his thoughts, notices you again, and reconsiders.

Slogaibon [3-11-2003]
ParoVadius' Slogaibon jabs forth his beak. More frameframe practicando, as you can see; indeed, it was a good night.

Slogra stabs [3-12?-2003]
In CastleVania: Symphony of the Night, Slogra attempts to stab you with his beak, though without the slidey maneuver as in his Super CastleVania IV debut. Remarkably, the sound effects that were eventually dropped in (Slogra's exclamation and beak-stab) worked perfectly.
This phenomenon is called luck.

Grave [3-17-2003]
Poor Lain. She is dead.

Olrox [4-19-2003]
"Particle effect" attempt. I wanted to see if I could give the sense of a succession of fireballs. For the flamethrower, I eventually borrowed the reptilian form of Count Olrox from CastleVania: Symphony of the Night. Before I realized how bloody easy the Ink Bottle tool could give an outline to a fill, I had been experimenting with the Modify->Shape->Soften Fill Edges option in Flash. Total working time, about 2 hours, 31 minutes; the last 55 spent on setting up the first frame (faux preloader). A Mirage from Silhouette Mirage amuses you as the 150k load, Purupuru Magic clips giving her a voice. Background music (vocals reduced) from Super CastleVania IV.

Slogaibon Signature [4-30-2003]
I had some free time in the middle of my SoftImage project, so I decided to make this signature of Slogaibon, which I actually never used...

Hmm...on the monitor I designed this with, the dark red gradients you can see actually appeared black.

BONEZ977 [5-31-2003]
Born and mostly nurtured between well-deserved SoftImage3D breaks in April 2003, this is an attempt at simulating forward and inverse kinematics (a.k.a. realistic movement) through a combination of Keyframes and Motion Tweens; bone systems in Flash were still several years away. Had the project's deadline allowed, this bone system would've marched off, chicken-style.

SH@DY [c. 6-3-2003]
I taught a friend of mine at work how use Flash. It was actually version 4, so I was really out of my element, but we managed.

Joe Coochie THE MOVIE [c. 6-3-2003]
Killing time later that day, I had recently captured the perfect hand sprites for Red Falcon for use in NEMESIS, so I played with them. Unfortunately, Flash 4 doesn't know what PNG transparency is, so it rendered the sprites out with a fabulous white box. This is a Flash 5 export. The title character is a co-worker who'd be leaving soon.

OWN3D Series: CastleVania [7-5-2003]
Simply expressing an opinion of the ROCK HARD STUD you play as in that PlayStation 2 CastleVania game...

OWN3D Series: 2 Quarters [7-5-2003]
...as well as that "talented" individual, Two Quarters. These were booted off Newgrounds with great immediacy. They were put up there as a fun gag, anyway.

Jeans [8-6-2003]
I was working on a self portrait until a break, and when I came back, I had found that m'man Jeff had screwed with it. :] The first frame you see was actually my attempt at duplicating the logo from G's Magazine, a Japanese mag dedicated to cute girl characters in PC games.

Booboo [8-6-2003]
You know those fireballs that leap out at you in the early Mario games? They're called "Podoboo", which must be Japanese for something. In any event, I put this demo together to show Randy Solem a way he could animate the Podoboos in his opus, Rise of the Mushroom Kingdom. I...don't think he followed it.

SNAPPLE THE MOVIE [8-10-2003]
The impromptu ICVD dance video featuring notable Dungeonites of the moment. But enough talk! Shut up and JAM.

Mario Somethingelse [8-19-2003]
At work, I was working on this drawing with Mariko, then retreated to my 20 (30) minute break. When I came back, Frash novice Heff had done something to it...

Rorikon [9-9-2003]
A squiggle-haired girl walks by a bookcase and knocks it over by mistake. But really, the point of this time-killing junkbit is the translucent sunlight pouring in from above... Not sure why the bookcase in question is assigned a Button behavior; my mouse must've slipped.

Breather [9-11-2003]
I created a sprite of myself in IconEdit, Trace-Bitmapped it in Flash, then animated the seperate parts.

HRRRM [9-18-2003]
Parts animation featuring terrible cellphone pictures of Heff and I. It'll make sense once you turn on your favorite hiphop tune.

Winger [9-26-2003]
The things we do to kill time... In Contra III: The Alien Wars, Red Falcon's cohort, the Vicious Slave Hawk, has a 2-frame wing flapping sequence, which is excusable in 1992. This time around I wanted to see if I could manipulate the wings in such a way as to give the appearance that formerly stiff VSH is putting effort into its flying.

Once Upon a Time in New Mexico [10-4-2003]
More practicing of Break Apart. Once Upon a Time in Mexico was a damncool movie which reminded me that Johnny Depp is THE MAN. This short bit spoofs the movie and refers to how difficult it is to kick out up to 15 computer users whom, at closing time, had suddenly become deaf.

BUNNY [10-7-2003]
I thought it'd be funny if this fully-armed, fully-boobed bunny from DiGiCharat were to sing "Closure" by Chevelle. Ah, is lipsynch such a pain! How does Ashlee do it so well...? ZOMBABS ROFR!!!

Kill Liu Trial Run [10-9-2003]
I dislike the overrated Lucy Liu even more for the fact that she was cast as the (half) Japanese villainess in Kill Bill. I wanted to design a Flash game in which you blow her out of the sky, but I was only able to figure out some of the animation.

Demonstr8 [10-22-2003]
A friend had to animate the words of a poem for a school assignment, but didn't know Thing One about Flash, so I demonstrated a few basics.

FHDWOU [10-22-2003]
Soon after that, I was challenged to come up with an animation in under 10 minutes. This was the result. Accidentally, the victim Symbol's Behavior had been set as Graphic rather than Movie Clip, so it's bobbing movement is missing.

Choporz [10-27-2003]
Carcarodontosaurus has some really nice choppers.

2004

Dinobird [3-24-2004]
A lone dinobirdie (Slogaibon?) from the unfinished Serial Experiments RED DOT flies peacefully above a neverending ocean of clouds.

Or an ice field, take your pick. I love this kind of parallax scrolling.

Sword [4-14-2004]
Animation of a slashing sword.

Naked Pigs [5-4-2004]
Fairy Pure flies with naked Piggies, based on a hilarious and random story. I like the wing treatments.

Gunblastar [6-1-2004]
I confront the master of the Subduction Zone, many miles below Earth's crust. That is...I would, had I drawn more sprites of myself. The background image is the same as the foreground; a default Microsoft background or some such defaultness.

BRIT [6-5-2004]
Poppa was a Stick Figure...Momma wasn't. Torn between two existences, Brit exacts revenge on those mocking his special attribute with his "Swift"-ly built 3DSMAX weapon. Originally a Flash illustration, the largest amount of work on this animated drawing involved isolating, recentering, layer arrangement, and repositioning for each of his dozen parts. Animating was easiest.

Gunblastar [10-21-2004]
Believe it or not, Flash 5's default "smack" and "plastic" sounds did well in providing this quickly-sketched gunner with a soundtrack; I work with what I can get.

DOISH [11-1-2004]
Pure loves to run in the desert for adventures at 30 frames per second.

BANNY PWR [12-9-2004]
More timekilling with the After ParoVadius FLA. Akane generates Options.

200V

Lypuston [1-9-200V]
Someone on a CastleVania forum posted keyframes of a werewolf's attack moves, and they looked just too good not to use.

Digimon VS Pokemon [4-5-200V]
Find out how I answer this eternal question in another hand-drawn short I put together in a few hours.

For a long time afterward, I've had it in mind to finish the coloring I started, and on April 7th and 8th, 2007, I finally got around to it. Digimon VS Pokemon in COLOR!

SVB [6-11-200V]
Testing camera control on an area larger than the 640x480 stage. This is the kind of thing I'd do for something like Konami vs Capcom.

2006

King Ceaser [2-4-2006]
The place is Berkeley, the time is the evening, and the actions, feeling good while chilling out in my room after a walk about town. Head Automatica rocks in my Digital Recorder, and I recall a charming animated GIF that might be able to groove along with the present jam. Believe it or not, this was an actual challenge. My mouse and Wacom tablet were still a few thousand miles away at the time, and a touchpad is no way to create and move keyframes. Nevertheless, I was able to get as far as the zoom-out before adding some more touches to it much later in the year.

Touchpad Trial #1 [2-24-2006]
Apparently, my gear wasn't showing up any time soon, so I decided to try putting together a piece of animation without it. In this incomplete scene which was somewhat grueling to produce, CastleVania III's Grant DaNasty is about to face off with Skull Knight. At that point in the process, however, my Wacom tablet did finally arrive, and this trial was immediately ejected into space.

Spiral Question [2-27-2006]
An attempt to create a vortex with varied speeds of rotation. It might be hard to see, since the whole thing was created in the darkness of the early hours with no monitor brightness.

Beating Circles Baby [4-23-2006]
In a stunning trailer video for a Korean MMORPG named Yogurting, a girl periodically freaks it front of a vibrant orgy of Illustrator shapes and complicated animation statistics. I was like, "Huh, I can do that in Frash." So I do. Here I attempt to emulate beating circle elements that appear as one of the trazillions of backgrounds that occur during the video. Perhaps I should incorporate something like this into that fruit animation I'm always on and off with.

Simple Character Animation [4-26-2006]
Very simple character animation test of a bat chicky. This took, according to the FLA data, an hour and eight minutes (time I got up and ordered an Iced Tea included). It came out pretty well, considering I didn't concentrate on meticulous drawing. A nice Time Trial.

HackoVadius [5-11-2006]
In early December of 2002, I got a hold of a spaceship shooting game tutorial. Having recently returned to New York and my Flash 5 for Dummies book, I was reinspired in all things Frash 5. I was also inspired to take a good, hard look at this tutorial and the logic of its coding. Thus, I hacked it into this...expression of Gaibon's hatred of Firebrand?! I never figured out exactly why Firebrand's death sequence is as lethal as his life sequence. Audio captured by Protogem from Akumajo Dracula X: Chi no Rondo. Instructions follow.

Pushups [5-15-2006]
Getting reacquainted with my DVDs after my return to New York from California, I figured I'd watch the episode of Sailor Moon in which the evil stud Nephrite dresses similar to how Richter Belmont will in CastleVania: Symphony of the Night about five years later. At the end of the episode, endlessly adorable Naru Osaka, whom had (as per usual) been victimized by the enemy, comes to and gets up off the floor. For some reason, thoughts of Mario Paint came to mind. Anyone familiar with that 'program' will know exactly where I'm coming from with this looper. Link somewhat related.

FunkFrank [10-6-2006]
Avoid prolonged watching of this looper. As with all things displayed by monitors or televisions, prolonged viewing of rapidly flashing objects may induce seizure. In honor of The Monster's new ability to launch missiles from his elbows at his little foes in the upcoming CastleVania: Portrait of Ruin, I made this looper of him celebrating. I initially wanted the mash up this teranoid track with the equipment theme from Mega Man II, but there was no way of meshing the two, far as I knew.

2007

BEFORE THUNDER STRIKES [6-14-2007]
During a creative blackout (the result of a 48-hour work week), I randomly asked Rapplefee, the ParoVadius junkie, if he'd like to collaborate on a quickie animation. He agreed, and suggested it feature a lightning bolt, a three-legged fox, and Red Hot Chili Peppers, all of which he provided. So I made this animation about a lightning bolt, a three-legged fox, and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Larry Rocks [7-16-2007]
Got (the slightly disappointing) The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 DVD box set that week. Once I saw, for the first time in sixteen years, this scene of "Cheatsie" Koopa grooving to his walkman, I knew something just had to happen. Rock on.