It's been an emotional day for me, i've finally had to face that its looking very unlikely that i'll be able to come to the Pico Day office meet this year after all. Purely financial reasons, purely my fault. Last year i wasn't able to go due to visa reasons. i couldn't legally leave the UK, so this coupled with the fact that its the last office-based meet has been a hard blow to me. But i know most of the people that read this wont be able to make it to the office either, so i'm not going to wax sadness about it. instead i've just wanted to reflect shortly and share that I owe a whole lot to Newgrounds. its been an indisputably major part of my life, even if my actual site statistics/activity doesn't show it. From ng i've had an artistic outlet, source of entertainment, support, attention, critique and friendship. These things are much harder for me to come by in my local "real" life circles, and i'm grateful to ng for it. Virtually ALL my work and commissions have been via the generous Newgrounds community, and heck, its because of Newgrounds' willingness to reach out and gather fans in person that i met Harry Partridge- back at the NG booth Comic-con '09.
I'm sure i will meet the awesome staff here again at some point in the future if i really can't be at Pico day this year, but really i'm sad i'll miss out on seeing all the non-philly users.
i love being part of the NG community, and hopefully my page will reflect it and be more active for 2014Â
w/ <3
-Joyce
Ockeroid
Also sad I can't be there for the last one, but feels like it's part of the bigger thing that the NG community is more split up and moved on now.
Newgrounds has done so much to build up the internet animation and gaming community, and inspired so many people to start. And it's just sad it's all slowly moved away from the site and there's not that core thing to bring everyone together anymore.
So much amazing stuff came from Pico day and the meets. Shame they aren't still going :(
sucho
its silly, but selfishly, NG meets are like prom or class reunion for me. cheesy, but since i was homeschooled, newgrounds meets -primarily pico day- are one of the very very few social group outings i get to that are laced with formality, but still a fun atmosphere- and much more interesting + valuable people to hang with vs most graduating classes…..