Best of April 2023!

[TomFulp]

Thank you everyone who participated in Pico Day this weekend! We got so many out of this world entries and I swear the art somehow keeps reaching new heights each year, where we could have a whole Pico Day museum at this point.

A lot is happening this month so we have to keep moving. Your votes are in and the Best of April have been decided!

Top Five Movies ($100 each + $200 for best Original)

The top entry based on original material and winner of $300 total is Monkey Wrench. Congrats @Zeurel and team!

Sublo & Tangy Mustard is getting $200 total because the competition was fierce and @Aaron-Long deserves something extra, as well.

Top Five Games ($100 each + $200 for best Original)

The top game based on original material and winner of $300 total is Fruity Tower. Congrats @Prox276!

@FuturecopLGF has released his Monthly Game Review for April, with a list of faves!

Runner-Up Animation

6. 2 in the AM PM REANIMATED

7. Super Mario Land in 7 minutes ANIMATED

8. COOL TIMES: FUNNY GUY

9. ΘwΘ

10. Noisette café - Pepperman

11. Pizza Tower Shorts

12. Ollie & Scoops Episode 10: A Night at Claudia's

13. Gooseman Runs for Office

14. Cherries short

15. Mario’s Ugly

16. Kattwerp!

17. Mario Movie Post-Credit Scene Leak (FAKE)

18. Noisette café - Vigilante's visit

19. Attack on Butthead

20. Homestuck: The Most Internet Story EVER (Part 1) - LOVEWEB

21. 放課後PIDSER

22. INVADA

23. Sonic doesn't like Tails' face

24. DE_dust2: Hacker's Wrath Tribute

25. Community, but Sonic

26. Lucky Cola

27. CORY'S FRENCH DIP CHEESE MELTDOWN

28. Solace: The River

29. Artifacts

30. Reverend Octopus.

31. Lego Joker Tries to Make Everyone Go Gay

32. Satina Season 1 Sneak Peek - Meet the Horsemen!

33. Keeper of the Celestial Flame of Abernethy - Official Music Video

34. TRAIN

35. StarQuest Ep3

36. SLEEP MODE

37. I'M CHEESE WALLACE! (Wallace & Gromit Parody)

38. Newgrounds Dreamcast Collab

39. Klub Dmitry

40. Kevin's Mom

Runner-Up Games

6. TrashKitty

7. Gooby

8. Tidying Up

9. Sadmin Night

10. Madness Roulette FREE FULL GAME

11. Shinigami Run

12. A Date with Death Confessions

13. Genokids DEMO

14. Go, Go, Cupid!

15. Dashmo

16. It's Like Pong

17. Alister - Monster tamer

18. Lunar Worm

19. Super Plantoid

20. Cargo Truck Racer

21. The Whicher

22. Maerl Bay

23. Pixel Dash 2

24. CypherGrid

25. You Will Fall

26. Hank: Straightjacket

27. Clockify

28. Must Escape Dinosaur Land

29. Malice Boutique

30. Shadow Gauntlet

Voter of the Month

The voter of the month and winner of honorary Supporter status is @SockDotClip!

Featured Art and Audio are directly under this post!

[TomFulp]

Check out the Top Featured Art of April!

@CADAVER, a true artist to watch, made a sort of living diorama with HOT WIND BLOWS.

Speaking of dioramas, @AuroraPLZ grew a town on a tank.

@Schuschinus stacked an immensely dense metropolis in Calles Apiladas.

@Razpaz merged Pop Team Epic with Warhammer 40k in this animated pixel marvel.

@EthanDoesaThing added an entry to his SOUL-GEAR collection, inspired by Medabots.

@zattdott imagined a town terrified by a massive Snek.

VonGrimsworth is now @VonKreepula, with creepy new art!

@xkl-3 made their NG debut in April, sharing all sorts of cool mechanical things.

@PostmodernOuroboros has been around since last year but just started sharing art in April.

@deathink animated his classic Robot Day 2014 piece.

@sammytighe shared some great gaming fan art!

@Stradomyre created a poster promoting Axe to Grind, the latest Dead Estate update.

@Zals illustrated Wario with great style.

@jimmyknives returned with Strategy Break!

@SalsaClock gave us the dancing StrawberryClock we didn’t know we needed.

@omegachainoboy envisioned a Resident Evil 4 puzzle game.

@BoogWerks keeps making great mechs.

@SounDoG-2031 shared the haunting Moonlight’s Reverie.

@KajaG caught up in April, with lots of great art including this piece from Dashbored.

We love a good Samus piece and @Granfaloon didn’t disappoint.

@SketchToPen celebrated the anniversary of our Dankmen joke.

@jiansketch made fan art of @tofokyo’s OC from Kero Kero Groove!

Castle Crashers and Pizza Tower collide in @PRUPKET’s Artists at Work.

@donpeppi made a sequel to last year’s Shoot em’ Up!

Check out the Top Featured Audio of April!

@tsuyunoshi shared his feelings of infatuation with Spur of the Moment.

@Pulvite seeks to share a moment with others via song, despite feelings of being an outsider.

@Biddle3 made a short calm song called Sunset.

@vai5000 and CMTEN produced this hyperpop melody about flying too close to the sun.

@RedSkiesOfficial sang about drowning in his own thoughts.

@Dry released the Portal Defenders: Fast Break OST!

@milkypossum released the Dashmo OST!

@Slintas continues the killer synthwave with We Are Androids Now.

@sleepFacingWest shared the end credit medley he composed for The Legend of PIPI!

@Waterflame collabed with @pftq and Diana Garnet on his first song with full fledged lyrics.

@whoiswillsims crafted a love song with a great 90s grunge flair. 

@Ajtastic was also on the 90s rock wavelength this month with Out of Place.

@crammish took his first stab at seriously writing lyrics and his future looks bright!

@philbofett partnered with vocalist Bella Bradbeer for the melancholic I Miss You.

@Daru925 made some groovy jazzstep for the NG Audio Iceberg Challenge.

@onumi released a whole Lost Tape of unreleased music.

@AeroRanger100 wants you to Take Care of Yourself with a track that was stuck in limbo for years.

@danJwilcox brought post-grime sounds to NG with Yung Offender.

@Demonicity produced menacing, pounding beats in Combat Mode.

@ADR3-N made a Nu-Metal jammer for bad girls.

@PaddyDavis sang about addiction and isolation in Bad Blood.

Finally, @Fyriiee shared a beautiful piece made for the Chips Compo Audio Secret Santa.

I started on an April Playlist that I’ll likely still be adding songs to. We made the first in a series of Playlist Updates last week, if you missed that!

Closing Thoughts

Thank you everyone who made April special! It was great to see so many original animations in the top five this month and I’m happy Fruity Tower snagged the $200 bonus for games, given how people could easily be paying money to play that. Prizes are possible thanks to our Supporters and they will keep going up if more people come aboard!

Also thank you to the Clock Crew for rescuing April Fools with an unexpected Clock Day!

Other News

We’re hosting an Eddsworld Charity Art Contest. Entries will be posted on June 6th to celebrate Edd’s life and the 20 year anniversary of his first movie on NG.

Piconjo Day is June 9th.

The Art Inspired Music Contest deadline is June 19th.

June 23rd is the Too Many Games Meetup in PA.

Winners of the Flash Forward Jam and Treasure Hunt are coming up!

The Art Portal update is looming large overhead, with multi-author and true multi-image publishing!

[greateday]

no no no

what about clock crew

[TomFulp]

At 5/8/23 11:28 AM, greateday wrote:no no no
what about clock crew

Good call, I added the Clock Day April Fools to the closing thoughts.

[ADR3-N]

At 5/8/23 10:56 AM, TomFulp wrote:top featured April list

WoOOooOo senpai noticed me! Very honored to have made the list. Congratulations to everyone!

[NK2007]

Yeah, Best of april. awesome!

[Royal-Harmonica]

Though I find Sublo and Tangy Mustard way more entertaining, I gotta give this one: Monkey Wrench is INSANE. You could put that in an animation museum, and no one would ever question it.

[TwisterzX0]

Neat! Also Tom can you bring back the "Browse All"/"More" button tab on the feature tab thing???? It's kinda annoying wanting to look more for the featured submissions and only be forced to scroll up to the main tab to see more. I hope I explained this perfectly LOL

[TomFulp]

At 5/8/23 12:08 PM, TheBrickishere wrote:Neat! Also Tom can you bring back the "Browse All"/"More" button tab on the feature tab thing???? It's kinda annoying wanting to look more for the featured submissions and only be forced to scroll up to the main tab to see more. I hope I explained this perfectly LOL

Making note that some people have been missing the links there... Was trying to avoid things getting crowded when we added the forum links in those boxes. It all might work better in a future front page layout, too.

[MSGhero]

At 5/8/23 10:56 AM, TomFulp wrote:@Waterflame collabed with @pftq on his first song with full fledged lyrics.

https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1209581

Huh, after all this time. Certified banger

[GunTurtle]

Looks like you pasted in last month's runner-ups, they're all from march!

[TomFulp]

At 5/8/23 12:18 PM, GunTurtle wrote:Looks like you pasted in last month's runner-ups, they're all from march!

THANK YOU for pointing this out! I always start with a copy of the previous month's post as a template for the winner announcements but in this case I forgot to paste in the new runner-up lists. It's updated now!

[Nebulate]

you know this was a good month with 45 beutiful animations, 25 addicting games, 26 great art and 22 banging songs. this euquals to 118 amazing stuff that made it on the "best of" list. but you cant forget the pico day, clock day, and all of the other stuff that sadly didnt make it here. this has benn a great month

[AlexaWatterson]

At 5/8/23 10:56 AM, TomFulp wrote:Check out the Top Featured Art of April!

@CADAVER, a true artist to watch, made a sort of living diorama with HOT WIND BLOWS.

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/cadaver/hot-wind-blows

Speaking of dioramas, @AuroraPLZ grew a town on a tank.

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/auroraplz/overgrown-tank-diorama

@Schuschinus stacked an immensely dense metropolis in Calles Apiladas.

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/schuschinus/calles-apiladas

@Razpaz merged Pop Team Epic with Warhammer 40k in this animated pixel marvel.

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/razpaz/pophammer-80000

@EthanDoesaThing added an entry to his SOUL-GEAR collection, inspired by Medabots.

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/ethandoesathing/fight-on

@zattdott imagined a town terrified by a massive Snek.

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/zattdott/snek

VonGrimsworth is now @VonKreepula, with creepy new art!

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/vonkreepula/the-last-funeral

@xkl-3 made their NG debut in April, sharing all sorts of cool mechanical things.

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/xkl-3/3
https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/xkl-3/6

@PostmodernOuroboros has been around since last year but just started sharing art in April.

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/postmodernouroboros/cigarettes

@deathink animated his classic Robot Day 2014 piece.

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/deathink/tears-in-the-rain

@sammytighe shared some great gaming fan art!

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/sammytighe/behind-chain-chomp-s-gate
https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/sammytighe/break-through-it-all

@Stradomyre created a poster promoting Axe to Grind, the latest Dead Estate update.

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/stradomyre/dead-estate-axe-to-grind-poster

@Zals illustrated Wario with great style.

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/zals/wwww

@jimmyknives returned from a hiatus with Strategy Break!

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/jimmyknives/strategy-break

@SalsaClock gave us the dancing StrawberryClock we didn’t know we needed.

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/salsaclock/happy-clock-day

@omegachainoboy envisioned a Resident Evil 4 puzzle game.

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/omegachainoboy/resident-evil-4-puzzle

@BoogWerks makes great killer mechs.

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/boogwerks/five

@SounDoG-2031 shared the haunting Moonlight’s Reverie.

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/soundog-2031/moonlight-s-reverie

@KajaG caught up in April, with lots of great art including this piece from Dashbored.

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/kajag/i-ll-kill-them-and-take-their-stuff

We love a good Samus piece and @Granfaloon didn’t disappoint.

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/granfaloon/samus

@SketchToPen celebrated the anniversary of our Dankmen joke.
https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/sketchtopen/dankmen-for-4-20

@jiansketch made fan art of @tofokyo’s OC from Kero Kero Groove!

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/jiansketch/chain-tofokyo-s-oc

Castle Crashers and Pizza Tower collide in @PRUPKET’s Artists at Work.

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/prupket/artists-at-work

@donpeppi made a sequel to last year’s Shoot em’ Up!

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/donpeppi/shoot-em-up-2

Check out the Top Featured Audio of April!

@tsuyunoshi shared his feelings of infatuation with Spur of the Moment.

https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1210752

@Pulvite seeks to share a moment with others via song, despite feelings of being an outsider.

https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1210872

@Biddle3 made a short calm song called Sunset.

https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1210440

@vai5000 and CMTEN produced this hyperpop melody about flying too close to the sun.

https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1210290

@RedSkiesOfficial sang about drowning in his own thoughts.

https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1209928

@Dry released the Portal Defenders: Fast Break OST!

https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1208986

@milkypossum released the Dashmo OST!

https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1211353

@Slintas continues the killer synthwave with We Are Androids Now.

https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1210590

@sleepFacingWest shared the end credit medley he composed for The Legend of PIPI!

https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1210767

@Waterflame collabed with @pftq on his first song with full fledged lyrics.

https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1209581

@whoiswillsims crafted a love song with a great 90s grunge flair. 

https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1210435

@Ajtastic was also on the 90s rock wavelength this month with Out of Place.

https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1210882

@crammish took his first stab at seriously writing lyrics and his future looks bright!

https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1210465

@philbofett partnered with vocalist Bella Bradbeer for the melancholic I Miss You.

https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1206710

@Daru925 made some groovy jazzstep for the NG Audio Iceberg Challenge.

https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1208759

@onumi released a whole Lost Tape of unreleased music.

https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1210540

@AeroRanger100 wants you to Take Care of Yourself with a track that was stuck in limbo for years.

https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1207728

@danJwilcox brought post-grime sounds to NG with Yung Offender.

https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1211436

@Demonicity produced menacing, pounding beats in Combat Mode.

https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1210894

@ADR3-N made a Nu-Metal jammer for bad girls.

https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1210115

@PaddyDavis sang about addiction and isolation in Bad Blood.

https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1210883

Finally, @Fyriiee shared a beautiful piece made for the Chips Compo Audio Secret Santa.

https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1210731

I started on an April Playlist that I’ll likely still be adding songs to. We made the first in a series of Playlist Updates last week, if you missed that!

Closing Thoughts

Thank you everyone who made April special! It was great to see so many original animations in the top five this month and I’m happy Fruity Tower snagged the $200 bonus for games, given how people could easily be paying money to play that. Prizes are possible thanks to our Supporters and they will keep going up if more people come aboard!

Also thank you to the Clock Crew for rescuing April Fools with an unexpected Clock Day!

Other News

We’re hosting an Eddsworld Charity Art Contest. Entries will be posted on June 6th to celebrate Edd’s life and the 20 year anniversary of his first movie on NG.

Piconjo Day is June 9th.

The Art Inspired Music Contest deadline is June 19th.

June 23rd is the Too Many Games Meetup in PA.

Winners of the Flash Forward Jam and Treasure Hunt are coming up!

The Art Portal update is looming large overhead, with multi-author and true multi-image publishing!

I have lost again...... Why....?

[TomFulp]

At 5/8/23 12:28 PM, Nebulate wrote:you know this was a good month with 45 beutiful animations, 25 addicting games, 26 great art and 22 banging songs. this euquals to 118 amazing stuff that made it on the "best of" list. but you cant forget the pico day, clock day, and all of the other stuff that sadly didnt make it here. this has benn a great month

Pico Day will actually be part of the Best of May!

[FutureCopLGF]

Congratulations to all of the game devs who delivered another awesome month of games! Quite a busy month this was with almost 40 entries to go through. Some things to point out:

Genokids is a pretty cool demo for character-action (Devil May Cry or Kingdom Hearts) fans: give 'em some feedback to help their eventual full release and consider chipping into their Kickstarter!

CypherGrid has been getting a lot of updates to improve the experience and help better tutorialize the mechanics: if you got confused before, maybe consider giving it a go now!

Team Lumba is hard at work on their ambitious sequel and could use all the feedback you can give!

Hank Straightjacket is a pretty neat prototype for their upcoming full release of Hank Drowning On Dry Land: give it a wishlist to keep an eye on it if it interests you!

Looking forward to seeing the winners of the Flash Forward Jam!

[donpeppi]

Thank you so much for mentioning me again Tom! Its a great honor, and congratulations to the winners!

[AuroraPLZ]

Thank you for featuring my art!! There is so much amazing work here

[Aaron-Long]

Whoa amazing, thank you! It's been so awesome seeing all this cool stuff on here lately. Happy Pico Day!!

[Zeurel]

This month was INSANE for animation, an absolute ocean of great stuff. I'm actually surprised my team managed to get first going up against the likes of Meatcanyon and Aaron-long. Bless y'all and thanks again!

[streq]

Honored to have made the top 5!

Congratulations to the other winners! I haven't played every entry featured here but the ones I did are well deserved!

[BUM-DRILLER]

That banner on the front page looks sick! Great work

[SketchToPen]

@SketchToPen celebrated the anniversary of our Dankmen joke.

hey thanks for the mention! although my dankmen nft has been stolen and i am now crippled with debt, this softens the blow at least a little.

[BrandyBuizel]

I feel like this month so much good shit went under the radar here in the voting

[sleepFacingWest]

HOLY CRAP! Thanks for mentioning my music. I'm going to go simultaneously cry and throw up now.

[Diamondmanpixel76]

I'm glad to have been part of voting this month!

[Bleak-Creep]

At 5/8/23 12:08 PM, TheBrickishere wrote:Neat! Also Tom can you bring back the "Browse All"/"More" button tab on the feature tab thing???? It's kinda annoying wanting to look more for the featured submissions and only be forced to scroll up to the main tab to see more. I hope I explained this perfectly LOL

Yeah, I really miss this. I think people miss out on a lot of cool stuff without it.

[spoiler911]

There were so many good animations, I had a difficult time choosing which ones to nominate! I feel spoiled.

[TwisterzX0]

Not to mention it's easy to navigate. Good thing Tom is trying to fix it. Also nice art :3

[TharosTheDragon]

Once again, my #1 vote didn't even make it into the runner-ups (top 40 this time), but I understand since it is just an animatic.