Today, July 22, marks 20 years since I submitted FBF Randomness to the Newgrounds Portal, my first ever Flash movie to pass judgement:
I was 13, I had been learning Flash for a couple of years, and after a couple of shitty attempts at stick figure animations that were rightfully blammed, I decided to make something colorful and wholesome.
I was inspired by the fireworks display tutorial in RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 that had just come out in late 2004 to create an FBF animation based on the in-game song that was used in the tutorial called Girls Like Spice. No idea what it means, or if it was just a hehe Spice Girls reference (they're awesome), but I'll tell ya: it's still a banger to this day.
FBF Randomness was my pride and joy at the age of 13 when I had just freshly entered secondary school in Singapore where I'm from. Admittedly, you can tell I wasn't very well-versed in Internet culture, only managing to get a few NG-related things right-ish (like Agnry Faic and of course, StrawberryClock), but come on: I was 13. What were you doing at 13? XDDDD
Anyway, after its initial success (read: passing judgement), not only did I make sequels — more on that below:
... but I actually turned the first 4 installments into a CD volume, even creating a custom launcher within Flash MX 2004 using ActionScript 2.0 (at the time, Flash 8 wasn't out yet), to share with my teachers, friends and family who were all incredibly supportive:
I had big plans for the series, having planned many more installments after FBF Randomness - Marinia, with the intention to produce up to 3 volumes consisting of 10 installments in total (with Marinia being part of Volume 2). I even wanted to host a collab with fellow FBF animators at the time, like @theY4Kman, though I'd intended to open it up to anyone who wanted to join. And that would've been part of Volume 3.
Due to life-changing events in 2005, 2006 and up, as well as me joining the Clock Crew, FBF Randomness took a backseat (although I did create an abstract art spinoff on my website called Polychromic Randomness). But the main reason I never managed to produce more episodes was that starting with the next installment, I'd wanted to try creating my own soundtrack for the series. You can tell I was already moving away from copyrighted music for FBF Randomness starting with Marinia, but I wanted to go all the way and create something truly original. I tried picking up FL Studio 5, but I could never understand any of its features, because I had little to no understanding of music. I refused to make the next installment without original music, so... it kinda just stopped.
Every few years, I think about FBF Randomness, rewatch it, and I still have the intention to finish the series someday (and that would include finally learning to make my own music, natch). Hell, I'd still produce the 3 CD volumes, though I wouldn't go so far as to distribute them (and I can't legally do so anyway even if I wanted to) — it'll just be my own little creative project and a personal tribute to 13-year-old me. I still have my list of planned FBF Randomness titles, and my vision of what each one would look like. And crucially, I still have the FLAs of all first 5 installments and the launcher — these existed in a backup that pre-dated my catastrophic data loss event of 2009, and I'm very thankful for it. I had big plans as I said; I cooked them at that age, and then I just... dipped. I hope that won't be the end.
If you're just reading this or getting to know me for the first time, welcome! I invite you to check out my quaint little FBF series I made when I started my creative journey as a Flash animator. I've just made an official FBF Randomness playlist for your consumption. I hope you like it for what it was. What it is.
This year also marks 20 years since I became a Clock, and while I don't currently have anything for FBF Randomness, I do have big plans for that. Stay tuned.