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I'm curious how many Newgrounders here are in Iowa. I should have asked this when I was stationed in Washington state, as I'm sure the number was far higher, but I'm still curious.

For those of you who think Iowa is nothing but farm land, you're not that far off. But we do have a few good sized cities such as Des Moines (And its 50 surrounding sub-cities like Clive, Ubandale, West Des Moines, and on and on) and Iowa City.

If anyone reading this remembers me from back in the day (I did all those Robotech animations), you may have noticed I've been silent for the past few years, save for some art and audio submissions that see little to no traffic. I've been thinking (and working) in the background to come up with something new for Newgrounds, and it would be really cool to collaborate with others locally too.

My 'new project' that has been new for years now, has some basic parameters:

1) It must be 'original.' I want the content to be free of other people's intellectual property so that it stands as its own work. This is tough for me because I'm better at taking existing IP to a new place than making my own, but if the work ever took off, I would want to be able to use it to draw more attention to Newgrounds.com

2) It must be primarily serious, IE it can be as funny as I want, so long as the characters within it have to face reality at some point -- no magically returning to a state prior to the episode like, say, family guy or SouthPark.

3) The work must stand on its own as visual art, not just good audio or writing. I love the stuff that comes out of Newgrounds, but many things only survive as a comedic piece, they have no visual justification.

I really wanted to go for a serious art style too, but because I've spent the last 5 years looking for a good character artist to collaborate with, and had nothing but failure, I have to create an animation style that is down to my level. I think I've recently come very close to this style, and (universe willing) may have some sort of pre-pilot test ready soon.

Well, you didn't have to read all that now! I just wanted to see if you were from Iowa, and then I started rambling, but thanks anyway. ^_^