Damn, I am so happy to see the HUGE turnout that Pico day had this year! The whole portal was full of some seriously cool Pico cartoons and other NG characters. It was just a real pleasant surprise to see the NG community come out for the day, I was basically watching cartoons and voting on everything in the portal today haha. These are the kinda things I love about Newgrounds, and why I tell all new and old animators to join here, you really get to see a diverse mix of styles and levels of animations. Just a rush of joy when you come on and just see tons of new art, music, cartoons on a daily basis :)
Happy Pico day everyone! and thanks Tom for all the hard work you do to the site to keep it growing and kicking ass for all these years. Truly the best site for creatives to showcase and grow! Cheers!
TheEnvyRecords
Erm... Pico? I don't exactly understand why everyone is so addicted to this guy... Of course, I don't even understand that Friday Night Freakout game either... a boy wants his gf, so he has to rap & roast his gf's parents... it's just a Dance Dance Revolution clone... Oh, where was I? Oh! Yes! So, what's the deal with Pico on Newgrounds?
Comick
Pico is an iconic character for New grounds, he's basically the site's mascot and I would say was one of the first real popular characters to spawn from the site. In his early first flash incarnation, Pico's game about school shoot ups came at a time when the columbine school shooting was in the news. He was deemed inappropriate and people tried to ban Pico and the game...but Newgrounds had a motto "Everything by Everyone" and so they didn't ban the game nor did they judge. It was like the wild west of the internet. For YEARS Pico was a character that got fan cartoons, fan art, even the voting system had Pico's face as the 1-5 voting system before it was changed to just orange stars. I've been here a long time...heh.
So the fact that Friday Night Funkin became a hit and kind of put Pico back in the spotlight and introduced a bunch of new people to the character, it also pointed new people to Newgrounds! That means more users and also invites new life into the creative community and show off new animations and art as well. Plus hopefully more supporters to the site to keep it thriving in a world where all the major sites are owned by huge corporations... Newgrounds is very unique its still owned and run by one guy (Tom Fulp) and that is a testament of his passion to the animation online community. Plus the success of the FNF game shows that anyone with passion to their art can make it BIG online with the support of fans and community. Its just an overall happy thing to see and I actually like Pico, he has a lot of character and charm so its just cool to see people getting into him again.