It is official; a sequel to An Animal Crossing Tale is in the works. I've had a handful of videos taking place in the Animal Crossing universe floating around in my head for a long time, and recently I've garnished the inspiration to finally begin one of them. I suspect that, due to New Horizons becoming the talk of the town recently, An Animal Crossing Tale has been gathering attention once again.

I've always wanted to make more and more videos about Animal Crossing as it's been one of my lifelong favorite games, but as I've stated in previous posts, it's been hard to find the motivation to start on, well, anything for a while; I got so tired of spending immense time and effort on videos to get not even 6% of my followers to watch them. However, looking at the state of things and what you guys are saying, perhaps, for a new Animal Crossing video, things will be different once again.

I hate making announcements, as, from what I've learned over the last decade or so of doing this crap, they normally just restrain you to what you claim in the moment and simply land you into trouble later down the road; I think, typically, it's better just to wait until you finish something entirely and then go, "hey, here's a video. Enjoy." However, that's what I've been doing for the last two years now, and did that really make a difference? I would say probably not. So whatever. I want to say it will be complete before 2021. But again, that's merely an announcement.

Either way, it's time to face the positives, finally! I feel the premise and script for this installment of the Animal Crossing animation universe is great. I believe many will like it. I'm excited to see how it all turns out. Stay tuned.

-T4k

This morning I was happy to find out that, finally, after over 3 months, all of the videos on the Twisted4kStudios YouTube channel have been restored. It took quite a bit of back-and-forth emails between me and some YouTube reps, but here we are. I did have access to the channel for about a month at the time and was just about ready to re-upload all of my videos (of course I kept them all stored on one of my hard drives in case something like this happened), but lo and behold, to my elation, the YouTube Team did it for me. Thank you, YouTube Team!

I've got an animation in the works, some of you will love it, some of you will probably hate it. It just depends on what type of audience you are! :) I've also got plans to upload a bunch of speed paintings, if any of you are into that. Honestly, at first I didn't want to spam an animation channel up with videos that many of the subscribers didn't sign up for, but hey, basically no one's been watching anything I've been uploading lately anyway, so I'll upload whatever the hell I want.

Have a great day, and thank you all for the support! I was surprised at how many messages I got of people checking in and asking what happened to the channel.

-T4k

It's been a month since my last update on here, and regarding the hijack? Well, since a few weeks ago, I got access back to it. The channel is now under my control and I can do whatever I want with it at the moment. But other than that, the videos are all still gone. I could re-upload them now, but I'm STILL waiting on a response to get them restored beforehand. So that's what's been going on, in case anyone was wondering. That's all. Buh-bye!

​-T4k

Recently I have been informed that the internal YouTube team has confirmed the channel was hijacked. I was then told to create a new brand account so they could give it ownership of the channel. What's weird is, after I made said brand account, it got deleted. I told them about this and am now once again waiting on an answer. I think what's happening is that there's two teams not communicating with each other, one was just aware that the channel was uploading spam videos and according to their protocol, they took it down. The other is the team I have been communicating with and is aware that the channel was compromised. So I think what happened was that the unaware team figured the spammer was trying to recreate the channel and do what they were doing before, so they took it down preemptively? LOL I don't know. All I do know is that things should be all back to normal pretty soon, yes, deleted channels even with all their videos gone can be restored, I've seen it happen before. Thank you to all who have been messaging me and informing me as to what has happened; I am aware. :)

-T4k

About five days ago, my YouTube channel was hijacked, and just this morning they started uploading videos. I promise, they're not from me! About two days ago I got a hold of YouTube and they told me the situation has been forwarded to their internal team; as for a time frame, I haven't been given an estimation. This could be sorted tomorrow, it could be a month from now. I do not know! But I got a few messages from people informing me of what happened, so I figured I'd just post this to anyone who may be confused.

I'm sort of glad this happened, this was a bit of a wake up call for me; I was starting to take my channel for granted. I was getting all "how come I'm not getting as many views as I used to, how come I have so many subscribers but barely any of them are watching, how come..." blah blah blah, but you know what, when the channel was taken away from me, I realized "hey, there at least ARE people watching what I am uploading, there's people who don't have views whatsoever on their videos and would love to have even 50 of them." Once (or, if, I don't know) I get this channel back, I will be a happy man.

​-T4k

2019 was a weird one. An interesting year for me. Not good, not bad, but interesting. The workload was at an all-time high for me, both with my animation job as well as my own personal projects. But the first thing I got released was in early October: a Madness fan game I call Madness Gemini. It was based on a concept I had conjured a little over a year ago, but not knowing whether it would work well or not, I decided to test it with some good old fashioned Madness Combat characters. The response was generally positive, so if I ever get around to it, making a game with a similar system is not out of the question, one day.

A little over a month later, I finally released an animation: Mick the Mercenary: The Rescue. It was without a doubt the biggest, most detailed project I have ever tackled. It initially was just going to be a little promo video for the film some friends and I made a couple of years ago, Mick the Mercenary: The Movie, but I got a little carried away with it.

And just in time for Christmas, I hacked together a little seasonal 'toon, A Smashing Christmas Dinner, a Super Smash Bros. Ultimate fan animation. It's graphics are not quite up to par with what I've done lately, but I did not have the time. Well, I could've detailed it a bit more, but then It would probably take until about New Year's to get it done, if not later.

So what was wrong with this year? Although I got what I would call an entry-level dream job of mine, as far as my personal stuff went, I was pretty disappointed with how many people were able to see my last couple of videos; it's true when they say that you shouldn't just focus on numbers, views, followers, subscribers etc., but at the same time, if you spend months to years on a project and then only a handful of people are notified of what you had created, it's pretty discouraging. Especially when you've reached a point where you'd at least think a decent amount of people are watching, but the damn website doesn't let 95% of them know (talking about YouTube, not you, Newgrounds!!) Ah well, let's see how 2020 unfolds!

-Ben

Merry Christmas! Just released a little SSBU Christmas magic today, which you can watch on YouTube right here. Enjoy!

-T4k

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the whole YouTube bell icon thing on top of subscribing is ridiculous. I virtually lost over 95% of the subscribers Twisted4kStudios has been garnishing over the last 7 years or so simply because of its implementation. The last few videos I published that went viral were not because of them, but rather the fact that they started trending and appearing in people's suggested videos. When you have a video with its own original topic that's not correlated with anything that people are actively watching, your only realistic bet on the ones who will view it are your subscribers. And it's a little difficult to notify them of its existence when the website refuses to notify them. If YouTube wanted to have the bell thing, it would have been nice if they had it on by default for all of the channels users were already subscribed to. It's almost like being subscribed to a magazine, and then after a few months you realize you haven't gotten anything from them because the company thought you weren't reading them. It's completely crazy, but then again, it's YouTube, what can you really expect?

What an absolute shame. In short, it looks like I will have to rebuild my little empire. And I have a few tricks up my sleeves.

Take care.

​-T4k

It took me longer than anything I've ever worked on in my life, but Mick the Mercenary: The Rescue is done. I started production on it shortly after Mick the Mercenary: The Movie was released as a way to help raise awareness of its existence, but it ended up being a drastically huge project that took quite a while to animate. I am happy with how it turned out, but how many people will actually lay eyes on it? I think the answer to that is completely up in the air; it's an original animation with no references to anything, so I have no idea who will be able to find it online. We shall see.

So now what? I finished a script for the next video that won't take me two years to finish. From now on, uploads should be a lot more frequent. Stay tuned!

-T4k

I can't believe it's been 6 months since my last post here. Half a year. It's just been so busy. Working full time, moving to a new house, it's been nuts. But things are finally starting to settle. I spent so much of my free time on this Madness Combat fan game, Madness Gemini. I wanted to get it done in time for Madness Day, but the workload did not allow me to. Ah well, at least I'm fashionably late!

It's been so long since I've finally finished and published a game, and it's a nice feeling. There was so much more I wanted to add in and edit, but I really needed to just get that MVP; every time I thought I was done, something else just kept coming up in development. But if people play it and like it, I'll continue to update and patch it.

This actually worked out perfectly because this was a game system idea I had for a bit, and I wasn't sure if it was going to work or not. What a better way to test it then with Madness characters? I think it works, but I'll have to wait and see what the players have to say.

I'm also getting close to finishing a video I've been working on for over a year now. That is also exciting.

Download Madness Gemini right here, or play it on Newgrounds! Downloading it gives you the advantages of having a full-screen option as well as raw 44khz audio, versus the online version which is exported at MP3 160kbps (not as good, but smaller and can actually get uploaded to the site).

-T4k