Hello Newgrounders,

Let's start with the good news...

I'm officially finished casting voices for my upcoming Madness Day flash "Madness Heist". After a rather rough casting process, I feel now that I have a complete all-star cast. I'm extremely lucky to have the voice talents that I do. All of them give five-star performances in my opinion.

The official main cast consists of RicePirate, Motley-Fool, Apatheria, and Shock-Dingo.

The animation is coming along quite nicely. Although I must say I really miss Flash 8 back when the program was still owned by Macromedia. I've been using Adobe Flash CS5 and it's just not the same. It seems to freeze up a lot more often than Flash 8 ever did. However, I am doing some pretty graphic/sound intensive stuff, so maybe that's why.

Anyway, if all goes according to plan (which it surely won't), I'll have all my action sequences done within the next two weeks. Once all that is done, I can finally release a trailer. I'd really like to use a particular track that happens to be copyrighted material. This didn't used to be a problem, but I think Newgrounds is cracking down on that stuff. I could be wrong. Maybe someone can shed some light on that subject?

And now for the (sort of) bad news...

As of right now, I plan to "retire" from flash after this movie is complete. I'm starting to realize I have less and less time to work on these kinds of things. I have a full time job and I start college at Columbia in the fall. Both of those things are going to drain the life right out of me, and I don't see that changing for a very long time. Maybe someday I'll go back to it, but once this flash is finished, so am I.

I think this project is an appropriate one to be my last. I'm doing everything I've ever wanted to do in a flash from the very beginning: paying homage to the "Madness" series, directing voice actors, animating elaborate action sequences, and (hopefully) bringing a great cinematic experience to a wonderful audience.

I'll elaborate more on this when the time comes, but for now, enjoy the new POSTER.

I have to give props to blubbity for suggesting this concept for a poster. I think it turned out nicely. My main reason for putting it together was just to show off the names of the great cast I have for this movie.

Until next time,

-Matt Hunter