Newgrounds Flash Era

2000

Date: 2000 onward · Place: newgrounds.com, Tom Fulp's bedroom (then Glenside, PA) · Figures: Tom Fulp, founder · the Flash animator diaspora · Tags: Flash, Animation 01. Tom Fulp's BBS Grows Up Tom Fulp starts Newgrounds in 1995 as a Neo Geo fan newsletter and turns it into a Flash-animation portal when Macromedia Flash 4 makes browser animation viable in 1999. Anyone can upload a .swf; users vote; surviving submissions go in the archive. The model is YouTube before YouTube, for animation only. By 2001 Newgrounds is hosting Pico's School, Stick Slayer, Decline of Video Gaming, and the early run of Joe Cartoon mirrors. A generation of animators (David Firth, FilmCow, Egoraptor, Edd Gould of Eddsworld) starts here. 02. Everything Forever Newgrounds' tag-line is Everything, By Everyone. It survives Flash's death (Adobe end-of-life, 31 December 2020) by reimplementing the runtime in JavaScript (Ruffle) and continues hosting the archive. Almost every notable 2000s Flash cartoon (Salad Fingers, Charlie the Unicorn, End of the World) either originates on or mirrors to Newgrounds. Sources • Tom Fulp, Newgrounds 25th anniversary post (2020) • Polygon, 'Newgrounds survived Flash' (2020) • KnowYourMeme, Newgrounds