Asandir's interviews with Newgrounds forum users
This week's interview features the user JRob.
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When did you find Newgrounds and why did you join? Why did you choose the username JRob?
JRob:
"Both the games and the audio is what brought me here. I got into playing flash games back in my late elementary/early middle school years (around 5th grade and 6th grade in 2006). I jumped around from flash hosting site to flash hosting site, but eventually ended up spending most of that time on OneMoreLevel. They had a lot of flash games from sites like Armor Games, Kongregate, etc., but the one site that most of my favorite ones came from (Dragon Boy, Feudalism, Feudalism 2, Age of War, Arcane, etc.) was this site. That, however, wasn't enough alone to bring me here and keep me here since I didn't know yet that the majority of the music (stuff like Waterflame's Glorious Morning and tons of ParagonX9's music) used in the games came from the Audio Portal, much less even noticed there was one.
A while after I started listening to a lot of Kid2Will and ParagonX9, I eventually came here to download their music. The idea of putting my music on this site interested me, but there wasn't any music I had that I felt was worthy of posting (I didn't have anything that could render songs to .mp3, much less .wav, at the time either as this was before I got FL Studio or even MusicStudio for iOS). I came here frequently to listen to stuff in the Audio Portal, but I didn't really play any of the games or watch the movies...or look at the art or lurk the forums. I finally signed up for an account here about a month before I got FL Studio (my first submission was done in it, obviously).
About my username, J'Rob is actually one of my nicknames IRL. Back in the 8th grade, one of my friends basically combined the first letter of my first name and part of my last name. I know it's pretty dumb, but it just sounded right and it stuck (even until now). It didn't have a written form, so I gave it one and use it as my username for multiple things. I started out here as "theJRob" since it wouldn't let me use just "JRob." I didn't know if it was taken or not (this was before I knew you could simply just replace the "www" with the username in the URL) so I asked Wade to check and give me the name if it wasn't an active account, hence that is now my username (and I don't plan on getting a username change)."
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Do you think that you changed over the time you were here, as user, or also in real life?
JRob:
"Well of course I've changed (quite a bit) within the time I've had this account - I went through the end of my junior year and entire senior year of high school and just now finished my first semester of college, which is pretty much a major point in anyone's life.
Over the past year, I've developed my own posting style and attitude on the forums. I probably come off as more abrasive more often than I did when I first started posting here; I didn't start out as the "I'm new" thread, "im new dont be mean 2 me" type of poster, but I did have a pretty shitty posting style. One thing that hasn't changed is that I try to maintain as close to perfect grammar and spelling as possible, even when I fist started out.
In real life, I've started to care a bit less what other people think about me (not too much though, since I like to keep an image). Having started college about half a year ago, I've adopted the attitude of "there's 20,000+ students here and I don't have the time to care what they all think of me." I've also become significantly less introverted - we had to do personality tests for engineering to determine group roles and such and I scored right in the middle on the introvert/extrovert scale; before I probably would have leaned more towards the introvert side."
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Are there any other users that you like, and how do they affect you?
JRob:
"I definitely have a lot of respect for some of the users in the Audio Portal.
Dan Johansen has a lot of great music in not only Metal, but shows skill in crafting great cinematic pieces; he's got amazing guitar-playing skill and killer vocals too.
After listening to a lot of heavy electronic music such as Tiga by Quentin Grey, Cradle of Filth's Dance Macabre and the remix of From the Cradle to Enslave, I needed more heavy, kickass Industrial Electronic music and LichLordMusic's Leviathan Networks immediately had me hooked. I've supported him by buying his first album on bandcamp and he's also currently doing vocals and production on an Industrial piece I did and wrote lyrics for. I definitely would recommend listening to his music since he has a lot of kickass stuff.
Some honorable mentions for cool or funny forum posters go to:
Nor (dem anime avatars)
kisame (dem PM's)
Some honorable mentions for some good Audio Portal artists:
Insanctuary (despite being a massive shitposter on the BBS)
I should also thank Splats for recommending me for an interview
There are plenty of other great users, but I can't just go through and list them all..."
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Are there any users that you would consider enemies or that you just don't like?
JRob:
"I've had my fair share of arguments with some of the more stubborn users like Sekhem and Based (I'm starting to think that Based might be trolling about 50% of the time), but no one really annoys me as much as the anonymous zerobombing shitheads - the ones that zerobomb stuff without a perfectly good and justifiable reason; I'd like to know who the zerobombers are and watch them have their cable shut off."
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What is your opinion about the forums? Is there one forum that you prefer? And is there another forum user that you want to see getting interviewed by me?
JRob:
"I started out posting in Politics, but it just felt...slow; I may have posted some in Audio too back then, but same problem with Politics. General just seemed like the forum I wanted to be part of. The hilarity and drama in the General Forum is what keeps me there.As for users to interview, I think an interview with supergandhi64 would make for a fun read. I'd also recommend LichLordMusic for another audio artist interview."
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I guess that you have an opinion about the moderators of Newgrounds. Do you think that they do a great job or not?
JRob:
"The moderators are okay...well at least the ones who are actually active; it kind of bugs me to see a mod who is almost never active on here come on and lock a decent thread and just leave. I'd say the best forum mods would be stafffighter, ZJ, Zachary, Purgy, and sometimes Timmy. I think poxpower can be pretty funny at times, but can be douchy at others, especially in the Politics forum."
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Would you like to become a moderator on Newgrounds? If so, what kind of moderator?
JRob:
"Not really...I wouldn't mind, though. Maybe an Audio Portal or Audio Forum mod at the most."
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The last redesign happened 2012. Tell me what you think about it. What do you like and what is not so good?
JRob:
"I wasn't very active here before the redesign, so I barely remembered exactly what the site looked like; I had to go back through the archives to refresh my memory. It certainly looks a lot better now (cleaner too), in my opinion. I kind of want some of the old features from before the recent redesign Audio Portal such as author search and top five of the week (and I'm pretty sure there was an autoplay feature where one of the top five would play while on the main page of the portal)."
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Judging from your usericon, you seem to like South Park. Tell me what you like about the show and talk about your favourite episodes.
JRob:
"Like? It's one of my favorite shows, next to the Nickelodeon Avatar series; I've seen almost every episode (I need to watch the episodes that I've missed from the last two seasons). Despite it not being my absolute favorite show, it has my absolute favorite character of any series, animated or live action (...actually I don't really like many live action TV series) - Kenny McCormick.I tried to think of what my favorite episode was, but I couldn't think of a single episode as my definite favorite (there's way too many good episodes). I really liked the edginess of the earlier seasons, though; the newer seasons are still really good, but the older seasons just had that...edge to them.
A list of my favorite episodes:
Cartman Gets an Anal Probe (the first episode)
The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers
Die Hippie, Die ("hippies can't stand death metal")
Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow
The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs
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I see a fancy Final Fantasy VII icon on your desktop. Which Final fantasy title is your favourite and why? Which battles/moments impressed you the most in the series?
JRob:
"(Spoiler alert)
I actually haven't played it yet...I got it off Steam just because it was on there and I'm somewhat of a fan of the series. I've only played the earlier games in the series (1-6). Despite the fact that I preferred the purely turn-based games of the series (not too big of a fan of the ATB system), Final Fantasy IV is by far my definite favorite mostly because there was just something about the way the game progressed that complemented the story and vice versa (and not to mention it had the best soundtrack of the old-school games in the series). I really liked the mood of the final battle in IV; I remember the first time I fought Zeromus - I buffed up as much as I could before starting the actual fight, only to get slapped with a Black Hole. However, I kind of hated the attack Big Bang; I didn't hate it for being a bit OP - the final boss is supposed to be a major threat. The reason I didn't like it was because he had a small movepool. Black Hole made things a little bit more interesting by removing all the buffs and debuffs you set, but other than that, the only thing you had to watch out for was the random counter to magic attacks with a Flare or Osmose; since I primarily used magic for buffing and healing and using physical attacks, all he did was shake, Black Hole, shake, Big Bang, shake, Black Hole, shake, Big Bang.
I came kind of late in starting the series as my first game from the series was Tactics Advance. One of my cousins forgot the game at my house and he lives about a two and a half hour drive away, so it was a while before we could get the game back to him without mailing it (an extra bit of trivia, this is the same cousin that gave me his Pokemon Red cartridge that got me into that series as well). So, in that amount of time, I played some of the game and it really grew on me; my parents got me my own copy of the game for my next birthday. My next SquareEnix game after that was Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. Eventually I got around to playing the first Final Fantasy (and a couple other Square games) and have played up to VI thus far."
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You are an audio artist. When did you start making music? Do you plan to release more music on Newgrounds in the near future?
JRob:
"I've been a music person for almost my entire life; my parents got me a keyboard when I was like four or five since I'd always try to play the ones they had on display in stores. My parents weren't making too much money when I was younger (they've worked their asses off to get up to the upper middle class over the last decade and a half) so paying for me to take lessons wasn't really an option until later, but I had started to memorize a couple beginner level songs (it was one of those keyboards that has playback) until I started taking lessons. In the middle of my 4th grade year was when I started taking piano lessons; around that time, I started writing short melodies and such. I picked up playing the violin for the school string orchestra, which was first available to us in my first year of middle school (6th grade); the music theory which I picked up from piano lessons gave me an edge over the other students so much that I felt that the class was holding me back. Both having a background in piano and string orchestra helped for when I first tried my hand at using computer software to make music.
I started out with a program called Music MasterWorks XE, a MIDI-based software. My first compositions weren't really that great (at all), but they were more experiments with certain aspects in music composition such as chord structures and modulation, layering, melodies, etc. There are a couple good melodies and such which I would like to go back and try to reuse, and there are a couple songs which I want to update now that I have FL Studio (I've done just that with a couple of my thematic VGM); eventually I'll get around to doing it. I had a bit of a progressive period during this time and I really want to revamp some of the more intricate pieces I did back then. In 2011, I downloaded an app for iOS called MusicStudio; it plenty of limitations just like Music MasterWorks, but it definitely sounded better than MIDI. I finally got the FL Studio Signature Bundle in late 2011 and I really like using it. I plan to update a lot of my older stuff in the future."
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I know that you have a 100 years old violin. What other instruments do you have and which ones can you play?
JRob:
"Over 200 years old, actually; but yes, it's pretty old. The strings, coarse tuning pegs, the fine tuner, and all that other good stuff is new but the body and fingerboard are genuine 200 year old German craftsmanship. I started out renting a mock Stradivarius during my middle school years to play in the school string orchestra; it didn't sound nearly as great (like I said, it was based on the Stradivarius and was built a relatively short time ago), but in comparison to what the majority of what the other students were using (French made string instruments...ugh), it was of fairly high quality.
I think I've stated this multiple times on the forum boards, and in my response to the previous question, but I also play piano. I have an upright piano (my parents bought it soon after I started taking lessons) and a keyboard (it's pretty shitty since we've had it at my house since about 1998).
Other than that, I don't own any other instruments (I have a recorder, but pretty much anyone who has gone through the American public education system has owned and played one). My brother has a trumpet and my dad has a trombone and those are the only other instruments in our house, but I lack the ability to play either."
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Every person has secrets. Can you tell one of yours or something else that we didn't know about you yet?
JRob:
"It's not really a secret to you guys here on NG, but anime and manga (and everything else weeaboo) are part of a massive (massive) guilty pleasure of mine; I barely talk to anyone about it in real life, and even when I have, not very much at all. I feel like people view liking certain aspects (well, most - excluding stuff like the Final Fantasy or Pokemon franchises that practically everyone knows about) of Japanese culture as strange or weird - I could talk you to death about my favorite metal bands from Norway, Sweden, or any other European country, but when it comes to bands from Japan such as Yousei Teikoku, I avoid talking about it too much. Since I don't personally know anyone on this site, nor do any of the people I know in real life (not counting the select few who actually have been on here a bit and coincidentally also watch anime) use this site, I have no problem talking about stuff like this freely. If you were to meet me in real life without knowing any of this, you would never guess that I'm a tidbit weeaboo-ish."
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What can we expect from you in the future, JRob?
JRob:
"I'd like to do more collaborations. The Audio Portal has quite a lot of untapped talent that needs recognition. I'd personally like to see, and even participate in, a collaboration with artists from different genres to make something new and different or a fusion of the genres (like metal and electronic).
One thing I really would like to see is a group of Newgrounders come together to make a large game; we have audio artists, programmers, voice actors, artists (and 3D artists), and the like and we haven't utilized that talent for any major projects yet? It could bring a lot of traffic back here too if it becomes fairly popular. I'd certainly like to be part of that project, too.
As for my solo work, expect to see some vocal work and improved versions of my earlier stuff. Also I hope I will be able to finish this album I've been working on since I got FL Studio."
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Now you are filled with more knowledge about JRob, dear reader.Feel free to leave a comment here, saying what you think about the interview, requesting users to get interviews is also appreciated. Tune in next week :3
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Wavepad
Those South Park episodes are mostly the classics!
The new episodes aren't doing as well. ._.
Asandir
Not sure, haven't seen South Park in quite some time ^^