That's right, old timers...

I uploaded RAB1 back on April 6, 2003. Incredible! And yet... given how much things have changed, I can fully feel all twenty of the years that have elapsed since that innocent day. And it is hard to believe it could ever be called "innocent", given how rude it all was and still is.

The story... early March, 2003, 3AM. I wanted a Flash cartoon to siphon off the need to draw ass cracks 'n ball sacks as subliminal messages into certain "advergaming" projects (we really had no idea how to earn money from the internet back then!) I was commissioned to work on. I woke in the middle of the night to scrawl out a script on a napkin and went promptly back to sleep, only to wake the next day to read "A is for Ass, B is for Balls", etc., next to a few silly drawings of a puppy and a cat with huge, triangular noses. And the puppy had a grossly exaggerated nut sack. Perfect.

I thought, "well, that's retarded," because in 2003, that was OK. Thus, the title was set in stone, and after a sleepless, 29-hour animation session, the one-off was complete. I sat on it for a while, not knowing what to do with it. YouTube wasn't around yet, and the distribution company who bought my "Sci-Fi Guys" episodes had already shuttered. At the time, I was a huge fan of Neil Cicierega's "Animutations" here on Newgrounds, and while the site was replete with Hentai ads at the time, I figured it was a good a home as any to host RAB. So twenty years ago today, I started an account, and uploaded RAB. I closed the browser window (probably Explorer, heh), and slept for a dozen hours.

The next day, I had dozens of emails from Newgrounds users in my inbox. RAB made the homepage! It was #1 of all time! What the everlasting fuck?!

I went straight to the light board (I used real animation paper and pens back then) and popped out the singsong RAB2 within a week. RAB3 was next, introducing Satan to the crew for "Show and Hell". It was followed by an insanely complex, interactive RAB4 (the one with the TV remote featuring dozens of hidden "channels"), and the epic, 12-minute D&D short film, RAB5. I churned out a total of 23 episodes, but by 2011, I ran out of steam, was going through a bad marriage, and without even realizing it at the time, I hung it all up.

The real dealbreaker at the time is that I was working on a second RAB collection for Blu-Ray, but after only receiving five pre-orders, canceled the project. I never looked back after that.

Well, almost never. Last year, I had an idea to make something called "Retired Animal Babies". I thought it might have been neat to upload it today as a celebration of twenty years. I decided against it though, because 1) actually using Flash in 2023 would require a very slow old computer with the ability to actually open that program, and 2) I need to continue to distance myself professionally from RAB, since the "R word" is received almost as poorly as the "N word" these days. Oh man... "N-word Animal Babies" would have been so popular a hundred years ago in 1923. Good thing Flash wasn't around back then.

I hope you enjoyed marinating in nostalgia with me today, thinking back on those old, innocent-yet-offensive days. It's been a dozen years since RAB23 but I'll still get a few messages from people every year, hoping somehow it might someday return. I have a never say never attitude; I always have. So I think the best present I could give to these triangular-nosed characters is a promise not to lock the closed door.

--Dave

umop.com

Retarded Animal Babies 20 was uploaded to the Portal back in March, 2008, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of my horrendous animated series. A few years ago, I quietly took it down, having a personal problem with one scene in particular that just didn't sit right with me any more. I won't get into that right now, but suffice it to say, I'm a bit more relaxed about the topic these days, so here it is again: RAB20!

This marks the first time since 2004 that you've been able to watch every single episode thus far created, for any format, right here on Newgrounds. With the additional upload of RAB9 (quite a while ago now) and RAB16 (just last week), everything from RAB1-23 is available for your sick minds to absorb, along with promo/commercials Magic Animal Babies and Engadget Animal Babies (sheesh, there's some blasts from the past). This is a feature film's worth of content!

As for the DVDs within which those two seekrit episodes exclusively resided, I still have a few dozen copies of each (of around 1,000 originally available in 2004 and 2006), so you can visit my website umop.com for details on how to try and track one down before they're gone forever. They are definitely relics of a bygone age; a large amount of you might not even have DVD players any more.

Belch!

--Dave

umop.com

This idiotic thing is actually old enough to vote today:

Retarded Animal Babies 1

Watch it again if you dare! It certainly LOOKS like it came from the bowels of 2003.

DVDs are still available, believe it or not, although in amounts only measured in dozens (of 1,000 that exist). Surely this artifact will be worth more than twelve bucks someday: http://umop.com/dvd.htm

--Dave

P.S. The last episode (22? 23? who even remembers?) was already made TEN years ago, so you can probably stop asking for another one now. LOL!

Hello!

Are any other Newgrounds creators making NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) for their properties? Just curious. I've extremely new to crypto-anything and thought it might be worth looking into, what with that Beeple fellow doing so well and all. It might behoove many a digital artist to get on this gravy train, or it might be a stupendous waste of time and money! Hooray!

I started a collection page at OpenSea here: https://opensea.io/collection/retarded-animal-babies-the-definitive-episode-nft

If you or anyone you know is interested in NFTs, check it out. My plan is to create massive JPG files featuring 666 screenshots (of course) from each episode, measuring 666x420 each (of course), and assemble them into 18x37 mosaics for a 666 DPI (of course) file. It took a bit of programming assistance from a buddy of mine, but the result is definitely... something.

Anyway, just looking for some opinions about this bonkers bullshit, and to see if anyone else here has looked into it themselves. Cheers!!

--Dave

umop.com

Hey gang!

Wow, it's been a long time since I've dropped by to say hello! I've actually been busy working on my first novel, Beelzebuds. And it's out now! If you like my drawings, you might be interested in getting a copy for yourself. It's a 292-page novel peppered with 28 woodcut-style illustrations. It's a lot more involved-looking than the average frame of a Retarded Animal Babies toon, I can promise you that!

Set in 1984, it follows the story of Mitch Softwick who accidentally summons Beelzebub. An unlikely friendship ensues, although the impending apocalypse puts a bit of a strain on it. If you enjoy Stranger Things and have seen (and enjoyed) a really awesome show called Freaks & Geeks that came out around the turn of the century, you're really, REALLY going to like my book.

If nothing else, you can say you bought the RAB guy's novel.

Link: http://umop.com/beelzebuds.htm

Thanks for reading, and for continuing to watch my animations after all these years!!

--Dave

umop.com

Hello Newgroundsers! Only around 0.01% of you remember me, but 15 years ago I uploaded the first episode of Retarded Animal Babies... a 90-second attempt to be as stupid as possible while creating animated art. I made it in one 29-hour sitting. Probably in my sweat pants.

It's been since 2011 since episode 23... I've been through a divorce, a few moves, had a sex change, and changed it back again (and twice as big!). So it's been a while and I'm really not the same person I was back when my furry little characters cock-n-balled their way into your hearts. I've even removed Episode 20 in its entirety from Newgrounds until I can fix (or just nix) a scene depicting the suicide of Kurt Cobain... I kinda think it's disrespectful these days (not to mention inaccurate... I think the poor dude was murdered... watch "Soaked In Bleach" if you give a shit).

Anyway, people often wonder if I'll ever continue the series, and sometimes I think about it, since I've never made anything more popular than RAB and feel like I'm kind of obliged in some way to at least consider it. But that TITLE. It's pretty rough, right? I've thought about maybe renaming the series "Retreaded Animal Babies" or "Rebooted Animal Babies" to make fun of how Hollywood (and possibly even myself) is out of original ideas, and more recently "Retired Animal Babies" since they're so goddamned old (and yet still "babies," because of the Continuity Bubble that Bunny has them all permanently trapped inside), but isn't that lame & heavy-handed? What do you guys think? That dreaded "R word" has more of a stigma attached to it now than ever before. But my gut feeling is that watering RAB down for the sake of a pussy society's potential butthurt just doesn't sit right with me, and why placate would-be new fans while sacrificing the respect of you dyed-in-the-wool existing ones?

So fuck all that shit. I'd rather the series exist as it is, whether or not more installments ever get made, than to try to rebrand it now. Hmm, "Rebranded Animal Babies?" No. Seriously, fuck ALL that shit. I promise. And that's my anniversary gift to the fans today.

Happy Anniversary to RAB. Thanks for continuing to watch and enjoy it. You're all sick in the head, and I love ya for it! 

--Dave

P.S. I Photoshop cats on Facebook these days... the meme creator's equivalent of knitting potholders: facebook.com/catlazers

Hey strangers! You guys would probably like Anything Comics (especially today's episode, which features all the RAB characters!). It's an interactive webcomic where you get to make suggestions (in the form of Facebook comments) for what you'd like me to draw. Keep it cool and thanks for continuing to enjoy RAB animations after 13 solid years on Newgrounds!

No new RAB episodes are planned by the way; this series was retired five years ago. But I do appreciate all the loyalty to the series and hope you'll continue to support new projects!

Hello strangers!

I used to make this series back about eight hundred trillion years ago called Retarded Animal Babies. Life events spanning a dozen years prevented any more than only 23 episodes to have been made for the series (slacker!), but it was a fun, sporadic, and rewarding ride. There are still a lot of fans out there; enough to have made the DVD sell out at the Newgrounds store. I still have a small box of them left, so I've once again made the DVDs available for sale on my website umop.com, but once they're gone, they're gone.

RAB used to always shoot up to the #1 spot in the Portal ten years ago, and as the first few vanguard episodes were uploaded in 2003, viewers very early on were split cleanly into "love" and "revile" categories (with around 95% being in the first category, thankfully). Eventually though, the heyday ran its course. As more time rolled by, it was becoming clear that the series wasn't aging very gracefully, and a new category of viewers - specifically the "meh" category - were starting to represent a larger and larger pie slice. I never stopped being in the "love" category myself, as tough as it was to fit animating-for-fun into my daily routine. But the viewership dropped, interest in a second DVD was sparse, and I was more demanding on myself than ever to deliver bigger & better entertainment on a shoestring budget (did you know I made the first one in 29 hours? Episode 23 took half a year...). I was fighting a losing battle to keep my disgusting little fingerless friends alive! Plus, I had already become a much bigger fan of the new Portal offerings than I was a fan of my own.

That's when I knew it was time to just let it go. I'm proud of the series, for all its filthy horror. I don't have anything else to prove with it. It kicks balls. I love that I made it. I'm proud that I was able to keep it as fucked up and raw as it is, and thankful for a site like Newgrounds to allow it to exist at all.

So now it's been, what? Four years? Four years since the last episode came out... and you know, I still connect with people routinely about RAB. And never once is it a person from the "hate" or even the "meh" categories! In fact, out of around 150 people at my new job in New York, there are fully three people there that are RAB fans!

And I even sold a DVD just three days ago (no, not to a work colleague...).

So, it's like... is it dead? Is it alive? Is it all just in the past? The answer to all of those questions is YES. The series itself is in the past, but the conversations about it are still happening. This has inspired me to (finally, heh) create a Facebook page for Reatrded Animal Babies. I'll stick weird old shit in there from time to time, and we can all talk about the show, and you can all drop by once in a while and bark at me to make new stuff.

And maybe someday, who knows? If the barking is loud enough, and it happens regularly enough, who the fuck knows.

I would personally prefer any presumed future of RAB to involve getting back to the fun randomness that made the series what it was back in 2003. As much as I loved (along with most of the fans who cried out for episodes that were "nice and long") the episodic nature of 21, 22, and 23, RAB wasn't ever originally about storytelling; it was about bash-yourself-in-the-face-with-a-dildo-made-of-solid-osmium stupidity.

It was about being "retarded" in every glorious, insensitive context that terrible, wonderful, fucking curse (this word alone helped create RAB's popularity while preventing its further success) of a word evokes.

It is admittedly without much fanfare that my series "Retarded Animal Babies" turns TEN FUCKING YEARS OLD TODAY!

Yep, on April 6, 2003, RAB's first episode got uploaded to the burgeoning portal of Newgrounds, and got way, WAY more attention than I thought it deserved to get.

Tom and I briefly talked about making an event for RAB today, possibly with the inclusion of a long-overdue (or not at all called for in the slightest) 24th episode. The last one came out... when? Two years ago? I scripted and started storyboarding something for RAB24... it's not bad, not particularly inspiring, either... Then again, none of my scripts really started out that great... the fun stuff usually ended up happening while I was animating & coming up with last-minute crazy shit. I'm sure that would have been the case with this episode.

Anyway, life, work, being 43 and nowhere near as creative as my 33-year-old self (and certainly not the animators on this site half my age with 100x as much hunger to create free animation work!)... all got in the way, and now here we are with nothing but this post and I think perhaps a few beers later tonight to commemorate the millions and millions of views RAB got this past decade.

So... cheers to the Newgroundsers who still remember & like RAB... you all dragged out as much content from me as I was mentally and temporally able to generate for the site. As far as RAB24 goes, I can't promise it'll ever actually get made but I'll never say die, either.

You know what... I think I will do something special for you guys tonight. Fuck it.

--Dave

If you even recognize my user name, you probably are wondering if there'll ever be another episode of Retarded Animal Babies. I would reply with an equally relevant question: why the hell would you want one? There are 23, with each one being less and less popular than the one before. Every time I try to figure out new ways to milk the series, I end up checking my email or making a T-shirt or something else equally world-conquering. I announced plans for a 2nd DVD about a year ago, but after getting five pre-orders over a period of two months (the 1st DVD got 500!), I canceled all plans for one. Sad but true!

I would eventually like to make a different series, but animating isn't my #1 interest these days (can you tell?). I'm actually working on a new monthly comic book idea, and also a BIG book for my monthly comic strip "the Packrat" that appears in Keyboard Magazine, due out in January. So you see, I am still artistically busy; I just prefer doing things more fulfilling than trying to go back to the RAB well and come up with a worthwhile story (or even just weird series of imagery not already done before) for characters you probably enjoyed much more in way back in 2003 anyway!

I never, EVER say die, but man... it certainly does feel like RAB's time has passed. Not even Tom has gotten back to me about this topic in a while... and if he doesn't care, why should you or I? He's 100% right to back-burner this series; it has had its time in the sun and there are so many newer, better things to watch on Newgrounds these days. But I'm glad for the popularity it had, I'm glad it's still getting watched once and a while, and I'm really glad that you're somehow right here, reading this. If you're new to the series, be sure to check everything else out on umop.com because there is honestly a mega-dump shitload of stuff from over the years, some of which you might even like more than Puppy's nutsack (hard as that is to imagine).

This ain't no goodbye. Shit, half of today's Newgroundsers wouldn't even call it a hello, since they probably never heard of me. I still drop by and check things out in the Portal from time to time. Hope to see you there soon!

--Dave