Adam Phillips

Adam Phillips (35 years old, male), who goes by the alias "chluaid", is a very popular Newgrounds Adobe Flash animator, known for his award-winning series Brackenwood and hitchHiker. He has submitted 8 flashes, six of them winning Portal awards, and has an A+ batting average, at 4.24 out of a possible 5, making him the second-highest rated artist. His highest rated Flash is currently littleFoot, which was submitted November 8th, 2005. It is second in the overall Portal standings, at a rating of 4.24.

Career

Early work

Adam was originally an Effects Animator at Disney in 1993, where he was employed for 11 years. During this time, in around 2000, he started dabbling in Flash. He made mostly toons based around stories he heard during his childhood. His work quickly grew in popularity, as the second entry in the soon-to-be-famous Brackenwood series, Bitey of Brackenwood earned Phillips runner-up in The Greatest Story Never Told competition in 2003. He then put up Bitey's Castle.com in October of the same year to house his animations. During this period, Phillips also began writing book chapters for flash guides.

Rise to Newgrounds fame

Adam joined Newgrounds on March 26, 2004. For the next three days, Phillips was submitting almost all of his older work. He topped it off on the 29th, with Bitey of Brackenwood, which would win Review Crew Pick, Daily Feature, and Weekly Users' Choice.

Later in 2004, Adam announced he would released the third Brackenwood cartoon, then entitled "The River", on August 12th. The toon, however, experienced a slight delay, being pushed to August 26th, and having its name changed to Prowlies at the River for submission. This entry also won Review Crew Pick, Daily Feature, and Weekly Users' Choice, and was met with even more praise than Bitey. It won the second annual TGSNT, making it two wins for Adam. To celebrate the release of the Flash, Adam hosted a Brackenwood Christmas e-card contest. The entries can be found on the Brackenwood Collection page.

Prowlies took a different approach from Bitey, being considerably brighter and at the same time more violent than its predecessor. It was also the first in the series to use a scripted camera, which was contributed by Sham Bhangal.

In December, Phillips quit his job at Disney to devote more time to the Brackenwood series. This did not help him, as he had planned; littleFoot, the fourth Flash in the series, was released over a year later on November 8th, 2005. littleFoot is currently the second least popular entry in the series according to views, and it only won Daily Feature and Weekly Users' Choice. This toon introduced the titular "Littlefoot", and his apparent mother, "Bigfoot", who are based on the myth that a bipedal half-human covered in hair lives in the American Northwest.

Recent works

By 2006, there was no doubt Adam was one of the most popular animators on the site. With 10 Portal awards and quite a few Top 50 flashes, even more was expected from Phillips. Thus, word quickly got that the new Brackenwood movie would be a continuation of the previous littleFoot, and would be released in April, as reported on Phillips's site. As the month drew closer, however, no new word about the toon came up.

On May 1st, 2006, Adam posted a preview of the Flash, entitled "the YuYu", on his site. Two days later, the full flash was submitted to Newgrounds. It turned out to be a music video with no real story and pure action. The flash did have some continuity, though, as it rejoins Bitey, waking up from the rock that hit his head in littleFoot to a pack full of Yuyu — strange black creatures that speak an entirely different language. The flash regained Review Crew Pick, as well as Daily Feature and Weekly Users' Choice. It also hit #1 in the Portal standings and stayed there for a number of weeks.

External links

• Phillips's website
• Official Brackenwood homepage
• 2004 Interview with Phillips