My full name is Josiah Brooks, and I’m from Victoria, Australia.
I’ve been animating for a while now, ever since the begining of 2003. My interest in animation began during my 9th year of high school, when our assignment in computer class, was to animate something 5 frames in length, in microsoft Power Point. I had WAY too much fun, because Where other people in my class got bored, or were satisfied with a stick dude falling over or something, I took my project home with me and made a 2 minute epio battle of mortal combat between two stick figures, with sounds and everything! Well soon after that project I learnt about Macromedia Flash mx, and started to muck around with that

I began submitting animations mid 2003, to ‘stickslaughter’ a website that has since been closed, but was dedicated to stick figure animations in a flash portal setup. When I was ready to submit my first animation, i didnt know how to credit myself. I thaught ‘Josiah Brooks’ was too lame, so I went with ‘JAZZA’, a name that was in an email adress I made in my first year of Junior High school. Over time I created more and more stick figure aniamtions, and during the perios that i released an animation called ‘Exelsior’, I heard about this place called Newgrounds, a much larger place that people would submit aniamtions too, much more impressive anamtions than mine! However, I turned to newgrounds to submit flash.

Within the first few months of submitting my aniamtions to Newgrounds I realized that i was in a whole new league. Stick figure animation were looked down upon, and viewers seemed much more critical. That did not stop me wanting to win them over though! I worked hard enough outside of my animation wor, to buy a digital tablet to animate with. with this tablet i moved on from the stick figure animations to cartoons, such as ‘just another fight’, and ‘Spree’.
Finally the big break I was working for came. I don’t know how or why, but for some reason my aniamtion
‘Korosu: the black samurai’ was put on the front page of newgrounds. This was a HUGE leap for me. It got a couple of hundred thousand views, and a much more positive response than my old junk, but as always i could improve, and so i worked to do just that.

After several attempts to create a series (IE: Legion, Korosu, Spree etc) I finally made an animation that I WANTED to make more of, and many users seemed to like. This was ‘PALADIN episode 1’. Although that episode did not make the front page, I decided to keep the series going. Episode 2 took around 3 months to make (a lot for me back then) and HOORAY my day was once again made when it got the front page treatment. BUT, I didn’t completely get the response I was hoping for. Many users complained about the lack of story, and poor art and music. Lucky for me my tablet broke around that time, so i worked really hard and got a Brand new LCD wacom, much better for animation because I could see what I was drawing as i drew it!

So, back to the drawing board i went. Episode 3 began with a story re-cap, to kind of intoduce new elements of story and levels of diety that were neglected in the other episodes. To my great joy, once again, episode 3 got front page. Episode four took another 5-6 months to make, and again, got the front page. Several aniamtions had been released between the episodes of PALADIN (simply because sometimes ‘serious’ animations can get too tedious) and these aniamtions include the Pico Day Anthem, Target Practice W.W.W, Another Random Battle and others. Finally in February 2006 I pulled myself together enough to make Paladin Episode 5, But this time i went about it a Whole New way.

I started with a script (didn’t do that with any of the other episodes)
I then made storyboards for every scene in the animation and animated, While the storyboards for future segments were still being drawn. (also not done in any of the other episodes)
Finally, and one of the most difficult parts, was I composed ALL of the music myself, to avoid copyright but also to keep the mood and feel exactly as i wanted it. This proved both a challenge and a blessing, because i had never completes a score to aniamte to before, but I found myself a lot more free in how I could go about making changes and custimising my aniamtion even more.

The creation of Paladin Episode 5 prompted Loads of things such as my first Internationally available DVD for sale, a complete website layout and theme redesign, new forums, new online shop with shirts and mugs and stuff, and the list goes on. I also pushed myself in how I decided to publicise the episode, by promoting a DVD competition on newgrounds (tom allowed me to post on the front page) and I also entered the animation into several worldwide aniamtion competitions suck as the bitfilm animation festival, and flashforeward boston, etc.

Today I am not far from where you’re reading. Not rich or famous, but working hard and with passion, to bring stories to life in the best ways I know how. Im in this to entertain people and theres no simpler way to put it, because I find it the most fulfilling thing, when people repond positively and are entertained by what I create.
I hope to do so for the rest of my life!