Madness Deathwish

Fan tributes were how the Madness Combat series spread. Krinkels made the films; hundreds of Newgrounds animators taught themselves frame-by-frame action by copying his figures, his palette and his camera cuts, and then uploaded the results. Madness Deathwish is one of those, released by Arkuni in September 2007, and it is built as an interactive animation piece rather than a game — a selection screen of short sketches you click through.

An imitation exercise, in public

Learning to animate by rebuilding someone else's style is old practice, and Flash made it unusually visible: the same portal that hosted the original hosted the homages, side by side, with scores attached. Madness became the most-copied style on Newgrounds because it is deceptively approachable. The character designs reduce to a handful of shapes. The backgrounds are almost empty. There is no lip sync and no dialogue to write. What is left is pure motion, which is exactly the skill an aspiring animator needs to practise.

Arkuni's piece is squarely in that tradition. It is not trying to extend the series' story or add mechanics — it is a set of short, self-contained sequences made to demonstrate that the author could produce the Madness look and, more importantly, the Madness timing.

The house style, broken down

Watching a tribute is a good way to see what the original style actually consists of, because the parts that were hard to copy are the parts that show:

• A drained palette. Flat grey backgrounds, black figures, white accents, and colour used so sparingly that any of it reads as an event.
• Sunglasses instead of faces. No expressions, so all characterisation has to come from posture and movement.
• Snap-to-pose motion. Held frames punctuated by very fast transitions, rather than smooth interpolation. This is the hardest element to imitate and the clearest tell of a skilled tribute.
• Cuts on the beat. The soundtrack drives the editing, and sequences are built around musical hits rather than a story arc.
• Empty industrial spaces. Featureless rooms and corridors that keep attention on the figures.

How the piece works

There is one input: the mouse. Pick a sequence from the menu, watch it, come back and pick another. No timing, no scoring, no unlock order, no state to lose. Total runtime is a few minutes, and the reason to click a second entry is to see a different piece of animation rather than to progress.

Controls

Context and audience

Madness Combat and the work around it is stylised cartoon action made for the teen and adult audience Newgrounds served. The style's abstraction does a lot of work here — the figures are shapes rather than people, and the appeal has always been the choreography and the editing rather than any depiction of harm. Even so, this is not children's content, and it was not presented as such in 2007.

If you want the series in playable form, the games are a better starting point than the tributes: Krinkels' own Madness: Project Nexus is a full campaign with progression, and Tom Fulp's Madness Accelerant turns one animated episode into a controllable level. Deathwish is worth a few minutes for a different reason — it shows what the community around a Flash series looked like from the inside, at the point when copying it was the highest compliment available.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Madness Deathwish an official Madness Combat entry? No. Arkuni made it as a fan tribute. The canonical series is Krinkels' work.

Is it a game or an animation? Functionally an animation with a menu. You choose which sequence plays; there is nothing to control once one starts.

When was it released? September 2007, during the years when Madness tributes were arriving on Newgrounds in volume.

Why do so many Flash animations use this exact art style? Because it is teachable. Minimal character designs, empty backgrounds and no dialogue let a new animator concentrate entirely on motion, which is why Madness became the portal's most-copied look.

Where should I start if I want the actual series? With Krinkels' animated episodes, then the games built on them. Tributes like this one make more sense once you have seen what they are referencing.

Does it need a keyboard? No. The mouse is the only input, which is why it works on a trackpad or a touchscreen as readily as on a desktop.