Tom Fulp
“Tom Fulp is emotional support. He made Newgrounds, and has a penis. We're not sure if it's large or small since we've never seen it, but as the team motto goes; Never say never!”
― Friday Night Funkin' Kickstarter campaign description
Thomas Charles Fulp is an American programmer, animator, game designer and game developer. He is the founder of the multimedia site Newgrounds and is one of the co-founders of video game development company The Behemoth, responsible for games such as Pit People, BattleBlock Theater and Castle Crashers. He has contributed to Friday Night Funkin' by providing the use of his character and previous Newgrounds mascot Pico from his game, Pico's School.
Involvement
With Friday Night Funkin' being released on Newgrounds, a teaser trailer was released a few weeks later onto the site's official YouTube channel to promote it.[1] Toward the end of the video, several characters that originated from Newgrounds were teased to be playable in the future, Pico being one of them, meaning that Fulp at some point before the video's release had agreed to allow his character to be included in the game. Due to the immense popularity the game had been garnering, especially around early December 2020, the team quickly began working to put out the next update. Week 3 would eventually release and add Pico as an opponent, complete with his own set of tracks and background. Due to the amount of work needed to make new vocals for each song to go with each playable character, selectable playable characters were delayed, but the feature is planned to be added in the future.
Tom Fulp has displayed his support for the game's development and growth. He also has had a hand in promoting it on Newgrounds. Besides the teaser trailer, there was also the announcement of the Friday Night Funkin' Animation Jam to celebrate the game becoming one of the most popular in Newgrounds' history.[2] On the 1st of April, 2021, Tom Fulp updated the original Pico's School game for April Fools' Day (the game would be restored to normal the day after while the April Fools' version became a separate game set in an alternate timeline). Among the many changes to the story and gameplay, the ending was also changed to Pico revealing to Cassandra that he and Boyfriend are a couple and everyone at his school accepts them. Boyfriend's cameo, apart from being part of Fulp's April Fools' Day joke, was also done in response to the massive popularity of Friday Night Funkin' and how it brought attention to Pico's game of origin.
Trivia
- According to PhantomArcade in a Tweet, the face seen on Spirit is supposed to be Tom Fulp's face but pixelated and in a red tint.[3]
- Despite only having provided the usage of Pico for Week 3, Tom Fulp is listed as one of the developers of Friday Night Funkin' on the game's Kickstarter page.[4]
Gallery
A photo of a young Tom Fulp jokingly described as him "after repeatedly losing on Week 2" on Normal difficulty, as seen on the page for the Friday Night Funkin' Kickstarter campaign.
Artwork of Tom Fulp and Pico made to celebrate the former's birthday by PhantomArcade.
A doodle depicting Tom Fulp, JohnnyUtah, Alien Hominid, Mario, Pikachu and Knight from game series Castle Knight as Among Us characters.
References
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