James Anthony "Jim" Bonacci (born September 27, 1979, age 44) is the creator of Total Jerkface, Divine Intervention, Happy Wheels, GameTest12 and the Flash movies Beautiful Day and Where's My Bike?. Jim lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, and you can contact him through his e-mail address: totaljerkface@gmail.com. He is usually busy and unlikely to reply, however. You can also contact him on Facebook, visit his YouTube channel ImAngryMan, and his Myspace account here, although Jim will rarely, if ever, update it. He's also created an official Discord server, and his Discord user is horribleperson#1464. He is the current owner and creator of Total Jerkface and works with Jason Schymick along with some moderators on the game.
Developing Flash in early 2002, he made an animated movie on Newgrounds called Oh Beautiful Day and then another one in 2003 titled Where's My Bike?. Later in 2003, he started learning ActionScript and made a Flash game called Divine Intervention. The game was his first major success in the world of Flash games and has about 6 million views on Newgrounds alone. After releasing Divine Intervention, Jim realized that making Flash games was the thing he wanted to do and spend more time on, because it perfectly combined his interests in art and programming. A couple of years later (around 2006) he opened his site, totaljerkface.com (not the one as we know today). The website was built in Flash, and included a very limited amount of unappealing features. He included a Flash application that allowed users to ask him questions, which he publicly later answered.
He also added an interactive head there (different than the one on the site today), which would say something in a computerized voice if you put your cursor over it. There were multiple different costumes that one could put him into, including a wizard's robes and hat (which came with a beard), bloody bandages (which came with fire smoldering on Jim's hair), and his face skinned leaving muscle visible. He would also say a line in a text-to-speech voice if the cursor was hovered over his face, and this occasionally would turn the cursor into a burrito or cupcake which can be fed to him. (This led to him either exclaiming "Oh boy, that was delicious!", speaking a phrase in Spanish, or throwing up) However this feature was removed due to Adobe ending support with Flash Player, and as of now only a still image of Jim in the wizard costume is in its place and cannot be switched out.
He and Jason went to Berlin, Germany (see his news post Germany Land) for a month in August 2011. He also went to Thailand by himself in May 2012.
Work on Happy Wheels
In about 2006, he started working on Happy Wheels. Jim Bonacci was working at a Flash advertising job with Jason Schymick when he quit to start fully focusing on his "new game". Jim said that he spent 4 years making it, including rewriting the game in different programming languages. Originally, Happy Wheels was made for fun, it only contained Wheelchair Guy, and the first level, Happy Green Hills. After it gained some popularity, he made it into what the game is now, and published it to his website on June 4th, 2010. When creating Happy Wheels, Jim realized that creating all of the levels himself would take too long, so he opened up the Level Editor where users could create their own content. At about this time, Jim switched from working on Happy Wheels full time and part time. Jim then started to work on a fighting game, but he realized it was too ambitious to finish in a reasonable amount of time.
On November 13th, 2012, Jim announced he is "creating a new version of Happy Wheels from scratch". Unlike the online Flash version, this version will be written in C++, contain much more detailed graphics, and is downloaded rather than played online. Jim stated it will be free, but to make levels, you must pay $5 - 10.
At PAX East 2013, Jim showed a demo version of the mobile version of Happy Wheels.
He features a few of his own levels, which includes Happy Green Hills, Rope Swings, and Obstacle Course?.
Artwork By Jim
Since the early 2000's, Jim has posted numerous images online. He has done pencil drawings, MS Paint drawings, vector drawings, and has Photoshopped images. Images are posted in the order they were listed on the site.
Vector Drawings
Jim's best profession is doing vector graphics, something he still does to this day.
Pencil Drawings
Jim made some pencil drawings earlier in the 2000's.
MS Paint Drawings
In the early 2000's, Jim made a bunch of drawings using MS Paint.
Photoshop
Earlier in the 2000's, Jim Photoshopped various celebrities to make them look either funny or scary.
Trivia
- During his German vacation, Jim stated he knew nothing about the German language. He stated: "I don't speak German. No, I do know the word "Hallo". Jason knows 4 more words than I do, and can also count to ten.", obviously stating that Jim had forgotten to study the German language.
- Jim seems to enjoy eating potatoes. Whether this is due to a lack of money is unknown.
- He also has a big brother, Joe, as stated in the credits under "Special No Thanks", who stated that he dislikes Happy Wheels, although we do not know why. But he also is under the "Special thanks" in the Divine Intervention credits.
- Jim enjoys watching MMA fights.
- A quote from Jim regarding the level rules: "i don't mind sex levels with the characters. those are funny. i just don't want people drawing stupid pictures of porn with the new poly tool. if you want porn look at real porn." Interestingly, Jim does not use any capitalization in the post from which this quote originated, suggesting that he wrote this rather quickly or even that it is an imposter of Jim.
- Jim has a badge dedicated to himself on this Wiki, awarded for making 500 edits to articles, and every 500 edits after that.
- Jim is the only staff member (including developers and moderators) with his exact birth date publically revealed.
- Although the owner of Total Jerkface, he has not the first but the second profile in the history of the site. Ben Haynes, who helped on 2009's site architecture update, has the first. However, this was only used as a test profile.
- When Jim told UberHaxorNova that he "supports him and his mom" on YouTube, his comment was flagged and negatively replied to. UberHaxorNova made a video responding to this.
- In the video Soccer Time, Jim was under the pink monster.
- In 2011, he dressed up as Shredder for Halloween in a cardboard costume.
- He celebrated 1,000,000 Facebook likes by buying himself new socks and celebrated 2,000,000 by eating a cookie after lunch. But it is unknown if he celebrated 3,000,000 likes.