Yeah!

I attended my cousin's wedding, and I managed to survive it, as long and sensory overloading as it was. I didn't feel great and had to leave a couple of hours early, but I still got to see my cousin get married, celebrate with confetti, and eat a multiple course meal together with members of my extended family. Glad I was able to make their special day just a little bit more special at least!

Anyway, with so much travelling, eating out, awkward conversations, and hours of attempting to sleep in an uncomfy hotel bed, I've been feeling rather physically and mentally exhausted. Haven't been able to draw a lot of art, though I have been working on one pretty big thing that I intend to share here later this week. I hope you'll like it! ; )

Until then, enjoy this silly "meme" of my mascot character, Fnuzzlee:

I think I'll have to pump out a few more high quality artworks before I ask to have my scoutability restored, but that is something I plan on doing before the year ends. Hopefully the admins will listen to me...

This isn't a stress break (much the opposite), I actually have to attend my cousin's wedding. This will mean travelling halfway across the country, and having to stay overnight in some cheap, sleazy hotel in the big city, probably without WiFi. Not that I'd be taking my laptop there anyway, but still... I won't be able to access the internet at all for several days.

Although a blood relative by technicality, this cousin is not somebody I know well, nor have I spoken a word to in over 10 years. I've never met the person they are marrying, and know very little about them other than the country they come from. It will be a very large event, with tons of extended relatives from both sides of their families being invited, so naturally it will be a very unpleasant atmosphere for a socially awkward introvert like me... It will be a long day involving much talking, much clapping, and much eating of pretentious food. All while pretending to be happy!

Naturally, I'll need a while to mentally prepare for this event, so I'd like to minimise my notifications the week beforehand. So, I won't be posting any new artworks this week, though I'll continue to respond to notifications until Thursday. I'll also need some time after the event to recover from the stress of it all, though it might just be a few days, we'll see...

Anyhow... I'll probably live through it. But if in any event I don't survive the wedding, if I have a heart attack due to the stress, or if I am stabbed by some city thug before I even make it to the venue... I want you to remember me and remember my artworks well. And remember Fnuzzlee too! She's my best character, as cringey as she is... just don't remember me as "the Fnuzzlee guy" there's a lot more to me than that. If I live on to make my games and stuff, you'll see exactly what I mean...

Farewell, and wish me the best of luck!

I figured this out for the first time a few days ago while I was looking around in the settings. I was never given any kind of notification, but it turns out I've been de-scouted, which means that none of my artworks appear in the Art Portal anymore. The only place people can actually browse artworks on Newgrounds since this website has no algorithm to speak of... This explains why, for the past several months, the ONLY people who have faved my artworks at all have been my followers. You're probably also the only people who've even SEEN them!

I don't know WHY this happened, I was never given any kind of notification (I also don't know WHEN it happened). I only found this out by looking somewhere very specific and hidden away in the settings, and when I tested posting an artwork to the portal to see if it showed up there, sure enough, it did not!

It's possible that one of the art mods thought that my artworks were not high enough quality for the art portal, and removed me without telling. If so, that's kinda lame, since I've seen other artworks of a similar standard of quality to mine in the portal (or worse even, would you believe?), and it would only be because they personally disliked my style/content. It's also possible that the user who scouted me was de-scouted (as silly as it sounds, when a user is de-scouted, all the artists they scouted are also unscouted). One other possiblily is that I didn't choose the correct age ratings or thumbnails, even though I try to follow the guidelines, and nothing I draw is explicit anyway? The only other possibilty I can think of is that is it is just some weird glitch, but I don't know who to get in touch with to resolve it...?

It's really frustrating that I've spent to much of my free time cross-posting my works to this website without even knowing that literally nobody new was even seeing them, and not having a clue why, or what I can do to resolve this problem. It seems that unscouted artists don't have the option to scout like newcomers either, so I might NEVER be scouted again?!

Certainly no point in me paying to support Newgrounds now, like I was planning to later down the line, if they aren't going to be willing to support me.

***

In other news, I got into a fight with a troll on the Art forum last week. I mean that inadvertently of course, since I was criticising Newgrounds for being a very poor platform for artists looking to find an audience, in part due to its complete lack of an algorithm or any discoverability options. For some reason, this elitist user took my post as an excuse to blame ME for not getting noticed, telling me that my artworks look like crap, that nobody on the forum is interested in me, and that I don't deserve any attention for my efforts. This is just their subjective opinion of course (as if I don't have 1.4K DeviantArt followers or anything), as I was quick to tell them before blocking them indefinitely. I did have a quick look at their gallery before I did so however, and my god... some of the most repulsive "art" I've ever seen IMO! Yet this person thinks that I am the one with no drawing talent? Just goes to show how what artworks are considered "good" and what ones are considered "bad" should never be down to an individual or small group of people, because everyone's taste in art is completely different.

Anyway... we now know that this troll was wrong, and that the REAL reason for me struggling to acquire any new followers here is because my artworks don't even appear on the portal anymore. Really don't know what I'm going to do now, if there is even a point to this at all anymore...

Love this website!

Back from my little stress break. Didn't get everything done that I wanted, but at least I got to catch up with some of my other hobbies and, of course, my massive video game backlog.

I've worked on a couple of new artworks while I was gone, which I'll upload soon enough. For now though, why not check out this thing I threw together this morning for July 4th?

Yeah, we don't really celebrate Independence Day in the UK... was fun to draw for a laugh though!

I'm taking a little break from posting on Newgrounds (and other social media) until next month, to recover from depression and stress.

My failure to find an audience on this platform, despite all my best efforts, and the general feeling of being hated by most users of this site and others, has been getting to me for a while. This has been getting worse for many months now, along with a lack of sleep, and I can't keep going on without a little rest and relexation. So basically, I need a short holiday (also an opportunity for me to catch up with my gaming backlog).

Like I say, I won't be posting anything until July, however, I may take some time to catch up with some of the many talented artists on this site, and also post a few things on the forum. Not that people there ever care... but no harm in me trying I guess...

Wanted to embed a little GIF animation underneath my new artwork, but all images other than the main upload have to be WebP format, and hence won't animate.

I HATE WEBP! It's such an irrelevant file format that Google keeps trying to push on websites, even though the long established GIF and PNG formats are better and actually work on computers when you download them.

***

Anyway... I guess I'll have to upload the animation separately. Another day... I'm too tired right now.

In the mean time, enjoy my recent artwork (so long as you are an adult of course!)

I've noticed a couple of artworks I've posted the past few months have had a whole star knocked off the rating, despite only a small number of views/faves, most of which are likely to be positive given that I'm a very small artist here and only my own followers ever see my artworks.

I suspect somebody with a LOT of voting power is lurking here to "zero-bomb" my artworks on the occasion, to prevent them from having too positive a rating. Probably a hater of mine.

Not much I can do about it, not knowing who's doing it, but still... it's annoying.

Hello everyone, Happy New Year! Sorry I'm a few days late...

Kind of a bummer that I didn't even make it to 50 followers here last year, never mind my target of 100. But I won't let that stop me from trying. Despite my attempts to advertise my artworks in the forum, few have taken notice so far. I'll need to become a bit more aggressive in promoting myself! But not to the extent of becoming annoying and spammy either...

My key goal this year is to improve my art, significantly. I've realised that, since I'm not going the NSFW route, only by having really high quality artworks to show off can I stand out on this website. I'll spend a lot more time practicing new techniques, learn anatomy properly, and try out some more dynamic poses and ambitious angles. I'll teach myself to draw faster and more effectively (moving from a mouse to a proper drawing tablet again should help too, as will upgrading to a more powerful computer with the latest version of Krita).

I'm also going to expand myself beyond Newgrounds and DeviantArt. I plan on making a Tumblr account soon, and possibly a Twitter and Furaffinity (big maybe) later in the year.

Officially, art is just a hobby of mine; my main career path is computing, specifically software development. Once I'm happier with my portfolio, I'd really like to make some personal projects, including some simple games starring my characters. I'll probably host them here on Newgrounds, if I can. There's a comic I'd like to start working on too.... but, I'm getting ahead of myself again.

Anyway... those are some of my major goals for this year ahead, along with making more friends here on Newgrounds. Other IRL resolutions of mine for this year include:

+) Getting more sleep

+) Getting more exercise

+) Less time online

+) More time studying and working to get my first job

Okay, with that all the way, I'd like to notify you that I'll be taking a break from the internet for a week or so, to relieve a little bit of stress (and meet some personal deadlines IRL). I'll be back soon with lots more fun ideas, so take care, and hope to see you there!

I haven't had much success with the forum so far, so I'm going to make more topics, and start posting to other people's topics.

Would be nice to get to 100 followers before the end of the year, as I had planned at the start of this year, but it's probably too late now...

...because that's the only way I can think of, that anybody here will ever see my art.

Do Newgrounds' tags even work? Do people here even sort by new? Is it because I don't know who Pico is?

Seeing pretty much every other artist I click on have multiple front-paged drawings, and thousands of watchers even though they've only been on a couple of months, is kind of depressing. Not to mention the lack of interaction on my posts... oh, wait. Why am I typing this again?