absolutely nothing

In case you missed em, I made 2 animations last December. Go watch them. Or not.

.............

I've been using Flash for about 4 years now (oh god) and I can, without a doubt, say that I have improved over the years as an animator and as an artist. It was only about a year and a half ago that I got my first tablet and I wish I could have bought one sooner. But I can definitely say that "I do not hate my drawings" anymore.

2013 was a good year for me because I've managed to more than double the animations I make (including the ones not on Newgrounds). I've met new people and made new friends. I got more subscribers on Youtube and more followers on every other social media site and so much more. I also have gotten more awards here on NG; I got my first Weekly Awards and first Daily Features in 2013 and I am quite proud of myself for managing to get those awards I guess.

(This is gonna sound very pretentious) 2013 for NG for me was kind of a quiet year. I mean not much really happened. I've been using NG for roughly 6 years ( almost 3 years on this account and 3 years on another one which I've long forgotten the username and password for ). I mean yeah, a LOT of people still come here but in comparison to what I've experienced over the past years, it almost feels like visiting a ghost town or something. I don't really know, that's just how I feel.

I've heard people complain about how NG is progressively becoming "worse", which I think is completely false. I still think this site's content is pretty much the same with how it used to be, if not better. The internet evolves so quickly. What before was considered good might be mediocre compared to what we have today. Artists also "evolve" quickly and can kind of "adapt" easily. As stuff gets easier and easier to make and computer softwares get more powerful, the production quality of content on the internet began getting higher and higher. And from that, new legends are born. These people become sort of "celebrities" almost here on NG. They make these popular stuff and it kind of hides all the bad stuff out here and it kind of gives the impression that "oh, this is the kind of stuff I can watch on NG" or "man, this guy makes really good stuff, I'm gonna try to be like him", but as soon as they leave, there will be nothing to shadow the not-so-good stuff here. But I'm not saying that most of the content here is bad, I see good stuff here most often (well, not the "under judgement" section). I'm saying that there's nothing to look forward to anymore; There's no one to look up to now on NG. I think there still are fairly popular people here on NG like Harry Partridge and Yotam Perel and guys like them who are still kind of active, but I think a new generation of artists should emerge. Anyway, that was sort of a rant and it was just my opinion and how I feel about all this... So.. yeah, I would like to see NG have a big comeback this year. NG has been a big part of my life as an artist and perhaps to many other people as well; I don't want to see it just die out.

Okay, back to me; I want to make more stuff this year hopefully more than what I made last year. I also have had so much "identity crisis" on my art style but I think I've settled now. I also do the occassional comic-book style so I'll be making stuff like those too. This year I pretty much want to do voice acting. The problem is I haven't a decent microphone and I have this kind of speech impediment where I just screw up what I say, so hopefully I can get that fixed. I really want to voice act because none of the stuff that I made EVER had voices in it ( except some animated podcasts that I made ). And it's a lot harder without voices for me because then I have to give emphasis to the sound effects to make up for the lacking dialogue. I would also like to try out making funny stuff WITH dialogues I think that's my next logical step to this whole animation career thing. I mean I'm only 18, and I've been making actual cartoons for only 2 years so far. I have a pretty long way to go.

TLDR: I like my drawings.

2013 was good and bad but mostly good.

I'll make more stuff this year.

and yo mama is so fat... nevermind.

So yeah, just thought I'd spill that out.I don't care if you don't care, shut up. I think I've made a whole lot of typos but whatever. So Happy New Year and bla bla bla here's a drawing I made with a mouse:

BYEEEEEEEEEe

I really like this new text editor.

Comments

Log in to Comment

BryanV 2014-01-07 04:04:43

FIRST

Comick 2014-01-07 14:26:24

SnowGo and Grape were both great cartoons..it's funny that you say "I think a new generation of artists should emerge..." when its actually YOU the 18yr old aspiring animator that ARE the new generation hahaha. So keep up that work and never stop doing your own original thing man..don't be a follower be the one leading this animation wagon.

YoutubeIsawesome 2014-01-07 20:46:56

What's worked on next

googletoper 2014-01-07 23:39:18

FOURTH!

TomFulp 2014-01-08 12:04:35

I feel bad that Grape didn't break 10k views while on front page. I was just checking your YouTube to compare with NG performance and I didn't see Grape on there - is it just on NG at the moment? For your other movies that are on NG and YouTube, it looks like the NG ones have more views than the YouTube ones, so that's a positive for NG. Have you considered putting your other stuff here too?

I think the really big problem with NG is that a lot of artists are still lurking in the shadows and wishing good things for it, but there aren't as many vocal big artists as there were back in the day. They've chosen different platforms to be vocal on, like Twitter, Facebook, or their YouTube page... Or they just focus on their work and don't socialize as much as they once did. The incoming generation sees YouTube as the place to get big, so they don't put the effort into becoming part of the NG community the way previous generations did. The way people use the internet has changed a lot in the past five years, not to mention the whole mobile thing we still are working to address.

I like to think that if we solve ad revenue and mobile, more artists will start putting effort into their NG presence again. For less known artists we still seem to drive more views than any other website. In the case of both unknown artists and avant-garde stuff, there are a ton of examples from this past year where NG outperformed YouTube and Vimeo.

The question is whether we can get the whole community vibe kicking again. I know part of that is my fault because I've sunk into the shadows myself; still here on the site every day but not organizing as many community activities because I feel like everyone is just trying to do their own thing nowadays and I've gotten discouraged. I also haven't been posting about my own development in ages because I'm working on something that hasn't been ready to announce yet, although that is hopefully coming soon.

We have some social stuff coming that will hopefully reinforce more community bonds on NG this year, so we'll see how that goes!

BryanV 2014-01-08 12:04:35

Most of my stuff that isn't on NG are the animated podcasts, which I don't really think fits here that well, so I just put them on Youtube. And yes, Grape is only on NG currently and I'm still deciding whether to put it up on Youtube or not.
Also, nice to know that you guys have plans for going mobile. Looking forward to this year, Tom!