WARNING! VENT AND WHAT NOTS!
So recently my newgrounds supporter has expired. And it isn't like the general where we had the mystery vigilante gifting out free supporters left and right. Pretty sure that person is long gone now.
My supporter is now gone, And I don't think I'll ever have a chance to get it back, Ever.
"But Its only 3$? Why can't you pay 3$?"
Cough Look my financial state is as garbo as it is. I'm only 18 and I live in a not really economically functioning country. Hell my country's economy is really hitting the shitter, Its a long story I tell you.
But why do I care about the supporter and the forums? And why this matters anyways to my profile if I'm here to only post art and content?
Well for starters, I used the community tab not only to communicate, connect, And make friends, But, Also to gather an audience through the general. And again people to help me out along the way. Artist friends again connections and all. It was a good source, Forums are a great place to communicate with others. Unlike social media. And thats what made me stay with newgrounds. Next to my art getting easily recognized here. Its now my staying point too I guess.
But, The place used to help me out alot, While I can still acess the art tab of the community, I still fear in doing so, I know criticisms are meant to help us and what not, But every time I ask a question or get involved in something, I just get kicked back.
I sometimes feel like I don't fit in the art section, I don't fit with the art community, I feel like I suck as an artist, And honestly with how things are going with me and my ipad, Or generally my art tools, I don't feel like I'll ever become a perfect artist in a while. While people out there are making beautiful drawings with their drawing tablets, I'm just stuck here making shoddy stuff with my pen and paper, My ipad, A capacitive pen, And ibis paint x (With terrible meant for anime brushes)
Honestly I Feel like genuine crap when it comes to my drawings. They always look more terrible digitally, I always try to make them look better, But I keep adding sprinkles and expensive gold glitter to basically crap. And I swear the process for doing traditional to digital tracing is pain in the ass, I mean it, I have to constantly tap two lines, In order to achieve the perfect smoothness, Deal with me mixing up layers, Adjust brush sizes only for them to look terrible, Deal with pens again, And other things.
I really find the process in drawing with paper atlaest more fun and enjoyable, Like I feel a certain power of pride because I can easily sketch shades and faces in a smooth confident feel. Where I have to then suffer with my drawing tablet.
I genuinely don't feel like I can make a genuine master piece with my ipad and pen combo, The best I can do is shoddy sketches that won't even look that good.
I mean I don't have much in choice really, Unless I wait for april 20 or something for my tablet to get shipped, I don't even know what to do. How I'm I going to supply you with content, How I'm I going to work with things? All I have been doing recently is taking alot of drawing lessons from places like drawabox, And even having some certain pals help me out. I know it takes patience and all, But sometimes I don't feel like I'm moving. I'm I doing progress or not?
I honestly don't know what to do now, Its been stressing me over a week now, I really just can't handle things right now, I don't know how I can share content with others, How I can take pride, How I am going to work things out with my drawings, How will I deliver my workflow? Should I keep posting crappy pictures of my traditional drawings or should I do something else?
I'm out of my mind believe me on this. Please help me out. Its already bad enough I don't have a place to communicate and make friends with others. And honestly I'm at my limit not in a angry way.
But honestly, The best I can do at this point is practice and practice, As I like to say, Draw till you die, But I matter more on how I can share things with others now. Thats the problem
Love you all, And I hope you all have a good day, I have so much to think off with little help
With peace and love
-DerangedKnite
jthrash
The good news is that Newgrounds does not have an algorithm, so don’t feel pressured about putting out content for the sake of content, it’s not like Twitter or YouTube where frequent posting makes it easier for people to discover you, regardless of the quality of said posts. Newgrounds is like social media, however, in that it seems like you are comparing yourself to artists who are older, more experienced and overall simply had more time to practice and hone their skills. My art and especially my animation sucked when I was 18, too, and unlike you I wasn’t aware at the time that I could learn all this stuff for free on YouTube channels and waited until college to properly start learning this stuff. Hayao Miyazaki didn’t get to direct his first Studio Ghibli movie until he was 48, for example. You have way more time to get better than you think you have.
Also, no one is expecting 18-year-olds to consistently to make enough income to pay for monthly subscriptions of any kind, not even Newgrounds’ $3 a month fees. People who do support the site, like me, are older adults with stable jobs and incomes and/or healthy savings accounts, not teenagers relying on allowances from their parents and maybe a summer job.
Take a long break if you need to, but don’t be so hard on yourself next time. One of the benefits of being an artist is that your “peak” is still a very long ways off. You’ll be blissfully drawing masterpieces in your 50’s and 60’s while your peers are freaking out about midlife crises and wrinkles, just keep practicing until then.
DerangedKnite
jthrash you always came to news and posts, And any threads I make about art and supported me, I just wanna say, Thank you so much for being there for me, I actually mean it, You and some few other professional artists on this site helped me out quite alot, But thanks for supporting me in alot of ways, Everytime I feel like I'm in the gutter, You come up and pick me up and tell me to walk again. So I wanna say thank you very much, Really does mean it.
But still, I don't know if I really should take a break in uploading sense, I mean I don't have much in my head to draw fanart for anyways. Expect for your usual characters, But i have been pretty much training hard on drawing as much as I can. I don't know if what I'm doing is doing progress for me, But only time can tell at this point, As for the subscription I only paid for a newgrounds supporter once, Then I had someone help me out back when the general is still open, But now thats gone, I don't think i have anyone to hold me up on that anymore, So I got no one to talk to that much aside from some few people.
Believe me, Me having the ability to purchase a game especially one that costs 70$ is like a extremely rare miracle at best.
I have to agree on the artists too, They do seem like people alot of history on their drawing careers. Hell they even got the right tools for it. I'm only practicing a hellton and trying my best to improve my art at best to an atleast acceptable term, While slowly trying to build an audience through newground's forums well thats gone, Don't really know where to build an audience next.
Still thank you very much honestly.