This is a new idea I'm gonna be trying out hopefully for the next little bit. Every Monday I will be making a thread highlighting one artist on this site - whether they be an illustrator, animator, musician, game designer of a mix of all four - and I will be dedicating a whole thread to them. These are artists who are exceptionally talented but profoundly underrated, usually having no more than a few dozen followers. This weekly thread series will attempt to give each and every one of them the attention they deserve.
Starting with this week, the official underrated artist of 9-15 November 2020 is @GenericAnime!
GenericAnime has been active since 2018 and makes both animations and illustrations; though he only scarcely uploads content, especially when it comes to his animations. Nevertheless, he has a lot to show for his rather short list of works.
I first stumbled upon his work last November, when his 9-minute-long "This Isn't Me" animation - part of his Story Time Cult series - made the frontpage. I watched it, and immediately afterwards watched everything else he had made. I was instantly hooked to his style, which is centered around a kind of gritty quasi-psychedelic vibe that is only enhanced by his rather simplistic drawings. Generic makes heavy of use of the roughly drawn, no-straight-line, acrylic-like style that others have used to bring a certain gritty edge to their work, and he does just as well with it. Many call this particular style amateurish since it doesn't appear on the surface to require a lot of effort, but that's part of the challenge: one really has to know what they're doing to make such a simplistic style work, and GenericAnime certainly has that knowhow.
This style of animation fits in perfectly with the storylines Generic presents in his animations. As said above, all his movies are absurdist, psychedelic and almost Lovecraftian in nature, which most probably wouldn't expect from a guy whose main characters are usually little more than glorified stick figures. This style of his in on full display in his first two animations, "Eyes For You" and "Curse Ep.1 - Birth"; both certainly emphasise on Generic's "Lovecraftian" side, and are even more so enhanced by the beautifully ominous electronic music of @JustRigo.
Rigo and Generic have in fact collaborated quite often, with Rigo usually being responsible for the music in Generic's animations. Unfortunately Rigo does not share his audio on Newgrounds nor does he seem to have any available link to any of his works. Sad indeed, because this man's music is incredible, and it makes Generic's movies all the more dramatic and enjoyable.
Generic's biggest breakthrough in the community however is undoubtedly his Story Time Cult series, in particular the second episode of the saga, "This Isn't Me", which features voice acting from the famous storytime animator herself, Emirichu. This animation is perhaps less "gritty" and more clean than Generic's previous works, but is nevertheless presenting of all of his biggest strengths; his knack for telling a bizarre yet engaging story; his simplistic but eye-catching art style; and an underlying layer of ominousness that leaves you begging for more.
And that's a good segway into perhaps the only real criticism to be had of Generic: his animations are painfully short, and with such engaging storylines in every one of them, it's not hard to feel disappointed when all of them end on such a high note of suspense. But to be fair to Generic, he is a grown man in his late twenties who probably has much higher priorities in life outside of NG, so he probably doesn't exactly have time to make every animation a ten-minute-long masterpiece.
The Story Time Cult series has been dragging out rather exhaustingly this past year, however a three-minute-long "minimation" was uploaded by him just last month; "The Spark" is itself is a weird storytime-esque animation that goes back to Generic's early days of ominous stick figure characters, though it ends by alluding to a new episode of STC being released in November. 21 days left people, hold onto your patience!
Don't let his simplistic art in his animations fool you though; GenericAnime is an incredibly talented illustrator, as shown on display in his Art Portal submissions. When not making quasi-psychedelic satire cartoons, he's hard at work producing hyper-detailed illustrations of both original characters (such as this human below) as well as fanart, mostly of female video game characters. This seems to be the trend for most animators, for obvious reasons; they can really show their talent off in still pictures that they don't have to animate thousands upon thousands of frames of.
Why is GenericAnime underrated?
Despite exemplifying the alternative and experimental side of media that Newgrounds has always been a breeding ground for, this man has been on the site for over two years and only has 47 followers, including myself. Even worse, his most popular animations haven't reached more than around 1,500 views. This is a shame, because the dude really has a knack for what he does, even if he scarcely uploads content, and it is about time he gets the true recognition he deserves. This will be the trend for all artists in this series of threads; talented people with an unacceptably low number of followers and view counts.
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That concludes this installment of Underrated Artist of the Week! Obviously a bit of work could be used to improve the whole thing, so let me know what more you want to see more or less of here.
coo coo bitch lmfao
