Just wanted to wish y’all a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Glad to have this as a place to openly talk about things that trouble us in our creative pursuits. Thanks everybody!

The advice I wanna share is gonna be more general and not only for artists, but I believe it will still be worth to share.

I remember a moment in my life when I was like 17 were I actually lost my focus and didn't know what was my real passion. As a result, I kind of lost the point of enjoying life, as I didn't know what really made me happy.

After many reflexion and looking back to my past times, I realized there were a few things that remained untouched through my life, some of these being:

• My love for art
• My love for making games
• My love for helping other artists to outstand

Might sound crazy, but all these were present even when I was a kid. When I had like 6 years, I decided I wanted to create games when I were an adult, and forgot about it for a very short time until eventually returned to that idea (which is when I began to learn how to program games).

My love in art was initially for drawings, but later I realized I just love every form of art. Even if I only do drawing, music, animation and bondage as forms of art, I like every type of art I see out there.

So, my advice would be: make sure to check every moment in your life, maybe you have already crossed with what makes you happy, and if not, you have a clear and perfect reason to exit the comfort zone and try new things.

So here's two things that have been discouraging me lately.

And no, it doesn't have to do with my ability to draw, being able to get stuff out there, or my age now that I'm about eight months shy of being 30 and feeling like I'm some old decrepit wannabe compared to all the younger artists that are out there. At this point those are non issues in my mind because I am confident enough in my skill to know that my work is good, even if I'm not churning out some Disney level shit.

Rather, the fact of the matter comes down to this: My ability to set time for myself and my own personal long term projects that I would like to make that I haven't openly talked about, and trying to do what I can to keep myself on pace with the projects I'm currently helping out with.

And that's just it I'd like to take on as many projects as I can to get my name out there and get better exposure, that's something I've been trying to do for the past couple of years and now it feels like that for all the things I'm doing for others I'm sacrificing my ability to set time aside for myself to work on personal projects that I want to really take the time to develop in the sense that I'd like to create a personal project.

This is something that I've been experiencing a lot as of late and I'm not sure if it's because I'm making myself my own worst enemy in being able to keep up with the amount of work I've been putting onto myself or if there is something else going on that makes me yearn to do more with the skills I haven't used in a long time in conjunction with the ones that I have built on in college, like writing for example.

And that's where it feels like I'm either hitting a plateau, or I've found myself between a rock and a hard place with how I would like to move forward with my creative endeavors.

Even if you were a godlike creator, you can't push many projects at once. The correct thing is you focus on one project: better one polished diamond than many old rocks of coal.

I understand you wanna be renowned and get visibility, but if you focus on many projects, you'll take forever to deploy 'em and thus, will never get the recognizement you deserve.

I saw once in a webpage that every creator should threat his most ambitious works as WIP's, why? Because that way you first focus on the important, see if people likes it and begin to build upon that. Take almost every old series in NG for example (like madness combat or salad fingers).

As much as you have big desires, you have to remember we are humans, and we have some limitations: work clever, not hard

I feel really motivated, have no imposter syndrome and love my art. Problem is, I can't find any success what so ever and it's so so frustrating to watch my peers get the success they deserve and leave me behind (I'm an art student at uni so I'm surrounded by other artists). I've been posting online for at least 5 years (started on a different website) and post like, pretty much everywhere, and yet I just can't get any reach at all or any commissions. I hate being told that I just need to be patient by peers whose stuff comparatively blew up overnight. It's so discouraging to get absolutely no success in what is likely one of my main career paths at this point.

Sucks to hear that. I'd recommend you that if people can't find you, you can make 'em find you, how? interacting with communities and advertising yourself in some different ways (here in NG, people make art threads and join collabs to show off their skills, but it's just an example). People love to be hearded and noticed (just like you want attention, everyone else does), so, step up and make people feel attended by you, speaking of your trait as an artist only obviously.

And yeah, in other aspects you have nothing to do but to be patient. We all have different luck, and reach success earlier or later in life

easier said than done

Got a name for you: George Bridgman.

Websearch him. Then buy at least one of his books. Seriously, do it. Get a used copy if you want to save some money. His stuff has helped maybe three generations of artists now. It's certainly helped me. If you can only buy one book it should probably be Bridgman's Drawing from Life.

I really wish I knew how to make more like... solid art? Like. All I can really do is pump out portraits/headshots and like, obviously I enjoy drawing them, but I really wanna draw more. Shit like interesting backgrounds, or just interesting scenes in general. Just sucks because I rarely have the motivation to push myself more.

I hope this advice can be helpful to you guys. I worry about giving bad direct advice, but please let me know if it helped (or if it didn't)

I'd like to ask how are you currently setting aside your time? Is it kinda off the cuff hopping from project to project? For myself I had help building a more consistent schedule, and depending on the type of person you are you can either do this digitally through excel/sheets, or physically with notes or a planner. I have both a dry-erase board weekly planner and some old index cards that I make quick lists with on what I plan to focus on for the day. I'm usually loose with what I decide to do, so I set an hour or so per each 'assignment block', that is up to your own discretion.

I don't think there's anything wrong with taking on a lot projects to increase your own visibility, but like you said it's interfering on your personal pursuits. Take a step back and look at your current projects, how many do you have at this moment? How difficult are they and how much time can you give to them per week? The average work day is roughly split: 8hrs Work/8hrs Free Time/8hrs Sleep, and you can rearrange this to fit your needs, but I say to try to avoid tapping into your sleep schedule unless your absolutely certain, it'll more likely leave you too tired to work on something. Talk to the people you're helping out, if it's something that you are pitching in for on your own time but isn't pertinent, there's no shame with telling someone that you have to back out of a project, just be sure to be courteous and let them know ahead of time.

Try a weekly planner, digital or physical, and keep yourself accountable and realistic with the amount of time you can give to a project. And don't overwork yourself, if all those projects either prevent you from your personal passion project or leads you to burnout and you work halfheartedly on it, cutback where you can. It's a passion project so it's personal to you and you'd want to make it the best you can.

Great to hear that you're motivated with your work! It's extremely tough to put yourself out there as an artist, especially with the intent to make a career out of it. I struggle with some of the same things that you talked about and it does get pretty disheartening. And while it is tiring to hear, there's a lot of truth about remaining patient with your work and its visibility.

There's also a saying I like "Comparison is the thief of joy", and it's a tough thing to do but what matters most is the standard that you hold yourself to and not anybody else's. It's okay to compare yourself to others for the sake of healthy competition, but don't dwell on their successes, but maybe come up with your own short-term goals for your own success. I've spoken about something similar to a friend of mine that it's not true that all you need to succeed is either working hard or being lucky. It's both. You have to work as hard as you can (within healthy reason) so that way when a lucky break comes around, you're prepared for it.

Outside of that, a good practice would be to keep yourself consistent with both your artwork and your engagement with it. Newgrounds is a great place for this, but there's other communities out there as well (Discord, Twitch). Join groups especially ones about things you like, respond to comments on your art on whichever social media you use, and post on others works as well! I posted in here a while ago with some info that I think might be helpful in that regard.

Motivation can be hard thing to maintain, especially if you feel burnt out or disinterested because of personal reasons. There's this tweet I saw about cropping that might help with drawing/showing off more of the body but shouldn't dissuade you from drawing the whole thing from time to time. Backgrounds are also something that I aim to improve on, and I think the best advice I can give, is to find environments (real, videogames, animation, comics/manga) that you love and draw inspiration from that. I usually skimp out on my backgrounds and only have this pokemon one and my recent secret santa gift for examples of my own backgrounds. Also here are some videos that might also help!

(Winged Canvas)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IQoBr1-c3k

(Ethan Becker)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9f58K7r9X8

Hope some of this was helpful and feel free to let me know if something wasn't clear (typed this up pretty late)

Honestly I've been using a white board as of late however I don't really have a strict structure in how I approach scheduling. I would like to get a weekly planner and try to organize my time better for once I get out of my workplace but even then, that's easier said than done for me.

I would say that physical is probably the better option if I go that route because to be honest when I'm on the computer it's easy for me to forget to look at a worksheet and say "This is what I need to get done" when I have a ton of other things going on.

I do see where you are coming from in regards to communicating because I do think that's important. Because at that point it's better to say something instead of nothing in regards to keeping an eye on your own mental health and what not. Otherwise I generally agree with everything else you are saying here.

This one might be pretty interesting for y'all. Whether its for good or bad reasons I don't know.

I have a parody action comic-strip starring me and my discord friends. It's about self-inserts, internet beef, and like Porn I guess. Some of it got pretty popular on here but for the most part it's not that big. I kept writing it because my friends wanted to see more and it was sort of fun. Anyway I wrote it in a way so that flanderized strawman versions of famous internet personalities would be the series major antagonists so I can use them to make fun of the real internet person, make fun of myself, make fun of the state of the internet at the time, or have a cool looking fight scene. I sort of just wanted it to feel edgy and unpredictable.

I bring this all up is because during the first year I was writing and drawing this, 2 things happened. #1 I got a job, #2 I got dragged into this other writing project in my friend's discord that had almost the exact same premise as mine (minus the making fun of porn bits). Not only that but they also started out with the exact same antagonists as my first 2 arcs in my comic. That was very demoralizing but I didn't give it much thought, I figured that my project would be able to stand on it's own 2 feet. The main point is that I had less free time to work on MY ACTUAL favorite project.

My job is pretty irrelevant to this story so I'll just bring up the secondary project. Since this new project that my friend created FOR FUN (a.k.a. take time out of your own day to do it.) was so similar to mine I assumed I could treat it pretty lightly since we were in a server with 15 other people who could write for it. But not only was I one of only FOUR writers for this project, but I was also the guy with the most creative writing experience, which was even more demoralizing in the complete opposite way. So not only did it end up stealing away MUCH more of my time than I wanted, I was expected to work on this project far more often than the other members. To put a candle on this cake of pure agony, the creator of the project ended up... Getting It Cancelled Due To Creative Differences. Big shocker!!!

With all of that aside, how this all ended up affecting MY motivation even WORSE was that because this project ended up stealing all of my time away from MY actual project that I wanted to work on, the two villains that the Other Project just grabbed and discarded still needed to get finished in mine. Cuz of that I was getting bored of them for obvious reasons, and even though I didn't really want to lean into the PORN aspects of my comic, I ended up creating 3 new villains out of spite because that I knew would NEVER get into the other project. It's also because I wanted to make fun of these people at the time.

Anyway the bottom line is I conceptualized these 3 back in September of 2021 (one of them way earlier than that) and basically fully finished writing their arc in February 2022. But I didn't get to draw them in the comic until early 2023 after the other project was long dead and buried. So by the time I got to that point in the story that I wanted, it was basically completely irrelevant, added nothing to conversation, and I feel like it came off like I was trying to respark some old drama that no one cared about. On top of that I also shortened the fight scene with the previous villains to get to this arc faster which feels kind of like a mistake in hindsight.

Anyways to close this rant, my discord friends were the reason I kept making my comic and they became the reason I hated making it. Seasonal depression is hitting and I've been ruminating on this. I know everything that held me back on this project is basically gone (except the job) but I can't help but feel like this self concious pit that formed is never going to leave me. I have some friends on NG that are helping to keep my spirit alive for this project, but they've never heard this rant and probably never will if I can help it. I also never told the other server members how I really feel about the other project, cuz its old beef at this point. But my frustration and resentment still hasn't fully gone away, so I felt like screaming into the void today.

Sorry for the long text lol

First off, I would like to thank this thread for being a really great help to artists. Even me. However, I had to learn most of this stuff the hard way (aka beat myself up about my art to the point where I gave up for a year.)

Personally, one of the greatest things that hindered my art (aside from my constant negativity) was the fact that I wasn't using any guide or referencing. I just thought I could jot the idea/concept I had in my head onto a piece of paper and expect it to work, which I realize hindered my knowledge on art. Essentially, I threw myself up in the air and expected myself to fly.

As you can probably see from my work in 2021-(Early)2023, it sucks. My OC (fursona) looked more like a shoe than a dog, and later iterations seemed like a ball of lint than anything. But the great thing I learned the most about it? How I'm proud to say my art sucked. Learning how to criticize your past self (or yourself in general, assuming that doesn't degrade yourself unlike some people in this thread) has been one of the greatest things I've learned during my career. Back in the day, I used to shelter myself from creative criticisms, like an artistic recluse. Now I can learn how exactly I can improve my work.

Hell yeah.

TL;DR look up "how to draw furry art". It'll save you two years of learning from scratch.

This isn't related specifically to art, but the General forum is closed, so...

also I hope posting this doesn't end with me making such a fool of myself that I have to make a new account again but here goes:

All I know is that I want to create something. No ideas whatsoever as to what that thing should be. They say "Only do things because you enjoy them", but I don't really enjoy anything, so does that mean I should never do anything?

I've also heard lately "Don't wait for your dreams, go out and achieve them ASAP", but I don't have any specific dreams. I'm currently pursuing a BSc in Geography, and an aptitude test I took told me I would probably enjoy careers such as "medical illustrator", "web developer", "editorial assistant" "economist", "art appraiser", "architect", "cryptanalyst", "video game designer", "writer", and "illustrator".

The only thing I enjoy is, sadly enough, consuming media. Video games, TV shows, books, movies, music, you name it. You might say "Why not become a video game designer/television writer/author/filmmaker/musician/etc.?" So let's go over them:

Video game designer

Video games have been a longtime hobby of mine, and I used to dream of making one. Two obstacles - first, I find coding mind-numbingly boring. Second, I have no ideas whatsoever. All I have to show for video game development so far is this '70s-style arcade game I made for a high school assignment a few years ago. Not to mention in only three months I'll be the same age Toby Fox was when he released Undertale, plus I'm same age as the developer of Lethal Company. Methinks that ship has already sailed.

Musician

I took piano lessons for about six years and have been out of practice in the four years since. I don't really see myself as a singer, so I supposed I could enter the world of electronic music production. However, the problem, again, is original ideas. In the ten years since I started piano lessons I have yet to compose a single piece that is completely original.

Illustrator

A little over three years ago I picked up drawing, and have made little to no progress since. Every attempt to learn the "fundamentals" via books and YouTube has failed. Again with the whole "original ideas" thing, all I have drawn is fan art of characters from video games and cartoons. I'll admit my primary reason for wanting to improve with drawing is so that I'll stop feeling so envious whenever I see a cool piece of art online made by someone half my age with a gazillion retweets. I was concerned that I wasn't enjoying the process and if that meant I should hang it up, but my psychologist said looking forward to the end result is good enough. However, 99% of the folks over at r/artistlounge would disagree with that notion.

Animator

I have little to no experience nor knowledge of what goes into animation; all I know is that I would love to contribute towards a Newgrounds collab one day (Sketch collab doesn't count).

Author

Reading has also been a longtime hobby of mine, especially narrative fiction and astronomy-related non-fiction. Again, the question must be asked: what exactly would I write about? The only story ideas I have are fan-fictions of TV shows I've watched, and the golden age of online fan-fiction ended years ago.

So what now? Should I act on my desire to create something, even if my ideas are vague, or should I resign myself to living as a consumer?

I used to feel I didn't like nothing and I had no dreams or passions. Nothing far beyond the truth. If you don't have passions or dreams, you aren't doing things right, and are just letting life drag you to everywhere.

If those aptitude tests were correctly designed, it means you should aim for any of the results it threw since you capacities and interests fit in their descriptions. If you already have and feel you haven't improved, then either you have to focus it differently, or it's just not your passion at all. Also, not having ideas is to me, the first signal that you reached the limit of your comfort zone, and should begin to do or investigate new things.

Also, don't compare to you to people like Toby Fox and so. It's not healthy, and you're never too old to begin. People like Toby didn't make things like Undertale from nothing and get success immediately: he worked many games before and studied lots of things about psychology and humor to make Undertale a reality.

If you only enjoy watching TV and YouTube or similar, you aren't really trying. Everyone loves these things, so saying you only enjoy doing these shows you're either way too lazy or are hugely demotivated. Disconnect from these for a time and spend time with you so you get to know yourself, and decide what you really wanna do in life

I hope some of these suggestions can help you out.

I wouldn't take "Only do things because you enjoy them" and "Don't wait for your dreams, go out and achieve them ASAP" as an extreme. I believe it's more so "Put your personal enjoyment first, when you can" and "Don't sit around daydreaming, if you have a dream go out and pursue it." I also took a test that was supposed to gauge my interests years ago, I was a different person then and if I recall a lot of those answers were kinda muddled and sat in the middle of like/dislike; I wanted to create but was too depressed to start and keep at it. But you can start making things at any point in life, and as cheesy as I am: "The best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago, the second best time is now"

You mention you consume a lot of media, what's the thing you like most about what you consume? There's going to be some commonality between all the media you take in, and that is where most of your interest lies.

I can't speak on all of these but:

Video Game Designer:

Said this in a previous post but "Comparison is the thief of joy". You have your own unique perspective on things and whatever you accomplish doesn't need to be gauged by others, only yourself and the standard you want to hold yourself to.

There's a streamer who's been blowing up recently Pirate Software, he's been working in the gaming industry for around 20 years and he shares a lot of insightful things especially when it comes to creativity. Here's a video of his that I believe is important to hear if you have any interest in making games (about the first 10 minutes atleast) but are hesitant to take that leap. Also his website that goes into greater detail.

Illustrator/Animator

(Mashing these together because they relate the most to me)

For starters, to my knowledge it's very rare for people to go into the arts for money and fame. Yes we all want to live off of what we love doing, and it is nice to get recognition for our hard work, but it's rarely the reason why most people enter the field. Most artists just want to make the cool idea they had: a fun story, cool character, amazing background, whatever it is; the idea is to just put whatever we were thinking of down on paper (or digitally). And when it comes to comparisons, I remember hearing something before along the lines of "Of course when you just start speaking a new language you're going to be worse than a kid who can speak two growing up. They've been doing it since they were born, you just started learning." There is a big difference between someone just being a better younger artist compared to me, and someone younger than me but has twice the amount of drawing experience than I do. Regardless, neither of those things matter and it's best to just make the things you want to, doesn't matter why, just that it's something you want to do.

Also, here's a chart I tend to look at a lot that helps me see my own progress.

Not sure exactly what's going on over at r/artistlounge but I wouldn't put too much stock into reddit but that's my bias.

Author

I do think that it's a bit harder to present fan-fiction, or just online stories in general, but it's not impossible. Sorry I don't have any advice on where to go to do so, but I did have a thought about fan-fiction. Years back when I was on DeviantArt, I followed a lot of Pokemon Nuzlocke comics, and some of them had changed the characters from pokemon to gijinka (human but with similar design schemes). If those comics follow the same pokemon battle scheme (battles/gyms), and you just remove the pokemon (the animals/monsters) element from it, doesn't it just become a battle-shonen? I don't see why a fan-fiction can't share similar themes with work it's derived from so long as it isn't a carbon copy.

Fuuuuck

I accidentally unchecked that stupid "not a sketch" tickbox on one of the drawings I posted back in December. Has this happened to anybody else here, and if so, you got any tips for me? (Kinda beating myself up tbh)

you can edit the project and check that box, just go to that art and click the pencil button in the top-right corner. There's no need to be aggressive for that

I guess I enjoy those things because they distract me from life?

Another reason for why I wanted to become a visual artist was to get out the ideas I had onto the internet, but in the year since I got a drawing tablet I've been able to express all of my ideas and have now run out of them.

I understand that someone who has been doing something for longer than someone would be better at it than the other person, it's just that I have yet to improve in the slightest after drawing for three years.

You mentioned narrative fiction and astronomy non-fiction when you brought up books, so I was curious if the other media you watched shared any similarities with one another. Like for myself a lot of shows and manga I read leans heavily towards fantasy, and fantasy is what I usually prefer to draw. Funnily enough, a friend of mine had pointed out that one of my favorite themes must also be Cooking because it was in all the manga I had been listing off, and he was right I just never recognized it.

I've seen some artists do redraws of old work to see their own improvement, and I have done a couple of art redraws myself. It's difficult to see your own growth and this is just one way to go about it, but you could show your own work in critique threads or make your own art thread asking for critiques of your work. As for coming up with ideas, one thing that's helped me recently was joining up with any collab I thought I'd be able to take a stab at. Sometimes having restrictions/parameters to what you can do can help with creative thinking. Art challenges are another one, I remember one where artists would randomly pick 3 emojis, either for each other or for themselves, and have to try to create a character out of them.

Also since you're still in college, make the most of the available resources on campus. See if you could schedule a meeting with a guidance counselor or art professor/chair to hear their opinion on courses or academic/career paths. If you have some electives that need to be filled, pick a course that sounds creative and/or interesting to you and try it in that academic environment.

I suggest listening to the art of fugue by J. S. Bach. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMtjlaDEMdI

Nothing like a masterpiece in music while you sleep to get your mind going

Just wondering what would be the best way to get more interaction from other users. Especially other artists.

by challenging them or collaborating with them. There's lot of thread at the moment that let you interact with other users, like Calamancy's OC fight thread

Well by starting conversations and putting yourself out there like you just did is a start.

I’m not saying that to be sarcastic, literally the best thing you can do is to just strike up conversations here and there and the more likely users will interact with you.

The only redraw I've done is this character (compare February vs December) but for the more recent one I kind of had to cheat, plus it still looks like it was drawn by someone half my age

The thing is I'm way too thin-skinned for critique ...

Don't most collabs (besides sketch collab) require the applicants to have some kind of talent in order to make the cut?

Nope. There's currently the valentine's day Collab which only requires you to be able to draw something. Same for pokemon mystery meat collab

It can be difficult to get solid constructive critiques from time to time, some people tend to take critiquing to the extreme ends of either only saying good things or actively trying to tear you down. That is not how a critique is done, but not a lot of people have experience giving them. The best approach is to have an understanding of whether or not someone is just harassing you; is what they're saying provably true? Or are they just throwing haymakers to take you down a peg? Try to breakdown if anything that they say is objective or not if they are critiquing. If it is, make a note of it, and if it isn't, it didn't matter in the first place. It's tough taking critiques because a big part of art, most of the time, is putting yourself out there, and that's a very vulnerable thing to do. All you can really do is prep the best you can, learn from it, and grow.

And like Ems said, not all the time for collabs, as long as you submit something and adhere to the rules it's usually fine. These ones had passed but: The Friendly Frog Collab, The Snowman Collab, Newgrounds Secret Santa, and like you said the Sketch Collab, were all ones that just needed you to complete your submission. The collabs I've come across have been pretty open to everyone, and the only real ask was to finish the work and show that you tried.

There is no “tangible proof” that you are a good or bad artist; it’s subjective. Likewise, there is no “tangible proof” that you have a reason to love or hate yourself. However, raising your self-esteem and learning to be okay with yourself regardless of what you can and can’t do is good for your physical and emotional well-being.

You’re being kind of a dick to yourself and wasting other people’s time with an exaggerated “woe is me” attitude and active resistance to people trying to help you. Just stop bothering Newgrounds and go see a therapist, please.

I hear you and it sucks to be in this situation. I guess the one thing I can say, as somebody who apparently is popular on NG, is that that feeling never seems to stop. I may be well-liked on this website, but I still feel like I’m not seen enough outside of the BBS. And then there’s my friend groups on Discord and in real life - about 75% of them, I’ve got to be the least popular, most ignored person of the group, even if I’m the admin of the server.

Like Emiliano said, you gotta put yourself out there for people, and work to find the people who are going to like you. If you’re not succeeding with the general populace, perhaps you should catch the attention of a more niche group. There is probably a group out there for everyone - probably - but for whatever reason, some people have a much harder time finding it than others. That just seems to be the way life is.

I try to keep going for the few fans I have of my work but it's getting harder. I don't even really care about becoming super popular as an artist, I've come to enjoy having a small group of readers. But the nagging feeling that what I'm creating is shit and the internet would be better off without it is getting stronger.