Missed doing one in April caus busy busy, but we're back on track now! I don't think I really have anything to plug at the moment, so we'll just go ahead and get right to it this time.

I love @deadmandapper's vibrant, punchy colors, and they've got some really nice variety in their character designs too.

I honestly have no idea how @esperance creates the sort of things they do, but the best way I can describe them are half imagined images. You have to take a step back to really take in what you're seeing and the results are very unique and unsettling.

Browsing through @rattyboyslim's gallery, it's all just a large collection of lovable dorks. They're all so charming that I want to give each and every one a hug and a pat on the back; they're doing their best.

@Erinekou has gotta be one of the most promising new artists I've seen here lately; her style reminds me a bit of chocoholicmonkey's a bit, but it's a little more painterly in the approach. It's really clean and fresh, in any case.

@deardecay is one of those MS-Paint sorcerers that manage to make surprisingly clean art in that hellish program. (He's also got a really cute gay couple he shares with nuclear-smash too, and I can't get enough of that stuff. It's adorable.)

And then, lastly, I'm absolutely in love with @ducknpluck's whole vibe. They've got some of that classic CN approach to character design, and they manage to pull off the multimedia look cleaner than just about anyone. Really inspiring stuff.

I just hopped on this morning to discover I'm the user of the day today, which is pretty neat already, but in addition, the game I helped make for Flash Forward Day along with @Intrapath, @Getterrocka, @Taxmann, and @Scarfygoose is out today too!

It's a cute little puzzle game called Tidying Up and I really hope you'll give it a try! You get to play as a capybara and a roomba to clean out a house, room by room! Taxmann even went ahead and made a full banger of an album for this thing. Play it here!

I wrote a little something for the short story contest as well as for Trans Visibility Day. I had originally written a bit earlier in the year that I intended to turn into a cartoon, but since the content was so intensely personal, I knew I'd need to voice the main character myself, and I've never really thought of myself as a very good voice actor.

I am proud of what I've written though, and I hope you'll give it a listen despite only being audio for now! (Maybe someday I'll turn it into a comic or something, I'm not sure) In any case, I wish all my fellow trans folks a good day today and here's "Homecoming" if you wanna give it a go (just as a warning, the subject matter is heavy though)

*UPDATE*

I have decided I will turn Homecoming into a visual novel sometime in the coming months. I think that's the right format for it.

*UPDATE 2*

A very brief WIP demo exists. There are a couple audio bugs I need to fix when moving backwards on the timeline....

https://www.newgrounds.com/projects/games/4640814/preview

Music by Quarl!

I've been meaning to do another one of these for quite a while now, but I've just been so busy lately that I just hadn't found the time until today. Made a real effort to stick to folks with under 100 followers for this one, because I feel like their work all deserves a lot more eyes on it than they've been gettin'

@asbestosbunny has a lot of neat, somewhat abstract sorts of comics about alienation and industrialism. I think their soft pastel work is a nice balance to some of those darker themes as well.

@ozuzo has some consistently lush and gorgeous colors in their work; they've got some great environment work as well as some really fun and expressive character stuff.

In @garaco's case, they haven't put up too much work yet, but I'm a big fan of their character, Tammie, and they've drawn her in a really nice range of unique styles.

@roxydb has that fun, vintage children's anime sort of vibe to all of their stuff, and I love how expressive and lively all of their characters are. Just a really fun gallery to browse through.

@tuxed also has similarly retro anime style, but theirs is more of that Y2K style that Sega popularized in the Dreamcast era. Some really polished linework and poppy colors.

Hopefully I'll do another one of these soon, although I'm back to working an in person job again, and my time is a lot more limited than it used to be. Still, I hope I can be almost as prolific with my art as I was last year, and also have enough time to do some features like this too! Only time will tell, but I hope you'll give all these folks a follow for now!

Today's the day! Maple's Maid Service is finally out today! I really hope you'll give it a try!

I had a great time working with @Peti and @P-PAMda on this project, and I'm really proud of what we've managed to put together here (with the help of all our musicians too!) It's just a nice wholesome little game with plenty of cute characters and things to do around the town. 

I'll be putting the last promo piece I did for the game here tomorrow, but I also wanted to announce a fishing contest for the game too! There's a 1 in 512 chance to catch an ulta rare "fish" in the game (along with a medal for it) and so, I wanted to offer the first person to land a "shiny" fish a free commission as a prize! 

Happy hunting, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the game as well!

UPDATE! WE HAVE A WINNER!

@Splatterdash has won the fishing contest!

Why not? Let's go ahead and do one of these 2022 wrap up things for ourself. 

This was the biggest year for art I've ever had, even back in college when I was making stuff almost every other day just to stave off the hopelessness. I finished over 100 illustrations this year, along with a few collabs, a couple art contests, three animations (though, technically, one was done before the end of 2021, it just didn't have music yet) and ALMOST two games (Maple's Maid Service is on the cusp of being finished right now)

A few selections:

Working on art so consistently really helped dramatically improve my work over the course of the year, and getting Clip Studio Paint in February was one of the best decisions I've ever made. Before CSP, I'd have to make all of my art using the pen tool in Photoshop because my hands were often too shaky to make my lines as clean as I'd like. The pen tool works wonders for making shapes and patterns, and I used it almost exclusively while making the backgrounds for Maple's Maid Service, but it doesn't feel much like drawing, and it's really difficult to get the same level of expressiveness in a character when you're working so mechanically.

Through CSP, I got to explore a lot of different art styles over the course of the year. I dabbled with lineart again for a while there

I tapped back into my teenage goth roots

And then I eventually retreated back into my lineless style and finally upped the saturation on my colors after a good decade of almost nothing but pastels.

I also made quite a few new characters this year, some may have come out better than others on the first draft, but I fell in love with a lot of them and I'll probably try to continue making more new designs next year. 

I don't know if I have too much planned out for 2023 just yet, but I do hope to work on some more game projects, and maybe, hopefully, make another animation? I have an idea and even a little written for something new, but it's as personal and close to the bone as I've ever gone with one of these, so I'm a little scared of it too. I know it'll hurt, but I kinda want to do it anyway. We'll see what happens there...

I think that's about all I've got, so a quick thank you to you all for taking the time to read my ramblings. I really appreciate the fact that this website exists; I never would have expected Newgrounds to become the last bastion for artists on the internet at the end of 2022, but here we are. Hope you all had a good one!

Feel free to let me know what your favorite piece I made this year was, ask for an art trade, or hit a girl up with a fun project proposal? 

Been meaning to do another one of these for quite a while now, but I've just been so caught up working on other little projects and catching up on movies/games that I just hadn't sat down to do it yet. I have some other things I wanna talk about in this post too, but first I wanna get to all these talented people!

@Skirtzzz is exactly the kind of artist who I started doing these posts for; someone with way too much talent to be going relatively unnoticed. They've got top notch rendering skills and a real knack for expressions; the eyes tell the whole story. 

@Sherfuffle's character designs are stylish and inspired, and their colors palettes are always so spot on. I'd love to see them render out more of their sketches.

As I'm sure we all know by now, I've always been partial to the lineless art, and @Kerocolaa pulls off the look well. Their work is clean and crisp, and always reminds me of the sort of thing you'd see in a retro game's cutscenes.

@CaldoChico has a very distinctive art style; it's mischievous and playful and carries the same kind of energy as a really great sketch. The "imperfections" only add to the charm and give their work more character.

@thepotater is someone who knows how to use highlights better than just about anyone else on this site. I don't really understand how they do it, but that lighting is next level EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Halftones gradients! @815shiki puts those things to work. All of their work is so clean and well composed, but those gradients really put them over the top. Love their stuff.

I think that should wrap up the artists feature, but I also wanted to mention that Maple's Maid Service should hopefully be finished by the end of this year? In any case, it's very close to being done and most of what's left is just a bit of polishing. I've played a demo for myself though, and I think you folks are gonna like it. @Peti has been doing a tremendous job at putting all of that together. It's looking very cute. (And you can pet sheep!)

I also kind of want to do another free sketch giveaway thing like I did last year, but I am a little scared to make a proper announcement about it because I don't want to die. So uh, if you want a sketch, yes, I will make you one, and maybe something more polished it I like it enough. All you have to do to get one is follow me (and hopefully the rest of these artists!) and make a request on this news post. (I'll keep requests open for 7 days from now) I can't guarantee I'll get to all of the requests, especially if there's a whole bunch, but I will try my best and I'll do a big sketchdump with all of them later on maybe.

Thank you for helping me get this far! I don't have any sort of giveaway or special art to offer you all at the moment, although if I have enough time (and I THINK I will) I'd like to do another run of free sketches for December again this year as long as my workload is more under control by then. (I know I still have Art Fight stuff I wanna hit people back on too...but I might wait til next year at this point. I'm sorry!)

Lately I've been very hard at work making art for this maid game I'm doing with @Peti and @P-PAMda, and I recently just finished the overworld map for the town it'll take place in. I don't know when the game itself will be ready, but I'm hopeful maybe before the end of fall? We'll see, no promises, I know Peti's got a lot of work to do yet too. It's coming along really cute so far though, and I'm really excited for people to get to play it!

In other news, I've been hopelessly hooked on this game here (help me) and you all should play it too, because it's something truly special. It plays like a top down racing version of Super Meat Boy and the controls are every bit as tight and precise.

We'll go ahead and do a little underrated artists feature here to wrap this up too! Go check out @ShreddedCardigan! They've got a really lively, fun, and experimental art style, and their character designs are nice and unique too.

Been way too long since the last one of these. Over the last couple months in particular I've seen a lot of cool new artists popping up to join in on the lamb jam and the summer loving jam. I just wanted to take some time to celebrate a few of them, as well as some other underrated artists from around the site!

First up there's @sharpytown, who I've been meaning to feature here for a long time now. They've got a really clean and polished style (not to mention super cute!) that carries over into both their illustrations and animations

@LDBbell always uses these warm, earthy tones that give their stuff a nice nostalgic sort of feel to them, and I'd love to see their character designs in some kind of story at some point or another. There's a lot of charm there.

@kitdreamzing is one of the said "cool new artists" I discovered during the lamb jam, where they made this super fun living candle as their cult leader. As it turns out, their other art is just as inspired! They've got a great sense of atmosphere and color palettes.

Next we have @roadhorror, someone else I've been meaning to feature for a while. They still don't have too much art up yet, and a lot of them are just sketches, but what is there is super promising and has a lot of personality and quirky details.

@illun-co only needs a few colors and simple linework to make some seriously striking illustrations. They manage to capture a real sense of mystery and wonder in their work, and their style feels like it'd be the perfect fit for some kind of fantastic graphic novel.

@oddment is someone else I discovered through the lamb jam, and while they don't have too much art up yet, their style is very distinctive. It's edgy and full of chaotic energy, but the linework is also surprisingly controlled. Really excited to see what's next!

To close this out, I also wanted to thank everyone who played Roxy's Windows. I know the frontpage really helped, but I still have no idea how its blown up the way it has, and I'm really happy to see so many people playing it and generally having a good time with it. I know we've still got at least one more patch to release which should polish up the rough edges that remain, so hopefully people are still playing it once that comes out! 

The game I helped make for Stepford's Mobile Game Jam is ready for you to play today! (I did all of the writing and a good chunk of the art) It consumed most of my free time these last couple weeks, but it was a neat experience to work on my first game.

I won't lie to you, it's still a little rough around the edges yet, so think of this as more of an early access version of the game, but I think all of the core concepts are there, and it should be playable enough for most folks. We'll probably put out an updated version once the judging process is complete.

Hope you enjoy!