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!

I know I haven't made anything in a bit here and that's because I ended up joining a team working on something for Stepford's mobile game jam! It's very exciting for me because I've never worked on a game before (at least one being released in the near future) but I'm even more excited because it's exactly the sort of game I'd want to make, and the rest of the team ( @intrapath @getterrocka @taxmann @madfatter ) gave me free rein to write the story. (Though I'll admit I kind of turned it from a "mystery" into a more of a character study/teen drama) Thinking we should be able to finish it just before the deadline, but it might be close, so it'll probably be out sometime early next week. I hope you'll all play it!

I also wanted to mention that @Quarl (who did all the music for the Us series) and I are on ThatJohnnyGuy's Off The Wall podcast today, where he let us talk a bit about the series, and also a bit about our personal lives and our stories with transitioning. I know I'm a wallflower by nature, but it was a really nice experience getting to do something like this. Give it a listen here:

And one last thank you to all the people who've already watched the Us series. The last episode had a much, much wider audience than I ever expected the series to attract, and I'm very happy to know people have enjoyed watching them as much as I did making them.

I'm proud to say Us - Chapter 4 is finally out today!

In addition, because it's been bothering my for a long time now, I went back into Chapter 1 and changed the framerate on the whole thing to match the rest of the episodes. (It was originally 12 FPS instead of 15) Admittedly, it still lacks a bit of polish compared to 2-4, but I do think the change makes a significant difference, and I feel like it was worth the effort involved.

Anyway, go and check out the final episode! Or start the series from the beginning if you haven't already! I've got a playlist of all of them here below for ya.

https://www.newgrounds.com/playlists/view/5cb11dcb3ce4ab403af6c94aee0767e6

And be sure to check out the artists I commissioned from around the site, as well as my boyfriend, to help make some special art for the credits! They're a talented bunch! 

After having so much fun with it last year, I've decided I'm gonna participate in Art Fight again this year. In order to make sure I have enough time to dedicate to it, I've been powering through the last few shots for the final chapter of Us, which I'll probably end up finishing quite a bit ahead from when I had originally expected. That said, I'll still have to send it off to my girl @Quarl to have it scored, and I've also commissioned a few folks to make some special artwork for the credits to celebrate what a journey the series has been. I'm now thinking we might have it all finished up towards the end of August or early September. I'm really excited to finally get to share it with you all soon!

Coming back to Artfight, I made one of those little cards for it this year, so feel free to fire away, and I'll do my best to return the favor. Hope to see you there!

https://artfight.net/~BleakCreep

As some of you might already know, I recently had surgery. As a result, I'm not able to get up to quite as much in regard to art/animating; I'm still working on things, just uh, very slowly at the moment. I figure since writing is the one thing I can do right now without hindrance, I might as well post another one of my underrated artist features. Let's get started!

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@Bluefrit is a tremendously underrated pixel artist with a sharp eye for striking color palettes and a distinctive approach to character design. I'm in love with their lineless work in particular, but all of their stuff has this wonderfully mischievous gothic energy to it. 

I'm convinced that @alpha00zero is some kind of of ink god. They have such a fantastic grasp on rendering within a black and white space, and their work has a staggering level of detail and depth to it.  

@IMCARBRRRRRRRR (oh god, I had to triple check if I missed an "r" in there) is an artist who always has a lot of motion in their work, in the sense that they're always finding unique perspectives or character poses to frame their compositions. 

@Mickey505 is someone relatively new to Newgrounds, but even though they still haven't posted too much work, I've been seeing a lot of promising stuff already; The way they'll use one or two bright colors against their predominantly dark palettes really helps their characters pop, and I love the delightfully twisted designs they've got going.

@Umjammysammys is another fairly new member here, one whose art style kind of reminds me of Vib Ribbon; Their style is very geometric and shape based, with abstracted anatomy and flat shading, the angular forms capture a sort of childlike wonder. It's all very charming.

Been feeling the urge to do another one of these little features to shine the spotlight on some of the talented folks I've come across on the site over the last year. A brief word of warning, while there won't be any NSFW art in this post, one of the users I'm featuring does have a bit of that on their page, which I'll mark accordingly. Anyway, let's get started!

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First up we've got @Slushie98 who I hope to be doing an art trade with soon! I absolutely love her character designs with their big expressive eyes and their bright, striking color schemes.

@MoopersThings is someone I really admire for how often they experiment with their colors and art style. There's always a common thread that runs throughout all of their work, but you never know exactly what to expect next, and that's always an exciting thing. Really love the way they use basic shapes too.

(NSFW warning) Next up we've got @Ursulula who has a very distinctive style; I'm in love with their warm color palettes, gorgeous lighting, and softly textured brushes.

@Kajiuna makes a lot of fanart, but always infuses it with their own unique sense of style, which I find very charming. Their color palettes are always so warm and inviting, and though their linework is relatively minimalist, they never fail to capture the mood they're aiming for.

@atomichamzter has the sort of art style where every character they draw just looks so soft and huggable. Their textured brushes give their stuff an effortlessly natural, and nostalgic sort of appeal; it's all very cute.