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!

----

@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!

-----

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.

I promise I'm still making good progress on Us, but part of my process whenever I'm working on animating is that I need at least one or two creative distractions each week in order to exercise different parts of my brain and keep me from getting too burned out on it.

SO, to add some things into my backlog on those days where I could use a break, I first wanted to hold a little commission raffle as a thank you to my followers. If you wanna enter, just make sure you're on my followers list, and then leave a comment on this post and I'll pick a winner on 3/26. I will say the only request I won't take is for NSFW or fetish related stuff, but I'm pretty comfortable with anything else.

In addition to this raffle, I also wanted to mention that I'm open to do more art trades. I always really enjoy doing these and drawing other people's characters is helpful for challenging myself. I can't guarantee I'll take all requests for these, but if I like your style and you've got a character that looks fun to draw, I'm into it.

***Update***

WendigoVDB won the raffle!

This year I've been trying to make a bit of an effort to restore some of my old cartoons from college. For the most part that just means swapping out copyrighted music, but in one particular case (a cartoon I made as my senior project called The Actor) it'll require a complete overhaul of the audio, which will also mean I'll need to go and reedit for timing purposes. While I'm at it, I figure I might do a little polishing to the animation itself. It's not going to be a full blown remake or anything, but I just wanted replace a couple ill conceived shots and refine a few others.

This cartoon was extremely important to me at the time because it was the first time I'd really allowed myself to let loose with the writing, and the result was every bit as somber, nihilist, and dreary as I felt inside back then. I put a lot of pain into it, going so far as to cast my ex in a small role just to make it hurt that much more. Looking back now, I don't know if I'm all that proud of it anymore, but I still think it helped it realize how deeply broken a person I was, and it eventually led to some personal reflection and self improvement. I find myself in a much better place now, even if I still have an inclination toward the dramatic and macabre.

Anyway, I've reuploaded a couple of my old cartoons (in both flash and video formats) so far, which can be viewed below. @quebi was also kind enough to work up a new score to Lifeless, which I think is a big improvement on the original.

I also wanted to take some time to do another round of on some underappreciated artists I've discovered browsing the portals:

The first is @pilldroid who has this wonderfully edgy, punk, multimedia sort of approach to their work, and the results are consistently fascinating to me. Really punchy, impactful color schemes, and energetic linework. Love their stuff.

Next, we've got @jotchua who's got this adorable art style and a knack for great expressions and fun character designs.

A bit of a disturbing content/gore warning on this one, but @DecapiTATO always makes it look SO PRETTY. I love their color palettes, and gleefully unhinged imagination. Transfixing stuff.

And then last we've got @hugojunstrand I genuinely don't understand why they aren't more popular already, because their animation, composition, and character design skills are all off the charts. Beautiful, awe-inspiring work all around.

I see other folks do posts like these every so often, and as someone who frequents the undiscovered artists portal, I feel like I should really be doing a little more to help some of these people out because many of them are insanely talented. I also feel like I should just post little updates more often maybe. So we'll do a little of that after we get through this list of people. This gonna be a long one by the way....feel free to just skip around however you like.

I wanted to start off this list with someone I'll always see around when I'm looking for new people to scout; they've usually already commented on something that I thought was really cool and I secretly wonder if they think of me as some kind of scouting poacher, but I will admit defeat, @VulpsVulps you're better at finding cool new artists than I.

VulpsVulps seems like a good way to start the list because I feel like they're very underappreciated themselves and not only do they do a lot of great behind the scenes work, their pixel art and animations are fantastic.

Another cool pixel artist I've encountered is @pixelroger who does these great surreal, fantastic sorts of structures and characters. It's all very cryptic, mysterious stuff, and I wanna get to know that world a little better every time I see any of their new pieces.

Anyone who knows me well enough will tell you that I love both creepy and cute things in equal measure, and @BeesforEveryone has found such a perfect balance in doing just that in these adorable portraits of horror icons. I love them all, but these are a couple of my favorites so far.

To continue on with my love for cute, simple designs and vibrant colors, both @julimye and @pineapplegrenader really scratch that itch for me. Julimye for their impeccably rendered Astro Boy-esque characters, and Pineapplegrenader for their distinctive, soft, and absolutely gorgeous sense of style. Here's a couple favorites from each of their galleries.

I feel like no one should have less fans than pieces published when they're all this good, but @MetaGrif has dozens upon dozens of these earth shatteringly cool character designs that just haven't received the kind of attention they deserve.

I definitely have more artists I could share, but I think I'll wait a bit later on to write more. Check out the undiscovered art portal from time to time though (Uh, just be sure to turn off M-A rated stuff or you might get bombarded with fetishes)

-----

As far as personal updates go, I've been making good progress (ie: I have just barely started animating) on Us Chapter 4, and I don't think I should have any trouble in finishing it before the end of the year. I'm really excited to finally close out this story after working on it for the past three years, but it's been a great run, and I can tell I've been improving an as animator with each new episode.

I don't talk usually give out too many details about my private life here, but Us was always a story very close to my heart (I'm a trans woman myself) and writing for it has allowed me to work through a lot of difficult subjects. I write them for me, the people I'm closest with, and the people who work on the shorts with me, but it really means a lot to have other folks outside of that sphere get something out of it too. So thank you to anyone who's been watching these things, and I'm sorry I'm so very slow.

I think that's all for now, but I'm gonna make a conscious effort to post more often. Oh wait, one more thing! Join this gay collab (It's actually real and I desperately want it to succeed)

https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1491212

The latest episode of the LGBTQ romance series, Us - Chapter 3 is finally out and ready for your viewing consumption. WATCH IT HERE!

As a fair warning, it is very, very sad. But I have attempted to alleviate some of that angst by commissioning my bf (see more of his art here) to make a portrait of the couple at the bottom of this post, and I've also made a bunch of sketches of some outtakes and (mostly lighter) moments that happened outside of the animations themselves

Also, give @Quarl some love for taking some time out of her Jamuary schedule (where she makes a song a day for every day in the month of January) to crank out another wonderful score for this series

Anyway, I hope you enjoy, and if you haven't started the series yet, here's that episode 1 link too

Hello there, how's it going?

To celebrate the spirit of the holidays, and because I'm nearing completion on my latest animation, I think I'll give away a couple free character design slots (or redraws of a character you already have) All you need to do for a chance to get one is to be on my followers list and leave a comment below with a character description, or a link to your character, and I'll pick out a pair at the end of the week to flesh out into a finished piece.

If there aren't too many requests, or if they're not too in depth I might even do a few more or just do a couple sketches for those that didn't get a full piece.

As usual, I'll draw pretty much anything outside of anything too explicit/NSFW.

***Edit 1

Hoo boy, already quite a few replies in here. Tell you what, for anyone who doesn't get a full piece, I'll put together a little sketch dump and tag everyone with a character in there once it's done. I'll post this little Amongus animation for anyone who wanted one of those later today too. <3

***Edit 2 - A couple little sketches

AMONGUS. (in two versions) for @Einmeister and @Aronchalk

KITTY for @dababy445

Spike for @robotjones02

Penelope for @snoozlezonky

***Edit 3

So many requests, oof! I’ve got my work cut out for me. There’s definitely a few I’m pretty inspired with, and a few others that should be quick enough where I’ll probably get to them soon, but remember, you’ll need to be on my followers list in order to make a request!

For @M-kirbs

For @Ducksen

For @doggonnys

For @larrynachos

For @Inciniumz2

***Edit 4

Apparently I can't drop any more images into the post, but here's more sketches!

Zeddman for 0544014

Animu for reddyfu

OC for uraomote

Sid? or Yaki? for @lucas-draws

Robot Cowboy for Neonshambles

Billy for ReallyR4ndom

Ekibus Explorer for dogmuth-behedog

Arlean for Baconbob9000

Poipole for Chaseryle

***Edit 5

...and we're done! Thanks to everyone who made a request, and I hope you all enjoy your holidays!