I made a game for the Game Portal.

Why are you looking at me funny? It's the truth! I did! I made a game in RPG Maker MV and called it "ButtChrono!" If you are a fan of old-school RPGs and sardonic humor, check it out right here on Newgrounds' Game Portal!

Thank you for all the support you all gave me this year! 2022 has been a banner year for me and I'm excited about what projects I'll be able to finish and make in 2023! Hopefully this game puts you in a good enough mood to be inspired throughout the next year! Merry Christmas to those that celebrate it, and to those that don't, Happy Holidays!

You may be acutely aware as of late that there are people out there who don't see art as valid, useful, or even hard work. You may feel like there's no point in pursuing art in a world where computers can generate decent-quality projects in mere seconds, faster than any of us can even go to the bathroom or make a sandwich. You go tell those kinds of people to eat a sick snail, because I self-taught myself scripting as it applies to RPG Maker, tried and failed multiple times to upload it correctly to Newgrounds' Games Portal, watched a ton of tutorials and read a lot of forums and FAQs to get through the toughest problems, and even manually enhance each default RPGMMV sprite in a photo editor (Paint.Net, in case you're wondering) because I didn't quite like the look of the default sprites, but didn't have time to manually make new spritesheets due to my freelance animation work demanding too much time. But my ultimate reward for all that self-inflicted frustration is a game that I can truly say is MY work. Not an AI's, MINE.

It's all about the journey, not the destination. ChatGPT can only hope to make worse copies of my more unhinged jokes in ButtChrono, there's no way it could come up with this stuff on its own without human data to regurgitate from. You can't buy this sheer satisfaction and motivation that I just gave myself by making that game I always told myself I was going to make, but thought I was too dumb to be able to do. Don't deprive yourself of that massive self-esteem boost just because you're alarmed about what you're reading in the news and in art forums right now!

DON'T LOSE YOUR WAAAAAAAAAAY...!!

So I'm glad I left ArtStation. Epic Games is no longer even seems to be responding to the ongoing protests and even allowing people to commercially sell AI-generated reference packs on the website's store, not the least bit concerned about how a single artist can produce 5,000 packs of reference images that include 200+ familiar-looking references each without stealing or cheating. Clearly major gaming companies have learned nothing at all from the NFT fad that lasted just until recently (Ubisoft is jumping into this most recent fad, too, because of course they would), and we have to fend for our own future, assuming websites filled with AI-generated garbage aren't already being seen as trashy "Skid Row Dollar Store"-looking visual noise even to consumers who are unaware of why artists are protesting this.

I'm sure you've already heard of this, but you can check with this website if your art is being used by Stable Diffusion and its ilk.

https://haveibeentrained.com/

Luckily, I have yet to find any of my art or characters on here, but it is telling that a lot of the images that do show up are blatantly famous copyrighted images, video thumbnails from extremely well-known YouTubers like Pewdiepie, book covers and magazine covers. Hopefully that alone should give reason for large companies to sue people stealing their work into oblivion.

If you have money and don't feel TOO icky about how The United State's money-obsessed lobbying system works, then consider giving to this GoFundMe so that artists in America can pay to have a lobbyist fighting for them in Congress:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/protecting-artists-from-ai-technologies

There is unfortunately legal precedent that the act of scraping the Internet for images to use in an AI program is okay with a U.S. court case back in April saying it's legal. Yet these programs operate under some fancy-sounding "LAION-5B" license that basically states these images can only be used for experimental, learning and overall non-commercial purposes, and particularly on ArtStation, the game High on Life and Adobe Photoshop's latest big update, the images are definitely being used for commercial money-making purposes when they are not supposed to. I'm extremely confident the otherwise-terrible "lawyer up" culture of US companies will put a stop to this blatant plagiarism of their IPs, though the courts move slowly here and it may be years before we get some clear guardrails that allow human jobs and AI to at least co-exist. Politicians may even work on this for their own sakes because the misinformation potential of AI deepfake technology specifically concerns them. But hopefully this GoFundMe succeeds to increase the chances of things working out before it's too late.

Seriously, ArtStation's transformation since being bought out by Epic Games is like the classic 1980's movie Pretty Woman being played in reverse--whereas the fictional prostitute in that movie was transformed into a well-respected member of society by the end, ArtStation went from being a classy site for potential employees and employers in art-and-animation-related industries (by its very nature as a portfolio site, there was no drama because drama obviously hurts one's chances of getting into these tough industries), to a frankly slutty-looking dumping ground for AI-generated shitposts either because ArtStation being bought out by Epic made them financially immune to the consequences of people canceling their Premium and Pro subscriptions (or people outright deleting their accounts like I did), or they are deluded into thinking they can compete with other trashy, declining general social media sites like Twitter without having to at least make a less-cumbersome mobile site or phone app, first. Seriously, Newgrounds has made far greater progress in improving the mobile version of the site without "Daddy Money" from Epic, what's ArtStation's excuse?

I recently re-created my Portfolio site from college on Wix in case ArtStation turns out to be a lost cause for art-related job seekers and recruiters. The fact that DeviantArt apparently went through the same AI-induced backlash and ArtStation seems to be making the same exact mistakes as DA isn't promising, though, thus this new independent website.

Here is the link:

https://jeffreythrash.wixsite.com/jeffrey-thrash-anim

I plan on using this once the job hunt resumes in January (or possibly even after Christmas, I haven't decided, yet), so constructive criticism on how I can make things as easy as possible for job recruiters is HIGHLY encouraged. I only included my absolute top 4 images I made in the last couple of years and made the size of each as low-res as I could get away with in case of slow Internet speeds on the other person's end (plus, of course, so that if art thieves manage to get these, at least they are getting the lowest-quality versions of my art!). Don't hold back just because you think your feedback might be too hard to implement, Wix websites don't involve any coding so most fixes will be easy to implement.

I'm not quite as worried about AI art taking over at the moment because proponents of the technology are antagonizing the very same artists that make their learning algorithms functions in the first place. I used to be somewhat neutral about AI art until this ArtStation incident, and it seems like the solution to all this would be as simple as properly paying and crediting artists if they choose to "opt-in" to these algorithms, but for some reason the creators of this technology are fighting hard against this and as a result AI art is already getting "samey" as people leave websites like AS and DA and their pool of unwitting or willing artists get smaller and smaller. Even long-lasting, traditional companies like Disney and Dreamworks have to shake up their animation styles every decade or so to stay relevant with audiences, and so will AI art once people stop being so impressed by the shiny new tech. Speaking of stubborn companies like Disney, a lot of people who say that AI has every right to "borrow" from copyrighted images as long it looks kind of new in the final generated image don't seem to understand how copyright law works in the United States. They may be able to steal from small-time Internet artists as conmen have always done since the dawn of the modern Internet, but they are going to be in for a world of hurt once Disney or Paramount's IP lawyers get back from their holiday vacations.

Still, rumor has it that a NSFW fork of Stable Diffusion called Unstable Diffusion has recently received $25 million in funding and specifically plans on using it for scraping ArtStation portfolios for generating porn. Naturally I'm deeply afraid of some employer rejecting me because they found my art style being used for nasty images across the Internet while I'm applying for a job as an animator for Paw Patrol or SpongeBob SquarePants, so this new site I made will be my new portfolio site for now while I'm seriously considering deleting my ArtStation if they don't do much, much more to protect industry portfolios.

I am very upset to learn recently that ArtStation, the site I use to host my 3D modeling portfolio, is showing un-altered AI-generated art next to human-made art that likely took the artist weeks, months or even years to make without giving viewers any clear distinction about which is which. This is obviously a problem for me personally because, again, my main portfolio can be found on ArtStation, yet the site itself is unfairly making me compete with machines that can quickly generate art as good if not better than what I can do at my current skill level and thus making it significantly harder than it already is to stand out from the crowd and get hired via ArtStation. Not to mention that every time I submit a new piece to my ArtStation portfolio, it’s probably being used for algorithms like Stable Diffusion, which are known to use work from ArtStation and DeviantArt without any regard to copyright.

Fortunately, as of this writing there is a troll campaign from ArtStation Pro subscribers and even established industry vets to flood the “Trending” tab with “No to AI Art” protest imagery or written essays as to why the technology needs to be regulated.

This is my favorite protest piece so far:

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/03Pbz4

Besides providing counter-arguments to common refrains from proponents of using AI art as finished pieces, those of you excessively worried about a future we cannot predict like I am may want to pay attention to the last few paragraphs, stating that we should not give up on our passions just because a budding new technology scares us; the graphic design industry has dealt with AI art longer than concept and character designers have, and while it has undeniably cost some job opportunities (why hire your neighbor who is a graphic designer to design a bake sale flyer for your church when you could just make it yourself with a Canva template?), it has also INCREASED demand for weirder and more stand-out human designs as those pre-made templates get more and more overused and rich people pay top dollar just to have something different; and there is tons you can do to discourage people from using AI art as finished pieces on social media until current concerns are addressed, including contacting ArtStation’s customer support in this case.

This is my second-favorite protest piece just for the satire:

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Qnl8Y3

People who already think AI art and robotics in general are superior to humans despite its tendency to mangle up hands, feet and eyes even worse than a beginner artist ever could remind of Dr. Robotnik in the Paramount Sonic movies—they seem to want to believe that machines are better or will be better than humans, probably because they were bullied and cast out when they were in school, and refuse to believe there are subjective or intangible reasons why human workers may always be necessary, even when faced with recent news stories of companies shelving plans on self-driving cars because they just can’t figure out how to make these cars safe on the road without at least a little human input, or YouTube’s algorithm causing drama because it still isn’t capable of seeing content with nuance (unlike the mysterious human brain) before unfairly banning a video or user.

They either believe too much in current AI technology or are just not as observant as most people if they think a generated piece featuring a “beautiful woman” with 13 wispy fingers on one hand and sunken marbles for eyes is already capable of replacing humans entirely.

This is a disappointing, but not surprising move from ArtStation. They almost let NFTs on their platform last year back when that was the big tech fad of the year before wisely backing down when people started cancelling their ArtStation Pro subscriptions as a result (and of course, NFTs are on their last legs these days, so it was smart of them to hold off on that trend, anyway). Hopefully they’ll listen to their users again, but if they double down or continue to make changes that clearly hurt artists on their site looking for jobs, I may have to find somewhere else to host my best work. Maybe even hire a human web designer to prove a point, if I have the money.

Matterboar Animations recently paid me to do an OneyPlays Animated on their YouTube channel! Have a look!

I've been a busy boy this year, and that's saying nothing about my horrendous grocery clerk job that I am NEVER going back to because I need to make ACTUAL money at a higher-paying job if I ever want to live on my own like the adult I am, plus in every minimum-wage job I've had at this point, my co-workers, bosses and customers were art-hating fascists that made sure I had no energy or free time to pursue anything better than being miserable at a dead-end job like them!

I still have one more, even larger project to finish up early next year that is more suited to the Newgrounds audience (though it will also be available on YouTube and possibly even have short clips on TikTok, according to my director), but I think I'm going to pace myself during the Christmas festivities to spend more time with my family and watch Christmas specials, even obviously-terrible ones I'm morbidly curious about like Jingle All the Way 2 (starring Larry the Cable Guy...!). I probably won't go on a full hiatus, since every time I take a break, I rest for maybe 2 days, max, then get bored and start a more dangerously-ambitious project than the last (might try to learn RPG Maker next year), but I should definitely pace myself at the first sign of burn-out during this hectic season.

Thankfully, perhaps the main reason Newgrounds feels both friendlier and higher-quality than many other social media accounts is because it subtly discourages us all from spam-posting--I recently learned, for instance, that the moderators don't like it when people do massive Art Dumps and that's it harder for otherwise-excellent pieces to end up on the Front Page if they're part of a dump, so it's best to just upload at most one piece per week to avoid looking like you're spamming the site. That subtle friction preventing people from posting things TOO easily is obviously a good way to deter the spread of misinformation and bad art (plus possibly AI Art), but it is also very refreshing that I don't have to stress out about an increasingly-draconian algorithm and just post quality when I'm good and ready. EXCEPT THE FORUMS, of course, just some sketches at best and unproductive discussions about current events at worst. YouTube is actually fine as long as I don't have any delusions of making money off that site and just re-post Newgrounds animations or demo reels for fun.

See you again when I see you, I guess. Hopefully with that massive 2D-animated project soon...

I burped up some feminism!

You are free to use this exact same format, dialogue, script, drawings and JPEG file for your own parodies of Star Wars, Marvel/MCU, Netflix Originals, Overwatch, the US State of California, and late-stage capitalism in general (or whatever economic system China operates under—certainly not communism)! They don’t have to at least come up with new variations of the same-ol’ story, so why should we??

I’m going to upload all the art I recently posted on Ko-fi. I’m probably not going to use Ko-fi anymore because the site really doesn’t seem to be growing (the most popular artists who actually work in the comic book, animation or video game industry seem to only muster around 500 followers total), plus between the sites dismal Search Engine (I can’t find my own page when I search “Jeff,” but I can find it when I type “Jeffrey”) and the fact that I’m pretty sure it’s punishing me for not buying a “Ko-fi Gold” subscription (though, to be fair, the website doesn’t seem to have ads or the revenue that comes from it) it’s basically impossible for any one to discover me on that site by accident.

To avoid fragmenting my Internet fanbase anyway, I’ll probably just post commission sheets in between major personal projects right here if I want extra money.

Perhaps a more consequential reason for me to trim the fat off my social media footprint, though, is that I’ve read some VERY sobering articles about the climate impact of our constant Internet usage and I could potentially make a massive difference as an individual simply by making some changes to how I post art. Here are some tips you can follow, and the other benefits they profit besides reducing our carbon footprints:

• Optimize. For animations and videos, a good middle ground between quality and optimization is 720p resolution at 30 FPS (frames per second). This is obviously a boon to those of you with sucky Internet speeds, but still want to keep up with an artist’s work, plus 720p will still look “high definition” on all but the biggest 4KTV screens.
• Delete art you’re no longer proud of—maybe keep it on a local hard drive or flash drive if you must archive it. I don’t know if I want to delete my old art from Newgrounds, since it does a fantastic job showing an artist’s progression throughout the years, but I do feel comfortable deleting poorly-performing YouTube videos of mine and my Ko-fi account entirely so people only get to see my absolute best outside of Newgrounds. Because of all the creeps out there, I should definitely prioritize deleting all the videos I made when I was only 16 or 17, similar to Caddicarus. Plus the good thing about websites that are terrible at archiving old works like most Big Tech sites (e.g. Facebook) is that I can safely delete obscure stuff from over a year ago and no one will know the difference because they only care about my newest content.
• Set everything to Dark Mode. It can reduce battery drain anywhere between 1-28% AND it’s better for your eyes, especially at night!
• Use privacy-focused Internet browsers like Brave combined with the environmentally-conscious search engine Ecosia (which is basically some form of Microsoft Bing). I especially love how Brave doubles as an ad-block for YouTube—Google doesn’t need the extra money.
• For smaller, less evil websites like Newgrounds here, though, consider financially supporting them with a monthly subscription if you can. Most of the Internet’s carbon emissions come from these obnoxious ads, cookies and data trackers that slow websites to a crawl, but if Twitter’s financial woes are any indication, they are a necessary evil to keep websites “free” to anyone, so the least the most fortunate among us can do is give some of our income to sites we love so hopefully even free users will no longer be subjected to scuzzy ads.
• No crypto, NFTs or cloud gaming, though I’m sure you already avoid a lot of this stuff anyway. Even AI art might be iffy due to relying on energy-guzzling graphics cards similar to crypto.

Hope this helps and makes my art more accessible to all of you!

This may just another day for those of you outside the United States, but today is Thanksgiving--or as I like to call it, "Government-Enforcement Winter Weight Gain Day!" Happy Thanksgiving for those that celebrate it, and for those that don't, I hope you have a great day today in your own way!

I am honestly shocked at how much art I've been able to get done and posted this past year while still making time for my large animation project (I can confidently say it will be done by February 2023 now--home stretch, baby!), and I am extremely thankful for all you fans for giving me the motivation to accomplish all this! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I made a fun little Thanksgiving-themed animation back in 2019, if you're interested:

Here's some recent Ko-fi art for you to be thankful about!

I finally ventured to the "Forums" section of Newgrounds out of boredom (I normally avoid the Forums because the "Politics" section in particular is the closest this otherwise-lovely site comes to sucking as much as all the other communities) and to maybe get some differing opinions on AI art, which I've been privately and constantly flip-flopping on whether it's just another tool to allow me to make higher-quality independent art faster or a detriment to my hopes and dreams of doing this for a living.

I was not fully aware until now that perhaps the biggest problem that artists and even Tom Fulp have with AI art right now is that it just kinda scrapes the Internet for images and uses them to create derivative art without any regard to licenses, consent from the artists, or copyright law in general. Stable Diffusion and its many forks seem to be the worst offenders. This seems like such an easy problem to fix, like maybe just training the algorithm exclusively on public-domain ClipArt (I bet you could make quadrillions of different unique art pieces just from free CC0 art and assets alone), or better yet, pay consenting artists a decent wage to use their art in the training algorithm, but considering we started talking about AI art almost immediately after it became clear that NFTs and crypto are not coming back in their current form and no one knows what the fumbling fish-sticks a "metaverse" is supposed to be, I'm starting to think this is just yet another attempt by tech bros to steal and profit off our art while turning public perception even further against the "snooty" artists that make their scams possible in the first place.

Thus, my experiments with Stable Diffusion will pretty much start and end with that "Crazed Hippo Man of the North" piece I made recently, at least until I get assurance this isn't just another poorly-thought-out cryptobro scheme that makes it harder than it already is to make a single cent posting art online. Sorry for scaring some of you.

Speaking of the sheer difficulties of making money doing what I love, Check Out My Ko-Fi!

Just a quick reminder that I have a Ko-fi you could look at and maybe consider donating $3 from time to time to it—or tell someone you know who can spare that kind of money to check out my Ko-fi. I want to start making at least some passive income with my posts, so I’ll be posting a bit more on Ko-fi and seeing how that goes. I’ll upload the best stuff from there on Newgrounds eventually, but if you want to see my stuff early from now on, or you want to see more experimental (and arguably more creative) sketches from me that aren’t necessarily polished enough for Newgrounds’ Art Portal, then check my Ko-fi first.

Most importantly, I don’t want to pressure anyone, this post is mainly for those with stable incomes and can afford to give money to other artists through sites such as Ko-fi and Patreon. I am under no delusion that I can make a proper living through this (although my art output would obviously increase drastically if some kind benefactors gave me enough to do this stuff full-time and not have to look for a “real” job), so I won’t be paywalling any posts or anything, I’ll just share everything for everyone to see on Ko-fi for free and hope that is enough to earn me some occasional passive income and more views on the site.

So knowing that I’ll make my Ko-fi posts freely available without forcing you to pay money up-front or sign up for an account, long before I re-post some of them on Newgrounds, what are you waiting for? Check it out here!

You don’t want to disappoint this absolute stud of a man, would you…?