It’s-a me

I just checked Newground's Art Portal guidelines and it is reassuring to see that Mr. Fulp is not only against using AI art as finished pieces to spam the Art Portal with, but any tool that is often used by cryptobros to quickly and lazily bombard us with ads for their products--stuff like Epic Game's Metahuman, Daz Studio and Source Filmmaker after community backlash (apparently), and other substitutes for actually drawing or 3D modeling, at least unless you give credit to the creators of the original assets and your own original stuff is the focus of the piece. It certainly puts a lot less pressure on me to try to "game the algorithm" by posting a lot of "quantity-over-quality" pieces because there basically is no algorithm and in fact I would likely get punished by the reviews if I just post sketches or auto-generated art instead of just posting some high-effort bangers a few times a year.

It's a good thing there is some nuance to the guidelines, though, because for now, unlike NFTs or the "Metaverse," or any other flash-in-the-pan Big Tech trends, I have chosen to be more neutral for AI Art for now, as it currently tends to produce some creepy homunculus-looking surrealist art, which obviously provides a great springboard for my weirder character designs. You can be assured, at least, that even then I tend to follow up by drawing my own concept art in an attempt to make the design even goofier-looking and you may not even know whether or not I used AI art as reference unless I specifically tell you, as I see it more as a challenge to out-weird the original AI abomination. I will still need to hire 2D artists for "prettier" designs, though, that is just not my comfort zone specialty and it certainly isn't AI art's forte at this current stage of the technology.

And as for whether AI art will replace actual human artists in the future, well, it's not like you can just waltz into Hollywood NOW and get even an unpaid internship just by being good at drawing, unless you're good buddies with any of the celebrities or directors there. Will AI art really make that big of a difference in an industry infamous for serious gatekeeping, despite all this talk about hiring more "diverse talent?" My next day job will likely be just another day job to fund my Newgrounds art and animation endeavors on the weekend and HOPEFULLY get a little closer to becoming financially-independent, anyway. Might as well invest in technology that will make it easier to get a significant amount of art done over the weekend so that I can have more energy for my "adult" responsibilities the rest of the week and not burn out and quit like last time.

My sister got me some new grayscale brush pens and a paper sketchbook for my birthday, which as you can see was a great gift! I still prefer drawing on paper, partly because I’m still too cheap to get some rougher paper-like screen cover for my iPad Pro but also because drawing on paper (as opposed to a computer app run by some Big Tech corporation desperate for my personal info) is the closest thing we can get to true private drawing these days!

Well, obviously this scanned image is no longer private now that I’m showing it to you, but you know what I mean…

What it says on the tin.

My Mom finally convinced me to watch a Marvel movie after Endgame. It was called Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.

I didn’t like it overall because of how every character apparently has to make constant Dad-jokes like Tony Stark now to kill the mood of every supposedly-dark scene. If the characters can’t take the potential demise of several universes seriously, then why should I? This particular Marvel movie also confirmed what some fellow casual MCU fans have warned me in that the movies are basically just like the comics now in that you have to watch EVERYTHING Marvel puts out to understand even one thing Marvel puts out now, when in the past I could just ignore, say, Ant-Man and the Wasp and still easily follow the latest Avengers movie. In particular, this movie punished me greatly for not watching Wandavision and What If? the same way Kingdom Hearts 3 punished me for playing every game in the series up to that point EXCEPT the crappy mobile game that actually ended up being crucial to understanding what was going on in the final battles.

That said, I was ready to turn off the movie in the first 2 minutes, but it did have some absolutely-fascinating VFX and fight scenes that I truly appreciate as an aspiring CG animator and apparently that alone kept me interested enough to at least watch the entire movie until the usual post-credits scene. So as usual, animators are the TRUE superheroes and corporations that treat them like expendable “resources” are idiots who don’t know what their own audiences want (cough HBO Max and Netflix).

My Mom, on the other hand, was absolutely caught off-guard by all the R-rated demonic imagery and couldn’t even wrap her head around the movie’s concept of Multiverses or how there are a bazillion other versions of all the other characters. Shame she didn’t find any enjoyment in it at all despite being the one to recommend it, but at least it answers the question I’ve had for a while about whether I should introduce her to Evangelion like I was apparently able to successfully do with my Dad and even my younger sister. Of course that franchise would only confound her more.

My two major animation projects are going swimmingly btw, basically the only reason I need to suffer through a thankless and weirdly-political service industry job in between those much-more-desirable jobs is because I’m over the age of 26 in the United States and thus need to get health insurance from that job. It’s still going to be a while before I finish either, though, so I just thought to share some random update as proof that I’m not dead in a ditch somewhere. My Mom had a much more enjoyable experience watching Sonic 2 (the Movie) with me the prior Saturday.

Look at it! It’s awful, isn’t it?! Look at it! Look at it! LOOK AT IT!!!

Let’s Go Manchin

The guy’s a real life Dr. Robotnik/Dr. Eggman. I would like to apologize to the world in advance for the havoc this politician will inflict on the climate…

I've been very active on this website lately and uploading weekly, which I'm genuinely surprised about. However, I am still working on that big (and paid) animation project AND I've started work on another big (and paid) animation project, so between all this freelance stuff plus my day job, it may be time for me to take a long hiatus from uploading until I finish both projects.

(Cue boos, jeers, and tomato-throwing)

B-but don't worry! I've learned a ton from finally making a serious effort to upload on a consistent weekly schedule, like making at least a 2- or 3-week "buffer" of pieces in advance so that I can still upload something for the week even if life gets in the way and makes it impossible to work on something new for that week. And doing this sort of "weekly TV episode" -approach is a good idea so that people have something to look forward to on a predictable schedule--you should be screenshotting this advice if you want to build a growing fanbase in Internet art, btw. So when I come back (after uploading those two large projects, of course) I may start work on one of the many comic series I've always wanted to make, then start a Tapas account or something and upload on a consistent weekly schedule again so that you can follow it like a TV show!

Of course, until then I will still be making lame jokes here on Newgrounds and favoriting every remotely-interesting (and fetishistic) piece of art on Newgrounds here because you guys are generally awesome and welcoming compared to more mainstream sites like YouTube. Looking at some consistently-surprising and fun art doesn't drain my mental health, you see. So I won't be completely gone, just quietly working on my long-term projects and consuming YOUR stuff instead of posting my stuff for a while. See ya!

This comment I made on Sonic Stadium recently that had to be SERIOUSLY shortened by the editors is a serious wake-up call that I should probably stop writing so much in comment sections, blog posts and reviews:

Maybe I should start writing or learning coding again the next time I have an urge to type a bunch.

K bye.

I think, for a little while, I’m just going to focus more on posting art, and perhaps limit the time I spend just browsing here and the Internet in general—basically spread more good stuff (art) while making sure the toxic stuff doesn’t get to me as much.

Part of the reason is happily because I am actually on a bit of a creative streak at the moment, but the…”discussion”…surrounding Sonic Frontiers’s IGN trailers thus far is a serious wake-up call about the Internet’s tendency for manufacturing drama for clout and the importance of spending way more time “touching grass” than I do now. You’d think after judging the ultimately-decent Halo Infinite based on its lousy first trailer, or more recently the Johnny Depp vs Amber Heard Trial where Mr. Depp was falsely accused of being the abuser before the public trial made it all too clear that it was actually Ms. Heard who was in the wrong, that people would learn not to jump to conclusions and make themselves SO unnecessarily angry over nothing. Without going into too much detail, Internet personalities that otherwise don’t seem to care about Sonic either way (i.e. they don’t seem to have watched either of the movies or reviewed them, and in some cases even admit to not even caring for the classic Genesis games or Mania let alone any of the more-divisive recent games) are already declaring this game to be more awful and rushed than Sonic 06 or Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric.

This is absolutely baffling to me, because 1) IGN has specifically stated that we’ll be getting more and more information throughout this month, so people are clearly already judging the final game based on incomplete information—we don’t even know the story context of why, for instance, the robots look the way they do or what Sonic’s doing in this glorified UE4 map in the first place; 2) the trailers seemed to be EXTREMELY compartmentalized thus far to focus on one aspect, without showing how all the parts work together—for example, it seems the player is deliberating avoiding combat in the exploration trailer and vice-versa in the combat trailer, and it looks like a lot of things are supposed to be turned off to make things even more focused (like the UI—where did Sonic get the rings he loses in the combat trailer, and how do we know how many rings we have at any moment?) but of course inevitably makes the open world feel empty as a result.

Finally 3) A lot of the more valid criticisms, like the weak-looking combat and minor performance hiccups, also apply to Breath of the Wild and the PC version of Elden Ring, but while those two games obviously don’t appeal to every single type of person in existence, they are considered the absolute gold-standards of open-world design right now and Elden Ring in particular was basically given 10/10 reviews right before release. I don’t see why Sonic Frontiers deserves to be declared a negative-twenty out of ten in comparison when we aren’t even done seeing IGN’s month-long coverage of it. If I MUST offer my knee-jerk reaction based on incomplete info, I actually saw some interesting potential in the combat trailer specifically and it looks to at least be a 7/10 Breath of the Wild clone that will definitely keep me occupied until I see the end credits. It’s also clearly the opposite of Sonic Forces simply by virtue of being an open world game instead of being a glorified on-rails linear rollercoaster (but somehow more boring) like Forces was, which to me is a VERY good sign.

So yeah, I genuinely cannot understand the strong emotions in either direction about Sonic Frontiers when we clearly still don’t know much more about it yet than we did before, although I suppose SEGA’s marketing team (not the developers) deserve some constructive criticism for failing to get us truly excited so far and leaving us with more questions than answers.

Point is, either Twitter’s gone mad with power after convincing Paramount to fix “Ugly Sonic” or people have gone mad in general post-lockdowns, proving that spending hours on the Internet in front of our phones is the worst possible way to take care of our stress levels while being stuck inside. Thus I’ll try to just use the Internet in general this month to post more funny art and watch more IGN Sonic Frontiers videos without letting game “journalists” or the comment section kill my optimism. Starting now: