This is the definition of a first-world dilemma, but I just spent the past 3 HOURS looking at the last 3 DAYS' worth of Newgrounds art from the people I follow that I missed until now. Honestly, maybe I need to limit my reviews to just giving everyone 4-5 Stars and hitting the little "favorite" heart button most of the time, instead of making all these proper written reviews, if I'm not only going to follow tons of people, but follow their art religiously like a true fanboy. The only other possible solution is if you all stop making such good stuff all the time, and nobody wants that "nuclear" option.
The funny and sad thing about this little time sink today is that this was the direct result of me deciding to take a break from Newgrounds instead, because I fear I'm actually started to get addicted to this site. Clearly I picked the wrong site to take a break from, though, because I thought it would be better to watch some dumb meme videos on YouTube instead, but the vibe in that community is especially nasty right now, because YouTube has made yet more dumb changes that could scare off some of my favorite content creators with what frankly amounts to censorship. After thinking about it a couple of days, this change in YouTube policy does not affect anyone who wisely relies more on Patreon and/or selling merchandise, instead of dealing with an increasingly-impossible algorithm that is basically saying, "we don't want to support smaller creators--or any creators, really--because YouTube has been an unprofitable money pit for Google for over 15 years now, so if you could just delete your account to free up expensive server space for us, that would be great!" But you know how the Internet overreacts to everything before in the heat of the controversy and makes everything needlessly morbid for people that just want to watch funny videos or look at dank memes. Clearly Newgrounds would have been the lesser of the two evils for my mental health, though I should practice more moderation in the sometimes-wild forums, too.
Speaking of Patreon, let's segway into my next topic: I want to get to a point with my art and followers where I could at least make a small amount of money to support my animation. It's a lot of hard work doing animation, and I don't know how much longer I can get by just on "passion," so making at least a little bit of money would help ensure I still have the motivation to take on increasingly-large projects all by myself. Even if I do get my "dream job" working on an animated movie in Hollywood, some of my career sources say that I'll only work at most a year before I'm let go and have to start the job hunt all over again, so it would also be ideal if in between major gigs I could get by solely on freelance work instead having to consider working at that sucky grocery worker job again (which is in the process of replacing its cashiers and baggers with automation, anyway--not even sophisticated AI algorithms, it turns out that Windows 98 and XP have long been capable of running automatic check-out stands).
I fully understand, though, that many of my most loyal followers right now can't justify even donating to my Ko-fi on occasion, let alone making monthly donations of at least $1 a month on Patreon if I ever decide to make one. Usually, it seems they are only a young teenager and can't legally set up a PayPal account or otherwise give money to ANYONE online without their parents' permission. Or they come from a notoriously economically-unstable country like Brazil or Turkey and I should be helping THEM out financially once I'm financially secure again, myself. All I ask from you is if there is any way I could improve my "marketability" on Newgrounds so I could at least ask for commission work every once in a while and expect at least one of the slots to be consistently filled. I know looking at my Art Portal submissions over the years shows that I am very unfocused, constantly jumping between topics and art styles and not even deciding if I want to be a 2D or 3D artist (I'll probably try to focus on and master 3D this year).
Any other ways I could prove to potential followers who are old enough and financially secure enough that I'm worth working with and I'll always do a good job for them?
TheMiamiDeSantos
yeah newgrounds is a great site sometimes i just want to spend hours and hours looking at stuff here and talking to people. Youtube having all this censorship and boycott on smaller content creators because of the damn multinational corporations, the corporations doesn't want their stupid ads on videos with swearing, blood, etc. The famous ones on youtube gotta stop using those things if they want their videos monetized and recommended and the smaller ones can't use it if they want to get on the algorithm recommendation, so everyone gets limited on the boring ass politically correct stuff.
To have a succesful business you gotta be good on 3 things: on the stuff you do, on the promotion of the stuff you do and on dealing with people (customers, potential customers, followers, potential followers, allies, potential allies, etc).
"Or they come from a notoriously economically-unstable country like Brazil or Turkey" hehe
"All I ask from you is if there is any way I could improve my "marketability" on Newgrounds". Some months ago i heard from an artist that newgrounds ain't a good place to sell stuff, i personally agree with that as it doesn't get much visibility as a twitter or a facebook and many of the people here are teenagers. Most of my customers are from facebook or an artist/animator friend "well i can't do that but i think i know a guy who can".
I think facebook is a good option to promote stuff, meet new people, post on private groups and such as facebook is my strongest social media, having about 2900 followers there and more adults use the facebook
jthrash
I read some stuff in the news about Brazil yesterday, and uh, let's just say I'm glad you have a sense of humor about that, clearly I was being a bit insensitive with that "economically unstable" line.
You're probably right about Newgrounds, though ironically I've gotten the majority of my commissions so far here. Still, I'm not quite up to 300 followers here while I have gotten 350+ followers on YouTube without even trying or uploading on a consistent schedule, so clearly the "Follower" ceiling on the more "corporate" social media sites is much higher than Newgrounds or any other site I actually enjoy. Not sure if Facebook will work for me, though--besides the fact that I don't necessarily want to support a site that I feel is making the older people in my life stupider and more obnoxious with their opinions (and I live in a very "old" part of the country, so...), my art only ever seems to be "Liked" and viewed by my own mother and maybe one of my Aunts, no matter how much I post and how much I improve.
I've obviously debated doing NSFW stuff, since obviously 18+ sites tend to be filled with adults with way more money to spend on artists who let them indulge in their sick kicks (though obviously I will use a completely different username and not want to do anything illegal). But I can't comfortably draw such stuff until I live on my own without my parents constantly walking into my room like the overbearing Mom in Pixar's Turning Red. That would actually have to wait until after I make a fairly-stable income doing art all the time.
The good news is that, based on some career advice I've been hearing lately (mostly from Flipped Normals, an excellent YouTube podcast for 3D artists), social media is not THAT important outside of networking with people for potential remote work. Obviously, it's difficult to make time for both succeeding in the American animation industry (where I have to get good at animating simple, kid-friendly cartoons for the likes of Disney and Nickelodeon) and doing well on the Internet (where drawing fat anime girls and the...OTHER kind of inflation is the order of the day, except on YouTube where you probably should just give up because COPPA and YouTube Kids demonitizes kid-friendly stuff while their most recent change demonitizes stuff that appeals to teenagers and adults), and for all my problems I have with Hollywood and LA, do I REALLY want to have my livelihood dependent on the arbitrary decisions of YouTube, ArtStation and especially Elon Musk on Twitter? At least LA has all these unions to protect us from the worst kinds of exploitation from our employers, especially in the animation industry which has been unionized since the 1940's.
So unfortunately I can't just swear off trying to succeed in social media entirely for the sake of my career, plus I probably need to find some more "adult-oriented" mainstream site than Newgrounds if I want to make a couple bucks here on the Internet in between jobs. But at least I can be more casual about it since the Internet is just there to help me make friends and network for the jobs I really want.