inkveins 2015-02-13 22:30:07

I never really understood the opposition to a little positive reinforcement every once in a while. It's not like artists aren't already historically and socially roughing it; no need to remind them that their efforts are like a message in a bottle being thrown into a sea comprised of messages in bottles. Like Kevin Smith said, nothing good comes out of discouraging an artist. Always critique, always try to make them better, but there's no need for hurtful language.

Nobody's ever really brown nosing on deviant art. If people are following you and complimenting you, it's pretty much because they genuinely like your stuff and want to see more. Generally if you're not very good, you just don't get a whole lot of attention. The leg up that newgrounds has, is the prominence of the art forum, and lots of people who can tell you how to improve your trade.

Deviant art is kind of the same way actually with wips and all that. Frankly their categorization system is much better. They have a category dedicated to sketches, and they'll show up to your followers in their news feeds, but it won't be in your featured gallery. You kind of have to dig for it.

inkveins 2015-02-14 00:43:24

Oh believe me, DA is in dire need of a bigger staff as well. Being the go-to has its downfall. And as for the sfw newgrounds, man, that's really something. What, a decade of tired ass penis jokes, and now your website is taking a turn in a direction that you can't control, and you're going to take your ball and go home? Almost JUVENILE, really. To my understanding, the adult content of newgrounds has been one of its biggest selling points. I can't post some of the art I make on deviant art, but newgrounds offers a more lenient venue.

And I mean lets face it, youtube took over as the go-to because they pay you. The people that are still prominent here are niche. And now they're planning on stamping out the niche? What a terrible fucking idea.

inkveins 2015-02-14 03:54:35

Yikes. That's a long time. I remember coming to this website when I was in middle school and discovering dudes like Ego and David Firth. Times have definitely changed. You always want to see that awesome mom and pop joint down the road succeed and be the best; the one that's been around for decades, and has stayed pretty true to the original menu and they're nice to their regulars. But then it's like, Across the road, not only are they offering your food for cheaper, but they're actively rewarding you for eating it. I don't think newgrounds has the kind of time and money to speak the language of the starving artist. I appreciate the voting power system, but it's like, the people who have the kind of ability to do that shit are off elsewhere trying to make a career happen. It's just a bummer all around.

inkveins 2015-02-14 13:00:01

Thank you! I appreciate you saying I could improve, because it's true. Nobody's perfect, and you should always be trying to hone your craft.

That is one of the things I like about the deviant art critiques, is the minimum character limit that insures that if you have nothing to say, you fundamentally can't. It means that you have to actually think about what you're going to say before you just word vomit into your keyboard. Where as someone here can leave a review here as blunt and anemic "1 star, meh i don't like it". Which seems pretty common. People want to have fun and be a part of the website, but they're really inarticulate and aren't really in a position of being able to properly critique. Which is something I think of myself sometimes; I'll want to talk to someone about their art, but I don't really know how to put it eloquently enough, so I just don't.

inkveins 2015-02-14 16:10:22

Well let's really face it here, I don't think there should be any pretension about porn and hentai here, because it's pretty much newgrounds' fault. Pretty much everybody in the NG staff from day one had rude humor. Dick jokes, perverted shit, etc. You can rag on the hentai artists all you'd like, but uh hey, how's penicorn been doing lately? lol. Newgrounds has been happily exhibiting this sort of thing for as long as I can remember, and it seems from entering the community in 2015, it's been pretty much the same thing.

I actually think it's a much bigger problem on deviant art; I don't know how familiar you are with the past redesign and how the front page works. But a couple years back they reworked the front page system to feature more of a variety so that it wasn't just a bunch of digital art. But they shot themselves in the foot, because popularity is subjective to how niche the category already is. So for example, a beautiful traditional surrealist painting can be on the front page sitting next to some rudimentary ass typography piece, because the typography piece happened to get like, 30 favs. And since typography isn't popular, on the front page it goes. This also means that at any given moment, the "popular, past 24 hours" section will have anywhere from 2-5 sexy women in it, because pandering is fucking awesome. So basically, they tried to add variety, and it backfired immensely.

I like the newgrounds approach of being self aware, and knowing people just want to get off to some kinky fetish shit.

inkveins 2015-02-14 23:27:36

Well there's certainly no doubt that after 20 years, things start to get a little screwy. I've also noticed that the redisign came with a bit of the dog loosing a few teeth, with things like "blam this piece of crap!" being changed to "blam this, plz!" and the worst award being omitted (or at least I can't find it anymore.) It seems almost odd that they want to sort of move on into this sort of safe, minimalist aesthetic, when the strength and pull of newgrounds from day one was that it did the complete opposite of that. Or maybe that's just my nostalgia goggles.

inkveins 2015-02-15 01:27:23

Yeah yeah, turd of the week! I remember now. That's the thing about edgy humor, is if it's just for the sake of being edgy, it's not funny and incredibly disingenuous. I'd like to think the past FOREVER of newgrounds has been from the heart, but if they're having second thoughts about how to treat the business end of the website because of things that they've done, it makes me kind of wonder what they think they're going to do. I understand them fearing obsolescence, and trying to figure out how they can stay relevant. But anyone could tell you why. It's not exactly a brain teaser. The answer isn't "fundamentally change the website", because as we all know, that's worked out so fucking well in the past (deviant art, tumblr, myspace). You can still be yourself and make business decisions. Kevin Smith is living proof. He, and no one else around him were fooling himself that he was the guy that wrote the "37 dicks" joke. But look where he is now. He stayed true to himself and didn't let anyone compromise his work, and if he ever did, he sincerely regretted it.

This attitude these websites have been having lately stink of deviant art's pretentious as shit new logo, and with it came a sort of redesign of the way the staff are referring to everything. Now they're acting like they "REVOLUTIONIZE ART' and have like, the most sophisticated website on planet earth, and it's like, dude, this is the place that has stayed alive because of it's community of furry fandoms and homestucks, at what point did you think you were "sophisticated" all of a sudden? lol. I think that's ultimately the point too, is the biggest variable here, no matter what website you're on, is "community". Which is something newgrounds have purported to have a lot of pride in. But when you're making these decisions like, "we're going to split up the website into echelons, and the higher echelons are sfw and HQ and clean so that we look good", you're fucking up the community. You split the community in half, people develop an ego, and you're not going to make any more money than you are. It's for its own sake.

Maybe these are the thoughts that just kind of need to happen though. The midlife crisis of a website, so to speak. wondering if it's right to go on and "follow your dreams" and take a risk, or slip into conformity for guaranteed income.