1st posted February 19, 2023 (Wow, a whole month😳)

I've posted this on a few other socials, but after checking for any personally-identifying info, I've finally decided to post it here too.

I've overall heard that NG is a mix of casual & professional.🤔

One source: RE [DioShiba]: Is Newgrounds a good place for casually posting art?

Let me know if this post had any other personal problems though.🙂👍 Another (part of) one of my hangups😅: I have trouble knowing that.🤷‍♀️

I'm glad that for about a few years, I've been beginning to learn how to just hang out with others☺️: spending time watching shows/movies or going places with my mom; doing gesture drawings in animation-related Discord servers; and chatting a bit in a local animation Discord server.

Background

You could say I've been catching up on the socialization that I missed out on, especially in my teen years (when I spent almost all my time volunteering at church. Story for another time).

No going to concerts, definitely no dating (I believed I was too far behind [to retrospectively elucidate, with my psychological hangups] to be ready for dating.), sadly not going to youth group (conflicts with the Sunday morning Spanish service & school workload on Wednesdays), not even going to field trips (fortunately, until I was 13), hardly even any talking.😔

2 of some of the biggest telling signs was that my upbringing was

1. one where we were barely even allowed to talk in the house
2. an overall sheltered one, and
3. an upbringing that regarded mental problems as “whining” and meant to be sucked up. 😔

My Early Steps Towards Resolution

The things that most helped me break out of my bubble was 1. more virtual hangouts & 2. A networking need from my storyboard artist career path. To elaborate: 1st was thanks to COVID. Another story for another time, but I tend to talk to myself, especially while in front of a computer. Self-reflective stuff.😁 2nd was the advice that you're often hired by who you know and whether or not you're pleasant to work with. To go back thematically to that aforementioned local animation Discord, we've bonded as much over animation as we have supported each other with some of our mental problems. 🥲🙏

Hope For a Brighter Future

As my 2nd oldest brother's professor said to him (as all my brothers had similar experiences), I wasn't poor in money as much as I was "poor in experience.” However, now that I've taken my church volunteering load off, begun to address all of my life's psychological hangups, and begun to hang out with others, my experience is getting a bit richer. 😊🙏

P.S., please be considerate of technical support people's & technical director's time. They're people too.😢🙏

Nice to meet you. I just made my NewGrounds account!😄 I have other socials for my art, but I didn't have an NG for the longest time. Even though I heard that people genuinely care about providing good critique, I think I was worried that NG wasn't that active.😥

In the end, I changed my mind about that. When I Googled if NewGrounds was worth it in terms of posting art, I ended up finding a couple of really helpful NG forums:

RE 1: Is it worth it to post pictures in Art on Newgrounds in 2023?: NG's straightforward, user-based way of pushing out artwork to more users.

RE 2: Is it worth it to post pictures in Art on Newgrounds in 2023?: More for general exposure & connections rather than professional exposure.

RE: Is Newgrounds a good place for casually posting art?: the art portal's purpose for complete pieces (but not for casual, likely sketchier art) & marking sketches as such.

My concern: trying to categorize my sketchier-styled illustrations into a sketch or a completed piece. I don't want to spend too much time on illustrations from cleaning up line art😥, since I want to focus more on storyboarding (which has slightly looser linework). That, and I personally like and lean a bit towards a sketchier drawing style.😊

Anyways I'll be getting this up and running by re-posting (from my other socials) my art to here. Later.👋🙂