Since April 13th this year, I’ve been on Newgrounds for 10 years.

It’s been a wild time, and I thought it might be fun to recount and reflect on the years and how I got to where I am today within NG and with my art <3

Note: for the years written, the April of that year is the start of that time period.

Before Newgrounds:

I was just a kid who was always looking at stuff all over the internet. I usually was playing Minecraft with my friends after school, and going to see their dog when not. It was the age of Nintendo DS and Wii. I did some writing back then and had even tried to write a longer story. My grandmother had given my sibling and I art supplies, sketchbooks, colored pencils… our first art supplies.

My sketches were very crude in the year of 2013, and some of the best art pieces I made were actually in my art classes in school alongside a wolf I drew from a reference for my grandmother’s birthday.

In October or November of 2013 I started watching speed paint videos online, I loved the colors and shading, the lighting, everything! At that time, the only art program I knew how to use was GIMP (which is what was used for my first illustration here on NG). I really got into it, making small drawings for a Christmas card that year and designing my birthday invite early 2014.

I kind of kept to myself and didn’t post anywhere, my family knew about my illustrations, and I worked with a lot of pencil and drawing dragons in school. People knew I could draw, and I was pretty ok at it.

Joining Newgrounds:

In April 2014, I had been watching Markiplier, Jacksepticeye, y’know, whatever a little kid would watch at that time. 

Markiplier had been playing I think “There is no Game” or something similar. There was a link to the Newgrounds game, and I thought it would be fun to play it for myself.

I ended up checking out more of the website and found “Free Coins!!!” by @Denisowator 

I got all but the final medal, and didn’t want to restart my journey, so I created an account.

The First Year!

Newgrounds was a tad alive and I met two Newgroundsers that I stayed friends with for about the first two years ish of my time here. I posted a few drawings. Playing with pixel art, and inspired by my friends. Newgrounds was still a background thing. I did a bunch of reviews and playing back then, and I would chill with some folks in old Chatzy chat rooms, before Discord existed.

Year 2 (2015):

I started to already have Newgrounds pride. Hah, I started learning a bunch about Castle Crashers and the site history. I took part in a secret Santa that year, and was chillin.

I switched over to Krita that year after hearing about it for the first time, and I have never gone back.

Maybe this is when I started being on Discord? I forgot.

It was that summer I got an older drawing tablet, AIPTEK brand, from my grandmother, who had also done digital art in the early days of Corel Paint. [My father still has the paint can packaging for Corel at the time in his office].

Year 3 (2016):

Quite a bit more notable! It was the first Pixel Day and I submitted. I ended up getting scouted that day, and I was ecstatic! I started posting more, and drawing still took me a long time, and I didn’t do a lot of full illustrations. (The Jester was drawn on a borrowed laptop, my normal computer wasn’t the best)

I also took part of Pico Day that year and started the slippery slope of drawing metal and robots, I did not do anything with robotics at the time, but did have a small interest in the back of my mind that wasn’t really given any room to breathe at the time. I had gone to a summer camp that was to teach coding, and when they showed us Scratch, I was a bit disappointed since I felt ready for more. 

I didn’t touch coding again until highschool.

My old drawing tablet was no longer compatible with my new (hand me down) laptop and I got my first Wacom tablet. I still use it to this day and prefer it over my Huion Screen tablet :P 

Year 4 (2017):

And this is when I joined my highschool robotics team, as visible from my Pixel Day drawing.

I started to make a promise to myself to try to post more illustrations than the previous year..

I can start to see my move towards my focus on glow and reflections this year with “An Eye for an Eye”

I also had met with a few Newgroundsers in person that year at Ambler Theater:

@PhantomArcade had lost a bet/dare to @moawling and borrowed my dad’s glasses to complete it. 

I didn’t have a smart phone at the time, and used my dad’s to show @Ozone and @FuShark some of my drawings.

Also, @JohnnyUtah, it took me FOREVER to realize you were there too. I had a memory of Tom talking to *someone* before the screening about their cartoon being shown first, and then like two years later I figured it out! [My memory might be wrong]

I hadn’t seen so many people passionate about what they were doing before and it was inspiring to see everyone just excited and having fun. Heh, it was then that I felt as if I belonged. 

It’s when I started doing more and talking to more people on the site. These were just people doing their thing, and it was just exciting that I was close enough to take part of Newgrounds in person.

Year 5 (2018):

I went to the Revolutions bowling meetup and met @IvanAlmighty and many others! 

@Temariix made a Steve birthday cake, and @BrandyBuizel gave me a code to his game.

At the time, supporter status was being a lot more public as an option and I thought the painting of Tom that was used for the banner ad was a bit funny. I made a TomFulp mask to wear out of tape and random ribbon from my basement. I think @Krinkels still has the mask.

It was the first time meeting @Luis in person, and it was just wild when everyone combined the tables to make an extremely long table. Everyone was so chill, it felt like a family reunion.

I got a lot better technically in drawing that year and took part in my first animation jam!

I had tried to work on it as much as I could during the summer course I was taking that year :) 

https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/714141 

That August is when Hotbun was founded as a Discord server. I still kind of am hazy on how I joined.

BUT, Hotbun was joined with the faces of folks like @Snackers @HenryEYES @MatthewLopz (frog) @Oddlem, @irri @NickConter @Cymbourine @Carmet @littlbox …

ok, everyone who is in this:

In the fall is when I started writing the Telebuddies in my Cinema class where we edited videos together. I recently found an old report card showing I got a 99 in the class. It was my favorite, and as soon as I started to learn screenwriting, I was starting to write animation scripts (a lot of which are still on my drive)

This was also the first year of Tankmas! We originally called it “Christmas ADVENTure” made by @ninjamuffin99 and a bunch of other Hotbun folks.

It was so nice to be part of a larger collab, and I did some pixel art for Tankmas which led me to do more things with it in the future as one of the sprite artists.

And… Kind of looking back, now I realize that the beginning of Hotbun coincided with when I was starting to study for the SAT (college testing for US folks) and prepare for applying to colleges.

I started getting busy with school, robotics, and art all the same time. 

I’m getting a bit ahead of myself in reflection, but something that was really hard for me as a Senior in Highschool, and all through my time in college is that I could never really be as active as I wanted with Newgrounds. I had a great time in Hotbun right as it started, and everything after that kind of fell short I guess because I’ve been busy since. It just kind of sucks looking back, but also just seeing how soon after I got busy with school work after Hotbun started just makes me a bit easier on myself. It was a bit of bad timing for me, and I was more of a satellite member since that’s all I could do with the time I had.

Because of how things are with the anniversary in April, in the beginning of 2019, I had actually switched robotics teams, and it was my first season with them. The folks were a lot nicer than my previous team, but as I mentioned with Hotbun, time wasn’t really on my side with how things lined up. I was also about a half hour away from the robotics lab, couldn’t drive, and mainly did their graphic design items when I wasn’t doing homework in the lab.

I have my Art tab open on NG while writing this, and I can immediately pick out the drawings related to the situation. That’s why I mention it. But speaking on the timing of the anniversary dates…

Year 6 (2019):

EXACTLY on April 13th in 2019, five years from the day I joined Newgrounds, I was in a competition which I won 1st for Graphic Design, which was just a great way to celebrate, and even if no one else knew what I was talking about, I was happy for how far I had come. I was able to go national for it, didn’t get far, but had a lot of fun :) 

As I went into my senior year of highschool, I took some classes at the local community college. I enjoyed my programming course a lot and was in high spirits a lot of the time. I befriended the folks who worked at the Makerspace and enjoyed Beat Saber competitions with other students I befriended. I even met a gallery owner who liked my work as I was editing some of my digital pieces.

I vibed in the library studying for testing and enjoyed looking out the windows just to see the rest of campus thriving.

I started planning around doing my first art table in April 2020, and started reaching out to printing places and using the button maker at the makerspace. I was really excited to do my first one.

I returned back to my highschool for the final courses I had to do. Cooking, Chemistry, Anatomy and Physiology, and Public Speaking.

I got free lunches from the cooking class at times, and Chemistry was like solving puzzles. At the time I had been studying a lot more about previous pandemics and we starting to talk about a new virus showing up on the other side of the globe in my Anatomy course. I took this topic and gave a speech in Public Speaking giving my classmates more details about the virus since we all knew about it. 

A week or so later, my anatomy and physiology teacher looked at all of us during class and said something along the lines of “I don’t want to talk about this everyday, but this is important”. I don’t need to say what happened after that.

Year 7 (2020)

It was a bit tough especially for the first month or so, we had an extra guest and two extra cats in the house. All events were canceled, and everyone was stuck in place.

On the 7th year Anniversary I decided it would be a good day to accept my admission to college. We got sent a lot of items to celebrate from the school, but being stuck inside and having a lot of my competition plans canceled made everything fall flat on me.

Just some more documentation: This was my Shelter in Place jam WIP. I think it speaks a bit more to the rest of everything and the overall vibe of 2020.

I might finish this, but let’s leave Covid behind for a bit eh?

Year 8 (2021)

Oh, FLUFF, we’re going flip through this one a bit quickly actually. (Some uni stuff went on)

Summer animation jam with @BuhlBoy (I got to do the Backgrounds, which was fun!)

I was also the art director for Tankmas 2021!!! I stayed up late so many nights building and pushing the game to Newgrounds with the final updates. All the times I had designed the tree in the previous years added up. @Karlestonchew and @MrShmoods were on deck helping me with designs ♥️

I may complain about the work for Tankmas, but I loved every second of it.

Year 9 (2022)

I went to @PsychoGoldfish ‘s place to vibes with a bunch of others and celebrate Pico Day in person! (Heh, finally)

@Jacob @BuhlBoy @Xinxinix and myself had taken a road trip from Kansas City Missouri all the way to Denver Colorado for it. 

With everyone, we threw paper [redacted]es across the table at a local pizza place, and during the day of the BBQ, we got Ice Cream from this random neighbor of PsychoGoldfish’s.

Funny Aside: I had been calling PsychoGoldfish “Psycho” in person for a bit, probably scared a few folks, just a funny thing. Not as bad as trying to figure out whether or not to call @ProfessorDunce “Professor” or “Dunce” when we met in the winter.

In between robotics courses, which I didn’t realize I was speedrunning and doing a hell year, I went to see @ChutneyGlaze and @MaidenChynna for their wedding. I got to meet the amazing and cool @chimp-shrimp and @Syrupmasterz as well as we partied in a dinosaur museum.

(This is a drawing of all the folks I was able to meet in 2022):

Year 10 (2023)

At midnight going into the 10th yeah, I was at a bar in Taiwan christening the new jacket I had gotten in honor of 9 years passed. I knew I was in the final run of things and made a lot of progress for this year.

On my way back to the states, I stopped by Canada and visited in again with @Syrupmasterz and did a three hour jam to make this:

I stopped by TooManyGames during the summer hosted by @Cortat!

(I got to meet all of you lovely folks and got an incredible number of signatures on my flag!)

I had to leave the Monday after TMG to go back to college for work and otherwise. I was torn and it was hard to leave after meeting so many people that the pandemic delayed. 

But this kind of summarizes how I felt after:

@Droid it always kind of warms my heart to see you liked the song <3

I did two of the shots in the Summer Fest 2023 Opening directed by @Slimygoo 

I completed one of shorts I had started:

And @DannyGoodShirt had me do the thumbnail for Dr. Good’s Operating Theater, which was so wild to see my art on the FP for the promo

The Promo:

The Collab:

I was also commissioned for the first time for animation work, which was the Green World Trailer on my page. I learned very quickly my process and worked through the stress of final classes while also finishing it. 

ALSO, HOLY FLUFF! I successfully ran a Kickstarter for the Astro Lizard Enamel pins!

It was a busy year.

And finally:

Going into Year 11

I’m already two months in, and it’s going well! 

As a cap to the 10 years, @squidly and I ran the Boston Meetup, and had a good time with everyone running around Chinatown, and overtaking a local taco place. It was fun trying to weave through the rain.

For projects: While the status on Telebuddies and Regalia is good but slow, Rick’s Diner Issue one will have a few of the first few pages ready and out by Mid August! I’ve been having a lot of fun with the bots at the diner.

I’m in the middle of lining one of the pages.

And a lot of you saw me at Pico Day in New Jersey! I was running around making sure everyone was doing ok thought for the most part.

The after party was a bit more chill when @GeoKureli, Squid, and I went to an aquarium nearby :)

Anyway, after the end of the main Pico Day event, the flag was covered in signatures. So fittingly, I gave it to @TomFulp to hang up in the office:

(@PsychoGoldfish sent this me to after TMG this year)

And there’s still more to go this year! I’m excited.

Since I graduated, I have been reflecting on a lot of things, making changes, and planning. I’m just really glad that university is over. A bunch of my friends and folks who talk to me about my experience know I didn’t have a great time. It was stressful due to academics, personal life, and things I couldn’t really control. I had to just wait things out.

I am still waiting a bit, with the end of one of my plans in sight, but I’m still here eh?

As I mentioned in the 2018 portion about Hotbun, it was just bad timing for me. This is a theme amongst everything. Younger me would be impressed by everything we’ve done, but I still know there’s so much we lost over those years too. Bittersweet, and I’m still working through things.

Some of my solutions are coming to fruition, and helping me go forward stronger in this eleventh year, and for that, I’m happy.

Thank you all who have talked to me and inspired me through these years. Thank you all for being awesome friends and overall just cool people. I look up to a bunch of ya’ll, and I know some of you look up to me as well. We’ll keep building each other up.

So let’s take a cheer to the past ten years, and for the eleventh, the one to come.

With all the best,

-TheDyingSun