Happy New Years, Ladies, Lads and Nonbinary Chads!

2024's coming to an end and I get to make my first year-end summary post on Newgrounds! Wow!

It's been a wild year from start to finish, and a lot has changed in my life, with one of the best being that I finally joined Newgrounds! (Ok, technically I've had this account since 2021, but I was just kind of a lurker who never really posted stuff) It all started when I wanted to learn digital art in order to make Visual Novel sprites, and I remembered I had an old drawing tablet that I hadn't touched since high school. After messing around with it for a bit, I wanted to find a place to post my art progress and sure enough I landed on NG! My first posts were a few rough doodles of Animal Crossing characters I did while learning how to use Clip Studio Paint.

I timed my arrival here exquisitely as @Oddlem 's OCtober started around then, so I went ahead and drew the first drawing of my main OC Nat for day 1:

Isn't she gorgeous??? Okay but fr, this was rough. I knew practically nothing about the different pens you could use and pretty much just used the pencil tool for everything, including the coloring lmao. It took me a few days to get a handle on the software, and the quality fluctuated greatly between each post. I made a series of review blogs going over all of my days if you'd like to see just how much I improved and learned during this time. Improvement wasn't the only thing I gained thru OCtober, however, as I also met a lot of really cool people through it!

To shout out a few peeps (in no particular order), I met @ChazDude , @SomeDoodles , @ZenonRetna , @GoldShinx , @CappyCatII , @Gribbus07 , @TheJamarillo, @rekt-haus , @DosieDonut , @Coolusername225 , @BallsyMerc and @BargonSpaceman , to name a few, but there were a lot of cool folks involved in OCtober. (If I forgot anyone who sees this, plz lemme know, I'm tired and don't trust myself to have everyone listed lol)

Getting to see everyone's work and interact along the way was awesome, and the event really made me feel welcomed and involved in a way that few things have before. After this point, I'd pretty much fallen in love with Newgrounds, and made it a point to get involved with as much Newgrounds shiz as I could. I went on to sign up for numerous collabs, and got busy doodling my entries for them:

Alien Collab:

Smash Bros Collab (Not Out Yet):

Astro Bot Collab (Not Out Yet):

Among others that I don't have designated posts for.

Another stand out was that I took part in my first couple Art Trades! I put out a post on my Bluesky asking if anyone was interested and I ended up doing trades with fellow OCtober enjoyers ChazDude and Rekt-haus!

ChazDude:

Rekt-haus:

This was a lot of fun and I'd love to do more of these in the future!

Shortly after the art trades, I got to take part in my first ever NG Secret Santa!! I got @omakkekii, who had a really cool character design that was a ton of fun to draw!

I also received my secret santa from the awesome @CrayonJackie :

It turned out really cool, so thanks a ton for giving me my first ever Tankmas gift! :D

The final big development was that I was picked for one of the NG drawing tablet giveaways! This was a huge win as my old tablet was really small and super old. Sometimes it just straight up wouldn't work lol. I've used the new one for my last several projects and I'm loving it so far; it's so smooth and its wider workspace lets me properly use my shoulder for longer and smoother lineart. I wanna offer a massive thank you to @TomFulp , along with everyone who donated to make those giveaways a possibility. You all have shown me just how welcoming Newgrounds is to newer artists, and I look forward to improving and growing alongside all of you! I won't letcha down!

And that's pretty much everything! I've only been here for a few months so my end of year summary isn't as long as some people's but it's certainly not lacking in weight! So much has happened in such a short time and I am absolutely stoked to see what happens in 2025!

Here are a few final shoutouts to finish things off:

@Lizmas for drawing Nat as Spamton:

@Finasty , @2121Fancy07 , @Zakeblue1 , and @Evanora for bein cool dudes

(Again, if I forgot anyone, plz lemme know. I promise it isn't personal, I'm just bad at keeping track of a large list of names lmao)

Thanks a million to everyone who read this, and moreover to those who've followed me on my silly little doodle journey here on NG! Hope you all had a great holiday season, and I wish you all the best in 2025!!!