I ended my 2023 recap with a screenshot of my stats at the end of the year, saying how I couldn't wait to see what those numbers would look like in 365 days. Well, fast forward to now:

and it's looking pretty good to me.

This has been my first full year on Newgrounds, and for the most part I tried to look outside of my comfort zone and do things that I wouldn't usually do. I think this was crucial in re-igniting my passion for creating things, which resulted in me finally getting to work on a comic I've been wanting to do since last summer (and which I won't link to in this post to keep it SFW). If I haven't been posting much since November, it's because all my drawing time and energy is being funneled into the comic. The prospect of finishing seems highly likely, and I'm super happy about that.

And now for the highlights:

• My gooey boy got featured!

• All the collabs!

• My first art trade!

• All the creature designs for the 2024 Creature Collab!

• And, lastly, this Naruto cover re-draw for the Naruto 25th Anniversary Collab!

All in all, a pretty good year. Having said that...

This is probably the last time you'll see me be this active on Newgrounds. Over the course of this year I've come to terms with the fact that there's not really much of an audience here for the kind of stuff I prefer making. I also feel a bit at odds with the majority of the site's userbase. Let me make it clear, I'm not trying to say "me = good, Newgrounds and its users = bad". I think I'll always be indebted to this site for re-lighting a spark that I thought was gone for good. It's also not Newgrounds' fault that it's not the kind of site where I'm likely to run into people interested in my work. As someone much smarter than me once said, a fish will be an idiot if you judge it by its ability to climb a tree: it's up to me to find a place where I can build an audience, which is why I've shifted my focus to webcomic sites.

All of this is to say that, for anyone who may care, I'm not going to be spending a lot of time here in the foreseeable future. I'll probably pop by every once in a while if I have something to post, but that's going to be it.

I'd like to thank everyone who followed me, favorited or commented on my works, offered helpful advice in forum threads, hosted collabs I participated in and interacted with me in any shape or form. I'm very happy that you came to my little corner of the internet and found something you liked.

Take care, happy holidays and best wishes! And thanks for reading this!

vlsrb