12 years ago I joined this website just with the intention of being able to score and review flash movies and games. It later became a window for me to create my own works, and share them with the rest of the community. Its been a long time since I first submited my very first works to the platform, many of them which had questionable quality, but it in the end it was all for the sake of art and experimentation, and thats what NG was for me and many others during the golden age of the website.
To create something funny/artistic or just plain awesome and share it with the world. It was so much fun. It was everything by everyone. And everyone loved it.
Things have changed now, and unfortunately, many of them are not for the best. Flash is about to become extinct as a playable format, Youtube became a new brodcast entretaining monster, games on Steam becoming cheaper and accesible, mobas breaking each month the their player base records, and a massive artist migration that left Newgrounds in search for better ad revenue were some of the major things happening at the moment. The aftermath was felt like the remanents of a star that had just exploded...
I was there to see everything, and I was still no one to be recognized or to have contributed in any particular way to stand out. Until the art portal came out. It was a before and after kind of thing that will always remember. I was already doing ok on deviantArt, so I thought I didnt need to try again on another platform, but I still gave it a shot.
I will never forget the people in awe from seeing my fisrt works. It was such a fantastic feeling. Such memorable moments will remain in my mind forever.
Today things are still changing, Youtube although being the media monster it is, is no longer the friendly advertising platform, and html5 video is thriving as the solution for many problems flash already had. Unity also became the first to go software for game developers, and it opened endless opportunities for talented newcomers. Newgrounds became stable again with a small but more solid community, by using the supporter membership, and things started to look nice again.
As for me, well, I am still the same, I do art for the simple yet meaningfull reason of just enjoying it. And I plant to continue doing it as long as I am alive in this world. I am not making a living out of this. And sometimes it feels frustrating. But in the end its for my own happines. With porn becoming more accessible on the internet it is now the new way-to-go for artist to generate profit, and let me tell you there has never been a time that I wanted more to stay away from the artistic scenery. Regardless of the reason any artist would fall into this subject, I will not judge. I still decided not to fall into it, to be true to myself, because I believe, that in the end, this is the main reason you still follow my works.
You guys are ultimately the ones that push me every day to publish a new artwork and think of new ideas. And you have all my gratitude and appreciation for being always on the other side.
Congrats on being 4k. You are all awesome.
Thank you.
-keepwalking
