Your approach of planning a travel to NYC is perfectly fine, and yeah, that's at most what I pointed out in the last paragraphs. Travelling to NYC is totally ok, specially if is a place you know and like to visit, as is like visiting an old friend who you miss a lot.

For the relations part, don't sweat the idea of being "kinda introvertive". Referencing myself, I only have five IRL friends (and one of them moved to the USA), and I only get to talk with two of them in person most of time, as the others are busy with work or college. I'm not a family guy, so I don't interact a lot with my family besides my parents and one or two uncles and aunts. It's not necessary you turn into Mr. Popular guy to feel satisfied, having deep, influential relations is more than enough (and again, don't sweat the "i'm not contributing to the talk" part, not everybody has amazing things to say, but you can contribute in other ways, like telling a joke, making a meeting or hosting a session for playing, to give an example).

For your "stagnation" and/or motivations part, again, maybe you're putting yourself to a challenge which is far beyond your current abilities, and should tone down your expectations a bit to help you improve. When I was 15 years old, I started making a game with the idea of making it the next Super Mario Bros., and the result was that project has been stuck in development hell for almost 8 years for now (and is probably gonna stay like that forever). Having ambitious ideas is great, but everything should scalate gradually, not appear out of nowhere as if it were your mandatory magnum opus. Almost every well known user on this platform (even Tom Fulp himself) started their big projects for the funsies with trashy quality, and they all improved as time went by along with their ambitions and possibilities.

And last, for insecurity, remember that everyone out there feels as scared like you until otherwise is shown. We cannot predict the outcome of our work and how people will react to it. Sharing our work on the internet is basically taking a leap of faith, expecting to meet with people who can see the value of our work and are willing to contribute to this. A few days before @ElRandomGMD faced this exact same problem with confidence on sharing and improving. It's pretty common to feel like this, specially for nowadays standards, which allow you to see thrillions of artists out there who manage to make astounding art in the span of three days or less, giving the sensation that you're staying behind, but nothing far from reality. Art is the language of soul, it's meant to reflect what we think and/or believe, and is one of the most transparent tools for showing who we are (that's also part of why people hate AI art :bb).

@EudaemonArts

I don’t know if these are the right words but as someone who was in your situation before, don’t be too hard on yourself, there’s plenty of drawing tutorials online you could look at if it’s getting to the point where you’re mental health is being affected really badly, you can always talk to a therapist

I'll try to be consistent with my answer since I'm bad at taking so much information into account.

As I have said before, you are very determined, and since I saw that you said spending 10 hours making a comic page and having the courage to throw it all away to do it from scratch it left me perplexed, but sometimes you have to know when to take a break, we all have a moment where we question everything, when we think we're not doing enough, great artists also went or go through this, but a saying that I hold on to a lot is "time heals all". notably even with 3 years of experience you are forming as an artist, and in these times with technology I don't blame you for feeling overwhelmed or similar, I was there too. If you stop drawing for a while you won't lose your ability, don't be afraid to seek to express everything before it's too late, you have to be optimistic, my hands shake too, I also question my existence, but I seek happiness, perfection does not exist, but happiness does. In life, you'll have tons of ideas, and sometimes you'll feel sad for being unable to develop them, to include them in your story, but in the end, that's part of the process of being an artist. You have to let go of your fears and express yourself the way you want. Always find people who will listen and help you. I know perfectly well that a bunch of words won't cure your current feelings, but they'll give you something to think about for the future. We all have to be afraid of something, but we also have to face it, and that's the truth.

We have to give equal importance to the past, present, and future. Let me tell you, working as an artist is difficult, both before and after. I would compare it to being a YouTuber or something like that. It would really be preferable to have a real job while you take the time to develop as an artist and create a base to make a living from it, and be happy for it. Don't waste time, sleep properly, don't stay up late. It's easier said than done, but sometimes the little things make big changes. I've also had similar situations, and I overcame them. I still have some, but with what I've learned, I know I'll overcome them. You have my support. I'm not good at giving advice, criticism, and much less words to make people feel better, but I have nothing to lose by trying, by showing what I want and what I can, and so do you. We have to be considerate and help each other. I wish you the best of luck. And I hope my answer isn't confusing. I tried to take everything into account.

I'm almost at the character limit, good luck again.

Ok buddy, first of all, a reality slap: you do have problems and I can relate to them, but there's a point past your words that make you sound like victimizing yourself. Self criticizing is good to a point, but once past that point, you're just putting too much weight in your shoulders to carry on (I'll talk about that later).

I understand you might want to make this thing of sharing art a way of living, specially if you can make astounding art with that, or lovable comics and/or animations. I'm pretty sure most people in this site expect to achieve that somehow one day. Even if it doesn't become their main income, knowing people out there care about the projects you develop and expect to see more is always cathartic and satisfactory. When will that opportunity appear though? you can't predict that, the world is always changing, and who knows who might be the next most innovatine creator out there, maybe you, maybe me, but we can't predict that at the moment, the best we can do is keep doing our things in the best way we can do so we can have the proper opportunities one day.

About your improvement... you have the wrong mindset, to put it simply, you lost the battle before even starting. First of all, if you have artists who inspire you, be them purely illustrators or actual mangakas or something like that, it's perfectly fine you want to learn from them and wish to one day get to their level. However, be realistic: you're not at their level, and that's not something bad. You may become the reference artist for someone else one day, and get at the level of those who inspired you, but you are not there yet, why compare your current abilities with way older people with more experience who lived in absolute different conditions to you? Also, it doesn't matter if your improvement is minimal compared to other artists, at least you're improving, not everyone moves at the same pace (and if you're getting pain or exhaustion from spending a lot of hours in drawing, maybe your body wants you to get up and move a little bit, sitting during your whole life is not healthy, no matter the conditions).

If you have problems remembering the tricks you used to make an art piece astounding, why don't you save two files for it? for example, photoshop format for saving layers and effects is .psd, but you can save art in .png, .jpeg or .webp for sharing online, and whenever you want to repeat a style, you can check the .psd and see how you did it back in the day (or you can even write it on a notebook or a post it, there's always a solution). Being a smart person doesn't mean knowing everything, but knowing where to search what you need. Someone who knows where to find help is a really smart person.

Now, you said something about not seeing colors the right way (do you have color-blindness?) or having wobbly hands and all sorts of things. There are certain aspects from your daily routine that might be affecting in some of these cases. Drinking a lot of coffee, having unnecessarily high levels of attention to your environment and such can make you have lots of shivers (if it's more of a health condition, better go to a doctor to get a better diagnosis). As for the colors part, I believe there are some glasses that change the light in a way that allows you to see the correct colors, but if that's not an option for you, well... adapt to it. You can't just change your pair of eyes for another (not currently at least), so you'll have to adapt your way of working to your conditions, avoid using certain colors, make tricks with lighting and shadows, those sort of things. Another variable of intelligence is the ability of adaptability, so you'll have to adapt to your situation.

You also said you're a nice person and try to get along with everyone. That's great, I love transparency and respect, but remember: you can't get everyone to like you. As humans, we all have personal opinions and beliefs, and some of these just don't get in line with others opinions and beliefs, some might even hate you for your opinions. That doesn't matter, you're a human, you're allowed to think and act however you want (as long as don't damage others ofc). If someone does not understand that and wants to drown you on their misery, better to keep the distance.

Another thing: "Art is my only escape, the way I can express my feelings and ideas to the world", art is YOUR answer, not THE answer. If a thread like this one exists is precisely because many artists out there don't find their art cathartic enough for certain problems, and seek help on interactions with people who can understand what they may be facing. I get your immediate physical circle makes you feel like you're alone, i'm literally the only artist in my whole family, I get how frustrating it can be you might want to talk about something, but the others don't understand you at all. If that's a problem, search for people to interact with, NG is a big community of artists in constant growth, there's lots of communities out there, collabs which allow you to meet cool people, discord servers filled to the brim with people of all sorts. Nobody is really alone, I asure you there's always someone waiting for you at the right corner.

Finally, I understand that if you want to live from making art, then you want to become influential enough to have a big fanbase of people who can follow your work, but you're making a mistake in confusing fanatics with followers. Fanatics are the real people who always show interest in your work, no matter your influence, and those are the one's who matter the most, as they will always be there, expecting to see what else can you deliver. Followers are just an statistic, and don't represent a real fanbase. If you check on iconic content creators (not even from NG, you can also go to YouTube for example) you'll realize most of their submissions don't match the amount of followers in views. A user can have three millions of followers, but his latest submission might only have 500,000 views, or on the contrary, a user might have 5000 followers, and his submissions have 2.5 millions of views. Relying on your followers number as a way of measuring your fanbase is wrong. Aditionally, if you have an account where you want to share whatever you make, no one is stopping you from doing so. Three weeks ago I made a post about this, you can click on this link if you want to know more, but to put it simply, even nowadays pros who deliver some of the most epic things out there, give themselves the opportunity of sharing trashy sketches and dumb art, because this is meant to be fun and satisfying for you as an artist, not an absolute torture (and now that I mentioned it, you're right on the part of pain as a necessary trait for pushing ideas, but you may be getting a little bit toxic on your way of working, if you can't finish an art one day, move it to the next day, don't stay up late).

As a summary, don't sweat things that much, consider reducing your expectations (these have to grow gradually along your ability, you can't build a car if you haven't made the tires yet), give yourself the opportunity of living more calmly, and don't fall in the trickery of followers as a signal of success, that only works for marketing purposes, not for much else. If you follow what i'm saying, I promise you'll be getting better in less time, and feel way lighter as time goes by. We're a community, we want to help each other, and make deep relations from the thing we all love most: art.

Thank you for your comments everyone; but I’m going to try and get that post deleted. It was a bit too personal and a bit embarrassing and I don’t agree with how I felt entirely. I think I just felt everything was caving in at that point in time and I needed a break or change of pace dearly. I’m trying to live more freely and take more of a break. I am putting WAY too much pressure on myself and as much as I will strive to make comic art, do comms and hopefully get scouted one day I really need to slow down and shift my focus. If I keep going at the rate I do I’m going to end up destroying myself quit and then I really won’t be able to do anything through art.

Thank you for your comments - I would like to discuss further but I think that comment in particular I’d like to bury under.

I've struggled a lot in my art and Newgrounds career over the years, but never thought to post anything about it into this thread. However, recently I feel like I've hit a pretty rough patch.

The main issue I'm currently facing is to do with friendships. I'm gonna be straight up with you all: I have no idea how to meet new artists and potentially make new art friends. Now that's not to say I don't have any friends in this community; I'm in a small group with a bunch of people who I talk to on Discord for time to time, and they are genuinely awesome people. But I still have this constant desire to meet new people, talk to them and hopefully discover different perspectives and personalities on things.

I have something pretty embarrassing to admit: lately I've gotten into the habit of occasionally straight up sending DMs to fellow artists on Newgrounds whose work I admire, and asking if they would like to talk. Now I know what you're thinking, but the last thing I want to do is to make people uncomfortable, and I make it clear in these messages that they do not have to accept and I will perfectly understand if they say no.

But as for how this has actually gone for me, I have gotten a surprising number of people who accepted, and who I ended up adding on Discord. However, only one of these people still remains on my friends list to this day. A lot of the time, either they have a tendency to disappear in the middle of a conversation, or they're just not very interesting to talk to outside of their artwork. I do not blame any of these people in the slightest; I am fully aware of what I'm getting myself into with this, and of course they're under no obligation to talk to me at all, but over time it's become clear to me that if you want to make friendships that last, this is not the way to do it.

The problem is, I just don't know how. I can tell you how I got into the original friend group I mentioned earlier: I messaged an NG user asking to join their private Discord server, they invited me in, and I pretty much met all of them through there. I'm still incredibly thankful for that opportunity to this day. But like I said, eventually I want to start meeting new people again, and I haven't been able to replicate something like that ever since. I've asked my existing friends for advice on this in the past, but either they don't know or they just give generic advice. How do you all do it? How do you actually connect with people in this community?

I'm sorry if this isn't the right place to post something like this, but I figured that since I'm looking to meet people in the art/creative community specifically, it would fit.

I just sometimes get blocks because of both external issues and just a lack of ideas

I’ve been putting this advice off for way too long, started to watch his videos and practice a bit and I’ve actually been proud with my results so far. I’ve used Drawabox and Quickposes to help but I never really considered this. Give me my absolute dumbass award I earn it lmao. Thank you!

Here you go buddy. Congratulations!!1!

No problem! I'm glad I was able to help :>

Been a while since I've seen any activity here but I've definitely seen some vent posts in this forum.

I'm gonna bump it so that we can go back to consolidating the vent posts into somewhere that people will see and give support.

As for me, honestly I wish I had more time to do like, literally everything. In all creative media. I want to finish stuff and start new stuff like I used to be able to. I guess it's just being an adult now compared to then.

Throwing my 2 cents in here, I wish I had anything to show in regards to making progress towards my dream ideas.

It’s been years since I conceived these ideas I think about often, yet I don’t have much to show besides a few artwork. Them being video game ideas is also doubly troubling as a non-programmer, because that factor then gets added and now I have to think harder on how to solve that.

It’s hard to draw when your motivation is random.

If you have game ideas you want to make a reality, learn how to program, if you don't like that, find someone who can do it for you, if there's nobody, then search a place where to slowly develop your ideas one way or another, like an indie group of game devs and such.

Side note: sometimes, you don't need motivation to do things. Sometimes, you have to force yourself to do things, and motivation will slowly take over

Yeah, that’s what I’ve been mainly doing. But damn is it hard to have those ideas in your head, and then realising making them as idealised as in your head is hard.

Hopefully I’m on the right track.

As long as you don't let that feeling consume you, yeah, you're on the right track. I'm a gamedev myself, and I have ideas which have been cooking for like 8 years by now, since I know they require a level of quality I'm still not capable to achieve myself, but I patiently wait for the right time to make 'em happen

Hopefully I can find a team to work with or the like to gain that experience, I'd be up for working on art for a team. Though there is that option (as in a newgrounds feature to advertise yourself to collabs) already.. Ehhh, to busy drawing fat men.

Relatable. These days I don't draw or sketch nearly as much as I'd like, but I just don't have a lot of time for it. Been posting entries in my blog about why (short answer: I have land & am preparing it for home construction).