No one's done Hogstrong from Starbarians yet? Alright, I'm on that.

Fun concept.

Would an original character I'd previously shown in my News feed qualify for this collab?

Where is that?

I get a variety of errors, but I don't remember that one. Maybe I've forgotten.

My join date is misleading. The first two or three attempts I made to settle in were extremely frustrating, so I bounced pretty quickly. I've been active for roughly a year.

Newgrounds is running filter software that prevents posting. That's what the Shield is. I can log in only under particular conditions since it was implemented.

But I get your point. The site isn't doing the Tumblr+ thing of blocking posts on keywords or image screening.

I received different errors every time I tried to post. One of the attempts went through but I didn't know until a half-hour notice popped up.

By the way, milquetoast opinions? Haha. It's been a while since someone ussd the fancy way of calling my posts sissy. That's funny.

I know Newgrounds is leaning into censorship, but this looks more extreme than expected.

The error stopped me publishing a News post asking for help. It includes a sketch as an example. But I don't know if it was my WIP or a keyword or something else that triggered the warning. {Edit:} It's not the image. That went through by itself in a test I belatedly thought to try.

This happened after I was forcibly logged out trying to post the first time. I figured it was a coincidence. Maybe Newgrounds was updated?

Meanwhile, I took maybe three hours today for an tiny animated banner with a cycle that lasts less than a second. 😄

It was on a very cracked smartphone screen using an obscure pixel art app that doesn't have a feature for adding text, but yeah, no comparison. I think your skills are impressive.

Congrats.

Czyszy is correct. If you're doing it by yourself and aren't repeating steps you've already taken enough times to know how to make a solid estimate, then it'll take longer than expected.

How long on average? Anywhere from fifteen minutes to hundreds of hours of work. The amount depends on what you're doing with what tools and how much of your existing skillset you're using versus how much you have to learn.

But if this is for guessing if someone else is using generative AI...? That's hard to do if you aren't very familiar with what specific people can and can't do well with the media.

The time it takes to get a generative model to spit out something passable and not an obvious waste of energy varies, too.

You can make a two-minute animation in a couple of days by yourself? That's very impressive. Do you any uploaded that are public?

Mine is a secret play on my family names and some personal quirks. I was struggling to decide on pen names for fiction writing and also to feel connected to my relatives when relationships were fraying.

Since then, I've figured out the assumptions from the vague bits of genealogy passed to me were actually wrong. Kind of. History and laguages are complicated.

shadowfals is now my name as much as any other collection of letters is.

Edit: How did I end up in the Audio forum? The best I do for audio is mess with sound files until I get them to work with games....

————

Oops. Ignore this. Today, I missed reactions to a new game review in my count.

My opinion is it's skeavy. I assume the music is AI generated, too.

More data, for reference: I haven't logged in for more than a week while reviews and review reactions were coming up. My notifications count on login showed "46". Looking for everything appearing in the notifications that might be new, I accounted for 34 of the 46. That's less than 3/4.

That could be from posts or reactions being deleted if there's a widescale effort. Who knows.

:shrug: I'm not going to be around much anymore, so it's doesn't matter. The discrepancy doesn't seem to be messing with communication sitewide, at least.

Weird....

I'm not sure I follow how that works. Removed stuff can still get reactions in the system?

This has also been going on nearly every for weeks, so it would have to be something very popular.

Most of my usual notifications are for collabs. I guess it could be that people blocking my account are active in threads I follow. Not sure which which, because it wasn't threads I've checked.

Is there are list of our followed topics somewhere?

Yeah, I've had that happen, too.

:-But I don't get the issue you're facing. Also, I'm pretty sure you get no notification if someone mentions you in the supporter forum when you're not a supporter.

Then I'm out of guesses.

It's happening every time I'm here.

I feel like I'm missing something.

Hmm, strange. But thanks for letting me know.

The notifications count has been higher than the actual notifications shown for the past two to three+ weeks.

This is taking into account emoji reacts to collab reviews. There's still a big difference.

I'm guessing notifications for areas that are blocked, including any for the Supporters forum, will add to the count without showing up in the notifications lost. The thing is my posts haven't ever been popular enough to explain the difference. Like, I'll log in to "9" notifs, click to view them, and find only two new actions. This is happening every time I'm here.

Is this happening to anyone else?

How much varies.

I like practical and theoretical sciences; my guesses at what is likely to happen are better than average; and I've been watching how our world works long enough that technology, medical developments, and social changes that seemed impossible 30, 20, 10 years ago are now real.

Some of what SciFi authors and audiences continue to insist is implausible already exists. Other things that are considered unknowable have been explored far outside of public view. There's been too much interference in info sharing that's not for marketing for the reality of what's happening around us to be widely recognized.

That's why it's easier to be deliberately inaccurate at times to focus on something else. (Example: the characters' relationships. Character stories are more popular than Idea stories, even in hard SciFi.) Matching reader expectations takes fewer words than it does to explain unfamiliar processes or obscure tech.

Not all the science referenced in science fiction is the main feature of the story. So it's not worth the time and energy to make it all make sense.

Most English language readers struggle with basic comprehension, anyhow. Everything you or I write will be misunderstood more often than not.

I'm increasingly doubtful there's any point for me to get farther into research than it takes to convince myself of how the story should go and what the characters experience (or for other personal reasons).

Anime is tightly associated with manga and Japanese book publishing. The marketing and audience expectations of the huge international franchises are different for other types of works. If you aren't aiming to write specifically in Japanese markets, then it's better to look at what originated in the areas you expect your initial audience to be.

Also, those are extreme examples, not something to aim for as a new writer.

The original creator for one of those examples crashed so hard in developing a reliable team to help support the story that he's resorted to using LLM (AI) that was trained on the series to come up with new episodes. He apparently doesn't believe people who are familiar enough with the series can supply good ideas on what to do when his burning out... which is pathetic. I mean, I feel sad for everyone who's worked on the anime up that point. What a way to undermine their reputations....

But anyhow, it's usually a group of people writing long series at the urging of existing fans. One primary writer might the ideas and skills, including endurance, to keep the episodes coming without losing all their audience. That doesn't build up out of nowhere.

My advice is to aim for strong shorts. The skills for writing a one-shot are the basics for writing longer stories.

Option 1:

The Sea waves at trees, wanting attention from the strange plants.

One mangrove tree that was pulled away from shore during a storm tries to get its help returning home.

Option 2:

Pick out shenanigans from William Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Option 3:

Fruit-peel boats.

Rise of the Guardians (about saving Christmas by Santa helping his comrades) and Klaus (about creating Christmas traditions by building up community one mailed letter at a time).

Formerly The Nightmare Before Christmas, for how one guy learns selfishness and greed can risk everything he loves; because I never liked the Horror elements or how Halloween is depicted all that much, it's lost some of its appeal over rewatches through the years.

Yes.

Study together. Having a "body double" to bounce around thoughts and emotions with can help when there isn't an actual teacher.

Your angelic blue iris in less than an hour—

Sorry for poaching your commission, TheDumbCartoonist.

I'm going now to spend my automatic $0 on time travel back to I Should Be Writing!

Never. I've made people things on request— the "Fubzz" bee from online might be my favorite— but it was never a formal paid arrangement. (I've sold writing through open submissions calls and won monetary awards through contests. That's different.)

From what I've seen, it helps to have a friend with strong social influence as a promoter. At the same time, treat it like a business. Make effective marketing materials, be ready with contracts, and kmow how to handle finances.

I'm not especially good at friendships or business management. Both have been disastrous. I'm not expecting to ever be the name people think of when looking for new art. But, I have noticed these skills with the luck to apply them well helps in the process.

What I was thinking of how easy it is to go looking for motivation in large projects that get tiring partway through. At least for me, if there's not a well of motivation to draw from at the start, then the larger projects become demotivating to the extent that the smaller projects I could have started with become harder to consider. It's like a crash for willpower (usually because of fatigue).

You might work differently.

Good luck, whatever you choose!

I didn't know the Gamestop business still existed.

If I saw one a sign and could stop in time, I'd take a photo like I do when I find an old pay phone on a wall.