@Gelert - @Aalasteir (Q) - Index

Q: How has art influenced your life? Have you always drawn traditionally?

1- Well, I've been drawing pretty much my whole life and it has always been a hobby that I can return to at any point regardless of how much time has passed. But for the most part I don't really draw much nor does it have much relevance to my day-to-day life outside of the internet, so for me it's just "a thing that I enjoy doing" and not much else. I really do enjoy it though!

As for the traditional part: I think most if not all of us start drawing on 'traditional' mediums; we've all picked a pen and made some doodles on our notebooks in school, so in that sense I think 99% of artists start in a "traditional" way. It is the jump to digital that has to be made *after* having the interest spark from traditional, and it's a step I have yet to take.

Q: Why do you think you watch YouTube on a daily basis? What do you think about YouTube?

2- It's not really uncommon for people to watch YouTube on the daily (or any other form of entertainment) nowadays, and I don't think it's a bad thing necessarily (although it heavily depends on what type of content you watch and how much). As for the reason why, I'm not really knowledgeable enough to give you a better answer other than "that's just how it is for me".

And as for my thoughts on YouTube...I don't really have much, honestly. Conceptually? One of the best things we have today; As a platform? It's great! (although it has been getting a bit worse over the years); As a company? Haven't heard the best of things. But overall YouTube encapsulates so much nowadays that we'd have to be talking about a specific topic within YT for me to (maybe) have a substancial opinion.

Q: What are some music? And what is it specifically you like about Vocaloid?

3- What I like about Vocaloid is how much it represents the sense of community. Miku as a whole is just a product, a design with a name and nothing else, but the fact that she has become the icon that she is today is thanks to people that do art and songs revolving around her. Nothing is official, and for that, everything is.

Vocaloid is fanon at its maximum expression, it's the "Everything, by everyone" motto taken to heart, united by the same love for the virtual diva that each and every single fan shares. And I find that to be an amazing thing.

I also just really like the music for how it sounds, of course. There's literal hundreds of bangers out there, and you always have more to discover! Unfortunately I can't really go into detail for that in here, since 1.- It's quite difficult to talk about particular recommendations for the 'genre' (which isn't a genre to begin with), and 2.- The character limit doesn't allow me to xD

Q: What are the long text you like to practice your English skills?

4- So, I often mention that "I like to practice my English skills" as a joke because I find it funny, but in reality I just like writing unnecessarily lengthy texts. And not even creative or literary ones, but rather inconsequential stuff like comments on posts and discord chats. And oftentimes you can cut like 60% of what I say and it still delivers the same amount of information (case in point: this interview). As much as it pains me to admit...I have the heart of a Redditor.

Also, fun fact!: I had to cut and resume a LOT of things that I wrote down for this interview; the first time I managed to barely stay below the limit, but the second time I wanted to make sure NG didn't deleted it again, so I played it even safer xD

Q: How did you discover the NG community and why did you join?

5- In a timeline: I had always known of Newgrounds ever since I discovered the internet, but I only thought of it as "that old forum website with edgy people on it...and porn" so I never bothered looking into it further.

I got interested in creating an account for myself around the release of Week 2 of FnF, since I loved both the game and the community that was forming at the time (emphasis on 'at the time').

After that I kept on exploring the site for more interesting games and cool art. I tried uploading my own drawings a couple of times, but I always ended up deleting them out of shame. That was until I participated on the 2021 Secret Santa event, which made me actually want to try and be part of the community. Granted, I haven't been as active as I'd like to be, but hey, I'm still here and plan on staying for longer!

Q: The story of how you created the "OC Plaza" post on the Art Forum, what are your conflicting feelings on the thread?

6- To keep it "short": The idea for the thread was born shortly after doing my second "Art Trades/Requests" post on the forums (which is now deleted BTW, but the first one is still public). I saw that a lot of people, both after and before me, were doing similar threads asking for characters to draw, so I thought "why not make a big thread that is public for everyone? That way people like me don't have to be making new threads constantly and the forum isn't as crammed with them!" (I didn't really mind them, but most of them where pretty similar if not identical to one another. They were quite common, too).

The "conflicting feeling" part comes from the fact that, when creating the thread, I had the self-imposed idea of making a drawing for every single person that left their character in (seems excesive, I know, but it didn't seem that big of a task at the time). This, however, proved to be quite difficult even from the beginning, making me struggle to even finish one drawing, and as time went on I felt even more daunted by the idea of sharing anything on my own thread. It made me feel like a fraud.

Nowadays that feeling still hasn't fully gone away, but it's vastly overshadowed by the positive feeling that I get everytime I open my notifications and see people interacting with the thread. Seriously, the fact that it has kept active for YEARS makes me very happy, and I'm truly grateful for all the artists that have posted on it.

Q: Why do people create OCs?

7- For a multitude of reasons, honestly. Some for telling stories, others for the pure sake of designing, and some for having the freedom to draw characters however and whenever they want. At the end of the day though, I believe that OC's are both a result and a tool for creative expression, regardless of how they are created.

Q: Your advice for being part of the community

8- As I mentioned before, I haven't really been doing the best job at "being part of the community" myself. But, for what it's worth: My advice would be to loosen up more, and realize that this isn't Twitter, or any other social media site for that matter. Newgrounds is made not from the site itself but the people that are in it, so post what you *really* want to post without much worry.

Q: Your art advice

9- My advice would be to try and truly understand your artistic process: What your strengths and weaknesses are, and most importantly, to know what you enjoy doing the most. Some artists like doing lineart the most, others coloring, others rendering, and similarly you could have a preference over fanart, environments, etc.; Try to understand what really makes you enjoy your process and make it your strength.

Stepping out of your comfort zone is important as well, of course (you can't really improve without doing so), but understanding what that zone is for you is also important so you can expand it as much as you can.

Q: What does it mean to be Mexican for you?

10- Literally speaking: To be from Mexico. In a more emotional, personal sense: ...to be from Mexico.

In all honesty, while I do love living here, I'm not really that patriotic about it, so...yeah. I do love my country though! (Most of it, anyways xD)