Oh yeah, I got the brainrot real bad.

I went on a trip to a torture museum once upon a time ago and came home and made characters based on some of the "accessories". We got Scott, who's stuck wearing a medal for drunkenness for committing one too many inebriated crimes and is not allowed to be served as long as he wears it, and Raoul, who's stuck wearing playing card and dice blocks to mark him has a cheater.

If you're a lesser known artist and/or a novice (which I would say you are in your current state), then the best fits for you are going to be sites that depend less heavily on algorithms. Your art is very unlikely to get picked up by one, and so the strategy must be to avoid them, and to find places where your followers are less likely to be using them.

Right out the gate, we can eliminate Twitter and Instagram. Both actively discourage users from sorting their feeds by chronological order by hiding the setting to do so. I haven't used Twitter in a few years, so things may have changed, but I recall having to click a fucking sparkle icon of all things to change it. On Instagram this option is hidden as their logo, which does not look like a goddamn button at all in the app. This is done on purpose. It is pretty safe to assume that only a small percent of the userbase knows about these secrets and actually applies them, which means many of your posts are going to get beaten by the algorithm. Your followers that love you will be seeing very little of you. On Instagram it's even worse, because you can't search tags by newest at all. It's impossible. This means people are unlikely to discover you by random chance without the algorithm.

The good news is that many other sites either default to a chronological feed, or have very accessible settings to turn it on. This means your followers, when you get them, have much better odds of seeing your work. Most sites will present you with some sort of algorithm or simple likes-based top posts page when you go to search, but as long as they have an easy to find chronological setting, you're back in business. People can actually find you there, as long as you tag well. Sites that meet this description include Bluesky, Tumblr, and Cara.

Many sites also have repost settings of some sort, which is massively helpful for extending the 'lifespan' of a post. I use Tumblr mostly and I queue up a bunch of old art to automatically share twice a day so people have something to chew on while I make more stuff. Some of my followers might be in very different timezones, and some people might not happen to log on the same day new art is up, so there's usually someone seeing it for the first time. Just try not to be too spammy with it.

So there you go, I would personally say Bluesky or Tumblr if you're looking for a more widely-used website. They'll be a tad kinder to you.

AYO, FAMILIAR FACE?!?

I've got quite the collection.

Ava seems like a lively gal! Better or worse, that's up to you, because it's a stylistic choice and what matters most is that your character turns out being something you enjoy drawing. Follow your heart on this one, because I think they both work. But! I have ideas on how you could do the new eyes better. I looked at your gallery and you seem to mostly draw solid-colored eyes, and I can see that you lack practice with positioning pupils. So, if you're going to continue drawing pupils in the future, then you ought to practice studying how eyes move to focus on objects.

Right now, a lot of your artwork has pupils centered in the eyeball or close to it. Humans (and many other creatures and characters) have binocular vision, so we get two views of the same thing and our brain composites them into one. That means each eyeball is going to get angled differently. When things get farther from us, we widen our gaze, and we narrow the gap between pupils to focus on something in front of us. The video I embedded is a good real-life example.

So first, we need to get our two angles. When drawing, I like to imagine or straight up draw "laser beams" shooting out of their eyes to see where the focus lands. These "beams" should emanate from the center of the eyeball, and the point where they overlap is what they're focused on. If they don't cross, then you have an unfocused set of eyes. You may want that if the character is looking really far away, or if it just works for the expression, but in most cases you will want them a tad focused.

As with all art advice, there are no hard rules. However, I heavily recommend using guidelines when your character is looking at something visible within the art, because it will help you to really sell the illusion that the character is looking at it. Your audience might not interpret the art correctly otherwise. These guidelines become less important if the character isn't meant to look at anything in particular, such as in the piece you shared, in which case you can go off vibes and what looks good. Just keep in mind though, if you want a more appealing expression, to slightly criss-cross the pupils. Artists commonly default to focused eyes because spaced out pupils can look like something is wrong with a person without context. You can totally use that to your advantage in some scenarios, but I'm guessing you don't want that in every drawing.

And that's all I have to say about them orbs in your face for now. I can see that you're very passionate about drawing your characters, and that's great because that means more opportunities to learn. I'm glad you're trying new things, and I can already see the upgrades to your skills since last year. You're on a good trajectory. Nice work!

I don't think it only boils down to "Trying to be nice", although that may be part of it. When you request a critique, you are requesting that members of the public give you a great deal of personalized attention. Artistic feedback is most useful when it is well articulated, and generally that takes more time and brain power than quick compliments. It's like answering e-mails (at least for me). Kind of exhausting. But many people are willing to do it, it's just that most people aren't. You're an internet stranger asking for their free time, after all.

I understand that going some time without any in-depth feedback can be frustrating, but you kinda just have to shrug your shoulders and accept the wait or seek it from a more active, improvement-focused place. Honestly, seeing as though you've made this thread and have received lots of thoughtful comments, I would say you've had success here. Next time, just make yourself a critique thread, sans the complaining. Done.

Also, I checked your account, and I don't see you giving very much criticism to other people, either. You left one singular review with actual constructive criticism in it, and it was super vague advice. Which is fine, I suppose, but this a community. People who engage with a community will have the community engage back with them. I recommend checking out other people's art on the forums and helping them out with receiving feedback on top of keeping your own thread. They may even return the favor.

I hope you take these suggestions to heart and that they work out for you. Good luck in your artistic endeavors.

Thank you!

I don't doubt his ability to start a new addiction if he had access, but thankfully for him, it would not have been invented yet. I think the fact that he could have had the OG Coca-Cola recipe is a more concerning matter.

Howdy, I'm Skelleste and I draw a lot of cartoon nonsense. I'm no stranger to NG, because I've used it before but not for a long time. I'm working on a comic about an alcoholic monster that can never get a drink no matter how hard he tries, which is still in the works, but you can keep up with my art here in the meantime. I post much more frequently to my Tumblr, though. I like that this site is very friendly to unusual content and I look forward to exploring everyone's work.