After seeing @Kunaigirl post about it, I'm getting in on the action, too. I made new ref sheets for Klash and Skruffy this morning and everything. Here's my profile on Artfight: https://artfight.net/~Smugarug

I'm gonna shit.

Okay, back from my shit.

So it's been a month since my last post. The things that have gone on between then and now are worthy of being put into the history books. The world's getting hotter and hotter, the future is full of "what-if's" and "maybe's", and I can't figure out a third thing to write here.

So what do we do? Well, first of all, we get off the phone, the games, and the social media and start doing something productive and meaningful. Something you enjoy doing that you can share with others. For me, making art is just that, it's a productive and a social activity. I get to draw cool stuff and I get people to talk about the cool stuff. Although to be fair, when I post it, nobody's around because I post at weird times of the day.

Maybe that's my old Tumblr-era wannabe mindset talking. Whatever the case, it doesn't really drive me as much as it used to these days.

I've also begun adopting the Rad Bradbury quote of, "The intellect is a terrible danger to creativity" (you can watch that here) and I get that now. 'Cuz I can't THINK about making art I enjoy. I have to just do it. Art's one of those things where you don't NEED to be smart to be genuine. Sure, you can use your critical thinking skills and try to reason it out, but all in all, being creative is less about answering questions and more about processing feelings and emotions through the lens of other characters and mediums.

And I can speak to the truth of that quote. I was always second-guessing my own art and THINKING about it, rather than just DOING it. I was burying my personality underneath layers of pretend "smartness", but I don't think I made friends by being SMART, did I?

So I hope this opened up your eyes to the immaculate nature of creativity, or at least gave you all a better glance into what my life was like. Coming up next...who knows? That's why we stay in the game, right? In the wise words of Ray Bradbury, "Don't think."

The one day I decide to not get on the PC, and I get THIS. Watched pots DO never boil, I guess.

Anyways, Smug out. More exciting art to come soon, so stay tuned.

Hello, all. It’s Smug again. A month and a half later since the last news update, what’s changed?

Well, I went to the @DeuceLeGoose Game Gallery meetup. I saw some ugly, stupid, skinny, and dumb-looking guy in a pink shirt there. Met a lot of faces, new and old. Got absorbed in pinball. Went to a Round 1 afterwards with @Tamago and found out I’m bad at singing Pantera. Y’know, the usual.

Other than that. Biggest thing that’s happened is me getting back into reading comics. Right now, I’m making my way through both famous mangas as well as comics I’ve always had eyes on. (Immortal Hulk is great if you enjoy body horror and horror in general.) Connecting back to my roots, reading comics both in issues and in paperback, has made me more motivated to start doing better in a lot of areas of my life. Especially in art.

Something nagging at me was the feeling that I wasn’t going in the right direction for some of my characters. I’ve got ideas for some backstories for some of my characters, some of whom I felt did need it, and some of whom barely needed anything at all to work for me. 

I’ll let you all in on a behind-the-scenes thing I’ve mulled over for literal months. Zaaru and Xandi, the big red man and the black girl, have changed a lot since their original inception. And not just because they’re shapeshifters. 

Zaaru was an eldritch horror alien space pirate dad, running from the law. Xandi only existed to say Zaaru was a dad. And then there was a wife who I never did much with. Then, as time went on, I got interested in making Zaaru a single dad. I also made Xandi human, which was a spur of the moment thing. But it fit her really well.

But then the paranoia sets in. Thoughts about how others would see her, how the human-alien child-parent thing would work. And so on and so forth. I wasn’t having fun with it, because I was trying to turn something I loved and cared for that WASN’T designed for mass appeal into a product. Something I could sell to you. And that was wrong of me, because my characters are mine. They’re not meant for sale.

Could I do it? Sure, if I gave enough of a shit about that. I could make a grand story like Marvel does with its characters. But that’s Marvel. That’s not just one man. That’s the work of several people, sometimes dozens. And I’m just one guy having fun on his own, making it up as I go along. You can’t commodify that. You can’t force the fun to happen. 

That was my biggest problem. The thought that I was obligated, even forced to make something as a product to be accepted produced some serious stress and anxiety. I began hating drawing my characters, because I wasn’t thinking of stuff for them to do, but how I’d be able to “maximize their potential.”

And it’s funny I mention Marvel. Because I’ve been reading and learning more about the Fantastic Four. How they were made, how the characters grew as the decades went by, and how different authors handled their origins and history. As my favorite team, the Four helped me understand that you don’t always get it right the first time, and art is more than just making something for other people. It’s about sharing your creativity with others, and encouraging them to do the same. It’s about sharing your positivity with others. That’s what the FF are about. That’s why they’re my favorite comic book characters.

That was one of the many trivial and pointless paranoid thought-storms that’ve been keeping me held back. There’s times when you really don’t need to overcomplicate things. Sometimes, the solution is just to have some fun and stop pretending you care.

Long story short, more art that isn’t the usual Ryl’Athels and Klash soon. And whoever that pink shirt guy was, if you see him out in the wild, tell him he sucks and he smells bad.

This week was one where I learned two important lessons: Time is the key to everything, and patience is a virtue for a reason.

I’ve been looking back on the art that I’ve been making for my entire life. Going back to when I first was on DeviantArt (about 2013), I was just making art for the fun of it. Letting my imagination run wild, making character designs that weren’t the most well-thought out, but still having fun.

But as I grew older and tried to be big on social media*, chased trends, being impressionable, not having your own thoughts, letting a single post trigger intense panic attacks, I couldn’t think about what I was doing. The atmosphere on these websites consists of flying shrapnel and smoke.

It’s also why I feel like my art got worse over time. I wasn’t giving myself the distance and the time I needed to process my emotions. I just kept thinking if I made characters, then everything would fall into place. But reality had other plans for what my hands wrought.

Looking back at my old art, I saw a lot of stiff body poses, same-y faces, cheap ideas, and safe artwork that didn’t challenge me. And looking back on the art I’ve made recently? I still see these issues. I’m angry. Angry at myself for letting this happen. It could’ve been so much better if I had just let myself have some time to breathe.

So why am I telling you all about this? It’s to hold myself up to a better standard and make it public to you all. So that if I ever slip again, you guys will notice and call me out for it. And maybe this’ll inspire you guys to stop fretting and start cooking.

Smug out.

Edit March. 16th, 2025 - Added some context for the third paragraph.

It’s that time again, everyone. Time I told you what’s been going on in the land of the Smug.

The biggest change these past few weeks is that I’ve been drawing more in my physical sketchbook than my computer. My computer’s become the thing I use to unwind, rather than an actual workstation.

One of the biggest reasons is because I don’t enjoy drawing on a computer as much as I do my sketchbook. If I need to render something, color something in, or give a sketch more fidelity, then I’ll boot the PC on and draw, then play a game or two and then shut it off.

When I drew art on my PC, it was mostly because I felt like I was obligated to keep up with other people. My brain was still working at a million miles an hour out of habit. Which is why the sketchbook is there. It’s more power-efficient, easier to access, and if an idea is bad, I can just move on knowing I didn’t commit an entire day’s time to rendering it out. 

Sometimes the best ideas are the ones you let go and let grow. You can cultivate them, give ‘em some support, but you can only do so much. Overdo it and you end up crushing them under your own anxieties and fears.

Anyways, that’s it from my end. I may not be posting more fanciful art in the near-future, but I don’t think Newgrounds cares about fancy. The people who care about my work just want to see me at my best. Hope you all learned something new from this. Smug out. 

Smug here. Think there's been enough radio silence to justify a li'l more talking on my end. I'm not gonna pull a Valve time.

Things have been going a little slow in the land of the Smug. After pushing out that one comic, I e. I've been dabbling with Krita, which I do like, but I've only used it for making digital art look like traditional art. I'm still using Clip Studio Paint to render my work, but I'm slowly getting the hang of using Krita for projects with a bigger scope.

Outside of that, you've probably noticed the sheer amount of characters that I've drawn over my time here, and how most of them have changed in looks and background. I tend to think way too hard about this shit, resulting in a lot of change for the sake of change. I need to be comfortable with being myself. It's hard, but nothing worth doing is easy. Hope this gives you all a peek into what's been going on behind the scenes. Take care of yourselves. Smug out.

Hey. Been a while.

Sorry about the radio silence these last few weeks. I know that I would usually post something rendered every few days, but I've been suffering from some massive burnout (and some IRL stuff as well), trying to refocus myself and get out of my head, nothing easy to say the least.

New stuff to come when it's done.

Here's some scraps that I didn't like enough to fully render.

Here we are again. The end of another calendar year. I'll make this short - I'm proud to have found a community of artists here that treated me with respect and love, things I didn't really think I'd ever get. But this year, thanks to my own efforts and the encouragement from others, I did. Thank you to you all.

To celebrate, I've made a gallery of what I think are my best works of art this year. Next year, I've no idea what'll happen, but I plan to make the most of it. Stay safe, stay sane, and don't let the bastards grind you down. This is Smugarug, signing off. For now.

Merry Christmas, everyone. Smug here. I’ve got good news and bad news.

The bad news is that I’m no longer going to be posting super-lengthy introspective news posts about my feelings towards my own art. Not only do my feelings constantly change, it’s also cringey and makes me look like a hypocrite when I inevitably go back on them. I apologize to anybody who enjoyed reading them, but I refuse to let misery have company.

The good news is that I’m going to move on from this (and the previous mistakes I’ve made) and just have a good time drawing whatever I find fun. That’s really the core issue I’ve been struggling to get a grip on - I wasn’t having fun with my art.

But, thankfully, I think that issue is solved via shutting my mouth. If I have anything pressing or meaningful to say, then I’ll make a news post about it. If it ain’t, I won’t. It’s almost TOO simple, really.

Anyways, hope y’all have a good Christmas and New Year’s, and I hope you stick around. This year has been a tough one for me, but I’ve managed to survive and thanks to the support of my friends and Newgrounds, even thrive. See you when I see you. 

• Smug

P.S. The bunman returns. Cuz I can’t think of a better mascot. Satan Rat’s still dead. I think Skruffy stepped on him.