Hi, all. Smug here.

A lot of you may have seen my previous updates in the past. Some of you may have noticed that I was struggling with nailing down just who I was.

Turns out, there wasn't actually anything wrong with me. Or, well, nothing wrong that wasn't normal.

Y'all read the title. Y'all already know what the fuck goin' on. I didn't, because I didn't think it was a crisis, I thought it was just ME. Turns out it wasn't. I was just going through a very, VERY agonizing time of my life. I wasn't enjoying the art I made, I wasn't challenging myself, I doubted everything and everyone around me. But as I get older, and the lower my bullshit tolerance gets, the more I realize what was important to me. And then there was my art!

Boy, if I have to be honest, I think my art fuckin' BLOWS. It's rigid and stiff and fuckin' boring as hell, which was at odds with how extreme and wild I felt my art COULD be. And yet, when I did try to get wild, the results were cool, but they lacked substance and lasting power. And during this crisis, it's been hard not to see that doing all of this was not only necessary, but practically natural. It's all part of the process.

Igor and TPAB rule, by the way.

So, what now? Something wonderful happens. My ability to have fun is coming back, and my old rigid and stiff dogma is slowly shedding away. I can look forward to making art again. And, hell, I might sound corny saying it, but I'm starting to appreciate and remember all the good that's happened to me. The people I've met throughout my life, the ups and downs. We remember the past not to erase pain, but to accept that it was things we did, both good and bad. And I'm not perfect; I'm not a saint. But the pain I felt was never to break my spirit. I was just tearing my shame and guilt to pieces.

A coworker told me that you can't drown your demons. They always learn how to swim. And hey, if you're reading this, and going through the same situation? Don't worry. You'll be alright. The important thing is to always sail forward to clearer, less demon-infested waters.

Title.

Being on here has been incredible for me and my mental health, and I hope I get to make more art that's much cooler in the future!

Oh boy. This isn't easy to admit.

For a very, very long time, I've been keeping my head in the kitchen, ignoring the problems going on around me while trying to solve problems that didn't even exist in the first place. It wasn't until recently when I realized I couldn't put it off my chores any longer. Just like in real life, I have to take some time to clean up and do what's right.

In other words, the burnout is real and I really need to take some time off. I have to rethink, refocus, and redesign my approach to my art. Because if I don't, the entire kitchen's is gonna meltdown or explode, and as someone who's had experience working in a kitchen, a clean house is a happy house. And I have a LOT to cleanup.

Quick updated today.

First and foremost, I've deleted the only two Adult-rated pictures from my gallery, as I recognize that they weren't in the best of tastes and/or weren't my finest work. If you know, you know.

Second, gonna be working on more OC stuff soon, but with more fanart mixed in. I've been getting back into comics (very slowly, never grew up around anything outside of Sunday funnies) and drawing fanart of characters from DC and Marvel the like.

Anyways, that's it for me. Hope y'all have a good day!

I’m cutting straight to the point here. I’m going to be using my news posts to actually post news and such.

First, I have to explain what happened with that last blog post. I wanted to try being all artsy and make a nice poem about my struggles. But reading back on it makes me realize, I never needed any of that.

Secondly, I’m still dealing with stuff upstairs if you know what I mean. Lots of self-doubt and self-acceptance, the usual.

Thirdly, I would like to know what you guys think about my art. Not because I’ve been craving attention, but it’s because I feel like I’m not getting the full picture.

I want to know what you guys think of my art so far and where you think I could improve. Point out inconsistencies that I miss, comment about how I draw things, et cetera. 

Leave your comments below and I’ll read them when I have time. Hope y’all have a good day. Smug out. 

To those of you worried: This is a good news post. Not a bad one. 

For a long time, I had very chronic headaches caused by my anxiety. The same anxiety, which for those of you who’ve read these, is probably why I’ve been making this many posts in the first place. I felt like my head was nothing but a balloon waiting to pop.

And then, as the title suggested, I took one edible and my entire brain just felt so much lighter and clearer. I feel like I can actually sort through my thoughts clearly. And they said weed was bad for you.

I mean it is if you smoke it too often, and I don’t like smoking anyways so…

For a very long time, I had fear that if I wasn’t the next Star Wars or Warhammer, I’d be irrelevant and subjugated to a void of obscurity. Everyone has these fears. Everybody has these worries of not feeling important. So you try your hardest to stand out and be something that everyone likes.

Except for me. I found my capabilities weren’t matching the insanely high one-man ambitions that I was scheming up. I was franchising before I even had an idea worth franchising. I was running before I was walking.

So I’m gonna keep it simple: I’m gonna have my own brand of fun, but I’m gonna do it the best I can. And that doesn’t mean to start making new OCs to make a movie idea with or whatever, just make whatever comes to mind, and what sticks sticks because it just does.

That’s all. 

I can’t believe weed helped me solve my problems. How long have I been missing out?

The last post was a bit dour, so this one’s going to be more lighthearted.

As lighthearted as being honest can be, really. It’s like having fun slapping a dead fish.

I’m working on improving myself and my mentality towards my art and how I approach my creative process. In other words, how I make stuff is not making me feel like I’m challenging myself enough. I’m sick of feeling like no one cares about what I make, because truthfully told, I myself don’t care much about it, and I feel as though it shows in some things more than others.

Quality takes time, after all. A lot of time. I’ve been young and impatient before and rushed ideas out, but that’s what young people are supposed to do, after all. Be stupid, make a series of bad decisions, and so on. Of course, unlike most young people, I never got a fake ID to enter a bar underage, get married in high school, get divorced to said under-20s wife, start a Ponzi scheme using cryptocurrencies, and get sent to prison for twenty years for money laundering and drug possession. 

Compared to some people, I must be doing at least ONE thing right.

I’ve always felt like an outlier, really. Always wanted to be taken more seriously, always wanted to have the wisdom others had learned so I wouldn’t make the same fumbles. Wanted to grow up faster. And yet, the people who tended to act like that ended up being dickheads when they were older.

So what am I writing this for? Well, mostly to say that this is a great period of time for me to, say, make a series of bad decisions that may pay off in the end. Just draw badly, because drawing something badly but with passion is better than keeping it safe. This IS Newgrounds, after all. You HAVE to start being yourself, because every day, other people out there are being you better than you.

This proves that I am once again a person heavily affected by exterior perspectives on societal norms, who fears ostracization but also wishes to stand out, a paradox of intentions and emotions that can be solved by uttering a very simple and benign phrase that many have spoken but fail to understand:

“Fuck it, we ball.”

Sincerely,

Smugeth A. Rugeth

P.S. More art to come. Stay tuned.

There’s no real good intro for this. At time of writing, I’m angry as hell, mostly at myself for letting this sort of thing happen. I didn’t think I was good enough for me for a very long time, which resulted in me making the mistakes I was warned of time and time again. Copycatting, half-assed executions, half-baked ideas - sometimes you don’t know you’re making mistakes until you catch yourself.

So instead, I’m putting this anger to some good use. I’m putting my foot down against the only person I can right now - myself.

The most important thing on the docket: I’ve been refining my OCs, or improving them, in order to make drawing them more fun, more smooth, and less pain-in-the-ass. Here’s the changelog:

• The big one: Zaaru, Yurrok, and Xandi are no longer shapeshifters. Not only am I unimaginative with shapeshifting (tentacles are about it for me personally), it’s also a pain in the ass to draw well. They still have their red, pink, and brown skin as normal, though. And Xandi still likes eldritch horror stuff. But she’s not gonna change into the Thing anymore.
• Iynael Sanuerto is now just Iggy, and he’s in the process of a redesign. I already have a smug asshole character in Yurrok, and I do need to work on making him something more than “big booty twink OC #45,203”. People can have big hips, but I shouldn’t leave him as ONLY a horny character when he’s with someone like Leyla.
• Chestnut is no longer a mage. I feel like that defeats the purpose of his growth from dweeb to someone respectable. He could just cast a spell of “no more shyness” and then he instantly becomes better. To which I say, no, you don’t get to do that because that’s cheap.
• The idea of Morcofitzia is not going to be a theme with my OCs going forward. Morgan Morcofitz and the other fancy “M” labeled things I’ve drawn won’t show up anymore, mainly because the whole setting was just me screwing around and throwing whatever wacky OC idea I had in a blender. I cannot have everything I want.
• Oh, and no more Bunnyman or Satan Rat from me. I don’t really need to ID myself online with a fursona, and my fursona looks more like a weird dog anyways. I blame and thank @stupidvampire for this revelation. He opened my eyes in a way only he could do.

I hope that with this post, you guys have got a better understanding of what I’ve been doing in the background behind the scenes. Don’t be like me. Don’t get so high and mighty off of your own supply. And don’t feel as though you’re enslaved to a character you made. I did, and it made the rest of my art significantly worse because of that. Stay strong, but stay self-aware. Smug out.

Hey, all. Smugeth A. Rugeth here. It’s been boiling hot over here to the point where I can’t even really draw or think straight. As if my forays into Cookie Clicker couldn’t have been timed worse.

But the heat (and too much free time because of said heat) has led me to reflect on what it is that I’ve been doing wrong. And maybe it’s a lot less dire than I had anticipated.

The last of these updates was on June 29th, which was about a week and a few days ago at time of writing (July 8th). And while this is all embarrassing to admit publicly, these are problems I feel like I have to confront myself about. And maybe problems other people may have, too. And it has to start with how I create art.

This is more a focused dive rather than the brief blanket statement about my plans I made in my last blog entry. I’ve got a lot of weight on my mind and I have to drop it somehow. May as well start here.

When it came to my creative process, a lot of the time I’d be very impressionable. I’d see something cool, think “How could I put a twist on it?” and then try to parody it - without understanding its themes and the message it sends.

Sometimes I’d obey the Law of the Crotch, which states what whatever the fuck makes me horny must be drawn and turned into a “character”. Personal recommendation: don’t do this. Just don’t. Post-nut clarity is real and suddenly you’re stuck with a twink with an ass the size of Mars.

And then some of them were “whatever the fuck I felt like” characters. Characters that just existed because wacky ideas kept emerging out of creative bursts while listening to music. Which by the way, makes me unleash my creativity outside of a canvas, which is a bad thing.

If you’re reading this and you have characters made as parodies, under the Law of the Crotch, or as “whatever the fuck” from listening to music, then that’s fine. I’m not out here calling you out for doing that. You just gotta make it work. You need to have the passion for it.

I didn’t.

I’d come up with a good idea on the spot, and then I’d rush it out and fumble a bit. I would have a decent idea, but my lack of patience meant little time to bake in that proverbial oven. I would lose interest in the product I made, I got burned and burnt out. And now…it’s time for me to accept that I’m not as talented as I made myself out to be. None of it was…fun.

Oooh, damn. Ellipses. For that imagined emphasis on the pause! Ooh! What a fuckin’ badass!

That’s the keyword that I’ve been missing. Was I having fun? No. I was not. I was feeling lost and confused. My ideas would soon fall flat on their faces because I had dropped the dough altogether. I didn’t want to take risks because I didn’t want to fail. Fail under my own high standards. That’s why I felt like I stagnated for so long, why the last few years have felt like grinding through layers of rock and granite. But now that I’ve finally dug myself out, the fresh air is both amazing to take in and terrifying to behold.

I’ve made a lot of mistakes creatively. Thinking I could draw something “once”. Thinking a “sketch” was just one concentrated piece that you could easily render. Thinking a “character” was just a “role”. The hubris of man is the greatest punchline that nobody will ever laugh at. Or in this case, the hubris of a stupid bunnyman.

You can’t stop stories from happening. You can’t force them to happen, either. My best characters, the ones I feel real passion and interest for, don't feel like I’m telling them what they should be. They’re their own individual sociopaths carving a path through crowds because they want something THAT badly. They make their own stories. They create their own punchlines. They ruin their own worlds.

So what’s next for the Smugarugian future? What is it I want to do next? Aside from trying my damndest not to melt into a fine paste, I mean.

Well, more fanart. Of what? Not sure. Whatever I fancy and whatever idea’s been floating around in my head for the last few years. A lot of potential has been lost because of my shoddy workmanship - but sometimes it’s better that way.

I won’t let the idea that I need to have a dedicated OC roster plague me anymore. That didn’t work at all and trying again isn’t an option. I can’t let my past mistakes and ideas chain me down. I have to have faith in myself and my art that both of us can improve and grow.

This heat wave melts away a lot of things. My patience for bullshit, especially my own, is one of those things. These last few weeks have been me delving deeper into my own psyche as a creative person than ever before, and I’m finding out more about myself than I thought.

I wanted to say, for the record, that I’m sick of how I treated myself. How I thought of myself as nothing more than a tool for other people’s happiness. How I felt like everything I did was for other people. How I turned it into a job with how much I stressed about if others would like what I made. I’m sorry for myself. And I also hate myself. 

That’s not going to be the same anymore. I want to get better. I want my art to be better. I want to dump this negative attitude for good and learn what it means to be better than what I was. And that means I need to learn what having…fun means.

Man, that’s just genuinely sad when I write it out. 

This is Smugarug, signing off. Stay cool out there, everyone. Have fun with your art. Don’t be like me and make yourself your own worst enemy.