Yatsufusa 2025-06-10 08:47:59

Supporter status allows users to change their username once a month - although your name seems fine to me, that is is a service a surprising number of users make use of.

Since it is 'Takeover Tuesday' today ( https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1538796 ), you could feature either the submission you are most proud of or the work of another artist you want people to see. (Given your recent arrival, the former seems to make a lot more sense.)
(As long as you have active supporter status, you get to feature one piece per week, so don't stress too much about the choice.)

You also get access to the 'Supporter Party' sub-forum, which is _the_best_forum_. Realistically speaking, that is also the place where most of the adults are hanging out. If you are a social person, you'll likely love it and talking to others can help build connections with your fellow artists. Although the same would be true for the 'Art' forum, people can make threads about whatever they want in the 'Supporter Party', as long as it wouldn't be a thread that belonged into one of the other forum or breaks the forum rules in general. (Not that you're giving me those vibes...)

Your name will get/was featured in that little 'supporter advertisement box' that's shown all over NG, but I do not know for how long accounts are featured.

Personally, I find access to the personal 'Dumping Grounds' very useful. Access is permanently unlocked. ( https://www.newgrounds.com/dump )

The 'Featured Tags' are probably really useful for artists. ( https://vilovestein.newgrounds.com/art )

The extra emotes you get (for posts & PMs) are a feature I get a lot of mileage of. You can see the list(s) if you chose the editing option for this post. (just as a quick example)

You can make private playlists (invisible for others), if you want to keep private lists across devices. And from what I heard, they will stay that way even after your supporter status expires.

'Extra Private Messaging Space'. Not a problem for you right now, but the increase is permanent, even if you drop support.

Here's the rest of the goodies, but I think I covered the essential stuff:
https://www.newgrounds.com/wiki/help-information/supporter-upgrade

From years of personal experience I can confirm that there is no 'social' difference. Others will not treat you as 'lesser' or 'better', just because you have supporter status. And of course 'crazy-people' also react exactly the same to you as they always have. ;)

Yatsufusa 2025-06-10 12:01:52

@ViLovestein I have a limited perspective on 'social media growth'. When I heard of facebook and Twitter when they were first conceived my thoughts on them could be summed up as "What a terrible idea. That's just existing services but worse and under the control of one company..." Since that time, my opinion of them pretty much took even more of a dive.

(I'll be listing places you already use for completion's sake, to give you a way to estimate how far off the mark I am with other statements, and because I'm hoping for some light feedback.)

From how I can assess the situation as somebody who does not publish on NG, I would say that there is no "real", singular place for artists (especially SFW-artists) to thrive. The places that produce the highest numbers 'do' allow artists to generate some income, but whatever "community" they have there is mostly "Oh yeah, I clicked them once..." - not so much "people who care". And those who 'do' care have an account on those other sites 'on the side' - but their 'actual' community is somewhere else. Those "somewhere else" places, are typically:
- Newgrounds (A community with their own issues, but also with a very diverse cast of people who could help you. [Remember that I am biased. ;) ])
- Cara ('Another' community that runs a hard stance against AI, but mostly for artists. Does poor numbers.)
- Tumblr (More the 'ruins' of their former community - but some people stuck around.)
- DeviantArt (They will feed your work to their AI. A community that serious artists either gave up on or run via PostyBirb. Users who stick around there stay because "All my friends are there." but often share the negative sentiments of site administration and the legendary poor moderation.)

Sites that "do numbers but not much else" are:
- Twitter/"X"/"Xwitter" (AKA "Hell.")
- BlueSky (The new Twitter. Run by former Twitter-workers. Soon to be bought up by [insert insult here] Elon Musk. The place itself is better than Twitter and is 'run' better than Twitter - but the community is mostly 'people who quit Twitter'. And with 'the main problem on Twitter' being its community... I mean, you can do the math here...)
- Instagram (They will feed your work to their AI. From what I heard there are also issues with remarkably unpredictable numbers, so a lot of the energy invested there might be wasted.)

Aside from that:
- Patreon seems "okay" for SFW
- ko-fi.com seems good for one-off donations
- gumroad.com seems good for more complex transactions
- "other services are available" (You'll probably find out what's commonly used right now when looking through the Collab system: https://www.newgrounds.com/collab )

What NG is pretty good at is helping artists improve with their art.

Overall, in terms of "numbers", I think NG works out best for social butterflies who spend at least 10% as much time on interacting with the NG-community as they spend on actually creating art. In that regard, the forums are the way to go. I cannot comment on the chat. I'm not a chat person... (But I think it also unlocked permanently when you got supporter.)
"Getting noticed" just with art alone is _rough_. The Art Portal is a very crowded place. If you are not on the top of your game in terms of lighting/shading and anatomy, you will has trouble standing out.

The following might be a misunderstanding on my part, but as far as I can tell, @Tyhond (who you have _inevitably_ already met) has fun engaging with posts like these. If you're lucky, he might have a few bits of advice as well - but I cannot speak for him.
From my perspective, some see him as "carefree", but he has a pretty firm grasp on things and understands the community and its unspoken rules as well as the spoken ones. He's also one of the artists who "live on Newgrounds", so he might be able to answer questions about how NG works out as a 'Main Site'. (We also have a PM-system, if you prefer to ask him certain questions in private, rather than in front of a Yatsufusa munching popcorn. ;) )

Tyhond 2025-06-10 12:32:35

If you have any question, shoot some at me, I can answer them! :>