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TurtleBox420
Play my Games -
https://theturtlebox.itch.io/
Listen to my Music - https://turtlebox.bandcamp.com/

Composer // Artist

I went to Art School

Dantooine

Joined on 8/27/22

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Will no longer be posting much art here -

Posted by TurtleBox420 - 1 month ago


Specific Moderator unscouted me from the art portal and I've spoken to Tom, as well as dozens of other users who have issues with the same mod.


My Mixed media style art isn't "welcome here". Which is fine I guess, but I'm sick of being scouted, unscouted, scouted, then unscouted again while having pieces I'm paying to have front paged removed because one person does with to muxh power has a hate boner for mixed media.


If you'd like to see more pieces like the one below, follow me on X or Bluesky -


iu_1297110_11771955.webp


EDIT: The fact he's removing my art as I type this absolutely insane. The fact I can go from 50+ art submissions to just about 40 because ONE person, who unfortunately has to much authority, deems my mix media art as "not for Newgrounds." Just not worth the effort. I had a great talk with Tom though and hope that the changes myself and others recommend make it through one day. Until then, like I said you can find my art elsewhere.


Tags:

8

Comments

I’ve had a look at your Twitter profile - Tom hasn’t replied to you. You’ve just been venting about being unscouted for the past 30 minutes.

You can't see my DMs, or what's being said in private / on discords. The fact that multiple people have made complaints about the art portal just kind of tells me what I need to know in combination with experiences I've had there.

Also it's not so much venting as much as it's me just showing how absurdly bizarre the behavior of the individuals in question are when it comes to cherry picking where to moderate and where not to.

“while having pieces I'm paying to have front paged”

Who are you paying, lol

It's incredibly obvious that you're an alt account of this moderator and this behavior is quite weird.

Takeover Tuesdays must not be something you're familiar with I assume?

newgrounds has a lot of issues, even the community once you stick around long enough. sorry your experience was ruined, hope for the best

I'm absolutely loving the audio community, it's the art side of things I've struggled with for two years. Between post being removed, my art witch hunted for Ai even when I debunk the accusations, constantly being told my art isn't "good enough" for here, and when I post higher quality work getting accused of stealing it, when I post professional photography / mixed media I get told that it's not for Newgrounds, just a waste of time to be honest.

I talked to Tom, it was a good chat. Unfortunately it's a situation where the rules are blatantly being nitpicked to prevent me from being scouted and using the art portal for one persons dislike of mixed media. The least I asked was for the constant unscouting of my art portfolio to be given valid purposes other than the individual unscouting me just saying they don't think my work belongs on NewGrounds. Even if I can prove the woman on the pictures is my partner, above 18, consenting to the posting, ect.

It's basically not worth the effort to go out on locations, stage and light photoshoots, shoot them for an hour or two, edit them in Photoshop, draw over them in Krita, go back to Photoshop, ect...all for it to be called "not good enough" for one person and have my account constantly in the crosshair of someone who takes their position here way to seriously.

At the end of the day, I respect Tom's perspective and he respected mine. It's not worth the stress to post here when my post on other sites are getting my art sold, getting me comissions, and overall just performing better.

I'll continue to post music here though. Just not anything really related to art.

@TurtleBox420 the music side of things is definitely the best part about the site, actually. best of luck to you!

@CankerousKitty @TurtleBox420

Lmao I know who this is

Turkey get a life

Relevant Guidelines:
https://www.newgrounds.com/wiki/help-information/terms-of-use/art-guidelines

- Photography
Photography is not allowed in either public or private galleries. We prefer to keep the spotlight on hand-made works. Photographs of sculptures, paintings or other hand-made items are acceptable....

You may submit collages with photographic elements, providing they constitute a new work of art with handmade elements. If possible, please post links to any photographs, or elements of the collage that were not made by you, to help us determine if the submission is suitably transformative.

- Scene Creators, Third Party Assets
Do not submit images made from other people's assets or from scene creator programs.

From this I can ask the following questions:

1. Are your former submissions truly transformative enough to justify a new piece?
2. Do you have the rights to use the source images and are you crediting them if possible?
3. Are you applying your skills in drawing/sculpting/painting/etc, as opposed to relying largely on your source images to create the bulk of your work?

If the answer to any of these are no, especially the third one, it's probably not suitable for the Art Portal. You're still welcome to share them on a Blog post like this one.

So, the first point to this, and what Tom and I talked about.

"You may submit collages with photographic elements, providing they constitute a new work of art with handmade elements."

This is what I have been doing. My argument was taking Analog photography, editing and drawing over it to create mixed media follows the guidelines of NewGrounds. Tom Agrees, but unfortunately it's a subject that's not up for the artist on NG it's up to the Art Portal mods, which is where myself and many others find the frustration.

Art like this - https://www.reddit.com/r/ARTIST/comments/1glcdhg/what_does_my_art_taste_like_analog_mixed_media/#lightbox which is an entire trace and sketch over an Analog photo somehow doesn't constitiute the standard a single moderator is setting on the board.

The problem isn't issues listed in 1, 2, or 3. Like my discussion with Tom went, it's a matter of the mod in question (who other users have also made complaints about) quite literally saying my art isn't "good enough" long after unscouting me and removing it all without any effort to open up a discussion about my artwork.

I used Mixed media. I take the photography myself. The model in question is my partner. They can confirm they consent to these photos being taken. They can confirm they are of-age. However these facts become irrelevant the moment the decision is made, which is why I just no longer care to put effort into posting here.

There's no discussion to be had. Our art is either deemed "good enough" on the spot by a single authority or we're told it doesn't belong on NewGrounds.

Either these portal mods lose their grip on the gatekeeping, or they grow up and move on with the times and understand that not everyone wants to post traditional art, hentai / rule34, or anime / cartoon styles. Some of us specialize in other styles, and having this mods friends laugh at me and say I got "scammed" in college and I'm a "fake" artist is insane.

Tl;dr - I am not the only one to complain about harassment from the mod in question. I talked to Tom about it, it was a good chat. Unfortunately way to much would have to change for Non-Traditional artist to safely have a place to post here without worrying about 20+ of our submissions being removed and us being unscouted randomly and told after the fact that our "Degrees" are a scam and we're not good enough for Newgrounds.

@TurtleBox420 I'm not defending the mod in question, but the stuff being removed is NOT mixed media.

All of the examples you're showing just look like you took the photo, distorted it, added filters and such, and that wouldn't constitute a "new" work under the Guidelines.

That is not a "hand-made work", and barely "mixed media", that is photo manipulation, which is completely different. Mixed media means you're mixing different mediums together, such as drawings with photographic elements, or sculptures, or 3D computer graphics, etc. In your case, it's pretty much just photographic elements, and even as a collage, it's pretty barebones as there's only 1-2 noticeable elements.

You tend to see more mixed media projects in the Movie Portal because you can easily make up for it by animating it, thus the rules are more lax. With the Art Portal, you pretty much have to draw, model, or sculpt some of the elements for it to count,

So me drawing entire new layers upon layers worth of elements into these images isn't good enough because you don't think hand drawn drawn or noise or facial features or hand done color grading is just bare bones?

This is EXACTLY what I mean. There were zero questions asked about what's being manipulated versus drawn here, My art and the art of other experimental / non-traditional artist just gets removed here without question and it's become insanely tiring to try to even find someone to contact about it who isn't the mod who removed it (same dude EVERY time) or Tom, who seems to quite frankly not know what to do at this point because the rules as written really just fuck over non-traditional artist.

@TurtleBox420 These types of questions pretty much answer themselves.

What you're describing, hand-done colour grading, and hand drawn.. drawn???, are all basic skills that could technically apply to traditional works too. Strip those away, and what are you left with?

Judging from the work that wasn't removed, drawings, etc. it's clear you can't draw well and you're using photo manipulation, or "mixed media" are you're calling it, as a crutch.
Even if you were drawing additional stuff on top, I don't really see it. The "heart" of the piece still seems to be largely photographic in nature, and the hand-made elements don't always hold their weight.

If you still need another opinion, here's the full moderation list: Try asking Exedor or SourCherryJack. I trust them more.
https://www.newgrounds.com/wiki/help-information/site-moderation

I talked to Tom on twitter about it. That's enough validation for me.

The art I've posted here that hasn't been removed are all professional comissions. I regularly talked about just uploading little nonsense pieces here, but the mod in question seemingly removed any high effort piece I post (including art I did when I worked at Gearbox) or claimed they were Ai generated. Upon being proven they were not Ai generated (I literally showed live stream footage of me drawing two of the pieces and original google drive files of the progress) he just stopped communicating but kept proceeding to remove my uploads.

So I mean, yeah. I talked to Tom. Tom agrees it's a really fucking weird situation but the mod in question truly believes they're doing the right thing and apparently that's good enough.

The fact of the matter is I'm not the only person saying this mod has an issue with power abuse. I showed Tom other people's complaints, Tom was aware. Oddly enough, SourCherryJack is someone people also complain about and someone I've seen first hand talk down to newer artist, telling them to give up and quit, shit like that.

So I mean, it's like I said. The fact I've been doing art professionally for 15 years but NewGrounds is the only place where I've EVER experienced any sort of treatment like this says a lot. So I'm just not going to waste my time posting art here, that's all.

@TurtleBox420 Yeah, um, this is not your first offense.

I just remembered this thread back in April where you also claimed to have also had music deleted. This one image of a green castle stood out.
https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1534447

These same edits got your thread locked, by the same moderator. You then claim to have never used AI, even though Specific Moderator™ alleges you did.

I can't help but call into question, what you actually did for Gearbox and Adult Swim.

You also claim to have 15 years of professional art experience, but either you're not putting it to good use or you've sunk almost all your XP points into a very limited set of compositing, colouring, and photo editing skills.

The moderator was shown proof that the pieces were created before modern Ai image generation existed. The moderator also claimed a picture from National Geographic that I RGB split was also Ai Generated, which is when they started dropping their claims too.

If you want to see where my 15 years of experience doing art and sound design professionally has gotten me I can show you my invoices and my house. The fact you people only ever have put downs as a response is astonishing and something Tom had no response to when shown how often it happens when people attempt to defend Alternative Art and Mixed media in this community.

My first offense was also put off by Tom, and others, when I proved the work that mod tried riling up existed before people were generating Ai images. Bringing it up again as a "gotcha" when I'm clearly still here posting artwork of the same quality off NewGrounds doesn't say much when you all (the mods) told me my art doesn't belong here.

Kind of moronic to go "Your art doesn't belong here so we're removing it." then see me upload toilet doodles and go "You're a liar and not a real artist!"

This entire situation, from start to finish, sort of just reeks of jealousy if I'm being honest. Maybe stop witch hunting everyone who shows up here with a portfolio they started filling back in 2015 and maybe stop letting the power here get to ya'lls head.