JACK GOES BEHIND THE SCENES ON THE ART FRONTPAGE!!

So the art forum goes through waves of newer users either becoming frustrated that their art isn't being frontpaged, or curious about how the frontpaging system works here on Newgrounds. I've been meaning to peel back the curtain on this for a little while now, and have generally been refraining from going more in depth in the forums in favor of a deeper dive. I have a bit of time to get into it today so here's my long-put-off inside baseball on getting your art frontpaged.

*DISCLAIMER making art with the sole intent of getting attention, and by extension frontpages is a bad reason to make art, draw what you like and what inspires you... but anyway, on to the guide.

Who (or WHAT) decides what gets FrontPaged?

Admins and Art Moderators. That's it, no algorithms, or ai's to worry about, if your work got FP'd a human came across it, and thought "hey neat" and clicked the "frontpage this art" button. There is a thread in the Art Forum with recommendations for the Frontpage that does a lot of good work and often recommended work ends up featured. Although if you are an artist reading this, I do not recommend posting your own art in there, it feels like poor etiquette and generally will rub people the wrong way, so just participate if you see cool art and post in there, maybe someone will see your account because of it and think "hey I should put this cool user's art in here.

When is the best time to post to get Frontpaged?

Our Fearless Leader TomFulp does a majority of the frontpaging, and is mostly online doing that in the morning (NG Time) So around 5:00 - 8:00 am (NG Time) is probably your optimal posting time, but these aren't necessarily hard numbers, and this is just what I've noticed over the years. The Art Moderators are volunteers and don't have super structured times they go through the Art Portal so there's not gonna be a set time to catch any of us. Sorry.

From TomFulp Himself

Tom was kind enough to post his routine in the comments of this post here's that reply:

"To get specific on my routine, every morning I go through all of the E-M art by scouted artists from the past 24 hours (while listening to the Audio Portal from the past 24 hours). I check Undiscovered occasionally but generally depend on the community to scout good artists. If a good artist gets scouted but never posts any additional art, there is a chance they could get overlooked. This is where the Front Page Suggestions thread is especially helpful.

On the topic of "art dumps", I agree this isn't the best approach. Sometimes someone will post the 10-20 pieces of art they made over the past year and if they are all good, I'll likely feature one of them and if I'm on the ball, I'll revisit them over the coming days to feature more. That doesn't always happen, though, so you would get much better results if you spread your art out over multiple days.

If someone wants to bait me specifically, Neo Geo and Treasure (game company) fan art holds a special place in my heart. I try to feature a lot of OCs too, though. Pixel art, sci-fi and robot stuff is always welcome."

What should I draw to get Frontpaged?

While I do not recommend drawing explicitly to get your art Frontpaged there are a few ways to bait an FP. Pixel art is a good first choice, as is drawing anything that has to do with Newgrounds culture; Castle Crashers, Salad Fingers, Tankmen, Friday Night Funkin' etc. Other good options are playing the zeitgeist, if a hot new movie/tv show/videogame/anime is coming out, draw something related to that. Evergreen pop culture properties like Legend of Zelda, Super Mario, Street Fighter etc. are also good options. Another good proven method to get Frontpaged is to participate in sitewide holidays such as Pico Day, Madness Day, Robot Day, Clock Day etc. Be sure to tag your work with whatever the post says to and post it up, chances are you'll get frontpaged for it.

If you want to bait me personally, I gravitate toward traditional art, so any ink, watercolor, paint is a good start. As far as content goes Guyver and Soul Reaver fan art will probably catch me, in a more general sense Fashion illustration, Folklore, and ocean life are up there in my interests.

Of course all of these suggestions are predicated on the assumption that they are well composed and complete pieces. If you are posting up art that has obvious shortcomings, and look incomplete or partially phoned-in, there's a slim chance you're going to end up Frontpaged. If you're looking at a drawing thinking "I could've cleaned that up a bit" chances are so is whoever would consider frontpaging it. I can't speak for other mods, but I do have a list of artists whose work I like a lot and am waiting on their super baller piece to FP.

Jack, what do you mean by complete exactly?!

I say complete piece because the general criteria of the Frontpage isn't necessarily "this is the best piece I've ever seen omg!!"

The way I go about it, and the way that seems to be agreed among Frontpages is that they're all not begging for more work. Whether it's an incredibly rendered digital painting with multiple characters and a full background, or a single cartoony character with a simple geometric shape background (or even no BG), in order to be frontpaged both need execute on what they set out to do. Obviously one was harder and took more time to do, but both should be drawn in such a way that they don't leave the viewer demanding any more from them. It's a difficult concept to explain, but if a character is floating awkwardly in a white void, or if a full scene has an area that looks empty and throws off the composition they'd both feel incomplete and would probably leave the audience wanting more, and would not be featured. However if the character is standing with a shadow and small details that imply they're standing on the ground, and the artist explicitly chose no background to keep the focus, that is complete. And if the full scene has an area that is empty but shown to be destroyed or wiped out intentionally and the composition supports it then it is complete. Both Frontpage worthy.

I've been posting for YEARS! I still haven't been frontpaged what gives!?

I get that it might be frustrating to not get the recognition of an FP after posting a ton of art, especially when there are a bunch of well known artists who seem to have a reserved spot on the Frontpage. The simple reality is you don't wait around to get Frontpaged, you gotta work to improve your skills to get to the point where a mod or admin looks and says "dang, that's some baller art, I'm gonna showcase it." That's it; it takes time, work and honestly, a decent amount of luck, catching the right mod at the right time. Even with all the ways I listed at the start to get frontpaged the absolute best thing you can do is learn. Learn and experiment with art, get better and better. Frontpage features are cool, I'm not gonna lie, I get a nice ego boost when I get one, but compared to being an objectively better artist and being capable of drawing dope stuff, it's small beans.

I'm really good at drawing! How do I get my work out there so a mod will see it?

Post your work in the Art Portal, be sure to get scouted (Ornery's Scouting Guide & Luwano's Thread) Now your art will appear in the main Art Portal, already there's a much better chance your work will be seen. Next you can make a thread in the Art Forum I can't speak for the other Mods, but I'm usually there every day or every other day poking around. A personal art thread is a good place to post up a lot of your art and works in progress, as well as get more structured feedback on what to improve. Being an active member of the art community here on Newgrounds will only help raise your profile and get more views on your work, so it's good if you're trying to catch attention. Beyond that, as much as I hate to admit it, a lot of the NG community operates offsite on twitter and discord servers; so getting involved in those portions of the community might be worth it for you as well.

Should I ask a mod or admin directly to frontpage my work??

Haha No! Silly.

A Note About Featured Art

added 9/1/2022

A lot of artists' will note that even when one of their submissions have been frontpaged, they don't remain on the actual frontpage for very long, if they aren't immediately bumped off. Unfortunately this is a reality of the system; if three or four mods are going through frontpaging, we're not always communicating, or cognizant of what's currently there, and I am sorry, it is frustrating for the frontpaged artists that get bumped after a few hours or even less. This is further exacerbated by the frontpage on mobile having half the slots as the desktop version.

The good news is, with the way the Art Portal is structured, your art still remains in the "featured art" tab of the Portal, which is the browsing default of the Art Portal, and gets much more traffic and far fewer submissions added than when sorted by 'new.'

It's not a perfect system, but we're always working to improve it.

That's it, good luck.

I hope you found these insights and recommendations helpful.

The tl;dr on this is to always improve, and make the best art you can possibly make; eventually you'll get there.