Nice post Tom.

While it'd be great to see more animators post here rather than on Youtube, I'd also hate for it to be people just creating a low quality port, and adding little input to the community other than just posting the video with comments like "please like/subscribe/follow my youtube/twitter/horsepornnetwork account" - Newgrounds is a community in itself, not just a billboard to try to get us to go elsewhere.

It'd also be great if people actually actively voted and reviewed positively on good stuff - right now that simply doesn't happen, as people just vote highly on everything. If you all start voting zero on all the demos, previews, 10 second pieces of crap and shitty rehashed shovelware so that the junk gets deleted, it's a lot easier for people to see the quality submissions, rather than looking for a diamond in a sea of shit. If you give a 5 to Parking Simulator 487, how can you give something better to an actual good submission?

At 8/3/14 01:22 PM, TomFulp wrote: These past few days a number of prominent animators have come out about the bleak future of animation on YouTube. Commenters keep opining, "If only there was an alternative to YouTube!" I'm here to tell you, there IS an alternative to YouTube and you're looking at it.

Thanks for sharing this latest news, i like this post because it is informative and written beautifully
keep sharing :)

To be honest, I use Youtube as a redirect to my Newgrounds and Deviantart.
Infact, only reason I haven't bailed yet is so I can hopefully get a few more fans, and so I can partake in flamewars.

youtube sux . it's just an alternative for TV mainstream media . but if you've noticed over the years , YT is slowly are turning into mainstream media as well . it's sad that some good artist that started here moved to YT . is it for the money ? idk !
maybe because they want to find better opportunities there ?... maybe, but for me , YT is slavery . i do have a youtube channel but my uploads there are "limited" . I'd still prefer NG to show my works .

for an animator , NG is still a best option to upload animation . my stay here in newgrounds , made me more exposure than all the other sites combined . it has an especific audience for artist . a big THANK YOU NG for allowing me to post my content here .

there is still some stuff needs to be added here tho . like having contents here be automatically viewed in some areas like mobile phones and social media sites as well . people are too lazy , or scared clicking a link and go to a page they don't recognize . they've imprisoned themselves in these so called "box" . NG as a whole just need exposure so if you can pull that off it would be much awesome

oh btw Tom ,... everytime i find a good stuff here , I share it in my facebook page . every NG user should too if they want to help this site .

I sadly haven't made flash in a while, but I always upload them to Newgrounds and will continue to do so as well as posting the movie ones on youtube just becaquse it is another place I have stuff, so I like to have my stuff on both of them and maybe deviantart also, but definitely Newgrounds as a priority! I like having more control over my stuff on here and not have to worry about google being annoying and deciding what they want to do to my content.

I hope people do continue to post their stuff here as well as elsewhere, as I love watching stuff on Newgrounds personally, less irritating adverts and not having to have all the stupid recommended things on the side from "popular channels" with obnoxious thumbnails getting in the way.

I get more exposure here than anywhere else. People who straight up leave NG are plain odd.

At 8/4/14 07:39 AM, Rahmemhotep wrote: I get more exposure here than anywhere else. People who straight up leave NG are plain odd.

Not really, youtube has more exposure..look at egoraptor's newgrounds page...he has 40,000 fans here... on youtube he has over a million subscribers ...

I remember egoraptor used to be really against youtube because people always stole his flashes and youtubes compression always meant poor framerates so people wouldn't see all of his drawings...

-then at a newground meet-up, another popular animator told him about how much money he was making from youtube (over 3 grand a month) and egoraptor was like " what? you can make money off youtube?!!" That's the story I was told anyway.

well, thanks to newgrounds, everyone on youtube knows who i am and gives me likes on my comments, but eventually people most knows me for ''the guy who comments on every dota video''

well, i will show a newgrounds link in all my future videos on youtube redirecting people to my oldest movies here, so they can see where and when i started with all this animation thing

thanks to newgrounds, I became what I am today on youtube, and i thank you alot for this, and i promise to return the favor

At 8/4/14 07:47 AM, ZenithQuinn wrote:

At 8/4/14 07:39 AM, Rahmemhotep wrote: I get more exposure here than anywhere else. People who straight up leave NG are plain odd.

Not really, youtube has more exposure..look at egoraptor's newgrounds page...he has 40,000 fans here... on youtube he has over a million subscribers ...

I remember egoraptor used to be really against youtube because people always stole his flashes and youtubes compression always meant poor framerates so people wouldn't see all of his drawings...

-then at a newground meet-up, another popular animator told him about how much money he was making from youtube (over 3 grand a month) and egoraptor was like " what? you can make money off youtube?!!" That's the story I was told anyway.

I think he means it's odd that they leave NG rather than posting on YouTube AND Newgrounds. If you "only" have 40k views on NG then it will hardly put a dent in your YT viewcount, right? If it does, then obviously you must have a huge audience on Newgrounds. Either way, posting on both sites will most likely increase your overall views. Even if you post on site X first and site Y some days later. I, myself am following noone one youtube. If I don't find your stuff on NG or twitter, I won't ever watch it.

Just going to put my two cents in as a casual viewer,

Newgrounds is the best place to get noticed, due to the sites daily prizes, weekly prizes and front page. Anyone can get noticed providing their content is good enough (and that an AAA newgrounder doesn't doesn't decide to upload on that week). The reason I know this is because I used to upload to YoyoGames and it was impossible to get noticed through the slog of gamemaker tutorial clones. Once one of my games made it to an gamemaker magazine separate to yoyo as a 'top 6 games this week' I did get a small boost of plays but nothing much because, well the readership for the magazine was small. My point, Newgrounds is great site to get noticed, due to the fact that 'new' stuff gets noticed. not place like youtube and yoyo where 'popular' stuff gets noticed.

Here's a suggestion that might improve the site,

Add a Trailer Category (for Game's and Movies) to the movie portal- because honestly I don't blame game developers to going to steam for the possibly of a stable income, instead of going against them, why don't we help them by adding a trailer genre to the movie portal, doing this might make the community soften to the idea of trailers been on newgrounds and this is a great way for developers to get noticed compared to steam and yt due to the size, also I do recall that some game/trailers did make frontpage but mainly due to the fact the uploaders had a large fanbase.

Good Post Tom.

You will definitely have my sword in this. I've been coming to NG for a long time and I can't imagine an internet without it.

At 8/4/14 07:47 AM, ZenithQuinn wrote: -then at a newground meet-up, another popular animator told him about how much money he was making from youtube (over 3 grand a month) and egoraptor was like " what? you can make money off youtube?!!" That's the story I was told anyway.

Well, i think the topic of making money on youtube is complicated, its way more difficult to make as much money as you used to be able to make back then by today's market. I think that egoraptor/whomever got into that game at the right time and he probably did/does okay as a result. Like most things in life, sometimes its about timing. Sort of like how in the golden age of game sponsorships, you could make absolute garbage and manage to get someone to give you $2000 for it.

The game has changed, for everyone. I think to some extent, its not a bad thing. I think on the one hand it strains out the bottom feeder opportunists that surface whenever someone hears that someone is making money.

Very inspiring and confident message, Tom. It was a pleasure to read. Keep it up!

A long time ago i looked at Newgrounds as the bar. Meaning if i got recognition for my work on there then i can be known as a great self taught animator. I myself am a stick animator. I love it. And no matter how many times i create full body animations, I will always go back to my first love of sticks. It was very difficult when i started out. The Newgrounds community had a heavy hate for stick animations. It was very hard for all stick animators to get recognized for their work. But throughout the last couple years there's been a major breakthrough in popularity of stick animations. Which inspired a lot more of us to post our animations on NG.

There reason i love NG so much is because i never would have been able to push myself as much as i have. I was one of the lucky ones to receive a wacom tablet from Tom. And from that i doubled in speed and quality of my animations. I was able to improve my stick animations by moving on to creating various angles and movement rather than the standard 2D type stick animations. I was also able to move on to doing better full body animations which enabled me to enter competitions on Newgrounds year after year.

I see some of the stuff Tom is saying, I saw one my animations stolen and put on Youtube that generated 150,000 views. I was pissed and hence created my own channel to display exclusive work. But now after this post, I look back and see i'm straying away from the real home of crazy stupid funny animations that once inspired me when i was a kid that just wanted to be as good as.

Though i must admit, I have been lazy with animation nowadays due to lack of inspiration and the business of trying to make a living. I would love to make more animations, but i also have responsibilities in the real world. BUT i'm willing to try. I have a huge imagination, and i don't want it to be suppressed because of the corperate world.

I remember that i ask you about this a couple of months ago. And ever sins i got the answers to these frustrations, i have been thinking about it. Newgrounds is seriously the first website i ever got into. And MILLIONS of people did the same.
I remember watching all of these weird cartoons, and playing games for free.
(Which just blow my mind back then.)
Watching stuff that had another feel to it then anything that was on TV.
And all of a sudden, most of those millions of people just left. Animators, game designers, coders, background artist, musician, voice actors, etc. They all kinda moved to Youtube.
Even you're biggest artist (Egoraptor) left, and never made a farewell post/cartoon. Nothing.....

Now they need help, and there is only one place they can get it.
Newgrounds

This post really made me open my eyes,and really made me realize that, there is a chance for this to work.
This is the right opportunity to strike. The Youtube animators, game designers, coders, background artist, musician, voice actors, etc. need help, and Newgrounds is the place to get it. This will work.

At 8/3/14 01:22 PM, TomFulp wrote: These past few days a number of prominent animators have come out about the bleak future of animation on YouTube. Commenters keep opining, "If only there was an alternative to YouTube!" I'm here to tell you, there IS an alternative to YouTube and you're looking at it.

Newgrounds has given animators a platform since 1999 and the majority of established web animators got their start here. We had real-time publishing for five years before YouTube existed and even beat their Partner Program to the punch with our Flash Ads system.

When YouTube first launched, animators weren't particularly interested. Its growth was largely based on television and other entertainment piracy. Over the years, animators started having their work stolen and posted to YouTube, at which point they began managing their own accounts as a defensive measure. The real tipping point came when YouTube introduced Networks. To limit their liability and outsource the effort of dealing with independent artists, YouTube allowed third party companies to establish networks and receive a premium CPM, so they could incentivize artists to join under their network umbrellas.

Individual networks raised tens of millions of dollars in venture capital to fuel rapid expansion. This created a lot of "bubble" money in the YouTube ecosystem; guaranteed CPMs, acquisitions of exclusive content, etc. It works out when these companies get sold for multiples of what investors put into them. Maker sold for $500-950 million based on having a bunch of contracts with popular YouTube channels.

In comparison, NG has no outside funding and CPMs have traditionally been shit, due to our lax censorship policy and a history of controversial content.

As the YouTube money grew, priorities shifted. Instead of being THE platform, Newgrounds became a springboard to move people to YouTube. Our front page blog space became filled with artists promoting their YouTube pages and a lot of the movies (still SWF format at the time) had "Watch on YouTube" buttons that were larger than the "Play" buttons. Our front page was essentially a big redirect to YouTube.

That wasn't the only thing working against NG though. Our CPMs declined as ad dollars moved into video and social advertising, not to mention the ubiquity of AdBlock. Game developers were losing confidence in Flash and jumping over to mobile and Steam. The last few years were a huge existential crisis for NG, as we shed staff and reduced other operating expenses, while also working to adapt.

We added support for animation in video format and released Swivel, the best ever SWF to video conversion tool, used by most web animators today. We knew this would speed up the migration to YouTube but we thought people would at least keep posting to NG; sadly a lot of them took the free software and ran.

I got it though; NG had failed them miserably. Web animators were growing up and they wanted to make a living; that wasn't happening with NG. I felt like this was a deserved punishment because NG hadn't lived up to its potential and I spent a few years beating myself up about it.

Now, though, our potential is growing. NG is paying its bills and payouts to content producers are rising each month. In addition to video support, we accept games made with HTML5 and Unity. We're running video pre-roll ads on all of it and the fill-rate keeps improving.

I can't promise that you will ever make a living off NG but I can promise that taking the time to involve yourself with NG will only help you. It won't take away from your YouTube views or your YouTube revenue and if anything will win you new fans and put extra money in your pocket.

There's no reason for you to give YouTube exclusive content if they aren't paying you for exclusive content. In fact, showing YouTube they AREN'T the only game in town is the one thing that will make them work harder for you.

Post your animations on YouTube but post them on NG too! Nurture fans on both platforms and the combined fanbase will translate to larger numbers on Facebook and Twitter. Tell fans about your stuff on NG! There was a time when social media didn't exist; you uploaded content to NG and depended on the NG front page to tell people. Now everyone has their own social media fans and they send them to YouTube exclusively. Mix it up a little! Make some people at YouTube jealous!

I didn't have the confidence to say this in the past because our CPMs were too low but we are getting more and more competitive and your support will speed up our progress. Our profits don't go to investors, they go towards sponsorships, contests and cool stuff like those Wacom giveaways we once had every December. We've streamlined the hell out of NG and NG doesn't make money unless the community is making money, so we don't win unless you do.

My pessimism has helped me achieve some great things in life (you keep working when you aren't satisfied) but it has also hurt me because I constantly undersell my accomplishments, NG especially. I'll say now that NG is the best thing that ever happened on the Internet and it deserves to be recognized. The NG staff shows up every day and keeps making NG better, through boom and bust for nearly 20 years, and no site is more deserving of success than Newgrounds.

So to close this out...

We hope to see your next animation!

Egorapter has a few videos that promote NG which is cool of him to do. Though YT has the potential to become viral and huge while NG feels more like a cult following at this point. There was also something I was reading in regards to making a good app game which is relevant to this situation.

The more widely acceptable something is the more likely people will like it, meaning that if you make a game like angry birds with strictly pg content with no adult themes it has the ability to be widely accepted/promoted. Youtube has that going for it while NG has that working against it. NG is great for it's lack of censorship but that limits the potential audience by a lot.

On that note, this place is great because fuck censors.

I don't always animate, but when I do, you can bet I'll post it here. I'm not after the moneymaking side of video content since I know I do it so infrequently so NG and Vimeo are the only places I bother with (Vimeo because I prefer its player to YouTube's with the sheer control you have over the embed, so maybe something cool to help NG would be to take pages out of Vimeo's book).

I absolutely agree with the comments about how anyone can get seen here if they have good content with the way the system is set up and the community so tight-knit. NG in my opinion beats any other places I post to in this regard (and this includes posting art here vs. deviantART, even though I've been doing that for 8 years). I'm a drop in the ocean anyplace else, but here, I get seen (daily second on my only posted animation and even had art frontpaged thrice!) and receive valuable feedback without even lifting an extra finger to ask for it. NG rocks! Totally plan on being a supporter starting next year :)

Thank you Tom and the NG community! :)

At 8/3/14 01:22 PM, TomFulp wrote: These past few days a number of prominent animators have come out about the bleak future of animation on YouTube. Commenters keep opining, "If only there was an alternative to YouTube!" I'm here to tell you, there IS an alternative to YouTube and you're looking at it.

Yeah! YEAH! Hell yeah that's what I want to hear! HELL YEAH! Looks like today was a good day to see whats on NG!

That was very well said. I need to get off my ass and make a good Flash now. I definitely got my first career ideas from visiting this website, and definitely check here and there just to make sure it's still running.

I hope you continue to bounce back! This website is an archive of our childhoods, from the Portals to the BBS. I might actually just become a supporter. Waiting for my next paycheck, lol.

Tom I still haven't understood how to make money on NG, but anyways.

NG is way better than youtube when it comes to Animation, The community is revolved around it, whether it'd be music or games/videos.

Youtube sucks, if you're an animator. If newgrounds had a good cpm value, and animators could get a good source on income based on clicks rather than duration time, it would explode. Pocket money is better than nothing, especially for people who do this full-time, and want to make it a profession rather than just a hobby.

The best advice i can give for online animators is to spread your stuff around the net, youtube can be 20% of your playground. There's more platforms that are better to showcase your material like Newgrounds & Vimeo.

Some of these days I gotta have a lil chat with you Tom about the ad roll income on NG. When I tried to get into it it got complicated for my ape brains.

Glad to hear this! So many news are talking about the end of Flash and it's still my favorite software for animation >_<

At 8/4/14 12:09 PM, Sev4 wrote: Glad to hear this! So many news are talking about the end of Flash and it's still my favorite software for animation >_<

They mean flash as a format not an animation tool... Swf is being replaced by video since flash swfs aren't supported by mobile

To be completely honest, I get way more views on here than 90% of the time when I upload to YouTube. On YouTube, 39 videos on my channel have only gotten a total of 12,000 views (my most viewed video, which has 4,000 views is one third of my YT view's, while the rest averages around 100), but 3 cartoons on here have already reached 1,200 views total. My cartoon, "Doc&Mac" got 145 views on YT, while on NG it got 450 views. Same scenario with my other 2 cartoons I uploaded. Even though I am still beginning at animating on Flash, I enjoy it very much and I plan to upload more and getting better.

I'm only 14 and I've been recently introduced to Newgrounds. Even if I do Let's Play on youtube (Low HQ obviously) I must say I have a real passion for animation. I haven't posted an animation on here yet (or on youtube) but hopefully soon I will because I really wanna show everyone on this site what great ideas I've been having in mind for awhile (Even if some of my ideas are parodies of certain Nintendo games.) Recently Youtube has been effing up bad, After hearing about the news for animators on youtube from certain people I really didn't know how to react since I really want a career in animation and make a living off of it. Thanks to Newgrounds this is basically my alternative for posting my soon-to-be animations. All is left to say when I do post my animations here I'd probably post them on youtube a week after or even a month.

Newgrounds its the best community there is for animators to prosper. I must say I have used it as a trampolin for my Youtube channel, but never had stopped posting my cartoons in here because it's where they belong in the first place. Where I can found well based critics, among some trolls, but the opinion of other amazing artists who tell me the truth so I can improve on my work.

In this scenario, Youtube it's a really nasty place full of people trying to make one-line jokes on the comments trying to reach at the top and be noticed so they get more subscribers. It really makes me sick but I am happy to hear this post by you Mr-Fulp, there is hope and I am glad Newgrounds has this strength ;).

At 8/4/14 12:54 PM, hbrunav wrote: Newgrounds its the best community there is for animators to prosper. I must say I have used it as a trampolin for my Youtube channel, but never had stopped posting my cartoons in here because it's where they belong in the first place. Where I can found well based critics, among some trolls, but the opinion of other amazing artists who tell me the truth so I can improve on my work.

In this scenario, Youtube it's a really nasty place full of people trying to make one-line jokes on the comments trying to reach at the top and be noticed so they get more subscribers. It really makes me sick but I am happy to hear this post by you Mr-Fulp, there is hope and I am glad Newgrounds has this strength ;).

Exactly what this sexy fellow said!

Though i am guilty of adding "watch on youtube" buttons on my uploads here (Which were around a week later. Gotta turn that cat around) i never stopped sharing and announcing every NG upload i did and also on my YT vids i have links to NG versions. I wish i was more active here during last years.

Old school Newgrounder here. I don't submit much stuff anymore but I do still visit on a daily/weekly basis to see what's going on. I have such a soft spot for this site because I absolutely loved my time here submitting cartoons and games, getting feedback, talking shit, getting shit talked to me, etc. It's probably my all time favorite site on the internet and it's certainly brought me the most enjoyment creatively.

The stuff I learned while making Flash cartoons for Newgrounds viewers was invaluable in my professional career. I'm not talking just technically either. The feedback system on NG taught me how to take creative feedback and use it in the next project to make my output stronger and more appealing. I learned not to take bad feedback personally and how to weed out the constructive from non-constructive reviews to improve my skillset. I literally use this every single day even now.

I'm not a hobbyist cartoon maker anymore as making games is my new creative outlet that saps away any free time I have. Fulp's post has inspired me to try making a game or two for Newgrounds to see if I can rekindle the fun I had here back in the early 00's and perhaps learn a thing or two on how to be a proper game designer. :)

Is it weird that when I saw Youtube animators complaining about the new algorithms the first thing I thought was "Does this mean they'll come back to Newgrounds?"
I hope we see another boom of great animators, similar to what we saw in 2006-2008.

NG 4 LIFE