TomFulp 2012-08-27 17:37:45

Hey this hasn't officially been announced on the site but as of today you can direct link people to a page specifically to follow you:

<a href="http://i-smel.newgrounds.com/follow">http://i-smel.newgrounds.com/follow</a>

That way people can toss that link in their movies and games or more importantly ALL OVER OTHER WEBSITES, the way people do that on NG with similar links for YouTube and shit. Will it take off? Who knows, worth a shot... Gonna be promoting it more heavily soon. In general we need to make the follow feature more visible and give a link to the full feed because it really is a powerful feature.

I should make that Story of Newgrounds the new About Newgrounds page.

Emrox 2012-08-27 18:27:30

What worries me, though, is that people are going to become competitive for fans like on like on youtube, deviantart, or twitter even. I mean, if we start seeing "I'll follow you if you follow me" everywhere, you really have to question if the whole "following" thing is a step in the right direction. Of course I don't want this feature to be removed, but when people start following other people all willy-nilly, features like these become flooded and useless.

14hourlunchbreak 2012-08-27 19:26:49

I followed you just to try out that new page. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED TOM, WE ALL LIKE I-SMEL NOW.
No but really, your newspost's are always crammed with the most delightful little tidbits.
Also, TIGS <3

Kajenx 2012-08-27 23:11:25

Haha, not to beat off a dead horse (wait, what?) but you really are quite obsessed with the idea of art games. (...late reference to you game design post...) You should do whatever you need to get it out of your system. It just doesn't matter what you call a game as long as it's fun. :3

By the way, your art is pretty good man. Keep it up! :D Just a quick tip, but if you are drawing your stuff out with outlines, then coloring them in Photoshop and deleting the outlines, you'll actually save a lot of time and effort just coloring and tinting the lines (set the layer so it preserves transparency) and making them part of the composition. You can also smudge and fudge and stuff to make them blend in. I was always afraid of using lines in my paintings when I started out because I wanted them to look painterly, but they add a lot to a composition, even when you want it to be a dimensional and realistic as possible. I even started using them more in my IRL paintings, go figure...

Anyway, reading your posts always makes me feel lazy, so fuck you! lol

Kajenx 2012-08-27 23:16:38

Actually, your vector art already shows you use lines pretty well, so don't banish them in Photoshop! Just make them a little less bold and it'll tighten up all the shading you're doing.

BSTHEDOG 2012-08-28 01:57:10

Watching your youtube always gives me the weirdest video suggestions afterwards.

TomFulp 2012-08-28 11:08:50

@Emrox - YouTube following might look lame because of abuse but it DOES work, when we publish a YouTube video we instantly get a few thousand views as a result of our 70k subscribers - YouTube doesn't make any effort to plug us anywhere so it all comes down to the subscribers. On NG people depend more on editorial decisions to feature them but this system empowers them to build their own base in addition to that.

Unrelated note, when we have more feeds in place, typing something like @Emrox would make this post appear in his feed, so he would know I said something to him. Won't THAT be neat?

Other note, ConnorUllman is the first person to include a Follow link in one of his submissions (Quietus II). It's on the loading screen and isn't even very visible so I imagine it could be a lot more effective with better placement. Still, he gained 9 new followers overnight. Up until then he had gained 171 followers after a bunch of games and Seedling, which has near 400k plays... So it does look like his follower count is picking up steam now. Can only assume the follow link is helping, we should track clicks on those. :P

Luis 2012-08-28 12:33:38

Yeah that @ feature would be good. Particularly in userpages, like i-smelly, i like wander around and see what people are doing, i may end up never following up to see if it was responded, itd be cool to have a notify for it.

Maybe itd be cool to add a customized follow button in the downloads area that people can drag and drop in or atleast use as a basis to customize? I think I'm creatively spent by the time im finishing a game and making the last bits of plugs and promotional things on menu's itd be nice to just download a template of useful buttons maybe in different styles or sizes and just drag em to my fla.

Luis 2012-08-28 12:34:38

ALSO, i got through half of your news update i-smel. i like the lemon and bill thing.

Luis 2012-08-28 23:30:33

I dont mind the length, and i like that you share your process. I like looking under the skirt and seeing whats goin on in there.

Pjorg 2012-09-11 19:47:04

I read your whole posts i-smell. you da best.

DannyDaNinja 2012-10-04 03:43:32

Cool beans