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dupreedraws
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dupreedraws's News

Posted by dupreedraws - November 23rd, 2023


Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Or, to those who celebrate it, at least.


People say that this is a day to be thankful for what you have.

However, I think we would all be better off if we made the effort to be thankful for what we have every day. Surely, if you look hard enough, there ought to be at least one thing you have to be thankful for. Especially if you have the ability to think about what that could be in the first place.


Though, if this particular day gives people an excuse to be thankful, then so be it. But I feel that in a world that moves so fast, every now and again it's important to stop for a moment and breathe in the world around you; being grateful for what you see. Every moment will become a moment passed. You might miss something you wish you had appreciated if you aren't too careful.


As common a sentiment this may be, this is still what I believe.


But enough with all that. I know what I have to be thankful for right now is the fact that I've gotten User of the Day today!


In fact, around this very same day last year was the first time that my artwork got Front Paged.


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A pretty odd coincidence, isn't it? Maybe this season is my lucky Newgrounds lottery-winning grace period or something?


How does that saying go, "If I had a nickel for every time (blah blah blah) happened, I would have two nickels. Which is not a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice"?


The difference between this and the Front Page though is that the Front Page has a degree of human effort to it, whether your art is selected by the moderators or by another user and sent from the Front Page thread. However, whether or not the same thing can be said for User of the Day... I'm not entirely sure!


But I believe the answer is that it's random. Either way, I still have Chance to thank.

Or perhaps Newgrounds itself? So, thank you Newgrounds!


I remember being very happy when this particular artwork had been Front Paged, mostly because of the sacrifices I made while creating it.


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This asset you see in the image above--which is my attempt at recreating the texture of the ARK from Sonic Adventure 2--is (technically) unfinished! As I was creating this, the vector graphics file actually got corrupted, and I could no longer make any changes to the asset. By this point, it was locked-in.


What you see in the final artwork is actually an image file, taken from a screenshot of the near-final work.


I remember being upset that I couldn't finish it, but aye, it's good that I got as far as I did, right?

And, since this artwork still ended up doing pretty well, it seems like that sacrifice paid off!


I haven't uploaded too many artworks since then. At least, not as many as I could, especially compared to last year, and especially compared to the year before that. I'll be the first to tell you that I know I haven't been spoiling y'all as much as I would like to. What can I say? The year has had alot to offer, mentally and physically, so I've been pretty busy.


(Man, has it really been a year? I don't know whether that's too short or too long!)


They say "quality over quantity", but something in me always feels like I can somehow do both.


My last blogpost was all the way back in May, after all. For my Newgrounds Anniversary. So many things have happened since then. Good things which I wanted to share, but Reason told me "Ah, but now is not the right time."

So I decided not to. And now, I'm thankful (lol) that I didn't! Especially because on their own, they're not really noteworthy.


But, since we're on the topic, I might as well cram every little "special announcement" I have to be thankful for as its own little footnote at the bottom of this post.


So, to wrap this up:


1. Thank you for 500 fans!


Truly, this number will always daunt me.


I feel like I don't thank you all enough, but thank you for taking time out of your days to appreciate my art and what I love to do. Ever since I started being active on the forums, I feel like this number has gone up way further than I could've expected. Before, if I wanted that to happen, I had to upload Art to the Art Portal, which was a good motivator in itself.


But now I'm at a point where that's going to happen regardless of whether I'm uploading artwork or not! Which feels weird, but I'm still very, very grateful--since I feel like there are much more talented people on this site who deserve what I have way more than I do.


Whether I feel like I deserve it or not, it looks like I'll still have it anyway (which is a hard fact of life I've had to learn, lol).

I don't know how to express my gratitude better than thanking you all and striving to meet (and hopefully surpass!) your expectations.


So, truly, thank you all.


2. I now have an Art Thread!


Ever since I started being active on the forums, most of my posts have been uploaded to my art thread. Here you'll find W.I.Ps, sketches, doodles, and even a bit of some behind-the-scenes insight into my past drawings.


Basically, it's anything I don't deem worthy for a blogpost or for the Art Portal.

Which, as you might can tell, I tend to be pretty picky about that sort of thing.


But, if you ever find yourself wondering "What's dupreedraws drawing?", you can probably find your answer in my super duper cool art thread.


3. I also have a Bluesky Account!


...and a DeviantArt account too, but you might already know that. A friend of mine was kind enough to offer me a BlueSky invite code since I struck off from Twitter (oh yeah, that also happened). So I figured that I might as well strike while the iron was hot, put my boat in the water, etc. etc., all while Bluesky is still in its special-access "Cool Kids Club" phase.


I only have a few posts, but it's better than nothing!


And hey, maybe if you're cool enough and ask nicely, I'll give you the ONE invite code that I have left. I've gotten three so far, but I've given them to two other people who I felt deserved it. So aye, this might be your chance to win a lottery of your very own, the way I feel like I have today.


4. This blogpost is over!


Happy Thanksgiving! Thank you for your time.


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Posted by dupreedraws - May 25th, 2023


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Six years ago today, May 25th of 2017, I decided to create my Newgrounds account.


This was initially done to have a place to upload the games I make. Though as you can probably tell, game creation is no longer the focus of dupreedraws. However if I were you, I wouldn't give up the possibility of that focus returning just yet.


But that's not the point of this post. The point is to celebrate this occasion and the "Three Talents" you see above.


I put "talents" in quotes, because I feel that this word has turned into one that gives people the wrong idea.

And that's the idea that a noteworthy efficiency or exceptional aptitude within a particular skillset is something that people are born with—a gift from God that you had no choice but to inherit—brought to you in a neatly wrapped package.


And sure, some of us have our brains slowly molded in a particular way that makes certain activities more appealing to us than others. However, I don't believe that this idea should be used to dismiss the hard work and effort that is involved in dedicating your time and energy to developing a skill.


What may look like a born gift with a particular skill is, in reality, just the tip of the iceberg. An iceberg of failure, regrets, struggle, blank pages, dead ends, disappointments, dissatisfaction, you name it. But for most of us, we don't see the whole iceberg. We just see the peak, the final result.


That said, I still chose to call this banner "The Three Talents". Because "The Three Skills" doesn't quite roll off the tongue the same, now does it? Lol.



All jokes aside, I always have to face this fact with every new talent I try to learn, and I especially had to face it during the creation of my latest 3D model of Heidi.


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(Rendered Preview on the left, Final Render on the right)


Ever since I was little, I've always had an interest in 3D modeling. I vividly remember downloading a copy of a program called DAZ3D Studio and making small little basic models of the characters I created. I had no concept of how to export a render, what a polygon was, what a vertex was, or anything like that. I was just adding shapes into the scene and manipulating them to vaguely resemble what I wanted them to be.


While I unfortunately don't have the models I created in DAZ3D, I do have the honor of showing you the screenshots of the models I created of those characters in Blender not too long after that on my old PC. And from this, I think you can get a pretty general idea of what it looked like.


By all means, feel free to point and laugh. I'm doing it with you.


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It was only years later, around 2019, when I wanted to take 3D modeling more seriously. I downloaded a copy of Blender on my new computer, loaded up a bunch of tutorials on Youtube, and tried to make a model of none other than Heidi herself. She was a very new character at the time, and one I took to be much more three-dimensional than the others, which was why I chose her to model.


And so I did, over the course of several days. Polygon by polygon, face by face, one vertex at a time.


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Except for the fact that I gave up at the face.


Though the words "freakish" and "horrific" come to mind, I actually don't regret this.


However, it turns out that I had severely underestimated the amount of work that goes into making a 3D model. Especially making it look good, and especially for a more complicated character like Heidi. Yet, I persisted, though not for very long, and didn't end up getting past the face.


And in the coming years, I left the modeling world at that. Reopening Blender about once or twice every one of those years, trying and failing to make something that I thought was exceptional, let alone finishing it.


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(Renders of basic unfinished objects from 2020, unfinished character wireframe from early last year)


Though I may have failed to make something I thought was exceptional, or to fully finish a model I had created, in reality, these attempts were not failures. With each attempt, I was slowly building my understanding of the fundamental concepts of blender, slowly learning how to navigate the software, slowly learning the things I could expect from it, and eventually, eventually, I got better.


My biggest problem was that I was creating my models from scratch, polygon by polygon, very slowly.

While this is an effective process for some, it was a laborious and tedious one for me. It was only recently that I discovered that my true passion for 3D modeling was to be found best in sculpting.


Sculpting a high-poly model as opposed to doing it polygon by polygon really takes away alot of the work-load involved in 3D, especially in creating more organic shapes. And while it does come with its own swath of limitations, it is still exponentially more preferable to me than "modeling by hand", so to speak, unless in an extremely particular instance like creating hands (which is something I'd rather model by hand than sculpt).


Ultimately it comes down to whichever you prefer the most, and what exactly your end goal is. Having a variety of ways to tackle a single problem while still being able to arrive at one solution is most of the fun that's involved in this line of work.


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(Early Matcap screenshot, mid-texture painting, first model render)


I first began modeling Heidi in around March, working continuously on it for about a week straight until I finally had the final sculpt. However, when I had tried rigging the model, I hit a dead end. I couldn't figure out how to make it work with the tutorial that I followed. In it, they took their base sculpt and remodeled the whole thing by hand in order to get good topology so that the model wouldn't break when posing.


And in assuming that I too had to do that (even though I didn't), combined with the fact that I have a bad history with modeling by hand (even though I could've), I decided to put the completion of the model in indefinite hiatus, hoping that at some point I would eventually decide to put up with it and tackle it once again.


It turns out, of course, that I did not have to re-topologize the entire model in order to get a properly functioning rig. And though my rig is not perfect, I don't think going over the model again polygon by polygon would solve its problems.


It was only recently that I decided to continue my progress on it again, once I was brainstorming how I could replace my old banner. For quite a while, I've felt as though my banner didn't accurately reflect where I was at artistically/skill-wise.


My style had long since evolved past that look, and as one of the first things people saw when they visited my profile, I felt like it was important for others to know very quickly what exactly I'm capable of, what I am like, and the kinds of things that appeal to me.


At first this began with the idea of simply just redoing each illustration of each character and then putting them all together in a single image. However, even that idea didn't feel like it fully captured the scope of what to expect from me.


I've always wanted my art to be a combination between many different mediums, software, and techniques. Not just purely illustration or purely graphic design, but using both together in harmony with one another to create something unique.


I wanted to take that idea of updating it to showcase where I was at artistically and take that to the next level—to crank it up to 1,000. And the more I thought about it, the closer I got to the "Three Talents" banner idea.


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(First thumbnail-sketch on the left, uncropped final banner on the right)


The sketch was created before I resumed working on Heidi's model, so I knew that I had to finish it and its rig if I wanted to make this banner. As well as creating other props that I needed and adding small details.


Heidi's base design was slightly modified during the creation of her model, and I wanted the rest of my characters to follow suit.



The monkey in the middle, Kiki (lol), came easy. I knew full well how to update her design from the previous banner and turn it into one that more strongly supported the appeal of the character. To do this, I examined her very first iterations and took note of what made them so appealing.


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(First idea-sketch of Kiki, first pixel art of Kiki's final design, vector art of Kiki, illustration of Kiki)


As the newer one of my characters, she has the advantage of having many readily accessible design-sketches and a clearly visible throughline with each design. She's one of the ones who are most fresh in my mind.


Despite this, I felt like there was a very strong sense of appeal that was present in her earlier designs that I just wasn't quite able to capture every new time I drew her. Some were too cute, some were too sharp, and some were too... long?


And it is for this reason that I thought she was the weakest of the three drawings in the previous banner.


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(Final art of Kiki with the original drawing in the bottom left corner)


The older design slowly began to feel more and more like too much of a departure from what I liked about the character, so I wanted to take her back to her roots and make her more appealing.


With the results of this back-to-basics approach, you would think that I would approach the same problem for Dante in a similar way. However, this was not the case.



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(First Dante sprite in the top-left corner, very old Dante vector art from 2019)


As the current mascot of dupreedraws, Dante's design is very important to me. However, his design is one that I think has been both relatively unchanged yet somehow drastically altered at the same time, in a way that I cannot say the same for virtually any other character of mine.


Because of this nature, his image—his "feeling"—is one that is very particular and difficult to get right. It's not like I'm not allowed to deviate from his base design, though at the same time I can't stray too far from the path, or else I will tamper with the feeling with the character.


In fact, Dante was a very interesting case, because his design had already been updated between the creation of the old banner and the creation of the new one, with a very speedoru-inspired look.


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I knew I was no longer satisfied with what I had before, but at the same time, I didn't know where to begin.


I had several new directions I wanted to take with the character. I wanted to make him more of an old-western cowboy/sheriff type. I wanted to give him new shape language—hair like a Christmas tree instead of the 3-pronged diamond shapes. I wanted to "apply logic" to his design by making his hat and hair smaller, thinning his eyebrows, et cetera, et cetera.


However, judging by the reactions I got to the concepts of his new designs, I could tell that I was departing too far from my image of the character, and especially the one that others held that image to be. The things I perceived as illogical flaws in his design, others saw as exactly what they loved about him.


It was because of this disconnect that I decided to sit down and really rethink the necessity and severity of the extent to which Dante needed to be redesigned. And through that process, I ended up coming closer and closer to the final design present in the banner today.


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(Old design on the left, a few of many redesign concepts in-between, final design on the right)


In the redesign process, I relearned things I had forgotten about the character, picked up new elements and ideas along the way, and gained a new understanding of his character that made me appreciate him in a way I hadn't before, which all ended up making its way into the look and feel of the final design. Relatively unchanged, yet drastically altered.


I tore my boy down and built him back up only to end up exactly where I started.

And honestly, I do not regret it at all.


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Boy, that was a long one. Time to wrap this up.


The process of making things you are truly happy with comes with what is often years and years of trials and tribulations that others tend to cast aside in favor of the final result. Even I had to brush past a few details for the sake of brevity, and this blogpost still ended up being longer than I expected.


Still, nothing of high attainment comes easy.


To prove this, I decided to walk you through just what exactly I've had to go through in order to achieve the things I wanted to do; to show you the ugly iceberg that lies beneath the surface. Hell, even my six years on this website isn't the whole of that iceberg.


I made this post in hopes that it'll reach some of you out there who may want to pursue a talent or refine your craft, but have run into so many dead-ends along the way that you’re asking yourself if you should keep trying anymore. I already know there are a few of you out there. I too asked myself that question in pursuit of this "third talent", and I'll still ask myself that question with other dreams I chase in the future.


Though to that I tell you this: If you not only fully believe in an idea, but fully believe in yourself, then I promise you, you can do anything.


Iteration is key. Start off small, and work your way up to the top. You’re not alone. There are people out there who are walking the very same path as you that are willing to help you along the way.


Thank you for reading this iceberg of a post LOL. Thank you for supporting me along the way.

And here's to another great year.


Have a pleasant evening.


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Posted by dupreedraws - May 4th, 2023


Hi there. Just made this post to inform you that I've finally corrected a detail on an art piece that had personally been bothering me for a while, close to a month now.


That being, the oh so important detail of whether or not there is a shadow casted on Noah's nose in the Angel's Egg Easter-themed drawing.


At first when I had noticed it, I assured myself that it was no big deal and that I could simply correct the drawing whenever I got the chance. However, I never did. ...Until now.


If you don't know what I'm talking about, here's a comparison image.


(Before/After):


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Makes quite the difference, don't you think?


In fact, at first, the shadow on Noah's nose was facing the opposite direction of the drop shadow casted onto his neck by his chin. And, if anything, that would have bothered me far more than if there were no shadow on his nose at all.


In fact fact, I'm positive there's a chance some of you may even prefer the Before version, and that's okay. I did this for myself.


I acknowledge that from an outsider's perspective this may seem like a very trivial matter. And it is. But this is moreso about the bigger picture here.


To me, every detail matters. Not because everyone will notice, but because of the fact that you as the artist will notice, either consciously or subconsciously, and so too could the audience. One tiny detail can drastically alter how effectively you convey your idea. One small change can make the difference between either being your personal cherry on top, or haunting you for the rest of your days every time you look at the artwork.


That's not to say you should devote any and all energy toward a single piece, continuously refining it with no end in sight. That energy should be spent toward your craft as a whole. However, I believe that simple carelessness is always felt, one way or another.


After all, as a wise man once said,


A toofpick changes everything.


But let me not get philosophical on you all.


This change will be seen on all of my other platforms as well, besides Instagram, and especially besides Twitter.


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Posted by dupreedraws - April 1st, 2023


Hi, just wanted to let you know that I've made a Deviantart account, and I've already posted a few of my artworks on there.


I did this in order to have an outlet to post any comics I may make at some point, on top of the other socials I have already.


Not to mention that I've already had some of my work stolen on Deviantart a couple times in the past, so I took this measure to try and prevent further art-theft in the future.


Not sure if I'll go through with the whole comic-thing, but I've got quite a few ideas, so feel free to follow me on there if you can.


I promise that this isn't an April Fools joke.


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Posted by dupreedraws - May 1st, 2022


I'm back.


Not exactly sure what I'll do with this account yet, but we'll figure it out. Feel free to stop by and give me a follow.


My Twitter


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Posted by dupreedraws - March 8th, 2022


Yesterday, I decided to donate to Newgrounds and became a supporter for this month. With this came the added perk of being able to change my username, which had been a long time coming.


I no longer really associated with "TyPreeAnimation" as a username, and instead went by "dupreedraws" on every other social media. Because of this, I would sometimes have people come to me saying that some guy called TyPreeAnimation was impersonating me and stealing my art, and I'd have to tell them that it was just me under a different username.


Some of you may have noticed that I had "AKA dupreedraws" listed as my first and last name on my profile. This was my temporary solution to the problem until I became a supporter and changed my username, which was one of my resolutions for this year. And now, three months into 2022, I've finally done it.


Not much has changed. In fact, it's not even that big of a deal, but I'm happy I was finally able to do it. This is the longest-standing social media profile I've made that I still maintain to this day, so I'm also glad that I was finally able to support a website that I had been on for so long.


Thank you for supporting me and all my creative pursuits after all this time, TyPreeAnimation or not. All of your stars, favorites, comments, and criticisms count. Whether or not you're reading this, I'm happy you've stuck around.


Here's to the future, the best is yet to come, etc. Cya.


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Posted by dupreedraws - May 5th, 2020


Usually I would tweet something like this, but my Twitter has been recently suspended. Here's some set pieces from Collision Chaos Good Future!


You may or may not know, but a part of my process in drawing is making a sketch and tracing over it with vector graphics. Soon I'll trace over these sketches with smooth geographic shapes and Bezier Curves, but until then, stay tuned!

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Posted by dupreedraws - January 13th, 2020


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Posted by dupreedraws - July 30th, 2019


The original hurt peoples eyes

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Posted by dupreedraws - July 29th, 2019


Not really worth posting art for, so I'll make a post instead

Sorry for not posting in a while, I've been busy working on something. Stay tuned for that I guess.

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