Hi all,

You may or many not have noticed that I've been posting very little on Newgrounds for a couple months now. Even before then, I had already cancelled a project and skipped a monthly newspost. What's been going on?

I'd say there are three main reasons for this:

• I was struggling with my OCD a lot during this period; however I'm feeling better lately and I've been learning to power through parts of it more.
• I got distracted playing video games. No excuse, I'm just a lazy ass.
• The third and final reason, and the one the rest of this blog post will be focused on: I have been feeling overwhelmed by the stuff I've been doing on Newgrounds, and that it's been feeling more like a chore than a passion.

Now look, I would consider myself to be a creative individual. And as such, I come up with a lot of ideas and concepts for random things. However, where I think the problem with me lies is that when I come up with an idea I like the sound of, I have a sudden burst of energy to get started developing it right away. This may sound good on paper, but you have to remember, I'm just one guy. One guy who is only a beginner artist. There's only so much I'm able to do at one time... and three simultaneous projects certainly ain't it.

I absolutely love creating new characters, designing them, giving them stories to look back on, worlds to explore and adventures to go on. I can hand-on-heart say it's one of my passions in life, and I am grateful for the opportunity to be able to create these characters and upload them here for all to see. It's something I've been doing ever since discovering this interest back in 2022, with Candlestick Road in particular being perhaps my first ever proper "project". However, for the reasons mentioned above, over time more and more of these projects and ideas have been piling up, and it's getting to the point where, despite my passion, I'm unable to keep up with maintaining and developing all of these projects. I no longer feel as if I know where exactly to go as an artist, and that in turn makes the GlitchBuddy account lose a defined identity.

Henceforth, I am making the difficult but necessary decision to cancel all but one of my projects effective immediately. I know this isn't the news that some of you would want to hear, but I feel as if it's the right thing to cut back to the bare minimum and re-evaluate my direction as an artist and worldbuilder over time.

The one project I will be keeping is Glitch & Gummi. I've been attached to these lil fuckers for too long now, and it will serve as a good beginner project for me to flesh out my writing and drawing skills with. Glitch & Gummi will now become the main focus of the account, although I'll still continue to draw and post random concept characters and fanart as I currently do. New projects won't be an absolute impossibility; I do still have the desire to eventually work on other characters and worlds. But for the foreseeable future, Glitch and Gummi will be taking the helm of the GlitchBuddy brand.

While we're here, though, I do want to show you all another thing I've secretly been working on in the background: a YouTube channel. Now it's nothing to do with art or animation (although I do want to make a GlitchBuddy YouTube channel at some point); rather, I will be making videos related to video games; reviewing them, playing them, talking about them, etc. Originally, these videos were going to be hosted by a new, original character I had made called Bork, but I eventually decided against this, and now the channel will be hosted by none other than Gummi himself. I've already started recording the first video, and I can't wait to show you all once it's done.

One more thing before I go; I plan to keep making the monthly GlitchBuddy Update news posts I started a few months ago; albeit in a much more slimmed-down, art-focused format. This should hopefully reduce the monthly writing burden, and enable me to present the month's happenings in a more concise format. The first one of these will happen in October.

Well, if you've made it this far, thanks for reading. This is a big decision for the future of GlitchBuddy, but it gives me an opportunity to slow down, focus more and take things slowly over time, rather than just rushing into them as I had been doing before. I know, I know; I've done a lot of these sorts of posts over time, and trust me, I ain't exactly proud of it. But I hope - I really, truly do hope - this will be a renaissance for me in my output, activity and, most importantly, quality. I really appreciate all the support I've gotten in such a short amount of time - for a small beginner artist like me, 60+ fans in a year is absolutely insane. I hope this new direction will help me provide you all with some awesome content.

- Glitch [ I - ]