5 Years Doing Art
Yup! Today marks 5 years ever since I've started doing art, specifically Pixel Art. I've tried and still do other art mediums, but the one I stuck with for the most time was Pixel Art!
A lot of stuff happened across these 5 years, so I thought "why not do a timeline of everything up to this point?" So here you go. It's a very long blogpost so keep that in mind. I'll see you at the bottom!
Before 2020
I tried to do art in multiple occasions, specifically digital and traditional art, but it never clicked for me. At least I made a sona that would turn out to be Andy. Due to an impulse purchase, I got Aseprite in December 2019, which I used to decorate my profile with Andy's artworks.
Back then my username was ANoob, so I used to represent myself with the Roblox noob between 2018 to early 2020.
Early 2020
In late February I went through a surgery, specifically to remove a metal plate that was there for fixing my chest (as I had pectus excavatum, and that plate got placed in there two years prior). March came by and we were essentially locked down due to some virus that was going around. We'd probably be out of this soon, but I was still recovering from the surgery and I couldn't really play games, so after seeing a close friend of mine doing art, I decided to start drawing too, in Aseprite (to justify that purchase).
I saw multiple people posting art on social media, and I wanted to follow their steps, so I basically deleted everything from my old twitter account, rebranded it to "ANoob", and started posting there. (no, there wasn't anything that would get me "cancelled" or something like that, it's just that I wanted to start from scratch). I also decided to do it in English (which at the time was at a terrible level), as I wanted to reach a bigger audience than my native language (Spanish) would allow me to.
The first pixel art I share there was about a tiny shop with a messy path and some flowers/signs all around. It got 4 likes in its entire life at twitter. It made me so happy. It was also shared on April 9th, which is why I consider it my start.
I made a few characters here and there, which are all basically in my art vault at this point, such as Lectus (an orange superhero that was later turned into a fella with a fire head), Jack Jackson (a ninja, name suggested by some friends at the time), and Little Guy (which in the kind of art I do nowadays was basically the Pixi/Anubi at that time)
Rest of 2020
Not much happens in the middle of the year, I just kept doing art (this time with a horizontal aspect ratio, as twitter always restricted image previews at that ratio), while slowing growing my audience. I also made a Reddit account to start posting art in there too.
I guess one thing that happened was that I had a mental breakdown and I almost quit art because of it, but uh, we don't talk about that.
At the end of the year I decide to explore new horizons, such as Voxel and Low Poly Art. The one I've stuck with was Low Poly Art, as Crocotile 3D (the modelling software I use) was quite intuitive for me. I also did a few timelapses, which are now hidden, along with some asset packs at Itch.
At the end of the year, I've broke through and reached the biggest amount of followers I could have dreamed of, as I reached... 40 followers, a pretty impressive amount. I made a celebratory piece for it which I still have lying around.
Oh yeah, I also made more characters, such as Pixi (in her original, tall design that had 2 guardians), Anastasia, B-Emoton, Darky (and their redesign, Lightly) and Indi. Lots of characters all around.
(In december the quarantine ended here, so that's neat)(I also had an identity crisis, oh no)
2021
2021 was a fuzzy year for me, but I'll mention everything I remember from it here, chronologically.
I joined my very first art server... The Crocotile 3D server. I was too shy to speak in english to strangers, but I managed to pull through. For almost all the year this was the only art server I was in.
I started doing Low Poly art more frequently, as that started taking off more than my Pixel Arts, and at the time I was focused on growth, so I gave in. It lasted a few months of back and forth until I've started doing pixel art frequently again.
I manage to pull through with my identity crisis, and found out I was non binary! I changed Andy's design a bit to reflect that (since they were my sona at the time).
I wanted to make a Newgrounds account, but at the time I was a minor and I needed a parent email for it. I was and still am uncomfortable sharing my art with my family (even if most if not all of it is pretty family friendly) so instead of doing that I did what most people would probably do... Made a GameJolt account instead! Well, "made", it already existed years prior when I was playing Undertale fangames, but its the same story as my twitter account, I just rebranded it for art. It's now my biggest active account at the moment, so that's neato.
I also made an Instagram around this time.
Around this time twitter removed its restrictive image preview ratio, hooray! I started doing art in a 1:1 ratio more frequently since then.
Approaching the end of the year, I joined the Lospec community, both with a site account and via Discord. Since then I've been sharing palettes in there, with more always on the way!
By the end of the year my biggest social media account was Twitter, with around 300 followers.
2022
I've started knowing more and more people thanks to my Pixel Arts, mainly English Speakers at the time, but my English kept on getting better so it was far easier than before to communicate.
I've also started doing events and big projects, with the first one being CrocoJam! (an Art Jam for people in the Crocotile 3D community). I've hosted/helped host the first 5, since then multiple people kept hosting it. I did so again after a few years, but only for a moment.
I also started doing something not so frequently, but that always did well, something about redrawing silly pictures of animals (primarily cats), which I guess people loved? Because while my normal art reached around 20 likes or so, these always went above 100 likes.
Around the middle to later end I did something in a few minutes and published it, not expecting it to do that well... It broke 1000 likes in the first hour, then 3000 likes in the second, and when I checked next day it had 72K likes, the biggest amount I've had so far by a long shot. So what was it? Well... A tutorial about how to draw a bed... with an Among Us character. I still feel regret for doing this one.
Around this time I also felt disconnected from Andy, like they didn't suit me as a sona anymore, so I started planning to have a new OC, but nothing came to mind, so I made a cat called Meowsy to take over in the meantime. I also redesigned Pixi and did some animations with her... Maybe too many, as it burned me out quite heavily on Animation, something I still haven't fully recovered from.
Across the year, there were rumors (that later turned to be true) about a certain someone buying twitter. From the get-go I was already worried about it, so I started checking out more alternatives, such as Tumblr and Newgrounds again. Keep in mind that at this point, I kept posting art on every social media I mentioned (Steam, Twitter, Reddit, Gamejolt, Instagram, Tumblr and Newgrounds) at the same time. It took me around 1 hour to prepare a single art post everywhere, but I felt it was worth it. My new friends were worried about me.
By the end of the year, Twitter was still my biggest social media, thanks to the usual animal redraws and the among us bed. I had around 2000 followers once the year ended. GameJolt was catching up though.
2023
Thanks to my bigger reach, I start joining more places where I met more friends, such as ESPixel (a Spanish Pixel Artists server) and Cafe Dot (a general art oriented server), along with a few secret and/or private ones.
When I said I met more friends, I really mean it, it feels like my amount of friends went from 15 to around 60 in this year alone, it's wild.
These friends helped me get over some of my fears, such as chatting in voice via voice chat, or opening a PayPal/Ko-Fi account. I'm grateful for having them at my side.
Around this time I start hosting the Art Weeklies project at GameJolt, where every week you'd have 3 themes to choose from to draw something, you can even mix them!
After so many months, I finally come up with a new sona... Anubi! A tiny and silly green fella. The name is a pun of my username at the time (ANoob), which made it sound more kid-like. Some of the friends I mentioned above used it with me in voice calls, so it stuck with me.
... It probably stuck too much with me, because a bit of time later, I decided to rebrand from ANoob to AnubiArts, as I felt ANoob didn't really fit with my art level by then (even if I started using it because of my skill at games, most people knew me from my art, and I needed to comply with that). The "Arts" was added because that's what I mainly do. I was scared that the rebrand would do badly like the Twitter to X one, but it was actually received well and stuck around in my case, which makes me pretty happy.
Thanks to one of the friends I met this year, I joined Mastodon, at .social specifically, and some months later I joined Bluesky too (I was user number 630K something in the latter!). Except for Reddit (which I quit around this time), I kept posting art in basically every other place I was in.
I also start doing redraws more consistently at the end of the year... Probably TOO consistently, as I kept doing one per day, but my art accounts in practically every site were kicking off, so maybe it was just worth it... Right?
I also opened up commissions for the first time here! I was very scared to do them (... still am now), but it was a learning experience that I appreciate a lot. Along with this, I opened up memberships... They didn't really work out.
I started another art project this year, this time about drawing cats every day for the entirety of November, called Meowvember, it was fun to do!
Since I've opened up a PayPal account, I decided to become a Creator at GameJolt, where people can support my posts for free and I get a cut of the ad revenue. That's pretty neato.
Before the year ended, I wanted to make a new sona, but at the same time I felt like Anubi was too new to replace her, so I opted to do a TimeSkip variant of her! The first TimeSkip variant had her wearing a cardboard box as a head.
In this year GameJolt and Twitter were fighting off constantly for the site that was my most followed one, but in the end (and thanks to the constant redraws) Twitter won, going from the 4K I had prior to the redraws to 9K.
2024
2024 was a wild year, and I still didn't recover from the side-effects.
I kept doing redraws, way too many of them to the point that I was burned out heavily on them, but I just kept pushing through for growing my social medias. I also did commissions two more times here. Due to this burnout I was struggling to post on lots of sites like I did before, so I focused on twitter, Instagram, Bluesky, Mastodon, GameJolt and Tumblr.
At the start of the year, my redraws were so popular that two of them beat the Among Us Bed, with 112K and 109K likes respectively. I felt at inner peace when it happened.
At the start of the year, I had more people join me on the Art Weeklies project, which helped me a lot to make the project stand for itself. Thank you all for the help.
I started making more and more OCs again, something I didn't really do in like 4 years at that point, it was refreshing to do it again.
In October, after trying to deal with twitter and Instagram's worsening for so long, I finally snapped and decided to stop using them as a whole, which hurt a lot, as combined these two had over 21K followers (19K on twitter, 2K on Instagram), but I couldn't really deal with those sites anymore. I decided to move over to GameJolt, Mastodon, Bluesky and Tumblr as my main art sites.
Shortly after, I had another breakdown, this time about art specifically, as I kept forcing myself to do art every day for about a year at that point, and I couldn't really keep doing it anymore, but my art income depended on it at this point, so I ended up taking multiple breaks, and considered quitting art again.
I still didn't fully recover from those thoughts, but I've been trying to change it for the better.
I also changed from the .social mastodon instance to the sunny.garden one in this time.
I hosted another challenge this year, called Scenestember... You can probably guess what it was about. I don't think either Meowvember or Scenestember will be coming back, though.
Around the latter end of the year I made this blog you're in now, hi!
I don't know if nothing really stood out this year, but its one year I definitely want to forget.
Since Twitter wasn't around anymore for me in this time, GameJolt was my most popular social media now, with around 6K Followers, followed by Bluesky, Mastodon and Tumblr respectively.
2025 (so far)
I was still suffering from the side-effects of last year, so I started quitting things I was a part of, such as Art Weeklies or the aforementioned monthly art challenges. I also stopped doing animal redraws officially.
The first piece I made for this year was another TimeSkip variant of Anubi, this time about her being a clown! My favorite Anubi design to date.
In this time I decided to revive my Newgrounds account, this time treating it as an actual Portfolio site.
I also started with HRT this year, which I tried to reflect in a few pieces.
In these last few days I mentioned that Anubi wasn't my sona anymore, which if you saw it no you didn't (though I'll say that one of the OCs I made in the last year took that place)
and that's it so far!
Lots of stuff happened as you could see, and while I'm still recovering from 2024, I hope that I'll be able to keep doing art for the years to come.
Thanks for these 5 years of art, doesn't matter where you joined on this journey, I just hope that you'll be sticking around for more!
I'll catch you all later, when I draw a banana duck taped into a wall
-AnubiArts, the s is supposed to represent the 5 in 5 years of art (trust)