Welcome!

Today is the first day of the new year! Happy 2024!

2023 was such a fun and busy year for me!

For all the Amazing Alligator fans out there, The next two story arcs should be released this year.

The first story arc is going to be the shortest and most underwhelming, I think, because its going to be a short story I've been working on about Tinsley and the aftermath of the trip she took during the Road Trip Arc, which will be attached to a single title illustration. I keep noticing mistakes in what I've written and redoing the entire thing, but each time I do it gets closer and closer to what I would call a final product! Because I feel this could be a little bit boring for a lot of people and I don't want anyone to feel like I'm wasting your valuable time with what seems like a text dump, this arc will only be one page long. I'll get on the title illustration after I finish with my last few Substitute Secret Santa assignments for 2023.

The story arc after that is going to be animated in a very particular way! I'm very excited for this one, so I'm going to stop talking about it before I give too much away. Stay tuned!

In other news, the name I've been leaning towards for the story I've been building through the character design exercise will probably be The Akashic Treehouse. The concept is that its a collection of comics which take place at different points on a timeline. Sort of like a "choose your own adventure" story, except the structure I have in mind would be more of a "choose your own canon" story. When characters come to make a decision to temporarily split up, each possible outcome will be its own story, clearly labeled on a color coded time chart. The full chart looks like a tree, therefore, The Akashic Treehouse. I hope you won't be too sad when Amazing Alligator wraps up, because this story takes place in the same universe as The Amazing Alligator of Country A!

Finally, I'm going to be opening a ko-fi soon to make commissions easier since many people don't like or don't have access to Paypal. I appreciate your patience, and I must thank @TomFulp and everyone on the Newgrounds team for keeping Newgrounds awesome and fresh!

e.e. McCutcheon

Art Commissions

Today's card is The Jack of Diamonds

Welcome!

Today is August 18th, 2023

Today is my birthday! Unfortunately, I cut my knee with an electric hedge trimmer at work today and ended up needing eight stitches. It actually hurt a lot less than you'd expect, but maybe that's just me. Years ago, I had a tumor removed from my clavicle, and when I woke up, the doctors said that I might be sore and need to stay in the hospital for at least a few days. I felt fine and went home the same day. Sometimes I worry this tolerance for physical pain might be excessive or unhealthy, when I cut my knee today the first thing I did was turn off the machine and casually walk to the car to get out the first aid kit. I don't want to get into too many details about the laceration here; it might sound boastful and I know some people are sensitive to gory / bloody things in real life. I was more inconvenienced by the paperwork and the fact that my jeans got ripped up and soaked. Going to the hospital on your birthday... its certainly something I'll remember for a long time.

Oh well, as they say; "La vita continua!"

Now, enough complaining! Today's actually going great for me so far. Everyone at work was really supportive and helpful. So, back to what you care about! Here's a quick little recap of some notable things that happened recently, as well as new things!

BAR HOPPING COLLAB 2023

I did a bit of art for Marshy's art collaboration! Be sure to keep an eye out for that!

https://marshybruh.newgrounds.com/

ARTFIGHT ATTACKS

(Looks like I picked the winning team! Hopefully everyone had fun on both teams!)

SWIM ON CHARITY COLLAB 9

(You can find the collab here: https://topazcomics.com/swimon/downloads/swim-on-9/)

Preview of my piece. Everyone else's art is fantastic, too!

COLORS LIVE! INTERVIEW

In this interview, I go into my inspirations and methods, among other things.

https://www.colorslive.com/page/Meet-eeMcCutcheon

DINOSAURS ATTACK! COLLAB

Be sure to keep an eye out for when this comes out!

https://blackdingo86ng.newgrounds.com/

Thanks you for all of the birthday wishes (and "get well soon" wishes), everyone!

e.e. McCutcheon

Art Commissions

Today's card is The Five of Diamonds

Welcome!

Today is July 31st, 2023

It's been a long time! I hope everyone is doing okay?

I've been very busy with Artfight this last July, and will be spending a day or two reuploading all 31 of my daily piece of art here on Newgrounds before returning my focus to Amazing Alligator.

The uploads will be similar to last year's, although this time I also plan on uploading some behind the scenes goodies! You know; guidelines, sketches, and isolated layers. The art I received this year was really delightful and motivated me deeply, so I'm very proud of how they turned out!

Also! I'm not on twitter anymore! I mean, my account is there, but it won't be used much going forward. "Blaze your glory" indeed. Geez Louise, I can't believe Elon Musk is a real person.

Also! On a more positive note, I was an artist on Swim On #9! That's a charity zine to raise money and awareness for sharks, so please consider checking it out! (Everyone else's art is really good here too, and the money will be going to a good cause, so you definitely want to check it out!)

https://topazcomics.com/swimon/downloads/swim-on-9/

Here's a small preview of my piece.

Also! I was an artist in BlackDingo86NG's Dinosaurs Attack Collab! It'll be really cool to see that come together as well, so expect a link here when its published!

Also! (I promise, this is the last "also") I got interviewed for Colors Live's "Artist of the Week" event! Colors Live is an application for making art on the 3ds and Switch. I don't have a Switch, but I do still use my 3ds to sketch late at night, and the discord community has always been really supportive and cool!

There is an AMA open in the discord, so if you want to find out what makes me tick, feel free to ask!

https://www.colorslive.com/page/Meet-eeMcCutcheon

It's been a very busy month and year. Hurry, hustle, bustle... Let's keep the art going!

e.e. McCutcheon

Art Commissions

Today's card is The Queen of Diamonds

Welcome!

Today is May 21st, 2023

It's been a while since the last news post, but I don't have a lot of time right now to write as much as I would like to. I decided to get rid of the old "buttons" from the previous news posts and go for a simple "list" look instead. Tell me what you think? I have one more slot open for commissions right now if anyone is interested, I'm working on a commission right now, I applied to submit art for a charity magazine, if I get accepted, then after that I'll be doing another page of Amazing Alligator and doing more textures for Crossfire, and then more album art parodies. Busy month ahead!

Other story arcs are already planned for The Amazing Alligator of Country A: One is for Joylene, one is for Tinsley, and the road trip arc is North's adventure with Theodore.

I have more to say but I'm going to wrap things up here. A picture says a thousand words after all, and I've always got more quality art on the way! I wonder if I should do another art tutorial sometime too? I'd need a good topic though.

My deck of tarot cards melted, so we're going to use a poker deck for the time being. Sorry for the inconvenience.

e.e. McCutcheon

Art Commissions

Today's card is The 8 of Hearts

Welcome!

Today is February 9th, 2023

I've had a crazy couple of weeks recently. I made all the new reference images for my commissions sheet, finished one job I got almost immediately after that, made a brand new table of contents for The Amazing Alligator of Country A (the [Amazing Alligator Playlist] button above will link there from now on), and I went to the DMV and will have to return soon or my boss will get cross with me. I have a brand new piece for my character design studies in the works, and its a relatively big one this time. I almost forgot to do my laundry, too... Sometimes it seems so overwhelming how much stuff I need to get done at once! Ideally, having commission slots now will not only encourage people to purchase the use of my talent while open slots last, but lessen the burden on myself as well. Of course, considering how many other talented artists also use Newgrounds, I still doubt I'll get much work here either way.

The Nintendo Direct happened earlier. I skimmed through it. Personally, "too little too late." The new Zelda game is going to be 70 bucks at launch? Yikes, dude. Nintendo finally showed couple minutes of gameplay, but to me, personally, it just looked like Breath of the Wild Again But With a Little More Stuff. The new Fantasy Life game seems like it might be worth a look though. Hopefully they port it to PC too, but if it comes to it, I'm sure I'll manage to get it to run (Yo, ho, yo, ho!). Nothing else really caught my attention in the direct besides "surprise, they released a remaster of the first Metroid Prime at full price" but I already have a steam deck and the prime trilogy. I still need to someone to get rid of my Switch for me, but that's just another thing on the bottom of the list of things I need to do. What a hassle!

As usual, thank you, thank you so much for putting up with me and my verbose antics so far! I'll try to get back to a more consistent upload schedule if I can. Making a webcomic like The Amazing Alligator of Country A is a lot of work, but expressing myself feels exhilarating and the warm reception its gets from those of you who are keeping up with Theodore's story makes me inexpressibly happy! He's going through a rough spot in the story right now, and one fan is getting genuinely upset at me for some of the things happening to him. Its very amusing! To them and to anyone else who feels the same way; don't worry! Theodore will be back to his old self again soon, I promise. It means a lot to me that you care about him.

e.e. McCutcheon

Art Commissions

Today's card is The Emperor

Welcome!

Today is January 22nd, 2023

Happy Pixel Day tomorrow! My pixel art tutorial was actually going to include more specific techniques, such as one for a "Gameboy Camera" style aesthetic which would have used filters from the G'MIC-Qt plugin to more accurately pinpoint colours, and I didn't take out the link to the G'MIC website from the bottom page by the time I published the tutorial! Its a great plugin, of course, and I do recommend using it for several of its other features, but it doesn't have anything to do with the tutorial as-is since I only described making the image indexed and cleaning it up.

In the end the tutorial was getting too long and I needed to wrap it up.

As for miscellaneous news, I heard something interesting on NPR (public radio here) recently; scientists didn't know how swing music worked until recently, when a physicist in Germany... uh, did some stuff? I didn't understand it properly, but I think its really neat how something as normal as music can elude proper scientific understanding for decades. I'll just provide a link to the transcript since I'm not adequately equipped to explain musical stuff.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/01/18/1139783203/what-makes-songs-swing-physicists-unravel-jazz-mystery

The newest page of Amazing Alligator is the saddest one I have planned for a while, I promise! I know a lot of people might be upset at me putting Theodore through something so depressing, but I want to show how he comes to terms with tragedy and grows stronger as a result.

The Newgrounds playlist for Amazing Alligator reached 100 pieces, which means I can't add any more of the pages I write to it. I'll either have to make a proper table of contents or a second playlist for the next 100 pages. Eventually it would be good for AA to become a proper series (https://www.newgrounds.com/collection/series) but I don't think its well-known enough for that to happen yet. So, I'll just continue to do my best work until it does!

I can't thank you all enough for reading this, its because of you that I'm motovated to do what I do!

e.e. McCutcheon

Today's card is Swords VI

Welcome!

Today is January 15th, 2023

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day tomorrow! Earlier this week, I set up Gamecube netplay with my buddy Esai to test it out, and it worked! of course, my lackluster internet made it a bit laggy. I know I was born in the tail end of the 90's and I grew up with technology so it shouldn't impress me; but connecting with people online? Its just like real-life magic! I know it sounds silly, but- ah, I don't know. I'm just feeling good.

My Tough Bippy fanart was frontpaged! This is the first time I've had anything of mine get frontpaged before, so I'm over the moon right now! To my new followers, welcome! I hope you like my art, because I make it for you! I hope my work can feature again soon!

On a more somber note, we're reaching the sad part of Theodore's "Road Trip" arc. For anyone who hasn't read through The Amazing Alligator of Country A yet, you can click on the green playlist button at the top of this news post to get caught up. No spoilers, but rest assured I do have a happy ending prepared for this arc. So stay strong and stick with Theodore, even if things seem sad!

Thanks again for everything! Next, I'll be making my pixel art tutorial and revising my commissions sheet before getting back to other pieces of fanart and new Character Design Exercises. Busy, busy!

e.e. McCutcheon

Today's card is The Queen of Cups

Welcome!

Today is January 8th, 2023

Happy Sunday! Its been wild and windy here in Elk Grove, so I'll probably be cleaning up fallen tree limbs in the parks for work this week. Hmm, what else is news? This last page of Amazing Alligator was in the works for a while! I'm happy to finally be able show off the finished product.

I didn't mention it last week, but my new years resolution is to gain a following at least almost appropriate for the amount of passion and style I put into all of my artwork this year. Oh, and I should probably update my commissions sheet to have higher prices and change up the samples...

I'll find time to do more Character Design Exercises if I'm not too busy with Substitute Santa pieces like I was last week. I actually finished up the background and basic sketch for the Federal Quartet late last night. I'll go ahead and share those below this post if anyone wants to get a better idea of how I work.

Oh, and check this out too!

e.e. McCutcheon

Today's card is Wands X

Basic Sketch: Federal Quartet

Background: Federal Quartet

Welcome!

Today is January 1st, 2023

Another year's come and gone! I plan on continuing to supply cool new art this year! I'll have a tutorial about using filters to make pixel art before Pixel Day.

The Road Trip arc of Amazing Alligator is about 3/5 done now. It was actually meant to be a lot shorter and was written in one three day weekend, but there was no way to cram everything into 3 or 4 pages without destroying the flow and pacing, so I'm taking my time with things and fleshing out all the plot points. I hope you're excited!

What else? I've gotten into Super Animal Royale a bit? I like the paper doll art style and the simplistic 2d action gameplay reminds me of old flash games. By all means, feel free to contact me on Steam if you see I'm online and you want to play something together. The distraction is almost always welcome!

e.e. McCutcheon

Today's card is The Sun

Welcome!

Today is December 25th, 2022

Happy holidays! Making art is how I like to celebrate the holidays.

...Of course, I like to make art all the time, so the good times never really end! Hopefully my art can help other people when they feel lonely or sad. My family and I are fine, I'm just not the best at big, show off-y "festive" stuff.

I'm not doing a holiday themed Amazing Alligator picture like I did last year because it would be released too close to a serious moment which is coming soon for Theodore in his story.

Here's the Christmas piece from last year if you still want to see a cute alligator picture!

Oh, also check out the piece @ThePaintHuffer made as my secret santa!

I've been getting my numbers from David Lynch, but he's stopped picking the number for now. So, I'll pick a card from the tarot instead!

Have a happy Christmas, Hanukkah, Winter Solstice, and New Year everyone!

e.e. McCutcheon

Today's card is Cups IV