► Ascentrium was a series I worked on non-stop for several months after quarantine began. "Now's my chance," I thought. And I was right - I had all the time in the world. But I didn't expect the entire project to have a runtime of over 2 hours long. Yikes.

I always knew I'd submit it all to Newgrounds, but how? I thought about making the submissions long and weekly, like I did with my YouTube Channel, but I thought I'd try something a little different: a short episode everyday. Here's what I've found.

1. I found I received my best scores when I submitted just after midnight. That said, I've been happy with all the scores I've received regardless of my time of submission. Newgrounds is generous and seems to be consistent giving each submission its fair shake regardless of the time it was submitted. Here's today's submission.
2. The submissions seemed to get quicker views when I posted one of my female characters in the screenshot. Hey, it works.
3. Though I only have 85 or so official fans, I found those fans to be extremely dedicated to seeing each episode. I may not have gained the numbers, but the viewers I did retain were very interested in the project. Quality reviews and feedback as opposed to quantity.
4. There are so many submissions on this site, that I didn't seem to annoy anyone with my large surge of new submissions. Newgrounds is so alive and active, that my daily animations were but a drop in the bucket.
5. The Portal is still a mystery to me. Sometimes the submissions fly through 'judgement' like nothing, other days the entire 'new submissions' column stays that oh-so-uncertain purple. I'm sure there's someone much smarter than me who could explain this phenomenon. Anyone up to the task?
6. I've been on Newgrounds since I was 10 (those awesome Pico days), started submtting when I was 12, and now that I'm older I've noticed that Newgrounds has matured while also retaining so much of the things I loved when I was a kid - we can indulge in animated violence, laugh at the absurd, or be transported to an entirely different world. That's the beauty of animation I suppose but I can't stress enough NG's ability to perpetuate the fun while also having a serious, more professional aspect to it all. This site is chock-full of talented artists.

► Fellow animators, I'm interested to hear what you think. Did you find submission times affected your scores? How do you like to utilize your preview screenshots? How have you found NG has changed over the years? Let me know.

I think that's all I can really ramble off the top of my mind at the moment. All of this said, my series is still ongoing. I have 10-13 more submissions of Ascentrium left before the story is told and my daily submission experiment is over. Hopefully by the end I'll have more findings for anyone who is interested.

► Now that I've somehow held your attention this long I wouldn't be doing myself any favours if I didn't ask you to please check out my series Ascentrium and tell me what you think! I only have a few more weeks left of uploads, now could be a good time to hop on board and theorize. The end is nigh.

► My Youtube page is above, and our Instagram page can be found here.

► Our Facebook page is here.

Cheers!

-Tom from Animatrium