Interview with TheDark.newgrounds.com

Hello Kuoke, tell us about yourself.
I am Kuoke. I draw stuff. My decent works are posted on kuoke.newgrounds, all of my finished works are posted on kuoke.deviantart, and all of my works including WIP's are posted to kuoke.tumblr. Additionally, there's cringemore.com.

Describe yourself in five words.
There is nothing to describe.

How long does it takes you to finish a drawing?
A day to a week. People seem to dislike the ones I spend more time on so I don't know what the fuck is going on with that.

What is the best thing about being an artist?
Nothing, as far as I'm aware. It's pretty fucking terrible being an artist, especially at my level of intermediacy where it's unclear whether I'll actually be able to make a bare-bones living off of my work. Almost all the perks of being an artist are purely internal and intangible.

After finishing a drawing have you ever felt like living inside it?
I've never thought of it so the answer to that would be 'no'. The answer would be 'yes' if I actually thought about it.

Except from art you have made some movies as well. In fact three of your submissions got awards. How do you feel about it?
I care little for those animations, namely because I made them years ago and was terrible at it. I remember that most of those six trophies I managed to get through flash submissions were earned on days where the highest scoring submission of that day was about 4, so those trophies aren't really saying much.

How long it took you for example to finish Boulevard of Broken Songs?
Considering I only did a small part of it, a week or two. This was a incredibly long time ago.

You have also a website. Tell us here what can we find there?
cringemore.com's initial purpose was to redirect people to a professional looking portfolio type site so I don't look like an absolute chump linking potential clients to deviantart. I decided to tack on regular comic updates afterwards because the general rule of thumb of any website, or anything really, is that it should have some sort of purpose of existence.

So right now Red Light Black Light 3 is nearing its end and immediately after that, Black Bob the Black Bear begins. Other than that, all the other content on that website is distributed either on Newgrounds, deviantart or my tumblr, so there's no actual reason to go elsewhere on that site. Hell, I don't even run ads on it. Ultimately, it's an organised archive for my comics with an side order of portfolio and blog that I don't use.

I'm considering writing up a retrospective of RLBL3 after it ends, thus enabling the use of the blog section which was so painstakingly coded from the ground up. Before I bought the domain and hosting, I didn't even know what the fuck <div>'s were.

Do you have any favourite movie maker or artist in the Portal?
I'm terribly indecisive, so favourites are not something I dare decide. There are some artist from the art portal that I've found quite impressive but they either don't post on NG any more or I've completely forgotten their names.

What is your motto?
"Act accordingly."

Give new artists and movie makers here some advice.
As I mentioned earlier, it's pretty terrible being an artist, even more so if you're attempting to become professional. Don't expect to get anywhere if you only put in 6 hours on a weekend per week. If you listen to rap, then you know the general idea of how much work it takes to get anywhere. If you are for some stupid reason wanting to become even half decent, the minimum amount of hours you'll be needing to do per week, as far as I'm aware, is 45 hours - basically a full time job.

The reason that I keep saying that being an artist is terrible is because this current society as a whole in bedazzled by medicine and the sciences, so much so that in the last century the once almost godly status of the arts as a whole has been reduced to nothing but a pathetic hobby. In my honest opinion, it is perhaps the least respected and the least paid job in the world, namely because there's such a lack of support by the government. In most Americanised countries, the government doesn't give anything to people pursuing the arts unless you do it in their controlled environments which can potentially undermine the entire ideology of the arts.

In a few European countries however, artists are actually given grants of annual minimum wage per year to support the growth of upcoming artists, allowing them to actually focus all of their time to their chosen career path rather than having to work 2 extra jobs just to buy food to eat, leaving them with an hour a day to actually work. I've heard inklings of similar programs being introduced in New Zealand as well.

Hey, remember the time when New Zealand was barely a country compared to Australia? Hah, what the fuck even happened there; Now Australia is being outdone in almost every regard compared to NZ. Even their internet speed is faster than ours. HOW?

My entire viewpoint is potentially skewed because it may be the case that Australia is actually the most pathetic country in the western world, having the thick cocks of America and China shoved right into its willing anal cavity while Britain is buckling its belt leaving the two to their sloppy seconds.

In short, if you want to be an artist, expect to get fucked over repeatedly throughout your entire life due to society's stupidity. See: Caravaggio. Oh there you go, a favourite artist.




You can check out TheDark's news page for interviews with other Newgrounds artists.
Permalink to TheDark's Newgrounds page.
Permalink to this entry on my website here.