This is gonna be a long one, so buckle up. It's the ramblings of a newcrab and their feelings about joining a long art event on a whim. You can always just not read it too. Your call, hotshot.

Comics and Random Art Bootcamp. The "B" in CRAB stands for "Battles", but after being put through the the wringer I think "Bootcamp" is more appropriate. Please don't acknowledge that "Boot Camp" is actually two words. If you're reading this as a Newgrounds user that has no idea what CRAB is, that's fine. The event is over, but will start again sometime in the middle of 2025. It's a pseudo-tournament where artists submit an original character and they compete against other characters. But that's not important right now. My entries are all lumped into a playlist if you haven't seen 'em (shame on you if you're a CRAB, you're supposed to read these before voting smh)

I'm not really sure there's anything I have to say that hasn't already been said, but it's good to give feedback in the hopes that we can make future /crab/s enjoyable for everyone. It'll also be from the perspective of a newcrab, which might be helpful for the vets or folks taking the reigns after the departure of the original Gamemaster.

Joining CRAB / Pre-Tourney

I found the tournament through the Newgrounds thread, and I thought about it for a while before finally pulling the trigger. When I got to the pit, I was surpised to find that there was another condition of entry. I don't recall seeing anything in the NG thread about fighting a Gatekeeper, just that the GM was supposed to abduct your character and you'd join the tournament. I hadn't even done that at this point, so I threw together a short three-page thing and said I'd fight Kevin later, and I was admitted entry. I don't think anyone really remembers my abduction comic, and that's good. It was half-assed at best and I don't think I'm happy with it.

I like the filter, I think it does its job well. And after seeing some of the past dramas, I understand why it's necessary. But I think it might help to let people know ahead of time that their abduction by the GM (or however we're doing now that the GM has stepped down) is part of a two-step process. It was nice to be able to bypass the fighting, but at the same time, I felt like I hadn't really earned it or "proven" myself. I eventually did ""fight"" Kevin, so that feeling passed. Somewhat.

The Stuffed Crust Crusaders

Getting sorted into teams was my second greatest social hurdle in this event, and it's one that I definitely failed to get over. Everyone in this event was a total stranger to me, and half of the people I'd eventually be teamed up with didn't really seem very active. But, I stayed positive and did my best to be friendly and supportive to my teammates. I'd like to think I was able to do that, somewhat.

Our theme... Luigi was appointed our headliner, and I admit that once we all got settled into the group, I immediately jumped on drawing a group picture. My first impressions of Luigi would be that he'd have us all working as his employees at his pizzeria, so I drew everyone lumped together on a scooter delivering pizzas. I feel like this definitely forced us to take a pizza themed team, which I admit felt pretty wrong. My guess is we were meant to be some sort of "professionals" team - people who have a dangerous line of work for a living. Or at least, some of us used to. But... pizza is where it settled, and I feel kinda bad about it since I kinda just... threw it out there. I don't know if it really fit anyone other than Luigi and Celia. I think it might also have contributed to why there was so little art of the team and interactions between them. With very little in the way of interactions between the artists, our team felt more like a "collection of individuals", and our characters having little in common.

I could have helped with this by actually reaching out and engaging with the others on my team. I don't have any reason why I didn't. I would have loved for our team to be like the others that were submitting art and interactions with their teammates. Something to really flesh out our characters more and raise the stakes of the tournament in the final round. But... we were the team that felt out of place, so much so that the event didn't even have our name listed properly until halfway through the tournament.

I'm not going to address the performances of my teammates, because I was never interested in taking the whole thing. I was only interested in seeing if I could even make it to the end. And having made it to the end, with how much time and effort I put in, I feel accomplished enough that our final placement doesn't bother me. Would I have liked to win? Sure, who doesn't want to win even a little bit? But to get all the way to the end was all I cared about, and I wanted to have as much fun with the kayfabe and shitposting as I could. I feel like a winner, even if the results say otherwise.

Round One

I don't think it's a surprise that most people didn't care for the Centuria theme. I'm personally torn; I think it was an interesting idea to place our characters into factions and have them larp a bit. But I do admit to being really overwhelmed by it as someone who's never done something like this before. I looked back and saw crab2 started with "Sports" as a theme, and those were pretty straightforward. The easier themes are what I'd mentally prepared for, as it would allow me to think of creative uses of Celia's power and write the character in situations she probably wouldn't find herself in. When I voted for Quest, I kinda thought it'd be very generic tasks like that. Something akin to "Slay the Dragon" or "Gather mushrooms for the guild/evil witch". And to be fair, coming up with thirty quests that are unique from each other sounds tough.

My matchup was for "Expose/Hide/Fabricate the Truth" - a task that a detective would certainly be good with. I think maybe I had been given that task to help ease me into CRAB, as I was unproven up to this point. My initial plan was to subvert expectation: people might think a detective would want to expose the truth, but Celia is loyal to a fault and has some moral grays. So I opted for her to hide it instead. But what exactly WAS "the truth"? I found myself hung up on this for most of the round to be honest. My plan for the Emperor betraying one of his generals is shoehorned in so bad it kinda hurts to look back on, but I was starting to get a little frustrated trying to make it all work as a narrative without making the comic 30+ pages. So I just... half gave up and let the chips fall where they may.

And then I found out that Jupiter anon was a no show. It was a punch in the gut, to spend all this time working on something that my opponent had no intention of reciprocating. That, coupled with the deceptively complex first round and general discontent among other crabs was not a good first impression of the event. But... at least there was something delivered from Cyrus anon, so it felt a little better. And it inspired me to animate a dumb little thing, something I hadn't done in years. Even so... I still felt like I hadn't proven myself or earned anything after all that work.

Round Two

Round two went to Japan, and my opponent was Mr. Overkill. The theme of Ikigai (purpose for living) was interesting... but my character already has a purpose for life. I suppose, to an extent, the Yakuza (which was mine and Overkill's matchup) would be a part of it. A former police detective would certainly not like the Yakuza. And when I found out from Overkill anon that their character also didn't like the Yakuza, I immediately decided that our encounter would not be antagonistic, but cooperative.

We were imposed a seven-page limit. How are you supposed to convey your purpose in life being about the Yakuza in seven pages? It's part of the challenge, I thought. It'll be fun to figure that out. But... honestly? It wasn't...

I rewrote and redrew my entire entry three different times. It was a different direction and different story every time. And every time, it was longer than seven pages. Or it betrayed Mr. Overkill's character and would've not been fun for my opponent. It was a really hard round for me creatively. I was stressing out because Mr. Overkill's round one entry was awesome, and I knew I had to go all in or I'd lose hard.

And when it came out, I remember receiving some critique about the Yakuza taking a backseat to the rest of the story. I agreed. But much like round one, this round was deceptively complex. And the page limit, while it allowed me to work to my full extent and add color, felt a little stifling. Another criticism I agreed with was that my last page was word heavy. It was all crammed in and ugly, but I felt it was a good place to explore my character a little, and share some stuff about her. All of that should have been done in between-round interactions or in lore channels, but I guess I just prefer something more diegetic.

Reading Overkill's entry was a trip. It would be the first time I saw my assigned opponent portraying my character. I felt the entry was great, Celia was portrayed pretty well, but I do admit to feeling a little weird about it. It's not because she was killed or anything like that, I think it was more the fact that there was now a rebellion arc kicking off, and Celia seemed more like a footnote in our matchup, and not really much of the major contender meant to be in Overkill's way.

My personal feelings about this are not Overkill anon's fault, really. I did enjoy their entry, it was a fun read and I loved how Overcroc became a whole thing throughout the tournament. But the first round had left a bad impression on me with my opponent not showing up and giving me a proper contest. And to have a rebellion launch in my round two opponent's entry while making our encounter smaller in comparison was somewhat of a double-whammy. I don't hold it against anyone for doing what they think is fun (a sentiment that will certainly not come back to haunt me). While I was having a lot of fun just drawing and not caring what the results were, I did start to feel like I was not getting back as much as I was putting in. And it was starting to really weigh on me.

Round Three

The final round was the fight in the bucket, and I felt... something. My personal life was starting to collapse, my grandfather was in and out of the hospital and eventually placed in hospice, and I started to dread that I might not have him for much longer. All as the finale was being revealed. In addition, I think I let myself get bogged down by negative thoughts about my previous rounds, yet at the same time, I was excited to see who I'd have to throw down with. The GM asked us to give him up to five opponents we want to fight. I thought about which characters would be fun to clash with, in addition to just having a cool art style that I think would be nice to battle with. My list, in order: Dizzy, Kalinka, Frankie, Cassidy, and "Anyone that's basically just human" I guess I got what I asked for in my bottom-most pick. My opponent was Z. I think Z is just a human who is enshrouded in shadows (if their epilogue is anything to go by).

I got BTFO in the art department this round. Up to this point, I felt confident that I could at least contend with my opponents, but Z is on a whole other level. If you're reading this Z, I genuinely have never seen art quite like yours. To see Celia portrayed in it was surreal, and I loved it. But needless to say, I felt intimidated. Z, while in communications with them, was really chill. My nerves turned to excitement as we talked about our characters and the ways we might interact in the ring. It was going to be the greatest challenge I would have to overcome in the entire tournament; a true Grand Finale for my first CRAB.

I want to say that I think the GM paired me with Z because they're a mysterious character that Celia would have to solve to defeat, but after seeing the extent to which the GM admitted to rigging some of the matchups for the entertainment value (which I'm kinda torn about, but understand), I'm left wondering if this was meant to be a match that the GM teed up for Z, thinking they'd take the gold and get HAUNT into that three-way tie. It doesn't matter much I guess.

I pulled five eighteen-hour days to get it done, even going so far as to call off work for one of those days so that I could finish it. I felt emboldened by my color entry in round two, and I knew I had to go even harder than that to win. And it occurs to me now, as I am writing this, that I did do a lot for the purpose of "winning" - even though I wanted to just have fun and see how far I could get. But at this point, I had two golds, and I wanted to know if I could sweep.

I never in a million years thought that I was capable of putting out so many pages in two weeks' time. I started really late because of personal life stuff I mentioned before, and to see it actually get done and be received as well as it was made me feel like I was untouchable. I had finished something that was longer than the comic Celia comes from, and was done in a fraction of the time. And looked BETTER. I cannot find the words to describe how good I felt.

But maybe some of you know my feelings about Z taking on additional fights and gambling their medals. I had a negative reaction to this news. The truth is, it wasn't really about the medals and points... it was about feeling like my matchup was insignificant again. Instead of it being the grand finale for our characters in CRAB 3, it was just one of many finales for Z. It felt a lot less impactful as a result, and looking back... I realize that my round one was disappointing, my round two left me wanting, and my round three was just one of many. I think at that point, I just had enough and cracked a little. But... people get different things out of CRAB. And Z, they were pretty cool about how I responded to the extra matches. And I could tell that they put a lot of work into their entry against me - against everyone. Maybe I was being selfish about it all, and did any of this even matter? No, not really. Once I got past that, I felt a lot better and felt proud of my work.

It was also the hardest-earned gold of the whole tournament, and I couldn't be happier.

Final Thoughts

I guess the biggest question to answer is "Was it worth it?"

In short? Yeah. It was. I know I spent the most of this post-mortem complaining about stuff, but in the end, I had a great time. My life may not be the best at the moment, and it certainly got pretty dark and bleak back at the start of the year, but after joining CRAB and getting the reception to my art that I have been, I feel the best I've felt in a very, very long time. Sure, I stressed a ton and lost weight. Sure, I wish I'd done some things differently. And yeah, the event dragged on way longer than it should have.

But it was a great time.

That said... I think my time as a competitor may be over already. The stress of delivering I can handle, but with the experiences I've had with no shows and the negative feelings I've had from opposition, I don't know if I want to put myself through that again. I can't help but feel like it's partially to do with my character choice; I care a lot about Celia and might take her a little too seriously at times. Maybe I'd feel different using a character I'm less attached to, but that remains to be seen.

I've said it before, but I'd be happy to be a sideliner and be the connection between outsider observers and our crabs in the form of a commentator. I enjoyed drawing little things here and there and seeing how folks were doing, as well as all the character interactions. I guess for now, I'll just see how I feel around the time CRAB 4 kicks off. I'm going to need some time to really process all of this, and right now I'm just riding the high of enjoying making comics again.

Thanks to everyone that participated and made CRAB happen. I'm so glad that I was able to be a part of it, and I hope that you all continue to have fun and grow as artists in your own ways.