2023: A Year In Review

It’s been a long year, I’d say! 2023 had plenty of ups and downs, but overall, I’m alright with this year.

Besides all my art stuff, going to conventions, and I losing my iPad, I’ve been living a simple enough life. Back in August to went on a trip to Arizona to met up with my friends and visit SabotenCon. The previous time I went to Arizona, we did more hiking and exploring the state. Most of my 2023 trip was wandering the convention, but I’d love to comeback again and visit the Grand Canyon or Las Vegas.

As of wring this, I’m doing laundry and not feeling that my day is any special. I still waste my time wondering what I did wrong in the year and hoping that I can fix what’s wrong with me in the future. For now, I’ll look back on what I’ve been doing for the past month and the past year.

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2022: A Year In Review

After a packed year of conventions and art events, I’m reflecting on my 2022 year and planning my next one! I feel like I spent more time learning to write than learning to draw. I wrote more blog posts, more promotional stuff and more story things that I’ve been sticking with instead of burying it away in my files.

Alley Art Fest Aurora 2022 Table Vizo Photo

Despite my feelings that I didn’t get as much artwork as I wanted to be completed, looking back, I had a good run for my convention stuff, doing a convention almost every month and figure out myself as an artist and what I really want to do with my work.

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New Blackmask Website

I’m announcing the launch of the new website for Blackmask and news of its development! There, you can follow my new of Blackmask specifically without needing to wait for me to even mention if I’m actually working on the game or not.

Blackmask Website Debut

Articles on development, story tidbits, and other related info will begin on this website, then span out to the other social sites. Mailing List features will also be available as soon as I can arrange it, so you can keep up with updates!

First Days with Pixaki

From learning pixel art in Procreate I found my efforts limited. With the extra money I had, I invested in Pixaki 4 Pro, a $30 USD app on the Apple App Store. I do most of my pixel artwork for personal and game art in Aseprite. With Pixaki, I want a good portable option that I can trade between the two programs for faster pixel art output.

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Making of the Furs of Fury Illustration

I want to share my process making illustration art for the Indie Real Time Strategy game, Furs of Fury. Working on this illustration pushed my skills to it’s furthest because this game needed this treatment! I initially completed the art in December, but I finally got the time to make a process post and video of this illustration.

The programs I use to create most of my art these days is Clip Studio Paint. Most of the sketching and painting is done in it. I worked on this illustration on and off for roughly 5 months in 20202 over several sessions of Art Streams, weekdays, weeknights and weekends. With this time-lapse, I managed to edit it down to over 20 minutes.

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Making Edits

I remain active with my work, working on art, editing webjunk, and doing what I do to the best of my skills! Here’s what I’ve been up to the past few days:

I’m making some new edits to this website. You’ll be seeing some rearranged pages. Links might crash or break, and you’ll see some placeholder art for where I want to put buttons.

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Bumbling and Scrambling

Life’s been unpredictable for the past few weeks with doing extra hours at my day job, getting work done on Flawless Extraordinary Super Heroes, and Adam’s doing his own freelance stuff. I even took a short break away from art and the internet to reground myself and organize.

At the moment, I’m stuck on some things with Blackmask. I’m learning more workflows and thinking of a direction for making the background tile assets.

Right now, I’m learning new tips from pixel artists like MortMort, CupOhJoe and LumpyTouch when I can. I’ve also been trying out converting my art into pixels from 2D Will Never Die, It’s promising, but I’m not as happy with the current results.

Blackmask Game Island Dark Jungle Environment Pixel Art

My Twitch streaming schedule has also started to slip. Sometimes, I have a hard time getting into a headspace to entertain and draw for streams after work. I did one game stream to shake up my rut, but my machine isn’t good enough to play often. It might be a productive way to relax, but I don’t want to make my Twitch about gaming considering people followed me for my art.

Besides this, I’m staying a float, sporadically posting on my Twitter and Instagram. Most of my sketches I post there are environment concept sketches for Blackmask.

Sketching has taken a bit of a back seat more toward thumbnailing and writing game ideas down during my bus driving.

Despite having not much going on, I keep feeling a pressure on myself to do better than I currently am. I never feel confident that these sketches are interesting enough to post on my socials because they aren’t characters. I have a bad enough time thinking about social media as it is!

Marching Forward on Blackmask

Progress on Blackmask presses on as I’m still making environments. It’s an uphill climb, but I can’t get discouraged.

For a short moment, I’ve been learning Pxyel Edit as it’s makes it easier to create repeatable tile sets. The program’s missing so many features that I ended up going back to learning more tricks in Aseprite.

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