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.

Game Development

Blackmask slowed down production wise as my and my programmer Adam, scrape by for the little time we have.

The month timeline I spent creating and animating this bear bandit is not something I like. I’ve been blowing time on meaningless stuff with my concept sketching that I feel like I’m losing focus on the core needs of the game.

We’ve made more strides to meeting more often wrangle back the focus of what the game needs and what we want to show the player.As we’ve mentioned before, most of our time making this game is, creating the pieces to test with, and all that’s left is to build the levels in a playable design.

As usual, the goal of this year is to complete the demo and prepare it for a Kickstarter. We’re open to help as other hands on deck could certainly boost out speed. I know I could stand to delegate a few of my art tasks, such as background work, and animation in-betweens. Editing the story and lore stuff is also in my want-to-do list as most that aspect is too cloudy for my comfort. It’s probably better than I’m worrying about so here’s to next year and I’m confident in the new future!

Conventions and Events

I think I went to at least one Convention a month. tabling at a large variety all over the state of Illinois.

Midwest Furfest 2023

At the beginning of December, I won an Artist Alley Table at Midwest Furfest for the first time ever!

Going to MFF wasn’t a planned decision at first. I wanted to be a dealer but didn’t get accepted, so I wasn’t planning to go. But I knew my friends were meeting up, so I got a one day pass to hang out with them.

While there, I applied to the Artist Alley Lottery and won a table to make art for Sunday. Every went smooth as I got three ink commissions! I never new about making badges so I didn’t have that option available, but maybe next time I stop by!

Also while at MFF, I attended panels, gaining more insight to furry fandom stuff in general. The more I learn about the Furry community, the more I realize how little I really know about it.  Going around chatting with people around the rest of con sometimes makes me question if I really am into furry or just a tourist who can draw animal people good. I’m over-thinking this as I always am though.

Pocket Con 2023

For the last convention of the year, I tabled at PocketCon at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.I had been to MCA once before, but it was my first convention in the city proper. My Square Reader wasn’t charged so I improvised with my phones NFC reader to take card payments.

The show was a smooth show. Table setups were tight so I couldn’t set up my prints. I might need to invest in a display portfolio.

I did a draw on demand short session where I went on the stream answer some questions and drew some art for anyone interested. I assumed this would be a larger presentation so I went into streamer mode to stay sharp.Other than that, I met up with other artists there and touched back with their years!

There’s a small amount of shows to start off the new year, beginning with PopFest Chicago on January 28th!

I have a full year packed with cool conventions and events! Take a look through my Convention Schedule to see where I’ll be next!

Tutorials

I made less tutorials than I wanted. A few notable ones are my experiments with 3D printing a Nib Holder for Inking.

The little I did has made a difference. My most popular YouTube video is a tutorial on how to reset your Wacom tablet without resetting the entire machine. I fumbled my words during my streams, but I got the point across enough to resonate with other artists hunting for a fix!

I wanted to make more tutorials, but I’m bad at managing my time while writing and producing art. My art knowledge still feels inadequate to teach anyone. Most of my art knowledge is from college and all my struggles cultivating a full time career in art. If I do have something interesting to say, I’ll at least write it down for the future.

Streaming

A nice thing that I’ve done this year is get back into Twitch streaming at a semi-regular schedule! As Wednesdays after work were my free hours, I was able to do a regular stream and fight to keep the time.

All my streaming pushed me to learn more about DaVinci Resolve and how to edit the VODs for my YouTube Archive Channel. It’s tough to make interesting clips for for my main channel, but for anyone interested, I have full streams with reedited sound and cut intro times on the Archive channel.

There’s been days where I didn’t want to stream, due to tiredness, tech problems, and overall disillusionment with talking to a blank audience. I’m up for continuing, but I’m open to suggestions on how to vary up these streams beyond just art stuff. I do want to make some more incentives for the few subscribers I have, creating more emotes, making subscription rewards, reworking the stream panels and other tasks.

I’m seeing about making some changes to my Twitch streams, so I’m not streaming again until February. Until then, why not follow me on Twitch and hit the notification so you’ll be right there when I stream again.

Artwork

If I want to asses how I did with my art production, I made a solid amount of colored illustrations. But it’s still a bunch of Work in Progress pieces that ended up left by the wayside. Looking back, I feel that I was focusing on pumping my numbers on my social media accounts than making meaningful artwork that progressed me as a storyteller.

A majority of my art, I’d say I still clung on my traditional tools. At conventions, I dug up sketches in my Bristol Board Pads that I inked in the slow times between sales. My SketchWallet also still had continued use to me to jot down fast sketches between the down times at my day job.

Much of this is because I lost my iPad. I searched everywhere for it and without me turning on Find My iPad or any other service, I’d say it’s gone for good. To be honest with myself, I didn’t feel like I made that much use of my iPad in general. I kept feeling frustrated by how much I didn’t like how drawing felt in Procreate or ArtStudio Pro. While, I used apps like Pixaki and Pixel Square to block in the beginning of some pixel art on the go, there were still to many missing features for me to be happy about pulling it out to use.

Commissions

In addition to my personal art, i took a decent amount of commissions this year. Most of my commissioned art was at Anime Central but I had plenty of others done at other conventions and online. I bet would’ve gotten more if I took more time to let people know I did do commissions more often.

I’m taking a break from commissions at the moment to focus on Blackmask. I’ll do tiny bits of gift art for select friends, but I’m not going hard into commissions for the month. When I do reopen commissions, you can take a gander at my Commissions page to see my prices and examples.

In the End

My plans for the future feel hazy. I’m disappointed in myself for not doing enough of the goals I wanted to live up to. I stick with making art because I can’t imagine myself doing anything else with my life. Sometimes the struggle of making a career as an independent doesn’t feel worthwhile. The hope and disappointments on that struggle has worn down my passion since college, perhaps after high school too.

One thing that I hope to try out this year is to focus on making art for myself without posting to the internet or portfolio. I want to submit work to a local gallery or convention, but I don’t plan to get too deep into my internet presence if I can help it.

As of writing this and you reading this, my work is up for bid at the New Hope Art Auction! Here you can bid on my Wheatley the Bread Cat Print where the proceeds go to the Cat Guardians Shelter! Bidding ends on January 6th so there’s little time left.

This year is the year that I break from my restrained mind goblins to a mindset that sees the world in a better light. I will avoid self-harming myself in my head about inconsequential stuff. Sure, I have responsibilities, but I have a circle of friends and family that I need to stop pushing away.

2024 will be a good year because I’ll make it a good year.