Game Development

I’m not as happy with my progress of game development as I’d wanted. Much of the early 2025 of game development was acclimating to returning to Blackmask. I spent more time writing the demo’s draft and catching up on my art commissions, than making newer game assets.

Adam and I wanted to showcase at a local game development scene. We applied in the process, but the jury of CIGS knew we weren’t polished enough to do that. Despite this, I still visited CIGS to get to know the Chicago game development scene more. I got a decent amount of contacts and we have chat every few months to say hi or show off what we’ve been up to.

My overall game development knowledge still feels lacking, so I’ll need to get better at asking for help about game development and tech problems that wall me. It wouldn’t hurt to refresh myself on game engines like Unity and GB Studio; reviewing the process of setting up assets, animation system to learn how to setup the sprites and anything else to shake off my mental rust. Picking up basic coding may further help me not feel blind whenever my programmer explains stuff he did to me.

This year, I’m shooting to make one pixel asset for cutscenes a week in Pixquare on my iPad. As I learn more about writing stuff along with elaborating the setting, things like drawing backgrounds is getting clearer. Thanks to my color commissions, I’m more skilled at making sprites; able to breeze through animation faster than before. This along with doing more work on my Twitch streams, should accumulate to more work on the game art.

Life Stuff

For the first few months, the year was stressful due to many family deaths and health scares. Things are stabler now, but it’s certainly a wake up call to pay more attention to my health. Next March, I’ll be 34 years old, so I’d need to get more active than not.

Over the summer, I made small goals of to get more active. Despite lacking bigger health progress, I take more moments to stand away from my desk to take stretch breaks. I try a few of the stretches from this book, Draw Stronger, by Kriota Willberg,
to get moving instead of doing a cold turkey thing of trying to go to the gym after years of being sedentary.

Latter on, I made bigger changes to my hairstyle. From 2023, I was growing out and coloring my hair; which was unthinkable to me when I was younger. My hair grew fast, so if I didn’t like the coloring, I could cut it. Later in the months of maintaining a longer hair style I was asked about to twisting it. Despite my initial apprehension, I went forward with it and at age 33, I had my mother twist my hair into a new style! The twists look good enough to keep them around for the ongoing future. Since they’re loced, I can start coloring them again, too!

Less Conventions

Art business-wise, I took 2025 off of tabling at conventions to save money for new art merch. With the economy together with tariffs pinching the public, it’s tough for folks to spend extra on non-essentials. So, I’ve been tightening my belt, knocking out many debts, rebuilding funds, creating more artwork, and scouting the state of conventions from a distance.

Despite this personal break, I still tabled at certain local library conventions to sell remnants of old books as well as stickers. While there, I’ve asked how my art peers have been performing at their events. Unfortunately, things aren’t looking good for selling new works. Avenues for creators to sell their work are getting fewer and further away for library cons can only do so much. Even convention hosts are feeling the pinch of holding these events

However, I still feel a shred of interest in returning to cons. I hold out hope that physical community can connect creators with fans old and new. Sure, I can keep coasting along; reprinting, and reselling older books as I work on new projects. But, it’s tough to ignore the reality of people’s situations; the effort making physical events work to sell art has yielding diminishing returns for certain artists. Perhaps returning my efforts to crowdfunding like Ko-Fi or Patreon can be the step forward for this year, so keep an eye open for that.

Social Media Reduction

Social Media is a crap show and I’m less encouraged to keep up with or post anything online. With old social media sites being an AI swiping Nazi hellscape; it was the last justification to delete the accounts then move on with my life

I squashed my Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts and started posting everywhere else to a restart. At first, I was worried about losing art opportunities, but as an indie artist worth his salt, I can adapt. Short of talking to friends and family who I can speak to in person, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter mean nothing for me and did less to bolster me or my work. Whatever audience I had there from my 11 years of having accounts, I made it back, twice-fold in my single year joining Bluesky.

I still have my day job and live with my family who are considerate of my position. So I’m not hurting for funds, just time for making better art. As I get older, I’m growing indifferent to the idea of keeping up a portfolio for joining a mainstream studio. Everything I hear about the current creative industry sounds awful to me.

With how the year’s been going, I’d be lying if I said my confidence wasn’t shaken. I’m gambling on a dream video game project that’ll bring me more vulnerablity than feel as equipped to deal with. As I get older, this baggage of scrutiny and fears of misconception seems to pile on. I go to therapy so I try not to put weight on my online clout or lack of. It’s a bad habit trying appease an algorithm to keep people knowing I exist. Even if it’s suckier, I want to live a less online life. The most I can do is keep to myself and get more content with my life skills.

The best choice I’ve ever made in my life was keeping this website, not only as a portfolio, or archive for my art, but as a singular space to express myself. My website is what I showcase instead of any social media I still have, so I’m sticking to my guns on it.

Writing and Reading

Pushing myself to write more for Blackmask and other projects; I’d been reading writing craft books like Elements of Style, Save the Cat, Write Faster, Write Better, and more. Some books are good and get me through the tough humps of writing; but most make me miserable about my lack of skill. Despite that, I’m getting more patient with myself about flying blind without getting frustrated.

With writing and all other advice about creativity, organizing the messy part is the point. I had short comics drafted in my spare time, so I’m dusting them off with my new knowledge. For coming year, I’ll try spending at least thirty minutes a week on a short draft. So far, I’m writing more summaries in note cards, refining in notebooks, and typing in the computer. The hope is, to have a short, rough draft every month. This all will build up to writing more work like new comics, and better drafts of Blackmask’s game story too.

Even with all the writing books I was reading, I took time to read some fiction. It’s been a while since I read a book that wasn’t a comic book with pictures, so I started with reading middle school novels such as the Wings of Fire series. As of writing this, I finished all fifteen mainline books, ending with The Flames of Hope. I still don’t have that analytical eye to look at middle grade books; but its getting me used to to read normal books more often. There’s other novels and novelettes I’ve read over the past few years that I’ll drop in short articles when I have the whim.

Conclusion

I don’t know what to say about 2025, beyond knowing it as another year of work. I’m not good at gratitude stuff due to perceiving it as a personal weakness against myself. Since I’m an insane person, I never think that I work hard enough to pat myself on the back for even surviving the year. Ideally, I’ll take more time for myself by forcing a four day work week. But, it doesn’t stop the feeling of inadequacy about my shortcomings as a person. It all sounds like whining, but no one reads this blog, so I can be as gloomy as I want. I can’t accept a smile without broken teeth.

My best quality is my walking depression, and I’m gonna keep walking in 2026. Can an see the interests I feel and follow that feeling to see were it goes. 3D modeling is a curiosity of mine and I’m doing tiny looks at Blender. I made decent progress creating a low poly model with tutorials, but I keep running into roadblocks within and without. I need to improve my time management to see if I can even go further with this.