It’s been a productive start to my new year. Despite nursing a head cold, I had for the first few weeks, I made plenty of art to prepare for the coming year!

On February 12th, I’ll be tabling at Northwest Indiana Comic-Con! It’s the first time in two years that I’ve tabled at a con!

The things you’ve seen on my Etsy Store, you can get them at the convention! This comes with the added benefit of meeting me in person and having a chat!

If you don’t know what you want to buy from me or have everything I have to offer, from my comics to my stickers, I opened a Ko-fi page as a tip jar. You can drop a small tip to me and commend my efforts!

If you want to hear some more news about my latest happenings, you can check out my latest post on my website!

It's almost the new year and I look back on 2021 with thoughts. It started out with promise, but I think it went downhill closer to the end. I can't help but say I felt directionless and the stuff I've been doing wasn't as amazing as I'd like for it to be.

This year is a less exciting year, but I want to be optimistic and press forward to the future! There's tons of stuff that I want to get finished, so it's time to work hard at it!

If you've been following this blog, my Twitter, and Instagram for news about Blackmask, I haven't been working on much myself. But my programmer has been going all out on the game!

My Programmer tells me that he has all the art assets he needs from me to build up a playable demo! This is lucky for me as now as I can be on stand by with my pixel art! I want to work on self-indulgent stuff like manual art, and promo illustrations! My current plans for Blackmask is to work on sprites I want, such as death states for enemies and Cole. Plus, I want to give Cole underwater swimming animations to round out his skill set.

After this, I figure out some storyboard stuff for cutscenes like Ninja Gaiden. Most of the stuff I want to do has changed, but that's the nature of collaborations. I like posting my art and ideas on my personal pages, but I don't want to give anyone unrealistic expectations that we aren't ready to fulfil.

We're confident that we can finish the demo and game on time. The team is on the same page about being professional and working to completion. There's still plenty of non-development tasks to figure out, such as making a website and researching stores such like Steam, Good Old Games, and Itch.io for places to post a demo

It's now up to me to believe in my training, research and creativity to push Blackmask's demo to completion. I've made animated shorts, I self-published three comic books, and I completed a whole children's book.

I can trust myself to ship a video game.

I'm having car problems right now, so I'm taking commissions for 10 slots.

Fill out the Google Form or DM me.

Check out my website for even more details.

My freelance work is nearing completion. The ball is in my client's court. There's notes and adjustments that I need to make before my final approval and completion. It's been a feat, and it's convinced me to assess my next possible art projects more. Next time, I want to set up my future projects to let me livestream and add some activity to my Twitch and YouTube.

Been preparing for next year's con stuff from interrupted by the Plague. I'm vaccinated, so I'm in a better situation to not be vulnerable. No amount of medicine can stop "Con Crud" so I'm nervous about returning to conventions. I can confirm that I'm tabling at Anime Central 2022. That spot has been in my vice grip for two years, so I'm pressing forward on this!

I haven’t streamed on my Twitch channel in months! Concentrating on finishing this freelance crap and my day job, I’m never in the mood to draw more. The games I play are currently on console, such as Metroid Dread and Shovel Knight. By November, my freelance art stuff should be wrapping up, I’ll start streaming again. There’s indie games I want to show off, like: Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo! I’ve been watching get made by my friends for the last few years! I want to show off the demo on stream, but if you want to try it out yourself, the demo is on Steam right now!

Blackmask is making tiny baby steps. My programmer buddy is in a place that I don’t need to do much else with pixel art stuff for the moment. Still, I can’t stop thinking about working on the game. I keep sketching up character designs with no rhyme or reason. Thinking about it, I’ve been in a comfort zone with my social media sketches. I keep harping to myself about doing more writing and background stuff

I have bad news and good news about working on my self-published comics.

Some bad news is that I changed my mind about making The Pizza Man a book. Good news is: I’m going to put The Pizza Man, Shirley’s Day and Incident at the Game Store, in one bigger book!

I made several proofs, and I was just about to go forward on buying prints, but I realized that instead of sitting on many floppy comics that don’t sell that much, I’d make a big trade paperback containing not just my comics work so far, but behind the scenes stuff like my original pencil art and inks! I can even include other illustrations and sketches in the book to show off more of my artwork!

I’m still rocking my Pumpkin Cat Stickers for the month of October! I’m keeping these up for the month, so if it sells out, I won’t be making more until next October.

Been changing up some things I want to do for my next print books, plus sketchbook updates and more on my website!

I made a new Halloween-themed Pumpkin Cat Vinyl Sticker based on my latest art, and it's up for sale on my Etsy Store!!

The sticker is smaller than the initial Bread Cat sticker at 3x5 inches, but I'll see if I can order larger ones when the initial prints finish up!

In addition, I'm also having a Halloween Sale for the month of October of all my stuff on Etsy for 40% off! Not only can you pick up a Pumpkin Cat sticker, but you can get the rest of the Pastry Cat Stickers and my print comics!

There’s not much to write about besides being laser focused on my freelance stuff. Since I was between notes on work, I took an impromptu commission as well. I should’ve taken a harder line on my commission times, but I needed bills money and the commissioner is dependable.

Progress on Blackmask is making baby steps. I haven't been doing too much pixel art but after the few meetings Adam and I managed to put together, we're at a good understanding of what we want to accomplish for the demo, so stick around for more news on that! Currently, I do bits of writing when I can to have some ideas so story stuff.

Adam's the programmer, so I leave him more in charge of the gameplay systems, with little bits of feedback here and there. Despite me always worried about overscoping, Adam continues to impress me with all the stuff that he's able to do! The next demo video should be a monstrous one!

In terms of other life stuff, I'm hanging in there. I haven't streamed in a month because I'm too much of a downer right now. Perhaps I'll be in better spirits once I can take a longer break from the heavier art projects.

I even drew a cool idea for the holiday season!

A short clip from one of my Twitch streams of what I've been up to lately, talking about Furs of Fury, The Pizza Man and Blackmask progress.

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.

You can read the rest of my process on my website!