2021 work
I'm tired! Really tired. And I'm still making work:
Music
Participated in my 3rd Looptober this year, completing it with 31 little songs! That list has notes and stars on the ones I think are interesting, but my favorites are:
sippy
eaugheagurneaguah
night beans
Gamedev
At the start of the year I set an intention to reconnect with game dev as a practice. It's a rough hobby, things take so long to flesh out that it almost feels like an endurance sport just getting an idea out. For half of the year I did do daily dev, usually an hour at the end of each day. I got pretty familiar with the Godot game engine as well, and feel like I'm in a good place keep game dev in my practice.
Upworm
For this year's Lisp Game Jam I made a 'Getting Over It'-esque challenge climber called Upworm (selfsame.itch.io/upworm). I'd done a few things with a two axis controlled physics worm some years back, so I knew how I wanted it to play and I had a pretty clear art direction in mind as well.
I'm very happy with the end result. It seemed to hit a chord too, at 4000+ downloads it's one of my most popular games. No press but there's been some lovely playthrough videos and I can tell people are having a lot of fun with it. I plan on releasing a mobile adaptation early this year.
IdleMatcher
Idlematcher is a relaxing casual matching game with incremental progression through unlockable upgrades and card decks. This was meant to be a small month long project that I started at the beginning of the year, but it ended up taking 6 months to complete! Unfortunately due to a Godot mono bug on iOS I have been holding off on release until it's available for both app stores. Hopefully this will come out next year!
I don't expect this game to get much attention when I do release, but it is a very polished mobile game and I personally find it very relaxing. It's been my go to phone game when I'm in awkward waiting room situations, hopefully someone else out there will get the same vibes.
Prototypes
VR Tower Shooter
'Spotter' is a prototype of a VR tower defense / wave shooter. The idea was you shoot things to get points to unlock towers and additional weapon types that you can place around the level. It's fun enough that I plan on getting back to it at some point.
other prototypes
A Bosch's frog character controller in Godot
Art & Craft
skull.supply
In May I opened a shop at skull.supply. I've never really sold work, so this experience has been very validating for my practice. I also enjoyed packing up and shipping orders. The shop itself did really well, I earned enough to cover the cost of my kiln and little wheel which is a really cool feeling:
- 41 total orders
- 87 skulls sold
- 122 objects sold
Ceramics
I was doing daily pottery for most of the year. Throwing on the wheel is extremely relaxing to me so it became a bit of an after work ritual to trim the previous days piece and throw a new one. I did some nice series of mugs, bowls, and bird footed plant pots. Unfortunately my new apartment doesn't have hookups or ventilation, so it might be a while before I can pick this up again.
Sculpture
Much less sculpting than last year but there's a few things:
Painting
I used to paint a lot, getting back into it has been interesting, sort of like some older rooms in my brain being opened back up. I did a small series of landscapes that turned out quite nice:
Drawing
Drawing is another thing I picked back up this year that I hadn't done much of in ages. I found this to be extremely cathartic! Really highly suggest it if you can fit a little drawing into your day.
Sadly I had a data loss of all my Procreate documents on an iPad. I really hate losing artwork and it still stings, but eventually i got over it and picked up the ipad again.
2022 Intentions
Well ok I'm in a frustrating place with my art but it's probably a familiar place to any artist where I feel like I'm not really getting out there or capturing much interest or attention. I don't really know what to do with that frustration, other than maybe try and harness it. Anyway my intentions for this next year is to tell stories, not necesarilly full narratives but at least open up windows into something worth paying attention to. Which I think i have an abundance of, you know, genuine authenticly weird little stories and vignettes. And with that in mind, like a full featured mobile game that takes me 6 months to realize is a lot less valuable than maybe a screenshot that hints at a richer world.