What I've Been Up to In August 2022
What I've Been Up to In August 2022
"Enjoy The Silence"
Kids schools started and all of a sudden there are some predictable time slots during the day when the house is truly silent. That’s definitely appreciated but also took a bit to get used to. It almost seems too quiet at home, why am I not worrying about the 5 years old needing some encouragement to play out in the yard? Why am I not worrying that the teenager may be streaming online anime too much again? It dawn on me that we, the human being, have a tendency to invite things to keep our minds occupied (yet, oftenly it just drive us more anxious) - the kids need me to think of this for them; my wife wouldn’t be pleased if I don’t do this now; I should read through that article to learn about the latest development in renewable energy; it’s quiet? why not listen to that podcast in my queue…
Silence is totally OK. Enjoy the silence.
Here are the things that kept me busy this past month, aside from the day-to-day ‘job’ related stuff…
Creating and hacking stuffs
Game Dev
I made the 2nd attempt to participate in a game jam - this is the GDevelop Game Jam #2 - I orginnally planned to make a snake game clone with some challenging twists… but I only got the basic snake game semi-completed (buggy!) Still, I learned a ton each time participating in this type of exercise so I am pleased. And I can always come back to this idea and make the full game later :) The incomplete, yet semi-playable game ‘Pet Crew’ is available here on itch.io
Continuing my long term game project to make the historic epic ‘Qin’, I was able to add NPC dialogue, also getting back to make more pixel art game assets
Drawing
Tang poem 唐詩 drawing - I continue to develop my skill and style, for both drawing and calligraphy. I am happy to see that my art started to change style, taking a voice by itself…
I’ve also started doing study drawings:
Writing
Aside from my book published through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, I’ve started the book project named “100 Tang Poem Drawings” (唐詩一百畫) - this is to add translation, share my own reflection on each of the poems and the drawing I did. This is now being ‘pre-released’ to my Patreon members once a week. It looks like this:
Website, Merch Store,
Patreon membership is launched! And we just wrapped up the 1st week with a special promo code to get an extra 5% off my merch store.
I’ve also created a social media posting schedule and started posting regularly across various platforms.
Merch Store - I went back in and created a new poster :)
Consuming Stuffs
Reading - continued on volume 2 of the epic historical novel of the Eastern Zhou dynasty (“帝國曙光”); finished audiobook Annihilation By Jeff VanderMeer.
TV/ Movies - I saw ‘Lightyear' with family (it was ok…), 'Don't look up' (it’s pretty great!), 'Westworld S4' (I think I can do another season… but I can see why a lot of people feel they are fed up); Britney vs Spears (not sure how I feel after watching it…); She-hulk (this is a weirdly charming, strangely relevant superhero TV series!); Incantation (咒, this is a horror story from Taiwan, I absolutely love it and recommend it); Paddinton (this is really good!); OK, I guess I spent too much time on TV again this month :p
Gaming - Batman Arkham Knight @ 35%; Tomb Raider (2013) @ 32%
If you really finished reading the above, I thank you, and wish that my sharing would either entertain you, or inspire you (if you’ve been thinking about your own creative projects).
Also please consider joining my Patreon membership to support me and be part of my creative journey. You will get access to a few of my artworks each week as well as a 10% discount to my merch store, and more… I may consider hosting a Discord server if there are demands ;)