August was a turbulent month - both at the personal level and the world events. We were shocked and saddened by the destruction of the Hawaiian city of Lahaina on the island of Maui. We were fortunate enough to have appreciated its beauty merely a year ago (in the June 2022 issue).
This hit home hard, as I previously read about the things in this world that we have accustomed to taking for granted will be disappearing gradually, but this is the first time that a place we visited recently is lost due to global warming. Pretty soon, Venice, Maldives, the glaciers near Greenland, or even Miami, Florida will be gone… and I wonder what’s the new world going to look like? What's the legacy from the current generation to be passed down to the future generations?
Time to stop sulking and look for ways to help our world more, maybe watch “The Day After Tomorrow” or “Waterworld” again, and look for things we can do everyday?
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
Qin - an action game based on the story of China’s first emperor. This month I fixed a few bad bugs found (now at version M.3.3) - and as I’ve shared on the linked devlog, Google screwed me up by deleting the account I created to publish this game on Google Play Store… (and I paid the $25 for Google Play Console fee). Anyway, I hope September will be better to achieve a public release.
In addition, I have spent some time rethinking about the future strategy of “Heta Studio” - in particular on how to streamline and scale up around the game development process. I hope to have more updates within the next few months.
Drawing
Weekly project drawing (comics) - here is a taste of the comics I’ve done this month - full 3-panel versions are on most of my social feeds, Artstation, and of course, my (paid) Patreon page.
Study drawings
#FanArt (always fun to do!)
Writing
Book#2 project -“100 Drawings of Tang Dynasty Poems” (唐詩一百畫) - this month I took a huge detour looking into publishing on unique/custom trim dimensions. I was hoping to create this book as a landscape, 10” x 7” and KDP is limited to having width below 8.5” (or something). I checked out Lulu or Blurb but their printing costs, due to supporting highly customizable dimensions at high quality papers, are way too much. I am reverting back to KDP and re-designing the dimensions :)
The pre-released drafts of this book will continue to be published/shared with my Patreon members every week! Also a bit writing on the next book project: ‘Impressions’ stories.
The Web
My Patreon members continue to get all the full resolution arts and pre-released writing pieces every week! I am also looking forward to providing soft copies of my books and games to my patrons later this year.
Website and Merch Store - no updates, but check them out! Oh, and did I mention that I have a LinkTree page?
Consuming Stuffs
Reading - Finished “The Dead Are Arising - The Life of Malcolm X”, started a new book “Tracers in the Dark” by Wired’s Andy Greenberg
Gaming - Finished Shadow of the Tomb Raider! Continue to play A LOT of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, also started Torchlight II (random pick from my queue)
TV/Movies - TV: 2001 Space Odyssey (looong and unique - interesing); Memories (recommended); Sicario (very nice movie indeed); Thor: Love and Thunder (entertaining enough, better than I thought); Guardian of the Galaxy Vol 3. (wow. very good); Paprika (amazing anime, the Inception story before Inception!)
That’s it for this issue of my newsletter! 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).