What I've Been Up to In August 2024
An immersion into living in nature...
First off, I’m very sorry about the long rant in last month’s issue. It was meant to be a quick blurb but quickly turned into a venting channel for me. Thank you for reading it through again, if you did. 😉
We had a wonderful camping trip right before kids formally started school. I personally enjoyed the entirety of the process - from researching (yes, it was the very first time I handled the whole camping trip) to planning to preparing and packing, to actually setting fire to cook and tents and mats and sleeping bags… The highlight of the whole trip? I am a bit ashamed to admit, it is the morning breakfast with a cup of instant espresso!
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
This month I am getting back into things and started by learning sprite sheets and tilemap/set in GDevelop.
Feel free to play my game#1 Qin (early access release)! Available on Google Play store (Android phones and Chromebooks), Itch.io & gd.games (web)
Drawing
Weekly comics - my 3-panel comic strips are posted on all major social feeds, but of course, the best place to access this would be my (paid) Patreon page:
Study drawings (#inktober52 ) - can you guess what is the prompt word for each of these?
#FanArt (always fun to do!) I continued to make illustrations for each of the 14 ‘wuxia’ novels by the legendary Jin Yong, again this one was the only piece done
Writing
Book#2 project -“100 Drawings of Tang Dynasty Poems” (唐詩一百畫) - the editing of book 1 (yeah… this will be a set of 3, initially) has been done! Now I am on cover design - perhaps September is the month this will happen!
The pre-released drafts of this book will continue to be published/shared with my Patreon members every week!
Almost every week I write a new short story to my substack “Echo of the Worlds”, subscribe and enjoy! (I said “almost” again, but happy to say this month I am switching the creative gears to a better speed)
The Web
No updates this month~
Consuming Stuffs
Reading - done reading 尋他千百度 by 金庸 (love it!); continue on Fair Play by Eve Rodsky and Game of Thrones book 4 “A Feast for Crows”; Million Dollar Weekend by Noah Kagan;
Gaming - Continued on A Plague Tale: Requiem and Katana Zero; started playing Alien: Isolation (and cannot stop since…); paused Shadows Awakening since I got distracted by… God of War (finally picked it up with a sale);
TV/Movies - finished House of Dragons Season 2 (it’s decent enough to leave me hanging and wanting more…); Binged through the rest of Game of Thrones Season 6 through 8 (I am not angry/sad about its ending, yet I do see how it can be way easier to be accepted if there are a few more lines of dialogue… The ending few episodes seems to be intentionally more 'artistic' than dramatic. There were a lot of moments without dialogue, just 'cinematic' shots and moving music... I think this causes some drawbacks to the important narratives to end the story stronger - Danny's turning mad, Jon's struggle on what to do, Varys, Tyrion... even Grey Worm could use a bit more details to shape up their struggles and those seem to cut short... budget issues?); rewatched The Six Sense (it's soooo good), No Sudden Move (wacky and entertaining!).
Learning: still wanting to learn Procreate Dreams and other drawing techniques… but time…
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).