What I've Been Up to In December 2022

And a quick 2022 review + 2023 plans

My family and I just returned from Cabo San Lucas, Mexico and it’s our first time experiencing an “all-inclusive” resort (TL;DR: it’s like a cruise vacation, except not tied on a boat and the rooms are spacious). It sets such a wonderful termination for the year of 2022!

Now that we are back and ready to begin a new year of 2023 - adjusting back to the needs of planning and cooking meals and washing dishes ourselves… :)

Looking back at 2022 - 1 book published, the game developed through M1/M2 releases, 2 game jams (Feb, Jul) attempted, 31 drawings done for Inktober, Many project drawings and study drawings. Put in place a regular process to make posts across social platforms, Patreon, and this substack letter - all accessible in my LinkTree. Finished reading 2-volume Chinese historic epic story and completed playing 2+ epic games. All in all, it’s been a pretty busy and good year.

Going into 2023 - I hope to wrap up the project of drawing 100 Tang Dynasty poems soon, and write/edit/publish book#2 with it; wrap up the game development and publish that too; then continue to draw, write more and make more games, as well as learning something technical (currently set on Rust)

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’ve completed the full game loop for chapter 1 with 3 bosses, prologue, level complete, death screens, and a quick ‘how to play’ overlay display. Hoping to wrap up ‘Milestone 3’ before the formal release in coming months! Here is the devlog.

  

Drawing

• Weekly project drawing (Tang poem 唐詩) - I am now at 96 drawings of the overall 100 drawings goal. Hoping to wrap it up in January, then start editing the book as I continue the writing part.

  

  

  december Tang Poem project drawings

• Study drawings - I tried to do 1 study drawing a week and post them, but this month I didn’t post all of them due to the holiday schedule and not very happy with a few of them… :/

  

  

  dec 2022 study drawings

Writing

• I continued to write 3 pieces a week on the 唐詩一百畫 (100 Drawings of Tang Dynasty Poems) project - extending from the drawings, I am adding translation, reflection and additional notes for each poem. This is shared with my Patreon members every week!

Web, Merch Store

• My Patreon members continue to get all the full resolution arts and pre-released book writing every week! I am also looking forward to providing soft copies of my books and games to my patrons later this year.

  

• Social - I’ve continued to regularly post across various social channels in most part of the past year (most of them linked off my LinkTree page), but I continue to find myself struggling between the two camps of belief system:

  1. “Social media platforms is the way” - to put your work and brands out for the wider exposure in current age (glancing over the negative facts - its ads-revenue backing, dopamine targeted algorithmic tendency to create echo chamber that will gaslight and destroy the minds of next generation…);

  2. “There may be other better ways” - and technologies nowadays, to achieve the same goal without the negative ‘side effects’ mentioned above, such as what substack has been attempting to drive; Discord, Reddit, Mastodon are all major contenders yet they all seem to also have their own imperfections.

• Website and Merch Store - no updates, but check it out!

Consuming Stuffs

• Reading - Finished Volume 2 of the epic historical novel of the Eastern Zhou dynasty (“帝國曙光”), and start reading my backlog of One Story subscription.

• Gaming - Finished both Batman Arkham Knight, Tomb Raider (2013)! Started to play Shadow of Tomb Raider, and Horizon Zero Dawn

• TV/Movies - not much, only watched a bit of Euphoria season 2.

• Learning - this month I got curious and picked up a Udemy course about Rust (programming language) to start my learning :)

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).