What I've Been Up to In Feburary 2023
What I've Been Up to In Feburary 2023
Go slow to... go stall?
Maybe because I am still struggling to recover the pace after the family ‘sick-a-thon’ in January, or may it’s the kids’ ski week (in which we didn’t do much), or maybe just me losing steam after getting a big project done (100 Tang dynasty poem drawings!)… this month I found myself taking my time to plan the next project, figure out multiple projects directions. Wanting to do a lot, yet doing just very little each, if at all.
In consolation, I did spend quite some time looking into home improvement projects, and we are hoping to get solar panels later this year, as well as electrifying more things around the house.
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 -
// (jan) hasn’t been a very productive month for my game development progress. Aside from days being sick, or taking care of sick kids, I tried to implement a little inventory system for the quest items but didn’t get far this month.
GDevelop Game Jam #3 - tried and failed.
Drawing
Weekly project drawing (Tang poem 唐詩) - at the beginning of the month I finished the goal of 100 drawings! I have been planning the next project… stay tuned!
Study drawings - realizing I need to practice and study more about how to capture certain objects, backgrounds, I try to do one study drawing a week. Here are the ones from this month:
#FanArt - The goal is to do one fan art drawing per week, but the Attack on Titan one took a while so I’ve only done two this month (and this brought me back to re-read the whole manga…)
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! Now I am about 70% done, after which I will be editing and putting it into a self published hardcover book.
‘Impressions’ book - This is a project that will decidedly last a while (probably 2 years) - currently being developed to be an anthology of short stories. This month I pulled out all my previous writings and notes (at least the ones I can still find), organized and started to develop them further into actual stories.
The Web
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.
Website and Merch Store - no updates, but check it out!
Hacking - Occasionally I still hack around devops/linux stuffs - This month I was surprised to learn that due to supply shortage, Raspberry Pi’s prices are essentially doubled. I feel lucky that I picked up a RPi3 and RPi4 a few years ago. Now they are running the latest Ubuntu Server LTS and I will be setting them up as a self hosted cloud for testing/dev work.
Consuming Stuffs
Reading
Continue to read “The Dead Are Arising - The Life of Malcolm X”
My fan art drawing brought me back to re-read the Attack on Titan manga, all 139 issues!
Gaming - Shadow of Tomb Raider @ 31%, and Horizon Zero Dawn @ 16%
TV/Movies - The Last of Us (yes! it’s still sooo good!); Incredible Hulk (it was not too bad), Hereditary (I feel like it’s more about grief, dealing with tragic loss but yeah there were some pretty creepy moments.)
Learning - continuing with Udemy course on Rust - I started to remember how it was like learning a programming language, the good, bad, and the ugly.
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).