I was feeling a bit lost on what to put down this month, and then I realized that it has been 4 years that I have been writing this monthly newsletter! I started doing this monthly newsletter as a way to keep myself accountable to the many goals I wanted to achieve, and now looking back, I’ve achieved many of them, as new goals continue to trickle in! Life is indeed full of learning and creating!
I hope to continue to write this update, to keep myself honest with my growth (or lack of), as well as encourage you, the readers, to give yourself permission to be creative.
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
Somehow I ran into a block while making the next game on GDevelop - time to find ways to ‘rewild’ my passion for this…
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
It is the month of Inktober! This is the sixth year I’m participating in this awesome event and looking back it is interesting to see how my skills and style developed. I’m grateful for Jake Parker and the Inktober team that hosted the event.
Weekly comics, Study drawings (#inktober52 ), and #FanArt - all paused due to Inktober
Writing
Book#2 project -“100 Drawings of Tang Dynasty Poems” (唐詩一百畫) - it’s out! First of the 3 volumes for this book series is now available as a hardcover on Amazon! Paperback and Kindle e-book editions will be a bit later, maybe after I put the 2nd and 3rd of this series first.
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”, but this month I wasn’t able to squeeze out much so I have nothing to show for.
The Web
No updates this month again…
Consuming Stuffs
Reading - Continue on Game of Thrones book 4 “A Feast for Crows”; completed reading 妖刀與天劍 by 上官鼎 (sorry I can’t find a formal translated title so let’s just say it’s a Chinese novel nicely intertwining historical events and characters with myths and kung-fu, it’s a fun read), also completed “天長地久 給美君的信” by 龍應台 (highly recommended, if you can read Chinese)
Gaming - Continued on A Plague Tale: Requiem, Alien: Isolation, God of War;
TV/Movies - Kingdom of Planet of Ape - it's OK, quite a few missed opportunities. (6/10); Kind of Kindness - I don't care what the critics say, I love its quirkiness and the storytelling!; “Wild Robot” - saw this at the local theater with my little one. It is quite good (8/10). The Penguin S.1. e.1~4 (what an intense show); Knives Out - this has been sitting on my queue for… years. and I finally saw it. It’s fantastic indeed!
Learning: not yet gotten back to learning Procreate Dreams but this month I looked into some drawing techniques…
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).