2020 Recap

It's finally the end of 2020! This has been a crazy year, as I'm sure it has been for many people. But there were some really great things that came from it as well, so it's been a rollercoaster of a year for sure! Art and personal projects have been a bit of a struggle, but life, in general, has been improving overall.

Here's a summary of this year's art:

At the beginning of the year, I started out by participating in OC Art Trades over on deviantART, which was a fun way to draw characters that weren't my own while making people happy. It was a lot of fun, but unfortunately, once deviantART changed to Eclipse, it really took that project down, as the website is no longer optimized for Groups, and the founder of the Group had to step down. This happened around May, when everything else in the world got crazy.

  

My friends and I decided to start creating art for an OC Trading Card Game, which we plan to eventually make into a real game once we finish the art.

 

I made some progress on The Nays like writing more of Rocko's past and leading up to the Ginko Eventure (that we still haven't written yet). 

 

I started to really enjoy doing more storyboard/beat board moments of Eventures, which has been a lot of fun, and a fast way to really show off The Nays.

There was a period in the summer when I was doing a bit more NADs again, so I could get some of the more main characters (along with side ones, as usual) drawn that I usually miss in the summer. 

RPG Maker MZ came out in the summer, so I had a lot of fun working on new test projects in that and reminiscing on old RPG Maker games that I had made in the previous engines. And then in August, I did a bunch of Nay Events.

In October, I did OCtober as my Inktober prompt. And then for the next few months, I worked on illustrating an Eventure that my brother wrote, and turned it into a gift for him on Christmas. It's published and online here!

Towards the end of the year, during my break, I started to get back into game design and learning. I made a 3D platformer test to teach myself Unity. And then I started on a 2D fighting game that I've been wanting to make for awhile. I'm still not sure if it'll be in Unity, Game Maker, or something else, but it's a project I've had in mind for awhile now.

So overall, I've worked on a few various projects, and now that I lay it all out, it feels like more than it did at the time, which is good!

In my personal life, I've made a lot of transitions as well. When everything went crazy in spring, my work also drastically changed to keep up with the times. I worked a lot of overtime over the summer and did a lot of professional development. This included coaching people, making big decisions, managing a massive Discord server, and basically touching every course we have to some degree. I even got to do more art with our 2D animation course and Roblox projects. So it's been a lot of learning and growing.

Outside of work, I had some rough times in my personal life towards the beginning of the year, so after seeking out some help, I was inspired to finally move out of that situation. In the summer, I did virtual visits to apartments with my best friend, and eventually, we found a place we loved. And in September, I finally moved out of my parents' house and into my very own apartment in Columbus! 

I thought it was crazy to be moving into my first apartment during a pandemic, but it ended up being the right choice, and I'm so much happier now than I used to be. The downside has been that it's been harder to work on writing more of The Nays, living far apart from my brother, but we make it work during visits, and I'm sure I'll come up with some kind of system once I'm more situated in a more normal year.

This year, in terms of art, I didn't really worry about daily art or posting my art online as much as I used to, because I wasn't necessarily creating art to post anymore this year. That's why Blogger has turned into a place where I really want to focus more on processes, and posts like this one, where I don't really have "daily posts". That's what my deviantART, Instagram, and Discord are for. I've been realizing I want to focus less on my social media presence, and more on learning new skills and working towards developing The Nays' story. Blogger just doesn't seem like the right platform for posting daily like I used to, and it felt redundant to share those blog posts to the websites that I already posted daily to. So I kind of want this platform to be its own place, and that's why I'm really deciding to repurpose it overall.

But that's been the year! It's been a crazy one for sure, and a lot has been going on. While I don't know if I improved much specifically in art, I do know that I've grown a lot as a person, gained some professional skills, and learned a lot of new things. So it's been a crazy year, but honestly not so bad, considering what's going on in the world.

Blogger: A New Purpose

Hey, it's been a while since I last made a blog post here. 

Card Art of Sarah for an OC TCG I've been on and off working on with friends.

This has been a weird year. I've been keeping up on posting art on a few other sites, but I realize I kind of abandoned Blogger, unintentionally. I don't plan to abandon it forever though. I'm merely planning to repurpose what I use this blog for. Any time I want to showcase progress on an illustration from start to finish, or just post a lot of drawings from a bigger project, I plan to post those all at once here. I also will still make my yearly end of the year recap and beginning of the year posts. I just don't plan to use Blogger as a way to show frequent art updates like I used to. 

If you're interested in those, check out my Discord server, Instagram, or deviantART. Those are the places I'm most active and will be posting most frequently. 

I'll talk more about why I'm making this change in more depth in a few months when I make my recap of the year post, but as I mentioned earlier, it's been a weird year, and rather than abandoning Blogger entirely, this is what I decided was best going forward. Though I'll probably only be making a few posts a year on here, I'm not leaving for good. 

Because it's been so long, here's some art I have created this year:

Val's NAD

Mooth in TWEWY style

I'll be sure to post more in my later posts, like the yearly recap, and anything else that comes before that as well. So anyway, thanks for sticking with me during this time. Until next time!

Old Forgotten Posts of 7 Years: Part 4

This is the final post of catching up on old forgotten blog posts! These are mostly from 2020, but there is one from later that I'm sneaking in here. I'm writing this in 2025, but posting as if it was posted in 2020.

Various Drawings for CUPdates (February 16, 2024)

Some of these at the end are art and things I meant to post a couple of years ago. I wrote PS Chat Eventure and was reading more Eventures. After re-reading You-Know-Who's Reign Eventure, I drew The Gek with his tentacles being web-like.

I also drew more NADs like Gina.

Also Yoshima.

And Filemon!

I drew a few Digital Sketchbook drawings. December was pretty minimal though.

Jinny and I decided to make a Guess Who game with our characters, so we made a template and printed out the prototype to test!

I also continued the Mr Marcus World Event. These were photos with Nays drawn in them (Doge and Larry).

And lastly, (not pictured), I did a test in Smack Studio. I started with using the Allen Walker sprite from JUS, and then was planning to do some with my own drawings. I didn't get that far on this, but hoping to come back to it!

Nay Attacks: Part 1 (February 19, 2020)

I've been working on how The Nays use their Marks to fight, and I think I'm finally getting somewhere. 

Here's a drawing I did of Rammako using his with a sword attack! He mostly uses this for defense, but also occasionally to attack when he needs to.

Pigger uses a whip mixed with claw weapon where he can control its direction and speed. I got the inspiration for this panel from Renji’s attack in Bleach.

Pubby has the ability to disappear for a few seconds to use this time for sneaking around and evading enemies. I was inspired by the after image strike attack from Dragon Ball/Z.

Jibu can bring cards to life and use them as a barrier or means of attacking with his Mark's abilities. I was inspired by Yugi-Oh for this drawing.

Scott uses destructive powers of blowing up and attacking with his blood. I referenced Sasuke from Naruto for this drawing.

Larry can make his Mark glow and shoot up a beam of light, which serves as an S.O.S. in times of need. I tried to take some inspiration from Sakura in Naruto and Orihime in Bleach.

Gair can use earth powers to build walls or break the ground in order to protect himself or fight against his enemies. For inspiration on this one, I looked at Gaara (Naruto), Todoroki (My Hero Academia), and Ed (Fullmetal Alchemist) for different ways that elemental walls are portrayed.

Zandra uses her legs to maneuver around quickly and can use them to float around like a feather. I was inspired by Lenalee from D.Gray-man for this drawing.

Recent Sketchbook Doodles (February 19, 2020)

I haven't been keeping up on scanning in my sketchbook drawings as regularly, but here are a few I've done over the past few months!

Paper People Nay Event (February 19, 2020)

 This was a Nay event I did awhile ago where I drew a bunch of paper people and made scenes out of them.

Nay Moments (February 13, 2020)

I've been watching My Hero Academia lately and it's kind of reminding me of The Nays in a way, at least in terms of character interactions and moments. So it inspired me to draw some moments from the Battle Vs. Ginko Eventure!

First NADs of 2020 (January 25, 2020)

Here are the first Nay-A-Day drawings that I did in 2020.

Requiem is a disheveled young man who isn't really much of a leader. He sticks with his tight-knit group of Hannah and Xitrev and barely strays to meet and make friends with outsiders. He's usually a better listener and follower, which is why he works well as a bartender. Though he's usually rather serious, he does have moments where he'll throw bananas at his customers if they're causing him trouble. Requiem meets an unfortunate end after his battle with Zumoi, in an attempt to get revenge for his friend Xitrev.

Pixel Art (February 5, 2020)

My friends were talking about old animated forum avatars, so I made one of Pubby.

OC Art Trades (January 21, 2020)

It's been almost 2 years since I did my last art trade, but this year I think I'm gonna try to do more of these because they're always a lot of fun. 

This is one that I did for someone over on deviantART.

Fanart (January 16, 2020)

Can't wait to play DBZ Kakarot tonight! I've clocked at least 80 hours on Xenoverse 2, so I think it's time to move onto the next DBZ game.

Old Forgotten Posts of 7 Years: Part 3

Here's part 3 of my old blog posts from 2019-2020. I'm posting these in 2025, but scheduling them to show up back when they were actually made.

Doodles from Work (February 10, 2020)

Here are some drawings I did for fun at work!

I kinda want to start spending more time on single drawings. This one took me a lot longer than my regular sketches and I used a much more painted technique, but it was a lot of fun and I'd like to do more of these!

This was a fun drawing I did of Warbler!

We drew penguins at work, because why not?

 

Evo is a character I've been using in some of my projects at work, so I kinda was thinking of redesigning or coming up with a more final design for future assets.

Concepting and Experimenting (February 5, 2020)

These were some fun little experiments I did recently.

I tried out a different coloring experiment during my lunch break today. Color is something I've always felt like I needed to work on, so more experimenting to come!

I made some concepts for what Pidgebeetle's training uniform for The Nays might look like. I wanted to make it more bird-like, and redid his symbol.

More Music Mania! (January 25, 2020)

I was kinda stressed one day so I did some Music Mania doodles and it helped!

Spy Snugs (January 15, 2020)

This was a Nay Event I did about a year or so ago. It had to do with browsing Twitch and drawing over screenshots/guessing what the other person chose. You can read the full rules here.

Here was the digital drawing of Persona Q.

And then these were the traditional portions.

January Music Mania Sketches (January 11, 2020)

Here are a few recent Music Mania sketches that I did during in January!

Wow this was a productive Music Mania! I came up with a bunch of new ideas to fix up the Land of the Clouds Eventure AND I finally came up with an idea on how to use this character that I designed almost a year ago.

I did this one during my lunch break.

Warbler Vs. Melinda Storyboards (January 7, 2020)

So right now at work, I'm writing a 2D Animation course, which means I get to create lots of art! These are some storyboard sketches I did for some of the content I'm working on.

First Drawing of 2020 (January 2, 2020)

It's the first drawing of 2020 and the first drawing of this decade! And to keep up my tradition that was started at the end of 2 decades back, it features Cipo.

This past year I played a bunch of games, including Trails of Cold Steel. Cipo picked up the line they use in battle of "It's my turn!" and often says that whenever Nays are playing games so that they'll stop playing or move on. Though he never actually takes his turn, he still has enjoyed saying it for fun.

Check out the links in this image description to see the previous years!

And here's the process gif!

Fanart Doodles (September 25, 2019)

I beat Trails of Cold Steel last night, so I decided to doodle Rean during my lunch break today! The ending was really good and I'm already waiting for the second one to come in the mail so I can continue the story.

FF8 Composition Studies (September 3, 2019)

With FFVIII Remastered coming out today, I decided to do some composition studies based on some of the camera angles in Dollet's maps during my lunch break.