2021 Retrospective and Looking Ahead

Well, 2021 is already almost over, and we get to do one of the good things about a year ending, which is looking back and seeing how much we've grown, and renewing our hope that next year will be a fresh new beginning.

To start, I've prepared my 2021 Art Summary:

(template here)

Compare to previous years:

Main differences I can see in 2021 from 2020:

- Higher resolution. 2-3x pixels for the canvas size dimensions from before. I like this because it allows me to add finer details and express my style better, and I get to keep my pixelart workflow without really putting myself into a "pixelart" pigeonhole. I don't think anyone really considers me a pixelartist nowadays lol

- Backgrounds. Nearly every pic in 2021 reflected in the summary has a BG (minus Cirno), even if it's simple. I do think it adds a big new dimension to the works.

- More storytelling. Each picture represents a kind of narrative or thing going on.

- An increased focus on composition/perspective. More interesting lighting. Definitely more varied than 2020 works in any case.

- I do think there is a charm to the previous years that kind of come from being forced into a lower res, but... well I'll keep doing the low effort low res doodles and spam :)

- Other stuff: I did some actual comics this last year, and was happy they were well received. Went from 76k to 159k followers on Twitter. Did a partnership with xppen and makeship. 

2022 Goals

I want to level up the polish and quality of my pictures, so I'll probably focusing a lot on improving and growing and studying rather than just putting stuff out for the sake of putting stuff out regularly. I also want to preserve the quirkiness of my older works because I liked it and am kinda seeing my newer stuff losing the charm, so I'll be trying to more actively inject that into my polished work. 

I don't know how much I want to focus on merch/partnership stuff. The plushie campaign went very well this year, but I also did nothing but post about that for almost an entire month. Not really what I want to do long term - so I gained a new appreciation for having a day job in that regard, lol.

Anyway I'm looking forward to the next year and I hope 2022 will get me even closer to where I want to be with my art :)

Thank you for your support!