Well this is a bit late...

I wanted to get a recap of last year done last week but I've been a bit busy with things, one of them being coming back home from an vacation overseas on New Year's Day! I was feeling tired and irritated from creative pursuits last month; luckily, this vacation came just in time to relax a bit. One of the main reasons I travelled overseas was to attend my cousin's wedding! I actually made an illustration for her and her husband:

I still need to plan out how to print out a canvas so I can directly send it to them. Anyway, let's move on to a personal review of my creative works last year!

Newgrounds Winter Festival 2022 Opening Animation

Having learned a lot in animation in the latter half of 2021, I wanted to put what I learned to the test in a fast-paced environment. News about the sequel to the 2021 Summer Fest came to me, and given I had experience working on that, I figured it'd be a convenient method to test myself.

I wound up actually doing a lot more for the animation than I expected. I actually started my main shot--the giant Girlfriend sequence--doing the latter half of December 2020, so I had extra time to help out covering other shots. The giant GF idea was probably my biggest idea in scope by then, and it's kind of a precursor to other animation ideas I had later in the year.

Palate Pallete - a personal artist study project

After working on the opening animation for the winter fest, I was left wondering what to do next. Aside from contributing a piece of artwork to Mabelma's entry for the Flash Forward Jam (more on that later), I didn't do much.

There was a constant thought that bothered me whenever I drew something back then: my art style seems lacking in something. Although I had a decent grasp on the fundamentals of art, it felt like I can't mold that understanding into creating something that is unique and that I like. Talking about the concept of art styles one night on Discord, as well as the idea of the "voice" behind the art, @immadametal suggested to me to try studying artists that I like and try to draw like they do to get a better grasp on their styles.

So I did a personal project to do just that! You can read more about that here.

Even though the project helped me learn a lot about how people can go about with their drawing process (especially in shape theory) and my personal style evolved a bit since then, I still feel like it's not something I'm personally satisfied with yet. That might just be a sign of doing something similar to this again to broaden my understanding, or to get back to working more on fundamentals. Either way, I do want to evolve my style to something similar to the studies I did below; they're the two that I liked the most, both in how I achieved my goals and how much I like the artists that I studied.

Participating in Newgrounds Events -- Collabs, Jams, etc.

Although I participated in only a fair amount of events happening on Newgrounds last year, they were actually very important in developing my skills rapidly, just like last year!

Flash Forward Jam - Mabelma's Trophy Collab

Mabelma was looking for help on the forums from anyone to contribute art to his entry for the Flash Forward Jam. I thought a funny, literal idea would be to contribute to it would be to make a trophy of a trophy girl/race queen. Maybe one day, I might revisit the character design and update her.

Summer Lovin' Collab

The first of the few events in the latter half of the year where I really went all in on animating. I was really bummed out that there were no Summer Animation Jams this year, as that was very helpful for me to kickstart animation ideas while not dragging myself out. When BrandyBuizel announced a one-off animation jam for this summer, I immediately went to work on my (first) entry, pushing myself to go beyond the static camera shots and low-key movements I've been used to doing so far. I still vividly remember one of my friends on Discord going crazy over the animatic I did for the volleyball shot.

I'm really proud of both entries I made, one for the personal push of going into uncharted territory, and another for getting both of these done within a week or so. It also renewed and revitalized my confidence in both animation and creative pursuits in general; I might have trouble refining my voice in illustrations, but I think I spoke loud and clear with animation.

Chenso Club Contest

Coming hot off the grill of the Summer Lovin' Collab, I really wanted to do more animating. Something where I can attempt something dynamic like the two entries I did for that collab. While working on other things, the Chenso Club Contest came up about a month later, and animated entries are accepted! Knowing that and basing my knowledge of the game entirely off the screenshots and the trailer, I got to work on animating something. Said something wound up being the 2nd place entry and winning me a neat coffee mug. Wow!

What caught my eye from the preview stuff was the attack where Blue turns into a giant blue buzzsaw mid-air. I took creative liberties to make her move and slice through enemies, eventually landing on the ground. Although I'm really proud of how the final product came out and how much I stuck to the source material, I couldn't help but notice that I didn't draw in the chainsaw trigger in the last shot, which bothers me a bit.

Sketch Collab 2022

You can watch my entry individually here.

Looking for more opportunities to satiate my need to animate, I looked to the Sketch Collab as a more relaxed way of just throwing out potential ideas to animate. Then I learned that the participant cap has been reached. Then later I learned that the cap was removed.

My entry is a potential scene of a larger idea I had in mind for a long while, starring the characters that appeared in my entry for the Epic Trailer Jam last year. The idea is that these two characters are training together in a laboratory-like control room as a re-occurring event in their job, with a scientist character watching over them and taking notes. It's partially why I didn't put up my entry on the Art Portal, because I do want to use or build upon what I did for the Sketch Collab for a longer animation. And there are some ideas in that animation that I do want to build upon--the moving first-person camera shot, the extreme shading and background darkening.

What's next?

I've been working on an original animation! You can see more details about that here. These are my rough animation updates for the first half of the short:

https://twitter.com/eigenbanana/status/1600928199893872640?s=20&t=ssVjB7MSI7K-kuKNuiY3-w

https://twitter.com/eigenbanana/status/1610342858116022273?s=20&t=ssVjB7MSI7K-kuKNuiY3-w

Other than that, I really do like to participate more in NG events than the last two years, if time permits. Not only are they fun, but I get more and more convinced that doing these really helps me with expediting the creative process. That is especially important for me as I tend to take things slower than I'd like.

Here's to a productive 2023!