Man, for a year where a good chunk of stuff happened, it really feels like it flew by. Honestly, I can still vividly remember writing my 2023 recap. Either way, here we are!

I'm gonna start with the art side of things. I feel the overall quality of my output is an improvement from last year. That's usually the baseline I try to hit. Like last year, I was doing a lot more projects this time, so the raw number of finished illustrations is still low. I made one of those month by month art summaries, and you can see I had to put sketches in some of them, haha! I actually did a LOT of sketching this year now that I think about it. Not too much more to comment on. Watercolor still seems to be my favorite.

Of course, I want to touch on projects! The first one I wanna mention is actually Pico Day.

If anything because it was probably the biggest traditional painting up to that point. It was also kind of last minute, so I must have been painting for three days straight lol. My only complaint is that I couldn't include all the characters I wanted to, and there are a ton of good comics on NG I couldn't get in. (Rorin Rorin, A Girl and Her Droid, Splatterbrain, Skelti-Castle. I am so sorry Snackers ;-;)

I also got to make a site skin this year!

This one was a real blast to work on. I wasn't totally sure how a watercolor painting would look as the site skin, but I'm so glad with how it came out. Tom and I exchanged ideas for a good while, and I think what we arrived on ended up being a real treat. A lot of other people seemed to think so, as the response was frankly overwhelming lol. Y'all showed this one a lot of love. I've said it a million times, but thank you for all the kind words, and thank you Tom for having me on for this.

Finally, the one that means the most to me, personally.

As some of you may know, Firewood has been my main ongoing project for more than a year now. This year, I was able to release chapters 4 and 5, an all-together 64 page two parter! These two chapters especially have been a JOURNEY. A lot of it was me testing myself on whether or not I could reliably continue a story. At this point, I'd say I'm pretty confident in that. I definitely think these are my best work so far in terms of comics. What I will say is that my process is constantly evolving. There was a lot of thoughts of optimization during these two. The main goal of course was to not compromise quality. There are a lot of hats you have to wear when making comics on your own. You gotta write and draw, sure, but you also have to be your own production lead.

I will say, watching this project grow has been insane. I made the first couple chapters with the mind set of proving to myself I could do it. Now this thing is easily graphic novel length. Quite a few of you guys came out to read the new stuff, and it warms my heart like nothing else. If you haven't read Firewood yet, you can check it all out here.

Honestly the non-art side of things was a little less eventful this year. The TMG meetup happened again, and that was a great time. I love being able to meet my Newgrounds pals in person. I don't think any other community has pushed me to the east coast before, let alone twice lol. You can see me in the photo if you squint reeeeeeal hard.

Honestly, that's about all. I've had smaller hangouts with NG pals here and there throughout the year as well. Just about everything else this year was outside of that realm.

And so, I'm now left looking on to 2025. If I were to pick a word to describe my feelings, it's uncertainty. I've been trying to sort through plans and goals, and I well and truly don't know what's going to happen. I feel like my body of work has only gotten better. I now have a graphic novel's worth of comic, and yet I'm just kind of asking myself, "what next?" and I don't have an answer yet. Course, I know trying to predict and curate the future is foolish. I've got a lot to think about for next year.

Anyhow, thanks for reading my word vomit! Regardless of what next year brings, I know art and NG will be a part of it. So thanks for sticking around, and here's to 2025!