A 2022 Post Mortem + 2023 Goals

Heyyo Everybuddy!

With 2023 already underway, like last year I want to take a bit to look back at the year that was, as well as outline some goals for the year ahead. 

2022 - The Year that Was

At the start of 2022, I set myself 2 Goals to accomplish over the year. unlike 2021, 2022 was a lot rougher of a year for me, So how did those go?

1. Make a Hypnagogia Prototype for Dream Diary Jam 2022 - I don't think this ended up happening at all. about halfway thru the year, around where the jam was, I ended up making some major shifts in development for both Hypnagogia and MBaW!, which ended up scrapping the game prototyping all together. while technically a failure, given where I moved Hypnagogia as a story since then, I'm not too bummed about this.

2. Make More Youtube Video's this Year- this one also feel thru very quickly. I had a shipping video planned for Febuary last year that I had all the art ready for, and a full script done, but as soon as the script was finished, I immediately hated it, and lost all drive for it. In part, a lot of the wind in my sails was sunk by seeing James Somerton's video on Shipping released the same month. a more successful, professional, and coherent video made me look at what i had half made, and it just looked so bad by comparison. so that video got tabled. as did any other ideas i had given that I kinda fell into a bit of a depressive funk for the first half of the year. Technically though, this goal was actually achieved, what with the first [s] page of Hypnagogia the webcomic, being a minute long animatic on youtube, so there is that.

MBaW! Development in 2022: Now, the big wall was MBaW! development, which also came to a grinding halt in 2022. the attempts to refactor MBaW! to speed up production backfired terribly, and by mid 2022 I was completely burnout out on My Boyfriend's a Werecat! and officially took a break from it to work on something more immediately creatively fulfilling.  I still wanted it to be thing, and still do now, but I realized I was making no progress and was miserable, so I switched gears, which I definitely feel was for the best. and of course the gear I switched over to was...

Hypnagogia Webcomic Development in 2022:

I officially launched Hypnagogia as a webcomic over on MSPFA on August 17th 2022, and since then have added a little under 300 pages to it as of the years end, as well as the aforementioned minute long animatic. It has been very creatively fulfilling finally trying to articulate this story I've had in my head since 2014 into a tangible form. I'll actually have a more detailed breakdown on Hypnagogia and its development soon in its own post, as a sort of Author Commentary/behind the scenes for each Chapter as they are completed, with the first two on Chapters 0 and 1 out whenever Chapter 1 is finished.

Other Developments:

2022 was overall a very hectic year personally and emotionally. I've talked about the more personal stuff over on Discord, but more professionally, 2022 was a the year of tech issues. I got a new Computer last year, and within a few months it developed a severe crashing issue that I could do nothing to fix. it got so bad that by November it was completely non-functional and I had to send it in for repairs. really dampened my productivity and my mood.

I also expanded my Streaming, officially moving over to Twitch as I now stream games with my friends on top of the usual art streams. Its quite enjoyable, and will likely to continue to do it, with casual expansions to it as we go. 

2023 - Plans for the Year

So while last years resolutions kinda both fell thru near immediately, I do want to try set more of them, as goals to strive for in 2023. They are: 

1. Advertise myself more - Yeah, lets just be shameless about this one. I want to grow my audience, and get more eyes of my various projects, so part of that is just advertising myself more. I'm generally super self-conscious about that, like I'm not good enough, or not done enough to advertize myself, but that's probably not true. I'm going to try and put myself out there more, get more attention on Hypnagoiga, and my Streaming and art projects, and possibly the Youtube videos and MBaW! if those ever manifest properly. 

2. Make More Youtube Video's this Year- Yeah I'm keeping this one on the list this year too. And while I will probably at least be able to fullfil it with another technicality, like another Hypnagogia Animatic, I'm also going to try and shoot for an actual like, video essay-ish video. I have something in mind. Something that feels like emotionally it has to be the first "real" video I make. We'll see if that comes true or not.

Outside of those, some general rundowns for plans in 2023:

Hypnagoiga

This is going be continuing as the semi-main thing I'm focuing on for 2023. the turn around is much shorter, and it's very creatively fullfilling, so it'll be the main focus for the time being.

Streaming

Continuing to stream once a week. exact times may change, as well as the subject, but for now, fun game times with chat and friends, as well as my monthly sketch request stream will continue to be a thing.

Art & Commissions

On general art, I definetly want to color and polish up more of my Daily Doodles, now that I have nearly 2 year backlog of them to comb thru for cute ones. As for Commissions, I think I'mma pull back on Coms a bit. set a small queue of 3-5 coms a month, and no more comic coms, since they're so time consuming.

My Boyfriend's a Werecat!

My desire to work on MBaW! is slowly coming back to me, but again I need to figure out what to do about it editing wise. I think I'mma need to go at the tangled knot of a mess I have with some shears to trim it down. mostly I think on the art. the long and painful lesson of why VNs don't have hundreds of sprites for each character. Which is mostly me needing to learn to lean more on the Novel part of the Visual Novel and less the Visual part, since that's what's been killing me.

We'll see. I've also just got a lot of life things i need to focus on and improve. 2022 was kind of a punch to the gut in a lot a ways. I hope 2023 can be one of recovery, growth and improvement.