ahhh 2026, new year full of new possibilities
i started the year from making and uploading i'm sorry snail on january 1st, without even realizing that i'm uploading my first game of the year on the first day of new year
really if this was like 2021 - 2022 i would probably just say "that'll do" and not make another game for the entire year
it looks like on the games front this might be a bit of a year of nswengine on my part, i am planning on maybe releasing some more games with it, and maybe adding a few things to the engine in the process
not sure if any more people will use it, but i wasn't really expecting other people to use it in the first place, i wrote nswengine primarily for myself
really the fact that some people did make games with it last year came in as a surprise, but it was also super fun seeing these games
the idea behind nswengine was to utilize four-dimensional movement and play with that directionality and text, and the few people who used it instantly understood the intention and made really special games
really for an idea that was quickly slapped together in one day, i don't think i could be any happier with it
i am finishing up work on a GUI editor for nswengine, and i will play around some more with it before probably moving on to other things, but i'm not really planning a lot more when it comes to games this year
really i've been looking a bit more to art as a thing for 2026
on that front, i think rather than planning any specific projects, i will just go with the flow, and try to see what seems like the most fun
more than anything, i would like to make a step towards working through my inhibitions
in the past i used to feel a lot of negativity towards my art, which i think was just reflective of the way i felt about myself in general
even after 2 years, 5 years, 10 years of doing art, my drawings always seemed bad and amateurish to me
i learned to put myself down in various ways, even when i've seemingly made a bit of "progress", like:
i'm not good at art, i can only do digital (???)
OR
i'm not good at art, i am using the underlying sketch as a crutch (idk what i was thinking here)
OR
i'm not good at art, i just use references all the time (most artists use references all the time, again idk what i was thinking)
in the end i decided to teach myself to draw with ink directly to paper, with no underlying sketch, and usually with no reference, because that seemed like maybe the hardest thing to do
looking back, i think the thinking was that i wanted to "teach my art a lesson"
i invented this vision of myself in the future where i will be able to just picture a form in my head and will it into existence, like that meme of a guy who imagines a drawing and projects it onto the paper with an art beam
the funny thing number 1 is that this had actually worked to an extent, i mean if i focus i can draw some things completely from memory/ imagination now without using a sketch or reference
the funny thing number 2 is that i no longer think that's actually that cool
i mean yeah it's "a kind of a skill" i guess, and it's actually very good for improvement, it forces you to visualise forms properly before you put them down on paper, as well as to stop making corrections all the time and just finish the drawing
if i was still interested in "progress" and "improvement" i guess that would be an amazing tool
the problem is i'm no longer interested in these things
not because i am burnt out or anything, it's actually quite the opposite, i was having a good time drawing last year - i think i just stopped believing the idea of self-improvement as an artist
there are a lot of artists out there who have not had the amount of practice that i've had in my +15 years of drawing, and maybe have less technical skill in some areas, but they are HAVING FUN
in the end, what's the point of improving your technical skill in the first place, if you are not HAVING FUN
i don't have any plans for monetizing my art in any way, i don't plan on doing commissions, i don't really care about getting a following on socmedia, i sure as hell don't want to work in the industry. so i really have no use for technical skill.
this is why going forward, instead of thinking what area of my art i could improve, i would just like to look for ways that i could be HAVING FUN with my art
i already discovered some things on that front this month, and i'll continue doing that. probably that will result in me posting a bit more sketches on bsky, but not sure
meanwhile, i am returning once more to the good old goblin mines, to come back at a later time
sending really the warmest of considerations your way
peb