What a long year, huh?

I'm no good at exchanging sentimentalities, so here's the raw deal:

Newgrounds

It's nice to see this place come alive again. I don't participate in many collabs myself, but I do enjoy checking in and seeing what everyone is doing. There will surely be more bumps in the road for Newgrounds, but I don't expect anything that will seriously challenge the core principles of this website.

Professional life

My first year as a self-employed artist comes to a close!

This endeavor was a success so far, I got to animate for some cool game projects and work with professionals from all around the world, as opposed to being confined to my shrinking domestic industry. Getting consistent 2D work in germany has been getting more difficult, so this was a much-needed escape and I'm glad it paid off.

One of the games I currently animate for is Gold Gold Adventure Gold, a stylish rpg management sim where you try to manage a town of colorful fantasy adventurers and other weirdos. The animation style is very reminiscent of stuff from the golden age of the internet (like NCH and Epic Battle Fantasy), so I felt right at home. Newgrounds set me up for this, I can see Toms beady-eyed avatar smiling down on me from the clouds like Mufasa.

Personal projects

My original plan was to wrap up the Lago 4koma comics in 2025 and upload them as one big submission, but I had a few ideas too many.. now there are 5-6 pages left to do, and that's after I cut some scenes out. Once these experimental 4komas are done, I want to restart work on the proper story comic after all - simply mentioning this feels like I'm already jinxing it, so I'll shut up now.

I also hope to make more illustrations (with backgrounds..?) in 2026, since my gallery looked a bit dry this year:

Edit: Videogames

I didn't play many new games this year, mainly because there was just nothing that interested me.. not even the Switch 2 lineup. My Game of the Year is Hollow Knight: Silksong and I also played Ender Magnolia, another great metroidvania. I didn't touch Monster Hunter: Wilds due to the justified negative buzz and bought Rise instead, which had much more of what I was looking for in a MonHun. Aside from that, I continued to slave away in the Deep Rock Galactic mines, which continues to be my favorite coop multiplayer game.

I also finally caved to Todds demands after 14 years and bought Skyrim, which felt like a time capsule of another era in game development. Took a ton of mods to fix basic functionality, but It is bigger than the sum of its parts and I can see why it was so influential. Can Bethesda even pull off another one of these?

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tl;dr: Most of my time went into professional work, so I want to set some time aside for personal stuff in 2026. Figuring out a healthy balance between work and hobby is pretty much my new years resolution!

Have a good one.