2026 art goals + review
Happy 2026!! 🎉🐴🎆 and happy Behind the Scenes anniversary!! ✨
It also marks the eighth year of my art freelancing/(almost) daily art posting, I think that's really cool that it's been going that long. Looking back, spending the past 8 years drawing and making stuff I like is quite something! I feel so proud... ;w;
Addressing issue from last year: with some help I upgraded the server for BTS. The issue I mentioned in 2025's post about the website turning off randomly seems to happen much less now, fortunately! I'm glad it's solved now, more or less!
How was 2025?
I wrote that I wanted to be more active on social media websites since I wasn't that active in 2024. But I was even less active in 2025... ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯ though I still post quite often here, I wonder if that counts as being active socially.
There wasn't any new project publications, only updates to my existing projects. I also continued working on the ongoing collab projects, for example Re:Curse.
There are some changes around my work desk last year: I used more of the space in my desk, as I made many more analog drawings. I divided my desk into two: laptop + drawing tablet on one side, and a pile of ink bottles, fountain pens, dip pens, watercolour palettes, and markers on the other side. Whenever I got some kind of art block, I scooted to the other side of the table and it helped refresh my brain to make something different. Last year, it seems like I made more analog drawing. It was fun!
I have been dwelling into pen, ink + paper quite much in 2025. To channel this new interest, I started journalling of some sort in paper instead of typing it. Nothing special, mostly doodles, my thoughts, and ideas for stuff. Consider it like an offline, unfiltered BTS. My writing isn't fancy, but when people say penning down thoughts help slow mind down, they're right. I grow to love writing down little ideas of stories in my cheap pocket notebook (like 2€ for 2) and every now and then I'd scan it and create a digital copy of them. I'll share them here slowly, but I'd like to accumulate quite a bunch of them first before releasing it. And since I write a lot of personal stuff, I'd like to filter those out of internet consumption... They're really boring, I am sure of that. :p
2025 art goals review
I looked back at last year's goals. I made these fancy board, bingo thingy. I didn't make a single bingo lol...
Wah...! 🙈 Not a very proud year of me... It was quite a slow one.
The bingo card is just an extension of the goals board, so I will not go through them in detail.
Steam page with released games ✅
All thanks to Choose Wisely Festival. I wrote about this on yesterday's post. Without the Festival's pressure, I think none of my Steam games would be public by now.
2026 calendar (on-time) ✅
It was basically a 2025 calendar idea repurposed for 2026 as I couldn't make the last year's one on time. I lost my calendars streak 😔 hopefully I can resume it for the future years.
5 full illustration ✅
I think I did it!
Some look quite rough (not fully rendered) but I still like them so much, I made them available in my gallery. I count them as full illustration!
Now, for the failed goals:
Blooming Chimes writing ❌
While outlining it was fun for around 2 months, I was stuck in a certain scene for months. I know what would happen in arc 2, but I had this difficulty in connecting two scenes together. Staring at it for days didn't help, so I decided to take a break from it until an aha! moment returns to me. Meanwhile, I've been having little scenes idea here and there and I've been writing them down, not chronologically.
Publish one new VN title ❌
I wanted to work on non-jam VNs, but I took my sweet sweet time working on them. Wow, the power of jams and deadline really works on me...
Read 10 VNs ❌
I downloaded many interesting looking ones, and played some made by dev friends. I don't know if I finished 10 actually. But I read a lot of books, and since the goal didn't state 'books', I can't mark this as done. I don't need to be so technical do I, but yeah..
2026 art goals
A simple board would work, no need for such fancy bingo board:
I renamed it to "wishful to-do", it sounds better than "goals" haha. I will still generally call it goals, though. But by calling it to-do, it gives the vibe of less pressure, thus, relieving the mental stress upon myself.
- Reapers on Duty progress
I wrote "progress" instead of "finish" to not put too much pressure on it. - Blooming Chimes outline done
I don't know if this is possible, yet. I started to pick more scenes that are scattered around my brain. I will slowly string them together throughout the year. - More Steam pages release
I want to get them out of the "Coming Soon" jail, when the time is right. - 2027 calendar
I have a concept I brewed in 2024, I hope 2027 is the year it will materialise! - 5 full illustration
Hopefully it's a way to improve my artistic skills! - Lunar New Year Lena art
An extension of the "5 full illustration" to-do. I think the term rings nicely! - More fanart
I'm looking to draw more fanart for fun! - More commissions
It would surely help me in many aspects in life! It's also great to widen my repertoire of what I draw, increase my portfolio and network. - Read more
I will no longer limit this to VNs. Books, mangas, and more count as well! - Use pens + inks more
I've bought enough last year. I also bought some more at the end of last year which haven't arrived to me yet – but this year is the year of using them all! - (finally?) Learn B3D
I keep this to-do because I really, really want to do it...
There are some goals/to-do I have but didn't put in the list above, such as "finishing Re:Curse" (since it's a group project) and many personal ones which I think is irrelevant to put here. I also don't put "improving skills" as goals because I don't know how to measure it...
This year's list is significantly longer than last year's. After a slow 2025, I hope to pick the pace up in 2026! Let's see what the year brings us. ^_^)99
Now, back to drawing, coding, replying to e-mails, and making more fun things 🫡