A Year of Productivity, My Art Progress

hi friends so i'm coming out of a pretty

intense year of productivity

and i wanted to give a review of what

that's been like so i figured since this

is my first video that i would start by

introducing myself

and the channel and kind of the journey

i'm on and after that

i wanted to go through some art progress

since the

main focus this year has been on art

from there

i'll go into the yearly review where i

kind of

go a bit deeper into how this year has

gone for me finally i'll

look a bit into the future of what's

ahead for me and the channel

so i won't go too deep into it on this

video but

it is what this journey and what this

channel is about for me in some sense

about two years ago my girlfriend passed

away

and after that i made a commitment

that would take everything i felt around

kind of what happened

and use it as a catalyst for positive

change in my life

i made a post on reddit around when that

happened i'll

link that in the description the

positive change

involves everything from living a

healthier life in terms of

diet nutrition fitness taking better

care of myself mentally

also being more deliberate with how i

spend my time but at the core of this

positive change is a game project i've

decided to

embark on i had a plan to make a game

with a good friend of mine for like a

really long time

hi tom and when i told him that i wanted

to do

something after what happened to lisz

he kind of suggested that we make the

game that something

that really lit the fire under me for

this project

but i also realized that for what i

wanted to do i had to basically do it

myself

bye tom for my day job i work as head of

engineering

at a startup called the safety wing i've

been at this company since

basically the beginning and i think we

have a chance to create something

pretty meaningful so i have no intention

of leaving this company anytime soon

but what that means then is if i want to

have any chance

of building a game at kind of the

quality and the

scope of what i'm aiming for i need to

get really serious about my

productivity and how consistent i am in

terms of working towards my goals

so that's where we are now we have this

game project that i've been working on

for about a year and a half now but most

of that has been basically working on

art trying to learn how to

draw or paint or whatever i'm supposed

to call it digitally the first year it

went okay

i had a lot of drive and a lot of

motivation which kind of made me feel

like i

could push through anything but i didn't

really have the tools

in terms of knowing how to make it

sustainable

and also didn't really know how to make

the most out of my time

which brings us into the review of my

art progress

so it's almost impossible to understate

how bad

i am or i guess was at art kind of when

i started out

that's also why i work for several

months on a game and kinda

knew that i wanted to do it alone but

also considering doing the art was just

completely out of the question

but i realized a couple of months in

when i started thinking about doing the

art

that the fact that i that it feels like

it's impossible for me

is actually a really good reason to go

after it

because obviously i want to make a good

game like a high quality game

but what's more important to me in this

project is kind of have just

some sort of project where i can just

pour my

motivation and my energy into

and that's why it's it's fine that doing

the art is really hard

okay so let's look at some art i figured

i would start

kind of showing my starting point

it starts off here with actually the

first

drawing i ever drew maybe in the last

like 10 15 years or something

obviously you draw a little bit when

you're a kid

which everyone does but i quickly

started to draw as little as possible

just because

i was so bad at it it is my honest god

attempt at

drawing 3d cubes from there you can see

some more attempts at drawing cubes

this is me trying to draw a diamond

here is my uh attempt at a bird

uh i think i know who this is supposed

to be but i'm not going to tell you

uh and here is my self portrait

this is when i had had some hair also

drawing myself with headphones so

just looking at these drawings it does

kind of look like i'm not trying at all

which

was kind of true because when you don't

know how to draw you kind of just no

don't know how to try okay now on to

some more

okay drawings i'm still not very good

but i think i've

improved a little bit at least so the

first two drawings

are some pencil drawings which i did

together with drawing on the right side

of the brain that book kind of gives you

some hacks

on how you can kick-start your drawing

which were really helpful

to me so here's some horse this was

drawn from

a reference basically like trying to

copy a picture in a book

and this is drawing from my hand

the next drawings are drawn with pen

they're assignments for a online

art learning resource called drawbox.com

which is

great uh first here we have some form of

plants which i don't know what kind of

plant it is

and then we have a rose by a scorpion

and a beetle of some sort and then there

is this a pelican i think maybe a

pelican

i don't know birds i don't know animals

in general so

those drawings were from the first half

of this year after that i kind of moved

on to

starting to try drawing some digitally

where

i started doing courses on a site called

cgma

which has been also pretty helpful they

have like eight week

courses which costs uh a little bit

but you get an instructor and you get

weekly assignments and you get reviews

so here we have my attempt i think this

was the first kind of actual

digital painting i did i haven't done

many but this was the first one

trying to draw my little sister

and then i had this uh one where i tried

to kind of draw my big sister as

the uma thurman in kill ball her face

became a little like pudgy or there's

something

off with her face but i was quite happy

with this still and then

we have some interior i drew all of

those drawings were kind of assignments

for cgma classes

so i never really got to spend that much

time on any of them

so lately i've been trying to work a bit

longer on two illustrations

one for each of my sisters i figured i

would show

one of them here it is still uh quite a

working progress and has a long way to

go

and i also really realize i'm way out of

my depth in terms of what i'm trying to

draw here i guess i'm kind of happy with

where i've

gone so far so here we have it in

black and white uh and then i tried

today to add some color which

well first time i'm doing it like this

so i don't know how the results came out

but

i guess it's okay so that's kind of

where we are at with the art for now

from here i want to start moving more

directly into game art but i also want

to

continue practicing kind of actual

paintings or drawings or whatever

just to get good at being able to create

a pretty picture somewhat because

this has become a skill that i'm more

interested in developing

now so while i am relatively happy with

the progress i've made in the arts

department i feel like where i'm

more satisfied is in terms of how i've

developed my routines and my habits

which kind of brings me into

the yearly review

i'll go more into time tracking in the

future i'm sure

but one of the things i've gotten quite

religious about this year

is time tracking i have these little

cubes

that i track basically every single hour

of the day

into 16 different buckets i think i can

show what

the output of those time trackers is

maybe here so i have a really good idea

of how i spent my time this year

i think i have about 300 days where i

tracked

24 hours a day and then 65 days then

which

i didn't track at all either because i'm

traveling or just not time tracking or

whatever

in those 300 days i spent about 1050

hours working on the game and

the art and stuff like that which

comes out at three and a half hours per

day which i'm really happy with

more so because it's been three and a

half hours each day something i do

as a routine not working

16 hours two days in the weekend every

now and then but the reason why i'm

doing time tracking

is not really to look into what i'm

spending my time on

it is more just to be really deliberate

about how i spend my time

so when i decide to do something i kind

of

set the timer for it and then i sit down

and that's what i do another thing i

started doing this year

is tracking habits there is a subreddit

called the x

effect which lets people post

goals and then check them off and then

share their success there

i started doing this in february where i

think i started with tracking

nutrition diet and fitness or something

like that

but then i quickly realized how potent

this was for me so

after february in march i ramped up to

nine habits and then

april and onwards i've had like 12

different habits that are tracked

you can see how that has gone here

i don't know how to show this but i

guess i will figure something out in

editing

i've had basically two kind of bad

months one is in june where things just

fell apart a little bit and then in

august where i was traveling

traveling has kind of always been a

little bit of a nemesis for me

in terms of productivity because when

i'm in my routine i kind of think of

myself as like a

freight train where i build up momentum

and then if there's no interruptions

i just don't stop but then when there

does come an interruption

everything stops and i also have a

tendency to rationalize

if i know there is an interruption

coming i can kind of say like oh

it's fine to take to stop doing my

habits

now because i know i'm going to be

traveling three days from now so i can

just like

lie in bed and be a potato for the rest

of those three days

so the fact that there's been a lot less

traveling this year for all of us

is definitely not hurt my habit

tracking habit tracking is one of those

things that has been really helpful for

me this year but that kind of brings me

to

what's up next for me and for this

channel

in terms of me and the game project as i

mentioned i kind of want to still

continue learning art generally but this

year i also want to start moving towards

making art for the game

the kind of end goal i have in mind for

the

next yearly update so 25th of november

in one year

is that i want to have a vertical slice

of the game

where i can kind of just have landed on

an art style and can show

some core gameplay elements and from

there i can kind of start

actually plucking away at making the

game

more flesh out so for the channel itself

i will include updates on how it's going

with the game

but the main focus will be on things

like what this video has been about

like building healthy habits or trying

to stay more productive

or anything in that ballpark

so when i'm recording this video i'm

sitting here at

zero views and zero subscribers so i

hope

if anyone made it this far that they

will take the time to

follow me on this journey the next two

videos i have planned is

one will be about how to manage a side

project

together with the job kind of like how

i'm doing with my game

and the other video will be about

building positive habits

and breaking negative habits and

anything i've learned in that

general area so i think that kind of

covers my basis for this yearly update

thank you so much for watching

and i'll see you all next time