retrospection

35 things that made my year

| Saskia

Inspired by Austin Kleon‘s 100 things that made my year list, I wanted to do something similar. I couldn’t get to 100, though, so that’s gonna be a goal for next year. For now, enjoy my 35 highlights of 2022:

  1. Seeing Red Hot Chili Peppers perform live! It wasn’t the best concert I’ve been to (and I haven’t been to many), but I had a great time nevertheless.

  1. Everything around the release of the graphic novel METRO 010: meeting the other illustrators at the release party, seeing the book in bookstores, realizing I’m an published illustrator now!

  1. Being able to give a guest lecture at Mediacollege Amsterdam!

  1. Participating in the Power In Numbers exhibition by Gallery Nucleus again! My piece is still up for sale, and so is last year’s!

  1. Visiting Copenhagen with my boyfriend!

  1. Working on my first card game this year, Mandala Mind! It will hopefully be released beginning of next year.

  1. Going to Gamescom and visiting Cologne!

  1. Enjoying the warm weather in my own garden this summer 🙂

  1. Learning to identify wild plants!

  1. My first home-grown beans!

  1. Upgrading from my 10-year-old Wacom Intuos to an Huion Kamvas 24 Pro!

  1. Attending semi-regular figure drawing classes again!

  1. Starting a monthly newsletter and being able to stick with it!

  1. Participating in #pleinairpril and winning a 1-year subscription to Clip Studio Paint!

  1. Discovering the work of Esther Morales – I love the way she uses lines in her drawings, mesmerizing!

  1. Participating in 3 game jams this year: the Global Game Jam, Ludum Dare 50 and Ludum Dare 51!

  1. Setting up a new bookkeeping system that works way better than the old one! It’s still Excel, but with more formulas, haha!

  1. Attending a couple conventions (The Big Draw & Tomofair) and realising I don’t feel ready for more.

  1. Alternatively, I was able to sell more print-on-demand products via Etsy this year, which I’m very happy about!

  1. I also sold my very first original drawing in January!

The cactus only flowered for one day!
  1. And of course reading through reviews of happy customers!

  1. The many events I attended this year, Playgrounds, Fantasy Fest, even the tiny Fantasticon.

  1. Meeting Eva Toorenent in Arnhem!

  1. Our cactus flowered for the first time! (and it got cactus fruit too!)

  1. Teaching animation and game design workshops to high school students! It is not always easy but the people I do this with are amazing and it is really rewarding to seeing things ‘click’ with those kids.

  1. Visiting the city archive to look up construction drawings of our house. Going through those old documents was pretty cool!
  1. Working on a very cool game project that has been shelved unfortunately! I hope we will continue working on it someday!

  1. BNO Start studio visits! Through this program by the Dutch Designers Association, I visited the studio of Hansje van Halem, CLEVER°FRANKE and Afdeling Buitengewone Zaken. Inspiring, even though they do very different things than me!

  1. Visiting Irene Goede at her atelier ‘t Koewegje during their open atelier day!

  1. Accidentely seeing the film Moonage Daydream (long story short: I came for another viewing that was cancelled and the lady behind the counter took pity on us and gave us tickets to this film)

  1. Visiting the Gustav Klimt exhibition with my sister!

  1. Drawing with friends at the Rotterdam Natural History Museum!
I also got U2’s Rattle and Hum for 50 cents at another shop!

  1. Analysing my social media and figuring out what each platform has actually brought me! Something I can recommend every artist and creative business in general, because where you spend most time and/or effort might not be the platform that actually does something for you.

  1. Collecting CDs from trift shops!

  1. And last but not least: blogging more! I still have a lot unfinished drafts laying around that I might never finish, but writing a bit every now and then is something I really enjoy and I’m happy that I was able to do so this year!

It was a very good year…

| Saskia

I’m not exactly a Sinatra fan, but I thougth this would make a striking title to my yearly retrospection post, haha! It has hardly been a very good year in many aspects, but I feel happy and humbled that the pandemic hasn’t hurt me or my business financially!

I started this year trying to get a foot between the door in the board game industry. I contacted a lot of companies during January and February and was even asked for a quote for Christmas themed puzzles. I attended OBJECT with fellow BNO members and had my first and last convention on March 7th and 8th.

Don’t look at my sleepy head, I was a bit nervous tabling by myself again! Too bad the convention itself was not too exciting either; there were very little visitors.

And then everything closed down in this year’s first lockdown on March 17th.

Right then I was in the middle of starting to work on a game prototype with Roofkat – I had visited him in Zaandam in February, a good two-hour trip from my house. The lockdown forced us to work via Skype, but it would probably been the same without it.

A lot of my fellow convention artists weren’t as lucky as I was; they depended on the income of events like Comic Con Rotterdam. And one by one they were all cancelled. Some set up a online equivalent: Stay Home Comic Con. People could join the Discord channel, watch streams and there was a website with links to everyone’s webshops. I participated in the stream too (woo, first time!) and I had 60 watchers at one moment! I enjoyed doing it, so I considered streaming on a regular basis, but I haven’t really picked it up yet. Maybe because I’m secretly too nervous for it!

Spring passed and the first holiday I was going to spend with my boyfriend was cancelled. I spend the summer mostly working, trying to enjoy the ridiculous warm weather whenever I could. But with everything live going online, I was able to attend conventions and events I never would have attended live, being too far for me to travel too. I made a lot more international contacts, which might help me in the future. That’s definitely a good thing that this pandemic has brought me!

Some other highlights of this weird year:

  • I made a mural with friends of Draw Club Rotterdam at a local culture centre! We were almost finished halfway March but didn’t get the chance to add the final touches until August. It has become a Frankenstein’s monster of different styles, but it was a great experience working together!
  • I was asked to jump in and create some map illustrations and icons right before Godhood’s launch. It was great to work on that game again after a few years, so much has changed since then.
  • The game VR Giants, where I did level concept art for, had a very succesful Kickstarter campaign! I was able to share some things I made for it, hopefully more soon!
  • I participated in three zines this year: A Pokémon Snap zine, one focused on character design and a monster girl zine. The two last ones had very similar timelines which made meeting the deadlines quite stressful. I hadn’t expected to get in them both!
  • I also participated in the Artstation Keyframe challenge, but should have made more time for it; I was unable to finish it before the deadline. :/
  • And other cool things I’m not allowed to share yet, unfortunately!

Looking back, I definitely want to have another go at trying to get into board games. I think I’m limiting my options too much only trying to do video games. After all, there are plenty of board games in need of fantasy art too!