WARNING: LONG POST AHEAD. GRAB A SANDWICH FIRST.

Maybe it's because I've been a shut-in long before the pandemic and will likely still be one in some (increasingly-hard-to-believe) future where I no longer have to think about masks, but my 2021 wasn't the worst year of my life and was certainly better than my 2020. That's not to say there weren't personal disappointments and even tragedies for me this year, as well as concerns about the state of US politics and democracy, but none of them directly had anything to do with COVID-19 and would have still happened in any given year prior to the pandemic. In fact, if it weren't for the new Omicron variant suddenly re-activating my "worry-wart" nature, I would say I actually finished off 2021 strong with getting a new day job, plus a long-term freelance animation project and wrapping up the year with this lovely 3D sculpt commission I got from FlikkiShassArt:

Deactivating my Twitter account back in April and my Facebook/Instagram account in August or September also helped improve my mood quite a bit. I do want to make my art as easy to find online as possible, but the constant "culture war" bickering on more those two more-mainstream sites really demotivated me from making art to the point where even just quickly uploading my art and leaving took nerves of steel, so I bit the bullet and "cancelled" myself from those sites before anybody else could. Facebook was kind of dying with the younger generation, anyway, and I'm pretty sure you can't use either site uninhibited without getting an account, not like how you can browse Newgrounds, Deviant, Ko-fi, YouTube, ArtStation or any other sites without an account, so I don't think getting rid of those accounts made much of a dent on my discoverability anyway.

But anyway, on to the resolutions that will hopefully improve my art career regardless of the world's state by the end of this year:

• I will simplify my art style for the sake of those of you with weaker Internet speeds/"TikTok" attention spans, which includes uploading at smaller, more manageable resolutions and not using noisy, busy textures unless necessary. Like most aspiring 3D artists, I fell into the trap of making "This will be Graphics in 2013"-type pieces and my recent commission from FlikkiShashArt gave me a much-needed reminder that, unless I'm making photo-realistic VFX, simpler color textures are generally better.
• Focusing...focusing...I will try to specialize more this year and hopefully be a "master" at one thing instead of just merely being competent at a lot of things. It's no secret that I want to work in the LA animation industry, so while I want to do my best to preserve 2D frame-by-frame animation I do need to get much, much better at 3D modeling specifically to even stand a chance in Burbank because there are basically ZERO 2D jobs nowadays, thus most of my posts here will likely be 3D models and sculpts from now on. However, the current super-secret freelance animation project that I'm working is 2D frame-by-frame, so those who followed me specifically for 2D stuff will still have at least that to look forward to in...2024 or so...
• Quality over Quantity--maybe this happens to a lot of artists who are also Sonic the Hedgehog fans, but in the past I was more interested in building my social media presence through a large quantity of uploads instead of just making a few quality pieces a year. This of course results in inconsistent quality where one of my pieces may turn out to be as beloved as Sonic 2, OR it turns out to be an insulting mess like Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric (I think Sonic '06 is over-hated for the most part), but most of the time it is just aggressively-mediocre noise like Sonic 3D Blast or Sonic & The Black Knight. My super-busy schedule going into 2022 gives me a perfect opportunity to try a more "Super Mario-esque" approach of going quiet for a while, but then uploading a potential modern classic when you least expect it.
• Finally, spread some much-needed positivity and good vibes--obviously I can't promise that our world leaders and their loyal followers will be less petty, that climate change will be solved, or even that the world will be vaccinated to the point where COVID variants will no longer be a society-altering issue, like the cold or the flu, let alone eradicated entirely like smallpox, but I can try to distract you from the news with funny-looking character designs. As I pondered leaving Twitter, I realized how inherently stupid it is to try to have a good-faith discussions on touchy issues on websites that either severely limit your character count or is filled with rude trolls that respond with "TL;DR." When you think about it, the only thing social media is good for is easy-to-digest art and videos and maybe funny jokes if you're more of a writer-type--how Twitter and Facebook in particular became infamous for political bickering when they are not even well-suited for thoughts that take more than 3 words to express is beyond me. But anyway, I'll probably avoid commenting unless I'm super-impressed with a piece to avoid potentially starting another flame war and focus more on uploading characters and liking other's stuff in an attempt to at least make portions of the community less anxiety-inducing. If we're stuck inside waiting for rich people to fix the world, we might as well try to make the Internet more chill in comparison while we wait, right?