Mondaily with more old artwork and a brief Christmas recap

It was a really, really lovely Christmas. It was only the three (two and a half?) of us for the day, and a few gifts and a lot of great food (bacon-wrapped, sausage-stuffed pork tenderloin!) and laughter and fun. I got a set of Copic markers to play with (eee!), a Batman shirt, a pair of long underwear and a shark with a FRICKIN' LASER POINTER! In all, quite awesome. Guppy got some fabulous loot, and has spent a great deal of time with a bucket on her head, telling me about her new letters (R included), listening to her Very Own music-maker, and putting her Very Own keys in her fuzzy purple purse.

I took a walk with Norway, and hung up my own ornament contribution. The only one I had was silver, though, so it's a little hard to spot. It is glittery, though, so it should sparkle when the sun hits it.



On Saturday, I was hanging my Batman shirt up on the line to dry and I asked, "Do you think Guppy would be okay with the Batman cartoons?" We don't let her watch an awful lot of TV, but once in a while, we'll turn something on. Before Jake could answer, Guppy pointed to the shirt and said enthusiastically, "BAHMAH!!" And we all cheered. My awesome little geek Guppy.

More scanning this weekend - and I got a NEW piece of artwork done, too. (But won't show you that until it goes up at the RT site...)


This was an RPG character from a Serenity tabletop game from 2006. I really liked this character - she was so much fun to play! (I even wrote fanfiction for her. (Fanfiction.net / AoOO)

(Hmm... thought I had more old artwork, but I guess it was all Torn World stuff...)

Today, there is Guppy-wrangling (as a given!), laundry-folding, bread-making, and a bunch of security programming work (massive changing of passwords housekeeping for self and for clients. YUCK.).

2013 Goals Review

This is the toast version: a little dry and plain. I hope to have a chance to put together a more interesting look at what I got done with thumbnails and story links to some of my favorites.

And then, it will be time for a fresh round of goals for 2014. It's always exciting, deciding what will go on the list!

good progress, done!, not started

Artwork:
(these goals may overlap)

*A least two sketches for each Sketch Fest - I did it! 99 (!!!) pieces in total, over 13 sketch fests for the year. A handful were even finished - or I went back and finished them.
*6 color pieces or paintings - More than! (I'm not exactly sure how many more, and most of them are small, but that's okay!)
*6 Portrait Adoption pieces, finished for submission
*6 stamp/card images, finished in ink
*6 Torn World pieces (sketches at least) - 37 pieces posted to the canon gallery alone, and there are more in the non-canon gallery... even before you include the 40ish pieces of old concept artwork I recently finished scanning.
*2 complex coloring book pages - Five completely done, plus one in the near-finished sketch stage! And these were challenging pieces. I really went all-out on them!

Writing:

*2 non-fiction pieces. One is drafted, a second one partly outlined.
*25 short stories - at least 15 of which should be Torn World Big Plot stories and 2 of which should NOT be Torn World stories. - 24 stories here, 19 of which were towards Big Plot things at Torn World. There's still a chance I make this goal by tomorrow...
*6 poems. - 9 finished!
*Revise the Upheaval novel with an eye towards either selling it, or releasing it as a serial in 2014. - no progress, though I have THOUGHT about it a few times. I need to sit and re-read it, figure out what worked (the middle!) and what didn't (the beginning) and what it was missing (an entire subplot with placefillers like 'sidestory for so-and-so here').

Personal Career:

*Submit at least 12 things to paying markets or licencors. Art, fiction or non-fiction, short, long... whatever. I'm a big chicken about submitting and I need to get over that already. - I've done this with art, but really should with some writing, too.
*Finish Rails (so very, very close!) and release it as an ebook. (Plus print copy?? Kickstarter?? Illustrate it if we meet stretch goals??) - Writing done, and released at the webpage! Though there may be a demand for some extras, depending on the Kickstarter. Still noodling about how/when/whether to do that Kickstarter.
*Finish my own coloring book, print it through Dateline, and decide whether or not I will continue publishing coloring books as a whole. Kickstart this? - Kickstarter was wildly successful. Like, crazy successful. And so much fun. I want to do it again, now that I've satisfied all the rewards.
*Continue with freelance programming. 4 hours a week is my goal here, including work sponsored via Sketch Fest, etc. - Some weeks I managed this. Some, I didn't. Considering I'm full-time mom for a not-quite-two-year-old, I did really awesome, though I don't think I actually made my goal. My clients are satisfied with what I could get done, and I have more work already on my plate as the new year starts.

EMG:

*Re-evaluate Commission-Control. - Still haven't given this more than a token of brainpower, though I do occasionally have ideas for it. I think it is marinating nicely, actually. I've learned SO much over the past few years, I'm getting kind of excited to apply some of the things I've figured out to this project.
*Expand and start advertising Portrait Adoption (big new feature upcoming!) - I got the worst of the updating done - the new login system is entirely in place. That was the ugliest and least rewarding of the updates to do, so I'm looking forward to working on some of the more fun features and pushing it out into the view of the public a little more. (Artists, there is a submitted description in the lilypad to be worked on! It's a fun one, with a 'live' customer! And we're getting a surprising number of adoptions out of the archives, too...)
*Set up EMG-Zine to be non-updating, purge out the login pages, feature some of the best. Kickstart Volume 4? Really need to see more interest here before I push that. - I'm calling this done. There is polish that could be added, but I don't think anyone would appreciate the effort it would be. There hasn't been enough interested to Kickstart Volume 4 of the print volumes.
*Evaluate coloring books. - I found my new printer! I'm sad it didn't happen in time for my Kickstarter, and probably I paid a good $300 more than I had to, but the new printer is SO awesome. I will be continuing with coloring books, and collecting work for several new ones. Many of the current titles will be discontinued; I've lost contact with the artists involved, or they haven't sold enough to make bulk reprints worthwhile.
*Get more active at Fantastic Portfolios as a critic. - I was spotty at this. Alas!
*Monthly Sketch Fests. Continue to improve the site. - I did awesome with this. Sales were all over the place, but participation was steady, and enthusiasm remains high.
*Get Torn World out of the meander it's currently in and start pushing the big North Meets South plotline. Release something that furthers that plot every week. By the end of the year, pass Pure on the timeline, at the VERY least. I'd prefer to be further along than that. - Okay, technically, we did not actually get to Pure in the timeline. I am still calling this a win - we got this big old story moving in a massive way; there were more than 25 main story segments posted (plus LOTS of other stuff), and Things Happened. I got burnout pretty badly on the story in October/November, but December has been rather inspiring as I dig back through some of my earliest Torn World art and remember what has kept me working on this project since 1996... and some new stories are starting to percolate and various subplots are beginning to weave together in beautiful and unexpected ways.