Real Lifes

2025 was a crappy year for most of my friends and it wasn't a walk in the park for me either. So for a bit of context, in late 2023 at the end of what seemed like 15 consecutive months of one tragic family death after another alongside endless abuse and disrespect from my work, my family, and my roommate, I walked out on my job and chose to dedicate 2024 to working on my art, which is why I had such a cracked output last year. Near the end of '24 I got my job back with better pay (but fewer hours so it kinda canceled itself out lmao), so 2025 I've focused more on making back the money I blew when I was unemployed.

Around May, my life took a frustrating turn. Despite paying bills and rent on time for the past ten years my landlord announced that he'd be kicking me out by the end of the summer. Fortunately I found an apartment within a month and was able to get the hell outta there just in time. Unfortunately for my landlord, he was bluffing the entire time and that was just his ass-backwards attempt at scaring my now ex-roommate to actually carry his own weight around the house in the event that I leave quickly and unexpectedly. Well it sucks to suck.

I consider myself beyond lucky to have found an affordable apartment while also being able to still make time to contribute to collabs and get commissions done. There were tons more collabs I wanted to participate in, but there's no point in beating yourself up over what you couldn't do.

I have no new years resolutions and no plans set in stone, beyond unshakeable obligations. I'm still grieving over losing a family member every month for ~15 months straight. During that time I learned an old Polish saying. It went something like "if you ever want to make God laugh, just tell Him your plans for the future."

Some rambly personal bits

• It's weird knowing that I have 1.8k followers on here. I know for some platforms, that's nothing. But I remember being stuck at 200 followers for years, so anything above 500 is like being a celebrity to me.
• I've started to get into a local irl art & zine community and I'm hoping to actually contribute to it in the coming year.
• I've experimented a lot with my art style but I typically only upload my proudest most finished stuff to the portals. I tend to upload my doodles and sketches to my Bluesky, but I know a lot of twitter & tumblr expats are stubborn about migrating over there. Maybe my 2026 resolution can be to post more sketches & doodles here as well.
• Everything is too goddamn expensive these days. I wanna keep my commission prices below a tenner, but Paypal likes to take a cut out of every transaction... then another cut when I transfer it into my bank account, so out of every $5 commission I'm actually getting around $3.50. Either way, I appreciate everyone who's tossed me some coinage. I was able to buy groceries with that money during times where I was dangerously in the red.
• While I appreciate any patronage, help out my buddy HibbySloth. In fact, if you buy them a Ko-Fi, send me a screenshot of the receipt (obviously blur your name and sensitive info out), and I'll draw you a free sprite.
• I've developed quite an annoying little case of imposter syndrome. Actually, it's been there ever since I graduated college way back in 2018. But it's become especially bad ever since moving into my own apartment. I frequently get stress dreams of my ex-roommate or some ex-friend barging in, insisting that I owe it to let them crash at my new place.
• The nicest thing I can say about my ex-roommate is at least he proved me wrong in one regard: I joked with my friends and my parents that months after I've moved out, he'll continue to throw tantrums and put holes in the walls and insist that they were my doing. As far as I know, he hasn't blamed me for a single thing since moving out.
• Oh yeah, also I paid off my student loans back in 2024. My loan provider kept selling my debt off to different collection agencies because I was paying it off too fast for them. They were actually emailing me, asking me to stop paying my loans off so quickly. In fact at one point my loans got down to $100, and every time I made a large payment they'd make sure to skim a little bit off the top so I'd still owe a bit at the end of every month, and this continued until I only owed a penny. I have no idea how that's legal lmfao.
• As I spend time with friends and go to events the stress goes away, but then I also feel a little guilty because the time I spend socializing could go towards making more art... It all feels like one big humblebrag when I say it out loud lmfao.
• I'm a little baffled by how barren my Steam Rewind thingy was this year. But then I remembered that I mostly play offline on my steamdeck because that airplane mode battery does NOT play around. My Steam Rewind doesn't cover how much Dead Cells and Risk of Rain 2 I play.

Now compare that to my '24 Replay

• I love Kingdom Hearts but what else is new. While platformers and RPGs are my bread & butter, 3D mascot platformers and PS2 era JRPGs are my meat & potatoes. I'm lowkey waiting for someone to find a way to make a good Kingdom Hearts style roguelike.
• Pokemon Legends ZA was alright. In fact I was pleasantly surprised by it. I'm really considering making a video essay where I just discuss the time I had playing through it. No addressing the haters, no airing out unresolved internet fights, just vibes. Oh! And somebody made an hourlong video on ZA's cut content. Go give that a look.
• I recently had an unpleasant run-in with an ex-friend who had the nerve to "forgive me" for no longer wanting to associate with him. The friendship ended because he was becoming a bitter reclusive incel, which as someone who very easily falls into self-destructive ruts, is a lifestyle I want to avoid by all means necessary.
• It always strikes me by surprise when people genuinely like my art, and that they aren't just following me because they feel obligated to do so for one reason or another. But yeah. I appreciate everyone who likes my content. I hope I'm not annoying anyone with my endless BBS arguing.
• It feels surreal to know I've been on NG for longer than some users have been alive. It's funny seeing people call me an oldhead NG user, because it feels like I didn't become a serious contributor until ~2018, and anything I posted earlier than that was just some incidental doodle or the only surviving part(s) of a bigger project that I lost interest in.
• I resurrected a 10 yr old gaming PC on Christmas day. I've been downloading updates and running system checks on it ever since. It's not even been a full week yet and it feels like I've been doing this for a month with how slow and rife with failure the process has been. I could'nt decide if I wanted to buy a Switch 2 or save up for that Steam Box, then I remembered that I already own one.
• I saw a teaser for a Sega Genesis homebrew game maker thing. I don't know if it's by the same crew behind GBStudio, but I really hope somebody makes one for the SNES and GBA. I love retro games like you wouldn't believe.

Oh, also I got banned from 4chan in February lmao. It was only a 3 day ban for "off-topic posting". Ironically, the post in question was me telling someone to shut the fuck up for off-topic posting, meawhile (assuming he didn't simply evade the ban,) the guy I called out continued to off-topic post until the thread 404'd. Despite the short length I needed that ban to realize how garbage the site was. I often used the excuse to continue lurking that, "Well, the pokemon board has those fun fangame discussion threads. Well the art & illustration board does those DTIYS things and it's good practice..." but I always knew in the back of my head that I was wasting my time on that site. I miss some of the anons who adamantly refused to make an account on any social media platform but I feel way better for leaving it. I'd oftentimes spend all day arguing with idiots then realize that was a day that could've been spent drawing or working on programming. Horrifyingly enough, it's still a better experience than using Twitter. At least 4chan has human moderators. But anyways...

I never forgot how in '24 I announced an N64 collab with minigames and stuff then just never followed up btw. A big reason why I always prefer to contribute to, rather than run a collab, is because personal life issues will get in the way and just hold me up from properly managing something as big as a collab. Now that my living & job situation has stabilized, I'd like to actually make something of one of my many projects sitting on the backburner... But I'd also like to make or contribute to an NG Zine... So I'd rather not make any promises that I can't 100% keep to, so all I'll say at the end of the day is, if something happens, you guys will be the first to know..

Well without further ado... my top favorite sprites (and non-sprites) of 2025

Sage unc advice

First things first, 31 isn't old. Get off your ass, ride a bike, and eat your goddamn vegetables.

"urgh but I hav--"

Then do what you can. Do what you think you can. Be as active as you can, rest, then try to be a little more active next time. Trying is better than doing nothing.

Secondly, it's very easy to get consumed with the idea that you need to be making art, that you need to be productive, that if you're resting, you're automatically a lazy bitch. You need to break that mindset for your craft's sake. Take a break from Discord, get off Twitter, Bluesky, Facebook, all of them. While it's still your choice, take plenty of rests. Watch your favorite show or play a video game. Don't be afraid to just make garbage, either. You might discover a new medium that you really like.

Shout outs to...

I hate being pinged even when it's for friendly shoutouts, and I don't like pinging people either. My friends know who they are. I hope they know that I'm proud of them. I also implore anyone who thinks I hate them to please go touch grass. I appreciate every random dude who DMs me saying that they like my pixel art or my games or whatever. Thanks for keeping the site alive for all these years Tom et al.

Anyways I probably have a ton more half-thoughts to unload, but I've been writing this up for over three hours. There's a blizzard outside but I really wanna get at least a little blitzed for New Year so I'm going to try and rush down to a corner store and buy a few spiked seltzers or something.

Oh, and another thing...

I'm finally making a sequel to Ritz on a Roll! Those silly little teeny boppers who were still DMing me for years asking me about a sequel will be excited for sure! I've learned many little tricks to optimize game maker games for browser and I hope to deliver on that. I plan to release a demo sometime in February, provided nothing gets in my way.