oh look, here’s 2012! First I wanna say thank you for the outpouring of support and encouragement since my heart surgery. The past couple of months of recovery has not been difficult. Sure there’s been the pain of a split sternum, but I actually feel like I’ve got off very lightly, as if escaping some kind of punishment. I guess that’s mostly because I sit in a chair drawing pictures for a living, and I can do that whatever the weather, whatever my health.

FX

The FX course is doing well with 217 members. If you want to learn 2D FX animation, you can join us at any time for immediate access. Check out the course page for info on how it works, what you can learn for a measly 85 cents a day and of course, how to sign up.

All course participants start at Week 1, with a new article/lesson coming every week thereafter. I plan on continuing this course until my brain dries out, so there’s plenty of content to keep you going. Here’s part of a splash animation lecture from the course:

Work

I’ve been working on a lot of things. Sometimes I think I have my schedule under control when suddenly, in the shower or drifting off to sleep at 3am my eyes will snap open as I’m reminded of another deadline that’s looming. I work up to 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, so my working week consists of about 14 ordinary work days. Lately I’ve spent a lot of time working on the BCA FX course, maintaining the site and being active on the BCA FX forum. Each week’s lesson takes between 2 and 4 days to write and prepare.

On top of that I have two freelance commitments, together taking up about 7 more days. The rest of my time is spent working on Dashkin’s rewards and catching up on the game art. Speaking of which, here’s the first of the Kickstarter Dashkin wallpapers. The high-res versions of these are exclusively for our backers. If you’re one of them, all three of these new images will be completed very soon and delivered to your inbox in glorious MD (Massive Definition).

The main Dashkin focus right now is the Kickstarter rewards and the art for those. This includes wallpapers, posters, postcards and collector cards. The sketchbooks are still under construction but I intend on having the pages finalised and sent to the printers before February turns up.

Unfortunately a BiteyCastle holiday card wasn’t squeezed into the schedule this year, so what I started in October 2010 may finally see the light of day in December 2012.