Goals For 2025
"Illustrator Of Fantasies" wasn't just about making comics. It's about all the arts I love and can wrap my creative interests around. That's comics, literature, painting, and even music. If I can explore fantasy themes through it, then that's where I want to be. When I started up IOF, all those years ago, I really was mostly focused on painting. That was oils, watercolor, acrylics, all the traditional foundations of fine art. Then I made a comic book, and that’s where I’ve been since. In 2020, I started exploring music so I could explore animation and sound design. Four years later, I’m living, learning and loving the flute, and have a violin and cello to explore on when I’m ready, while also looking at adding a clarinet and guitar to my collection. I don’t know where I’m going to get all the time to explore these things, but they’re in my mind as big parts of what I want to explore as an artist, not necessarily a brand.
I understand the value of limiting my focuses, especially for those I expect my work to appeal to. Versatility is great because it means I can pick up anything and just go. But for audiences, and people I am asking to engage with my work, having so many interests all over the place is daunting and off-putting. And I don’t want to exhaust or scare people away from my work, but rather just make it clear that I do more than make comics. The first dream was to be a professional fantasy artist and storyteller. When I learned that was something I could do, and give to myself, I’ve been expanding since.
So what brings us to today? Well, I want to spend the next year making art and really leaning into my own development as a multidisciplinary artist. So that’s obviously comics, but also I want to go back to traditional art media and bring myself back to painting. And now that I’ve discovered music, I want to bring that forward a lot more.
A couple of weeks ago, Twitch published users’ Recap and there was much rejoicing! But I wanted to take what I saw in my streamer recap and turn those into some fresh goals and ideas for the new year, alongside the musical ideas I mentioned above. Let’s start!
Total Streams. According to my recap, I had 52 streams for the year. Woot! Once a week! Such commitment. Let’s try in the new year for doubling that number. Easy goal, because all it requires is me showing up to stream every week and going live. Let’s make it happen!
Top Categories. This is another very easy one to do. I’m an artist, and I show my comics and art making process on stream, so my top category should always be art. But the goal here is to add more versatility to the streams, and that’s where my stream schedule comes in. I don’t really know what these could look like overall or what category, but with Art as my top category, and me getting through my favorite games on Sundays, Friday could be an extra game day or an art day, and so could Saturday. It’s those two that are kinda floaty right now, but we could have some hang-out days where we’re just talking through things, community game days or even art-share days, and yes some musical performances. Again, the point is to broaden the perspective of the channel and do more things, rather than just living in one category forever.
New Games. The plan was to get through the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster series. After that, I couldn’t think of anything, but I remembered that I started Octopath Traveler a couple of times on stream, so I’ll come back to that, as well as get a nice, pleasant play through of the Star Ocean series. I’m also thinking of getting a capture card for my Switch (I’m late, I know) so that we can get through Tactics Ogre and Triangle Strategy.
Clips. Ha! I made two clips this year, both from FF2. Let's make some more? As of today, I still have to make clips of the holiday flute performance (it’ll happen, I just take a while is all). New flute performances, naturally, but what about clippable moments in a Game Day stream, or a Making Comics stream?
Regularly scheduled calendar events. I see this as an opportunity to go beyond just having a stream schedule, but is really about our ability to share with each other in fun ways. I want to do more community building events that allow us to hang out, get to know each other, and just have fun experiences online. This could be movie days, party days, art shares, that sort of thing. If we’re all hanging out with each other, how can improve that experience for us? How about tree decorating, the Affiliate Anniversary celebration, drawing stuff, the list goes on. The point is just to have more stuff on the calendar to count on, but in a way that doesn’t exhaust me.
Art Goals. There are things I want to do as art projects. When I started streaming, I did traditional art. I want to go back to that, so the plan is to return to Pencil, Ink, & Brush, the channel’s first “art show,” at least once in the new year. What about once a month? I think that’s doable, right?
Music. Let’s dig into this one. Sure I’m going to schedule two concerts for the new year: Affiliate Anniversary and Xmas. But what about more than that? When planning my next actual performance, I originally looked at April 21, which, in 2022, was the day I committed to learning flute; my flutiversary, if you will. Why not celebrate that with an outlook on new music and techniques I’m learning, and a small performance? And make it a regular thing? That adds to the clips we’ll have. I’m an amateur flutist and performer, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to avoid sharing what I can do with folks. In fact, it means quite the opposite for me: lean in to sharing what I can do, and keep growing.
And honestly? I think that’s how I want to approach the whole year. Keep doing what I do, and do more of it. Lean in to what I know, and keep growing. Other things I want to do with the channel are more technical:
New overlay. I’ve been wanting this for a while, I just haven’t come up with any looks that I feel good about. I can keep it basic, but I want to do more.
New channel theme. I’ve been actively working on this, and a new theme ties in with the overlay. I feel like I’m approaching something I like, so stay tuned.
Emotes, badges, and channel points. Again, part of the theme but once that theme comes together, everything else should flow through.
These aren’t so much goals as they are aspirations. I expect that once I find something I like, I’ll get that updated in Discord and the channel, and that will be that!
So this is officially the outlook for the new year. Thanks for letting me talk this out.