I decided to move on from Hearthstone after so many years. It wasn't because I hated any new mechanic or set that came out. I guess I grew tired of the same gameplay after so many years. The new Battlegrounds mode did injected some new excitement but I felt that I hit my own personal skill-cap brickwall after hitting ~7K MMR.

I started playing Slay the Spire last year during my trip to Taiwan. Since then I have been playing the game on and off. I love the rogue-like gameplay and the card-based combat system. It felt like a natural progression coming from another digital card game. I also created a number of fanart for the game last year which I did not posted here.

This year, I returned to the game briefly after the Watcher character was released. I updated the fanart series with on that featured her, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to share it right now over here:

Hey guys, its been a while!

As 2020 is about to come to an end, I will be doing a series of posts here to wrap up on the year. And what a crazy year it has been. I think the COVID-19 pandemic will be on everyone's minds when they think about 2020, but this year was so much more for me.

This year, I moved two times, changed my job, bought a car and my second child was born 11 days ago. I was constantly fighting fires both during my work (I switched to another school, so yeah, more or less same same but different) and at home. But I see it as a good form of challenge.

I think most people have a pessimistic view on COVID-19. Don't get me wrong, I can see why. I do miss the travelling and the social gatherings. And I can sympathize with people who lost their livelihoods during this period; My dad did too. But I think it forced us to rethink the way we work and play. It also accelerated the adoption of digital tools in our lives.

For my drawing lessons, I brought my lecture and demo content online onto my YouTube channel. I was initially apprehensive about showing my face to the world (my previous tutorials only included audio narrations over the screen captures) but I had to do so because I think it will bring across a stronger personal touch. Keep in mind that the students viewing these videos started their first day of school at home and have thus never met me in person.

You can view the first video of the series here:

You can also check out the rest of the playlist here.

I think this experiment paid off. My students feedback that they liked the format as they could consume the content at their own pace. They could also refer back to the videos if they encountered any difficulties with their assignments. Moving forward, I will like to incorporate this mode of lesson delivery in future classes and continue with this workflow beyond the pandemic.

Some caricatures I did for my YouTube channel.

Excavated this old drawing I did a few years ago from my hard disk and decided to colour it.

Illidan Hearthstone Battlegrounds fanart. In these dark times, I can only say that we are definitely not prepared. Stay home, stay safe!

Started the sketch early this week while I was on sick leave. Managed to finish it over a few nights. I wanted to experiment with a more textural, messy approach for this piece; Paying more attention to the composition instead.

Here's wishing everyone a prosperous year of the rat!

Fanart of my favourite gymleader in Pokemon Sword and Shield.

I asked my wife for suggestions on our next destination for the Family Travels series. "Australia" was her answer. We have some relatives and friends living there and it was also where we took our pre-wedding photos with the help of my brother. However, I was struggling to come out with an iconic representation of the place other than the Sydney Opera House and Harbor Bridge. And then I remembered the Great Barrier Reef.

The recent attention on climate change has reminded us of how much we have damaged our planet. Reports have also surfaced on how the Great Barrier Reef was affected by this global phenomenon. I decided that I wanted to do a piece on one of the world's eight wonders.

When visualizing the image in my head, I was suddenly reminded of a piece of concept art I did for Mekazoo years ago. It involved the frog character diving into an underwater cave.

I was still working my way through the ZBrush course but my Schoolism subscription ended prematurely. Alas, here are my final 2 assignment submissions.

I wanted to attempt a more stylized design. I also wanted to try more hard surface sculpting. I am quite happy with the end product although it is a little off model to my concept art, especially the weapon.​

The focus on this one is more on surface textures like cracks, skin textures, etc. I think I could have done more with the polypainting but that is not an area I am particularly interested in focusing on right now.

Some caricatures I did at the latter half of this year.

This is a custom Hearthstone card I made for a colleague who was leaving the organization. He was the only other person I knew IRL that was a Hearthstone fanatic so I decided to create a special artwork for him.

Keanu was everywhere this summer: John Wick 3, Netflix's Always Be My Maybe, Microsoft's E3 press conference and Cyberpunk 2077.

My wife and I love Stranger Things. In fact, we built the Lego Stranger Things set together for her birthday. The latest season saw the group of kids hitting their teenage years. And just like Harry Potter and his gang during book 4-7, I must say that the teenage hormones have made the main characters in Stranger Things really annoying. The only character that I have actually grown more fond of is Steve.