Reflections 2025

EOY 2025 just passed. It has been a while since the last time I went to a convention. I felt things I have not felt in a while. It was also my first time tabling. My wife and I planned for it casually for a few months. Our plan went more or less well. There were no major incident. On the whole I had fun.

Post EOY, I still feel the want to table, perhaps a few more times. I have some ideas about how to fit the audience better. Plus, I did experience a form of support: Kamen Rider fans bought "Robo Rider" prints; a kind cosplayer gave words of encouragement and bought a few original prints (I really appreciate this!); fellow artists exchanged artworks with me; attendees visibly reacted to "Avengers: Infinity War" print.

(As a side note, I involuntarily listened to many, many songs throughout the 2-day event. One song in particular stuck with me: "Venus Bug" by Suisei Hoshimachi.)

I am no good in social media campaigns, so I was wowed by EOY staff social media posts. They definitely know marketing. One post that they kindly made me a co-author of gave me around 10 times more views than my usual posts.

Reading my 2023 reflections compelled me to summarize my journey since then.

• October 2023 brought an unexpected 3D collaboration work with ChicDead26. It was a fun side quest, revisiting 3D modeling. In the process I learned Blender modeling and texturing a bit. I was happy with the outcome.
• I rushed a repainting of "Greeting Ms Moon" in December 2023. I felt like I should do another painting pass someday.
• I remembered not knowing what to do next in early 2024. I ended up with another side quest: fightstick art. It was interesting to learn about fightsticks, but I do not click with fightstick world. Perhaps because I no longer play fighting games.
• I joined an OverClocked Remix project in May 2024. It is a Tetris Attack remix album. I spent the rest of 2024 drawing and painting front cover and back cover images for the album.
• I also upgraded my website in mid 2024.
• At the beginning of 2025 I formulated this art goal: "I would like to create images that evoke an emotional reaction. Maybe through dramatic expression and posing." This guided my ideas in 2025 and hopefully improved my paintings.
• In June 2025 I decided to try tabling. I spent the latter half of 2025 polishing old works such that they are good enough to sell as prints.

This brought us to the present. Next year I want to (1) make smaller products for conventions while at the same time (2) paint large, dramatic images for my artistic satisfaction.

"Code Chicky" Sticker Sets

I am knee deep in preparation for my first attempt at Artist Alley. Work on Infinity War print is still ongoing. In this post, I'd like to cover work on stickers.

I included stickers in my product list because they are fun and I thought they would be relatively easy to produce. What would be the theme?

Brainstorming with thumbnails

I started brainstorming by drawing thumbnails. The notes on the sheet above documents my train of thoughts. K Pop Demon Hunters? Too broad. Rumi only? Pretty or funny? I decided that I would not be able to draw her well enough. That's how I decided to cast Chicky as the character.

Next, what personality does Chicky assume? An office worker? A cute girl? What about a coder? With this idea in mind, a lot of expressions flowed out, capturing programming moments (influence from my day job). I thought of supplementary object as accessories to pair with an expression: laptop logo, drinks, and thought bubbles.  I attempted to include memes like "Math Lady" and "assassination chain". As a classic item from computer science, I drew recursion as well. I had a lot of fun drawing these.

Once I had enough ideas, I proceeded with drawing the pencils.

Programming Chicky page 1. Drawing sequence: upper right, lower right, upper left, lower left.

Programming Chicky page 2. Drawing sequence: upper right, lower right, upper left, lower left.

I started easy with a generic friendly smile to get myself familiar again with Chicky. For the last image on page 2, I found "two fists in the air" not appealing, so I went for success kid. (At least what I remembered of the image anyway.)

Page 1 had water bottle, coffee cup, and a tumbler. Page 3 had the rest as well as the thought bubbles. I forgot to scan the pencils, so I can only show the inked drawing.

Page 3: beverage and thought bubbles.

Inking, scanning, cleaning up, and coloring followed.

Page 1 color

Page 2 color

Next, it was time to arrange the expressions and accessories into sticker sheets. In my first try, I aligned the images in a grid-like fashion and it did not look attractive. I had to deliberately introduce asymmetry and chaos to get fun layouts that are somewhat attractive.

Code Chicky set A

Code Chicky set B

At the moment of writing, I am working on getting these sheets printed in such a way that I can get them kiss-cut later on. (I just learned the term "kiss cut" last week. Here is an explanatory article.)

Which set do you prefer? Get yours from my booth at EOY Music, Comics & Arts Festival 2025 on 27 & 28 December 2025, Raffles City Convention Centre Singapore. Hope to see you there!

Test Printing A0 poster for EOY 2025

 Last weekend I had "Infinity War" poster printed as a test run. At 117.65 cm ⨉ 33.86 cm (46.3″ ⨉ 13.3″), it is my largest print, so I want to make sure the final product is great. My plan is to sell the print at EOY Music, Comics & Arts Festival 2025. I covered how I went about polishing this old painting for print in an August 2025 post.

The test print turned out better than I expected. The printer used a shiny poster paper than looks nice with the printed image. Here are some photos.

From left

From right

Pardon the glare; I took the photos hastily. The poster is large, so it took so much space just to photograph. For scale, see the mouse on the second image.

Even though the print quality was great, I think the painting still needs some work. Hope I can finalize this poster soon!