10 Jan 2026

Projects Recap 2025

Table of Contents

    Everyone wrote one of these and I wanted to too. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my incomplete projects, and then recently about my unproductive but joyful holiday break. And currently, I’m busy procrastinating on my media recap, which feels bad, and has felt bad for the past few weeks while it’s loomed over me.

    I was scrolling through my sketchbook gallery and thinking—hm! I did draw quite a bit last year! So maybe I should record all the things I did accomplish, creatively speaking. (I already wrote about this briefly on Mastodon; here is the non-abridged version.)

    Site redesign (Version 7)

    I redesigned my website, and restructured it under the hood. I still need to write an updated Eleventy setup post about it, but I’m most pleased with how I fixed up my templates so that it’s easier for me to maintain all my custom pages now.

    A blog post. The page design features a soft pink background, with large red title text and a serif body font.
    anhvn.com, version 7

    I’m still happy with how Version 7 is looking—love some pink, pointy letters, and Tiempos Text, especially how it renders nicely on MacOS. There is of course the usual laundry list of improvements I would like to make—dark mode! better mobile styling! sensible collections filtering!—but that can come later.

    Homepage redesign: “tiles”

    I updated my homepage to what I call “tiles.” It’s simple in concept and execution and I like it!

    A three by three grid of squares, where each illustrated 'tile' depicts a different section on my website. For example, my blog is a notebook; my last watched shows a VHS tape with a show poster; my games page is a screenshot of Hades 2 in a Gameboy.
    anhvn.com, tiles

    I had been tired of my previous homepage (“halloween”) for a while, but didn’t know how to update it. I’ve had comic homepages for the last couple of years now, and I wanted to continue that and was half-heartedly writing some scripts, but it was all very fuzzy.

    At some point I started doodling little icons in my sketchbook, and then realized putting it into a bunch of orderly tiles would be easy to do.

    A bunch of scattered ink doodles: objects like plants, media consoles, books, cartoon versions of myself, and so on, all meant to represent parts of my website.
    the initial ideas from my sketchbook. now that i look at these in retrospect, these are more interesting than what i ended up with…oh well! that's how it goes, sometimes.

    I think I threw it all together on a weekend. Simple drawings, simple CSS grid layout. The most complex bits may have been the little animated details, which weren’t really complicated at all.

    I’m ultimately happy with it, and think it feels very me. I’m especially pleased that I finally was able to incorporate the dynamic media—the “last watched” VHS tape shows the newest entry in my watchlist; the “on repeat” vinyl shows my latest favourite song. And I’ve been wanting to do this kind of dynamic media on physical object kind of art for a long time. It sort of exists on my listening room page, but I think there’s a lot more room to take it further, artistically speaking. Contorting an image is easy with modern CSS; I need to draw an amazing frame for it. All of my latest watched movies should be VHS tapes, actually.

    Bespoke blog posts

    I designed two bespoke weeknotes posts this year, which is fewer than 2024, but I had also stopped writing weeknotes halfway through the year, so it’s not too surprising.

    Blog post screenshot, featuring a deep forest green background, and red, orange, and yellow accents.
    Weeknotes 29
    Blog post screenshot where the colour palette matches my site design, but featuring different typography.
    Weeknotes 30

    The colour palette of Weeknotes 30 formed the foundation for my redesign. I found that I liked the soft pink background and blurple text, and ended up redesigning my whole site to use it. That’s the nice thing about experimenting with smaller pages. If you try something and really like it, you can reapply it on a larger scale.

    Interviews

    I was interviewed on Foofaraw and People & Blogs. This was exciting because I’ve never been interviewed before!

    Plein Airpril

    I did 19/30 paintings for Plein Airpril. I missed a chunk of days because I was on vacation (New Yawk Citayyyy babyyy) and then important life stuff; otherwise I committed time every day to painting. I’m proud of myself for the consistency! Some days were worse than others, and there are a couple I’m embarrassed about, but I shared them all anyway.

    Compilation of April's digital paintings, featuring various landscapes, streets, objects, and food.
    the collection. view them, along with 2024's paintings, in my sketchbook.

    Museum

    Speaking of New York City, I visited twice this year (exciting!) and sat in a few museums to draw. Reviewing them all now, I can see how my observational skills have improved since 2023, which is really cool.

    Sketchbook in the American Wing at the Met, showing various sketches of sculptures.
    The Met

    I’ve compiled them in my sketchbook. I don’t have plans to visit NYC again anytime soon, but I hope to find more opportunities to draw my surroundings this year.

    Cringetober

    For my second art challenge of the year, I did Cringetober, and succeeded in drawing for 29/31 days! I have tried October drawing challenges before; my previous record may have been four or five days of Inktober, years ago. This year, while many days were still minimal effort days, I was consistent.

    Collection of all my artwork, which includes mostly rushed ink sketches, and a few simple digital works.
    view the whole collection here

    Hourly Comic Day

    I’ve been doing Hourly Comic Day on February 1 every year for at least ten years, and 2025 may have been my most polished year yet. I’m proud of myself! This year’s is coming up in a few weeks and I’m looking forward to it. It falls on a Sunday, which means I can be leisurely about it.

    Comic strip. 9am: I wake up in bed ('ugh') next to an IKEA shark plushie, sit up, and sneeze. I've been sick since yesterday but am still testing negative for COVID. Cool! 10am: I'm sitting at my desk and looking at other people's comics, while drinking coffee and thinking 'I should go draw…' 11am: I'm sitting in front of the TV, watching the recent Destiny livestream, and sorting stuff on the coffee table. Two smaller panels show me feeling gross and sick, and appreciating my coffee machine.
    9am to 11am. Read the whole thing here.

    Sketchbook

    I finished a sketchbook! I started it in February 2025 and it reached its last legs in December. I drew a few nice things, all inked and shaded properly; I drew a bunch of fanart; there’s a lot of cringetober stuff; I did my museum drawings in here. There is, of course, still less good stuff, but I think it’s proportionally less.

    Ink drawing of Nyx, shaded with black and grey inks.
    nyx from hades

    Something different this year that I had a lot more drawing than design work. My previous sketchbook was filled with website sketches and the like. I think one of the reasons is that this sketchbook had thicker paper meant to be used for artwork, while my previous sketchbook had thin paper that saw lots of ink ghosting and was thus much less suited for drawing. The presence of suitable paper probably spurred me to draw more.

    Pencil sketches of a singer posed with a microphone, referenced from a performance video.
    abigail, the last dinner party

    Another cool thing is that I think my general baseline quality of drawing is improving. I know beautiful, polished sketchbooks are popular to show off online, but that is absolutely not the case for me. Polished works are the exception. But with that said, I realized that I’m mostly happy with it, rough edges and all. A friend asked if they could flip through it, and I think I would have been too embarrassed to share previous sketchbooks, but this one could withstand a flipthrough.

    (I am actually toying with the idea of recording a flipthrough—me! a notorious video hater! making a video!? blasphemy—because I like seeing people’s sketchbooks, especially if they’re imperfect. But first I would need some kind of phone mount, lmao. The logistical hurdles are too high, so I have not yet done it.)

    Media Recap 2024

    My 2024 media recap was published on January 2, 2025, so I supposed it would still fit here. This remains my highest-effort blog post to date.

    Hero illustration for my Film and Television section, where the title is layered behind the drawing foreground: a figure on horseback; the background: wide, sandy dunes.
    One of my main goals was integrating text + art, and I had fun with the foreground/background effect here.

    A year later, I can see all the flaws in it, but it’s still something I’m proud of. I worked hard on the art and design. I tried to be sincere in my reviews. I remember finishing it overnight in a strange, intense nine-hour sprint, went to bed around 8am, and woke up a couple of hours later for my first day back at work after the holidays. Not a great day, physically, but I felt quite fulfilled.

    And then the day after, I started working on my site redesign. I think the creative energy from that project kept me moving forward.

    I have mentioned repeatedly how I’m working on my 2025 recap, which I had hoped would be beautiful and amazing and completed by now. But it’s not! Not even close. Last year I had a much clearer vision, probably because I didn’t have big expectations for myself. This year I’m like, I need it to be EVEN BETTER!!! which is kind of unhelpful to think at this point in time. I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s a struggle, but I’m chipping away at it slowly.

    I hope to continue to create things in 2026, try new things, experiment, make something weird, make something good, make something bad, make something no one but me likes, try really hard at something, and so on and so forth.