Welcome to 2026: BeepMini, Blender, and a cosy soundtrack

After a bit of a break over the holidays, I’m pleased to be back writing this newsletter.

I had a lovely holiday break with my family. We had two Christmas celebrations with different groups of people, so I’m well and truly stuffed full of indulgent food.

I was planning to take a bit of a break from “working”, but I really enjoy what I do, so I ended up spending quite a lot of time on BeepMini anyway. I’m now working on AI enemies. It was overwhelming at first, but I think I’m getting somewhere. I have a basic enemy that can patrol or move around randomly. It also runs away if it catches on fire (fire is also a thing now). Next up is making enemies chase the player, and then attack.

I’ve also been planning other things I want to do this year. I have an idea for my next website, I want to make 3 or 4 new games with BeepMini, and I want to make some improvements to Brush Ninja. So yep, lots of fun things to work on!

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Resolutions

I don’t make traditional New Year’s resolutions, but I do like to set goals for the year. One of the things I’d like to do this year is get better at artistic things. I’ve always been interested in art, and studied it at school, but I don’t feel like I’ve improved much since then. So this year I want to spend more time getting better at drawing/painting, and 3D art.

Drawing and Painting

I tend to draw unrealistic things. Cartoons and fantasy stuff is the most fun for me. I have a few sketchbooks on the go at all times, and I’d like to get better at drawing people and environments/landscapes, especially from imagination.

I have a bunch of how-to-draw books from the Etherington Brothers, two prolific comic artists from the UK. They publish loads of tutorial images on social media, and then compile them into books, selling a new book each year (via Kickstarter). I plan to work through some of these books and practise the techniques they teach.

I also want to do more life drawing. But I don’t have much free time, so I’m going to use one of the many websites that provide life drawing references. Keep in mind, if you’re clicking through to these sites, they do feature non-sexual nudity. I’ve used Line of Action, Sketch Daily, and Quick Poses, and they all have something different to offer. Worth checking out for timed drawing practice.

I also like watching videos of artists drawing and painting on YouTube. Some of my favourites are:

• Stephen Travers Art - Wonderful pen and ink drawings, with lots of tips and techniques.
• James Gurney - James is a brilliant traditional artist, and author of the Dinotopia books. He has a lot of great videos about painting techniques and materials.
• Proko - Proko has a lot of great videos about figure drawing and anatomy. His artistic style is very oriented towards manga comic books, but the techniques are applicable to all styles.
• Vanidas Mangathil - Vanidas is a self taught watercolour artist with a lovely loose style. His videos are like ASMR - very relaxing to watch. But I also find them inspirational for the amount of detail he can get from such few brush strokes.
• Artwod - Artwod is a drawing school and their YouTube channel has a lot of great short videos with drawing tips and techniques.

3D Art

I studied 3D art with 3D Studio Max at university because I wanted to work in video games as an artist. But that never happened. During Covid I started learning Blender, which I really enjoyed using, but I never had an end goal in mind. This year, however, I want to make some simple 3D games, so it might be time to get back into Blender and learn some more advanced techniques.

To get started, I’m going to work through Grant Abbitt’s tutorials on YouTube. He has a lot of great beginner and intermediate tutorials that cover a wide range of topics. Since it’s been a while, I’ll start with his Blender 5 beginners guide - hopefully I can speedrun it since I already know the basics. Then I’ll look at his animation tutorials, since I want to make some simple animated characters for my games.

Other people/tutorials that look good include:

• Lacruzo - YouTube channel - only a few tutorials, but they have a lovely cartoony style that I’m a fan of. The tutorials cover grease pencil (2D in 3D) and low poly modelling, all in a cel-shaded style.
• Polygon Runway - YouTube channel and website - This is where I started during Covid. The paid tutorials are great and start very slowly, taking you through the basics (start with the Become a 3D Illustrator course). The later paid tutorials get going a lot quicker and assume a higher level of knowledge.
• Crashsune Academy - YouTube playlist - This is a playlist of tutorials focused on making a low polygon anime cartoon character. Looks like a good fit for what I want to do.

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Sparked Discoveries

Here’s a handful of links I found intriguing recently:

Affinity Font Bundle

A couple of issues ago I talked about Affinity Studio, the latest offering from Canva (who acquired Serif, the makers of the Affinity apps). As a thank you for existing customers (of which I am one), they have just released a premium font bundle for free. You have to link your Affinity account, and then you can claim the fonts.

Size of Life

A new Neal.fun interactive webpage that shows the size of different life forms on Earth. From the smallest bacteria to the largest whales, and everything in between. You scroll and keep on scrolling to see key life forms and how they compare to each other. It’s a fun way to get a sense of scale and appreciate the diversity of life on our planet.

Enclose Horse

A simple web game about locking a horse in a paddock. You have to add fences to the field to keep the horse contained. The larger the paddock, the more points you get, but there are limited fence pieces and some obstacles (like portals?) that make it more challenging. There’s a new puzzle each day.

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Currently listening to

I thought I’d try something new this issue: sharing what I’m currently listening to whilst writing the newsletter. I’ve always had a bit of a complex about my music taste. I like a lot of different things, and I don’t normally share what I listen to for fear of judgement. I’m trying to be more carefree, so here goes…

We’ll start the year with a song that has some swears in it (sorry): The Sofa by Wolf Alice. It’s a really beautiful song about getting older and learning to enjoy the quieter moments in life. The radio edit has no swear words and is better for it. Unfortunately, I can’t find that version on the streaming services.

As a family we mostly listen to Radio X in the car (and sometimes in the house), and this was their record of the year for 2025 (voted for by the public). Personally, I voted for Florence and the Machine’s ‘Everybody Scream’, but it was a close call and I nearly voted for The Sofa.