It’s nearly the end of 2021, so I’d like to tell you about everything that has happened with GearHead, my other projects, and me personally in the past 12 months.

2021 was the first year that I really treated GearHead as a (sort-of) business project instead of art for art’s sake. One of the reasons for this is that because of Covid, I haven’t been attending conventions and therefore haven’t been making much money from comics since 2019. Though I did get a six cent royalty check from a book that I made almost twenty years ago. That one’s getting framed and going on the wall.

Between Patreon and Itch, GearHead earned close to $1000 this year. Most of that money was spent on GearHead related stuff- renewing my web hosting and domain names (around $200 for two years), hiring artists (Thomas Noppers and Nicky Rodriguez created loading screens; Lord Erin drew the pilot suits for all body types; around $400 total), registering a Steam page ($100 exactly), and hiring programmers to speed up some time-critical code (around $200 IIRC). Patreon brought in around $400 of that thousand. I don’t have a lot of patrons, but their support has been a huge help.

One of the reasons I don’t have a lot of patrons is that I have been awful at fulfilling rewards consistently. Sorry about that. I am thinking about changing the reward tiers for next year; possibly changing the GH Variations level to a 3D printer model reward. Making 3D models of the GearHead mecha is something that advances rather than distracts from GH1/2/C development since I have been adding mecha to GHC as I do the models for them and I am working on a method to use the 3D models to make sprites for all the mecha in GH1/2. Hopefully offering 3D print models will attract a few more patrons.

I will also mention that when the Steam page finally goes up, all patrons will get a Steam key.

Right now I’m working on a pitch document for a new comic. Reactions from the friends and other cartoonists I’ve shown it to has been good, so I’m going to see if I can find a publisher. I am also working on a new edition of Ataraxia Digest to be titled “Everyday Apocalypse”. This will be a collection of both new comics and retouched/colored old comics. I hope to get it finished before the start of the spring semester.

In personal news, my gouty foot is getting better. My OCD is remaining at a manageable level. My executive functioning isn’t functioning as well as I would like but in year 2 of Covid I’ll take what I can get. My family has a hamster now; his name is Peanut. My son is learning programming and told me last night that his ambition is to make a game more popular than GearHead; I told him that shouldn’t be a problem.

And that’s about it. May the new year bring us all good times. Happy holidays and merry new year!