What I'd say was my best work of the year is one humogous thing that I started in 2009 and which is still ongoing - Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual is a big, complex and challenging project that gives me a place to write stories of the retro future, some interactive, and publish them on the web and as books. I even got to put together a trailer for it, and that fed into the Kickstarter promotion that helped keep to the project going.
The web site gives me lots of ways to pretend that I'm brilliant*, with pop-up illustrations, saved places, and gamelike inventory items; and the need to crank out all the many illustrations has kept me busy. In fact I'm still busy, since the first sequential story will start appearing there in about a month's time and I'm also working on the next interactive Tale.
What makes it my best for the year is that it's an ongoing canvas that I can continue to expand on. In fact it may be the single neatest thing I've ever made.
I'm not an artist, my photography hobby has all but died and I can't show you any writing, but I am still a musician. I've posted this already but out of all my creative endeavours I think I am most proud of this.
I had a bit of a hard time choosing. There were three or four pieces fighting for the first spot (including one that I discarded as it was the last page of one of my short comics and thus a huge spoiler) but I have finally went with this:
The sad thing I've noticed was that I have barely finished... wait... hmm... 69 pieces including the comics pages? 2009 had closer to 100 or so.
i had a quiet year due to work commitments and health issues so I didn't make much music. I'm pretty proud of the ambient piece I did with Darren Tate, The Earth in Play, which has hit some top ten lists for the year (always gratifying and humbling).
The thing I'm most happy with though is my attempt at a BBC Radiophonic Workshop style soundtrack...
Phantasms Mixcloud stream is here Bandcamp is here
The support I received for it here in Whitechapel was amazing - thank you - episode 2 is almost finished.
This song was my best this year probably. I could also grace this thread with my visual arts, but they use MS Paint mostly and something tells me no one wants to see that.
Mostly done little digital doodles this year - a lot of them in connection with whitechapel; You guys are like an inspiration faucet, which I should probably make use of more often. One of my oldest paintings caught fire during the new year celebrations; the damage isn't too bad, but will need patching. Should probably be taken as an omen to finish some more. Current painting stalled because of lack of light, studio space, time and general slackness.
Flicking trough flickr, I think I like this one of Lazarus99 the best:
I'm particularly proud of last year's 24 hour comic, Rise at Sundown. It's my third 24 hour comic, and I wanted to challenge myself and do something I hadn't done before, so it's a children's story, and it's in colour. Here's a sample page:
Hey Guys! As I have greatly enjoyed the art and inspiration you guys have set forth herein, I thought I too would take a stab by showing one of my favorite pieces I did this year. Earlier this year I did a bit of revisionist history fandom type art pertaining to to of my favorite oddball Marvel Comics denizens: The Mimic and The Super Adaptoid. Here we have my reimagining of "The Uncanny X-Men #29" as "Mimic the X-Man #29" Cheers.
@ Paul Sizer: Your Super Man art was simply GREAT! Nicely done, man. @-3-: Lovecraft never seemed so saucy... Nice! Terror and odd allure.... who knew? @fishelle: Your "Woman in Training" piece is phenomenal. @ William Joseph Dunn: As always, my dear fellow, KUDOS! for all the folks out there in the web, I wish the photo could convey the impact seeing that work in person has. Great Stuffs!!! @chris g: Your Spock vs Jedi Jabba made me smile... a lot. That is a really fun image. Right on!
@tnperkins - beautiful work. @Fishelle - I'd love that print on my wall! @oddbill - wonderful craft skills. @Andre - great comic. Almost put a 'draw each other' of you up here you handsome devil. @twentythoughts - great tone. @Hey Apathy! - I've also got some surreal pencil animation from 2001!!! (not counting as my one as I'm being responsive?) @Neil Ford - Since you got on Whitechapel your work has grown so quickly. Same thing seemed to happen with Rooth. You guys are banging it out of the park, I'm looking forward to seeing his pick too!
Here's my pick from this year. Thought of throwing in my 'Pimp stare" of Iceland Bob but I have a strange interest in Ganesh so went for this: