So I decided that I would like a reference place for myself of all the kickstarters that I was involved with for 2025. With the idea that it might be of interest to some of you, I thought I would share that info here.

January

In January, and after our successful Kickstarter Gone Fishin', we decided to do monthly thematic one-shots for D&D.

So the first up was January's Gone Snowballin'. In short: a snowball battle for your D&D group.

February

For February, the obvious theme was romance, given Valentine's Day, so we built out a 'speed dating' one shot (Gone Speed Datin'), and I had a bit of fun with one of the NPCs who might wind up across the table from your character (above) while the cover art was a bit more... tame.

March

Gone Pub Crawlin' was inspired by Saint Patty's Day. We used some art I did a while back for the teaser. I really kinda love that little dwarf. Goes way back to an early post in my Patreon.

Here again, the final cover art was pretty solidly different, but I like these characters, and it feels like they're crawlin from pub to pub, so...

April

April was antiquing themed. I've no idea how / why April is associated with antiquing. 

Fun Fact: The character in the cover art for this one was originally something I started sketching up as another NPC for Gone Speed Datin'. I thought his open shirt, machismo laden body language, and cock eyed smirk made him perfect for lining up across from in a speed dating scenario. But when the guys saw it, they said we had to keep hold of him for Antiquin'. I still don't fully understand why, but was just happy he would find a home.

May

May was Gone Bee Keepin'. I went... a little different with this one. I really worked hard at using shapes to construct the image rather than lines. That's pretty solidly against my normal process and I found it challenging. While I'm not in love with the resulting image, I did learn a lot, and feel certain I could do something much better next time. I also did a bit of homework to figure out what sort of protective equipment medieval beekeepers wore and that's reflected in the final art. 

June

June was the first Wayward Pages bundle. Brad and I have been doing the Location Lexicon for some time now, and we decided to try bundling together  some of them and presenting them to the Kickstarter audience. They seemed to like it, though, in hindsight, we didn't do nearly enough promotional work to make it a real success. More learning as we go. Still, it was nice to see characters and art that I'd been working on for so long actually see the light of day.

It also worked out perfectly because the crew I normally work with on Kickstarter projects was taking the month off for personal reasons.

July

July was Gone Surfin'. I went a little nutty with the cover character's pose, but it was fun, and it seemed to play well with folks. As with most of these, I could tweak this endlessly.

September

September was a busy month Gone Foragin', with the regular crew, and then Matt (the writer / designer of these) did his own separate KS for Beyond the Mycelium.

For Gone Foragin', I again stuck to using shapes far more than lines, and I definitely like the results more than I did for Beekeepin'. Rapid artistic growth for the win!

For Mycelium, I did a whole painted cover, and really enjoyed the process - especially creating characters in a scene that are supposed to be mushrooms.

October

Obviously, October was Gone Scarin'.

Another fun one for me to create, and honestly, I was finally starting to feel like I had the process down for this one. It's a little... open? to me now, but it once again felt like a solid step in the right direction for me as an illustrator.

The large, blank banner eventually held the title of the book.

November

November was Gone Huntin' - with characters in competition to bring in the biggest / best game. Of course, there's a bit of a twist...

I had to hurry through the cover art for this one for 'life reasons', but overall I'm pretty happy with it, and once again I learned a bit that I will be able to use going forward.

December

December was Gone Sleighin' - a snowy race in sleighs pulled by various creatures.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this one was both fun and educational. It felt like my composition and layout game was on point, and I like our elf friend in the front. I made the forest of trees a bit 'generic' in order to make sure they didn't detract from the rest, but looking back, I wish I'd made them a little more unique.

...and that wraps up the Kickstarter work that I did in 2025. That wasn't all of the art that I did in 2025, but this seemed like it warranted it's own separate post / archive.

What's your favorite? What would you like me to have done that I didn't?

I can't make a living doing these characters. Or, if that's possible, it's certainly not probable. Not by a long shot.

So what would I like to work on that does seem like it would be more reasonable to make a modicum of moolah on?

Crests. For clubs and groups. I feel like this is an untapped thing. Like, if more folks realized that they could get something like this done, they might. I've even seen more 'official' types doing this based on family lineage and whatnot. I wouldn't try to put on airs like that. I would just assemble cool symbols for things your into. Or if your D&D group has a certain collection of character types and items that might be assembled into a crest in a cool way....

I really would like to work on labels for a distillery. Heck - those crests mentioned above would work for this. Something fantasy or viking theme, obviously would be ideal, but really, as long as they understand my style and aren't looking for an anime artist (because we're all the same, you know), I'm game.

Oh, who am I kidding? I would absolutely draw anime if that's what they really wanted.

Beer labels would work too.

I'd like to do some more tattoo designs (see some previous work here). That's unlikely though because most tattoo artists will do the design for free (or nearly so) and if you've done your homework on the artist in question - you know - because they're going to put their art into your flesh forever - you presumably already like their style.

What else?

Pet portraits or portraits of real people. Especially if it's a mashup of fantasy and reality. "My buddy as a barbarian." That kinda stuff. I'm admittedly not amazing at likenesses, but I can make it work, and honestly, it's an area I could use more work in to get better.

I've started doing tee shirt designs, but I'm really an amature. I've got a buddy who does a lot of graphic design work for cannabis companies and he gave me some great feedback on the existing designs in my merch shop. That said, it also made it very clear how far I have to go before I'm, you know, good.

Some of you may be familiar with Inktober - where there's a list of art prompts for the month of October and the challenge is to create art every day from those prompts in ink. I've done it a few times and 'won' (succeeded) once.

Now I'm doing Smaugust. It appears to be far less popular, but given that I'm the owner of dragonbones.net, I figured I would give it a go. Of course, I have a bunch of other stuff on my plate, and shouldn't really be spending my limited time on a meme, but what the hell. I have an idea that might make it worthwhile (beyond the pleasure of doing it / the experience of 'stretching' a bit).

Anyway, I may a post thread over on Twitter where I'll be posting them every day. I'll probably do actual posts with info on how I made the different illustrations etc on my Patreon page and/or dragonbones.net. That said, I figured I would put the first few up here for you to get a feel for the challenge and what I'm currently doing with it.

Day 1 - the Aquatic Dragon

Day 2 - the Tribal Dragon

I may re-do this one later. I'm thinking about creating an ebook after the month is completed with a write up for each of the dragons to be used in TTRPGs, but this wouldn't make for a good creature as is. Of course, maybe it will be a magic tattoo or something... I guess time will tell.

Day 3 - the Subterranean Dragon

Day 4 - the Wolf Dragon

I went a little 'on the nose' with this one, but I just kinda wanted to.

I used the guy all the way on the right for reference from this pic. Obviously, I stretched him out and didn't stick with it very much. Perhaps it's better to say I used him as a starting point.