2020 Was Wild: Augmented Reality, COVID, New Opportunities, and a Year of Madness!
Listen to the Podcast Below:
This years has been wild!
2020 was supposed to be off to a great start but the luck gods obviously had other plans.
I recap the highs and lows of the year, and reflect on all the opportunities that came my way in life, augmented reality, medical school, and as a creator.
Things were going very well for me at the beginning of the year. I just started using Unity to make Augmented Reality stuff, and was trying to make my first app. I was back to freelancing after I left my job as a personal trainer. This was giving me an opportunity to focus on Iltopia and the Eyelnd Feevr Webcomic more.
Mind you, I was also prepping for interviews for medical school during that time. In my mind, this was going to be my year. I was going to be in medical school, my webcomic would be poppin, Iltopia would be making sales during my first convention circuit, etc. Things obviously changed because of COVID, though.
Money was not coming in and I got rejected from medical schools for the second time. Adversity has always been something that I had to confront head on. I did it with football when I went from a wheelchair to playing on ESPN. I did it with Iltopia when I could not get hired so I started my own business. I even did it with medical school where I got rejected by every school the first time I applied and now I have interviews.
So, I did what I do best; put the pen to the paper and find a way to overcome these problems.
The best part about it was that I had a bunch of stuff I was already working on, and I had all the tools to do it at home. (computer, mic, etc)
I was really grinding away at ideas I wanted to see in the world. I was focusing more on Eyelnd Feevr and started releasing it on Webtoon and Tapastic. I released my Eyelnd Feevr AR app that allowed you to play around with characters from the webcomic in augmented reality. I started the Black Superheroes Matter podcast to help promote Black creators in comics and cartoons who are vastly affected by the closure of conventions. I continued the PDX Black Rose podcast which was a way to promote Black movers and Shakers in Portland. I even helped start an online learning platform called Mindstream which would help Black and brown youth learn more about the arts and technology while schools were shut down. I was teaching character design, animation, and a few other creative skills.
I finally finished the project that got me into AR from the beginning, Flossin Media AR. The goal with this was to find a way to make black stories innovative and immersive. I found that answer with AR. I worked on building out the experience for a while, and was able to release the vision in an exciting way with animation, journalism, gamification, etc. In terms of having Black People at the forefront of AR storytelling, this was it.
I got accepted to the Imagination Project which is a 3-month residency that allows me to work on a project with support by Creative Mornings and Wacom.
I got accepted to the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art Grant project for Eyelnd Feevr as well, and that will be an exhibition of the Eyelnd Feevr Demo version 2 in 2021.
I got accepted as a winner of the PDXCARES Capturing the Moment Grant for the George Floyd augmented reality project and Course to teach others how to create similar apps.
I was accepted into the Portland Incubator experiment to make a low-cost AR headset that allows me to bring hands free augmented reality and mixed reality to mobile phones.
I was honor to speak at the Unity for Humanities Summit 2020 where I spoke about Exploring Blackness with Innovative Storytelling, and was chosen for the Changemaker Showcase for Inclusive Storytelling.
I was the winner of the second Black Realities Grant and a Region Arts and Culture Center Project Grant for Eyelnd Feevr.
Over the summer, one of my many project ideas was to try to level up the book experience by integrating augmented reality into it seamlessly, and make mobile AR headsets more accessible. It’s ambitious, but I was able to make tons of progress with it. I hope to have a bunch of new updates for it soon.
I also spoke at the Augmented World Expo on using AR for Social Justice, and XR Talk about making AR for comics.
Aside from all the artsy tech stuff that I have done, I also joined the crew at the Numberz FM as a radio co-host of the Rooted Rose Radio show with my friend Arya Mormon. I joined Willamette Weekly as a cartoonist with my newspaper comic “A Moment in Iltopia.” I also went viral on TikTok with my project Pokemon Twerk Team. I amassed 34,000 followers and millions of views overnight to the point that I started making money off it, and I ended up getting shadow banned on TiktTok like many other Black creators.
Iltopia doubled its sales from $7,000 in 2019 to $14,000 in 2020. I was featured on Travel Portland, Built Oregon, KOIN 6 News, and My People’s Market. COVID-19 really showed that the work I do with Iltopia to create comics and cartoons that are culturally relevant to the black community has a market that I can tap in with and grow. More importantly, Innovation through a culturally responsible lens has a growing market that I am currently at the forefront of.
My girlfriend and I foster animals at the Oregon Humane Society as well. 2020 was a big year for us! We fostered 5 kittens, a cat, and two puppies for a total of 600 volunteer hours. Definitely a good distraction from the pandemic.
So far with medical school, there have been an increased interest in me as a potential candidate and an augmented reality developer and creator. I got 4 interviews so far and I am keeping my fingers crossed! With one of the projects I have with human anatomy and emerging tech, I think this will be an interesting year.
All in all, 2020 was a crazy year. Full of ups and downs, but I am really excited on what the horizon has in stored for me.
Read the blog: https://medium.com/@stuckonaneyelnd
Listen to the Podcast: https://anchor.fm/stuck-e-podcast
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPpMod_DXYqC3xWgub79MFTm5Ym8eVcu_
Download Augmented Reality App: https://iltopia.com/eyelndfeevrapp
Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/iltopia
Buy Merch: https://shop.iltopia.com
