Hello. Hope everyone had a good end to 2022. And, Happy New Year for 2023.
I meant to do an end of 2022 post but time seems to be speeding up, felt a bit like I didn’t have the time last year to process even a single thought.
So, what’s been happening?
WORK
Nifty League
I spent most of 2022 focused on Nifty League, the company that I luckily fell into and of which I’m a co-founder. The type of work I’m doing has been pretty broad; mostly animation and illustration for social media and the website and games, some game dev, planning and strategy, plenty meetings, some sound stuff, and briefing and feedback for creatives. Also went to the US mid-year to meet some of the team and community, where our company was one of the sponsors of NFT.NYC. Nifty League and 2 other projects (Worldwide Webb 3 and Forgotten Realms/Wizards) hired a big yacht, had a yacht party on the Hudson with DJs, endless pizzas and an open bar, and did a round-trip to the Statue of Liberty. 😲
It’s been pretty wild tbh, things happened very quickly, we hit the ground running and Nifty League’s been my main work focus almost as soon as we publicly launched with our character sale in Sept 2021.
The 2 co-founders [who were both living in the US at the time we connected] are great; they’re both ex-Activision and were friends with one another, and then they found me through the power of The Internet.
Bru & Boegie

At the end of around 2020 or 2021 I applied for some funding to make a new Bru & Boegie short film, and lo and behold it was awarded. I wrote a new script with the help of writing collaborator and friend Sheldon Bengtson (who is now doing great work on on Twende produced by Braintrust and MindsEyeCreative, a show of which I’m a co-creator) and I’m in the process of storyboarding it. Planning to be finished with the animatic before the end of the month. I’m doing this as a passion project, the finished short should run about 15 minutes. I like it.
PERSONAL
Plett
Plettenberg Bay in South Africa continues to be my home and has been for the last 15 years. I’m enjoying my house that I’ve had for about 6 years, and didn’t rent out at the end of last year. As such, I went to the beach a lot, had friends stay, and enjoyed the end of year break. Missed staying at my folks though. The town’s filling up with new residents, stoked to have my bro and his family living nearby now.
Music

Been getting back into music a bit, played a couple gigs with my neighbour who also used to be in animation and is also originally from Joburg. Also did a drum & bass set using my Octopad SPD-30 to play percussion over, which was interesting – was a little too early in the evening to crank the volume to a satisfying level. Anyways, has been cool not losing the music connection.
The Kiffness
My bro continues to do super well with his music and talent, his message, and the manner in which he operates.
Tax
I might write a separate post about this if/once it’s wrapped, but I got taxed twice early last year – both in South Africa as well as in the US. It’s been hugely time-consuming, costly and a headache trying to sort it out, and with the volatility of crypto and traditional tax experts’ relative inexperience in dealing with crypto, it’s thrown another layer of complexity into the mix. I’m working with people on both the US and SA sides to help me try sort things out. For now, my 2c is: An LLC in the US of which a South African is a part of is apparently not great at all tax-wise for the South African. We’ve since thankfully restructured the company that avoids this issue going forward, but there’s a chance I may not be able to get around the double taxation issue I experienced. It’s no fault of anyone’s; I got expert advice after the fact and may have fared far better to seek out advice beforehand.
Other
I set my Instagram account to private some time ago, so the Instagram pics I embedded in past posts on this website are now not showing up. I got a bunch of new followers from (I assume) the crypto space, and though many seem to be great people (I met some of the community IRL in NY last year) I’m still a pretty private person.
I post quite a bit of my work stuff on my Twitter, mainly reposting Nifty League stuff. The crypto space seems to mainly use Twitter and Discord, though we’re now branching out to mobile gaming too.
Have also given my website a bit of an aesthetic once-over and added a contact form to my Contact page.
Anyways, hope it’s been a good start of the year for you and your loved ones, and here’s hoping it’s a good year for all of us, including Mother Earth. 🌍🌱