Happy Lunar New Year
新年快樂, chúc mừng năm mới, 새해 복 많이 받으세요! It’s the Year of the Horse, and per tradition I’m posting the nengajō (new year’s card) I made for Japanese New Year, which also follows the twelve-animal cycle but on the schedule of the Gregorian calendar.
The characters, kinga shinnen, are a more formal “happy new year”. Like 2024, I cannot say the overall design is not influenced by a game I may have been playing in December, which has some chess themes in it. But horses are infamously hard to draw, and it turns out even chess knights aren’t the easiest thing to draw either. Goats are a little easier, so we’ll see how next year goes.