Hello!

I hope 2022 is off to a good start for you. I've had a productive week. I've been getting up early and drawing comic layouts, then moving my exercise to lunch time or after I drop my daughter off at school. It's been working out great. I'm so excited to show you what I'm working on when it gets past this current stage of looking like drunken scribbles. The bones are getting in place, can't wait to start fleshing it out.

Here's five things I' thought you'd like to check out this week.

Enjoy!

1) Chess Bots

From the Drawings Unit

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I've been working on comic layouts this week and a book proposal, so nothing new to show.

I was going through my website last night and saw these Chess Bots I came up with half a decade ago. I still really like them. I think I'll dust them off and do something with them.

Just thought I'd share them here in case you never saw them.

2) Kaneda's Bike Kit-Bash

From the Office of Scale Models

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This is a kitbash by Japanese based modeler MAXI. Really like how he took the classic design from Akira and made it more utilitarian.
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I like MAXI's philosophy from his twitter bio: "Creation is MAXIMUM, lifestyle is minimal."

You can see more of his works on his tumblr: LINK​

and twitter: LINK​
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3) Alien Plants

From the Flora and Fauna Unit

Ceramic artist Kaori KURIHARA makes these incredible other worldly fruit designs. They look like something you might find on Venus, if the planet could support life.

If you've ever worked with ceramics you'll know that to get your clay to do this without cracking or breaking is impossible. The craftsmanship on these is god-like. I don't know how she does it.

That aside, I just think they look so cool and makes me want to come up with better designs for the flora in my sci-fi comics.

Kaori KURIHARA's Instagram: LINK (TONS more images)

Website: LINK​

4) Fluid Comic Pages

From the Illustrators Division

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I love these comic pages by Matt Rockefeller. They're like dreams with images of scenes and events dissolving into each other, telling a story and just giving an overall impression of something all at the same time. Cool comic work.

These were done for his solo show: Crossroads: Stories from Dragonfly Holiday.

From Matt: "My idea was to create these singular comic images that tell a tiny story from the world of Dragonfly Holiday"

They're cool. I poked around, but couldn't find out what Dragonfly Holiday is exactly. So we'll just have to enjoy these pages.

You can see the rest of the pages (8 total) here: LINK​

Matt's Website: LINK​

Instagram: LINK​

Store: LINK​

5) On cauliflower

From the Inspirational Thought Unit

The first 15 minutes of this podcast was just great. It is an episode from Seth Godin's Akimbo podcast which I recommend listening to from the beginning if you do any sort of creative work. In this episode he breaks down the Beatles Get Back documentary and how it applies to "The Practice" which is what he calls doing the work to get good.

One part in here stuck out to me more then the rest (and it's ALL great). It starts right at 9:52 and I'll just share the transcript here in case you don't want to listen:

This was great for me to hear right now because I started laying out pages for a comic this week. Laying out a comic is essentially writing through drawing and it's difficult. There's so many ways to visualize the story how do you find the one true way that best reflects the scenes in your mind? The infinity of the blank canvas can be paralyzing.

I needed to be reminded to just put down cauliflower on the page.

It removes some of the friction, and the wall of it needed to be good. It doesn't need to be good at this stage it just needs to exist. Molding it into something good comes next.

That's all for this week. Thank you for reading this newsletter and hope you have a great weekend!

-Jake

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