Hello!

Been busy working on this Children's Book Pro course all week. We have 3 more weeks of recording and then the class is done! It's been a ton of work for the last few months with Will and Lee, but worth it to get all of this information put together for people. Excited for those who end up registering for it.

Other than that, I had a really quick, and small job for Netflix I did this week that I can't share yet, but will in the fall. It's pretty cool!

Here's 5 things I thought you'd appreciate this weekend:

1) Missile Mouse Design Refresh

From the Drawings Unit

Been working on a Missile Mouse and Space Punks story off and on, and I figured it's time to refresh this guy's design. I've drawn him over 1000 times and the suit is close to 20 years old, so to make it a little more interesting for me I'm mixing it up a bit.

Updating it.

Refreshing it.⁣

I think I'm set on this design...but do let me know what you think.⁣

2) Hermann Vogel

From the Illustrators Division

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I had never heard of, nor seen this gentleman's illustrations before, but when stumbled across them this week I stopped everything to try and find more.

There's not a lot of his artwork online, unfortunately. I did find a couple of his books for sale, but they're a little out of my price range right now:

​LINK​

​LINK​

Wikipedia entry: LINK​

Definitely an artist who deserves a book that collects his drawings in one nice, oversized tome.

3) The Felt Mistress

From the Office of Arts and Crafts

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Love these quirky little dudes and dudettes by Felt Mistress. She's created a society of curious monsters and wierdos that could inhabit our world if we'd stop to look around. I can see each of these guys riding a bus, getting a sandwich, or hanging out at the library. I love the shapes, the designs, and most of all those color combos.

You can see more of her work on her website: LINK​

Twitter: LINK​

Instagram: LINK​

4) Aliens in the Ocean

From the Flora and Fauna Unit:

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Came across this massive collection of photos of some striking underwater creatures. Photos are all by Steven Kovacs.

If you're ever looking for creature or alien inspiration, look no further than the depths of the oceans in our own planet.

See the collection here: LINK​

5) On getting the hard part out of the way

From the Writing desk in the Story Department

This week, I read this hilarious interview with John Swartzwelder, who wrote more Simpsons episodes than any other writer. LINK​

It's filled with some sound writing and career advice, but I appreciated this one the most:

How much time and attention did you spend on these scripts? Another “Simpsons” writer once compared your scripts to finely tuned machines—if the wrong person mucked with them, the whole thing could blow up.

All of my time and all of my attention. It’s the only way I know how to write, darn it. But I do have a trick that makes things easier for me. Since writing is very hard and rewriting is comparatively easy and rather fun, I always write my scripts all the way through as fast as I can, the first day, if possible, putting in crap jokes and pattern dialogue—“Homer, I don’t want you to do that.” “Then I won’t do it.” Then the next day, when I get up, the script’s been written. It’s lousy, but it’s a script. The hard part is done. It’s like a crappy little elf has snuck into my office and badly done all my work for me, and then left with a tip of his crappy hat. All I have to do from that point on is fix it. So I’ve taken a very hard job, writing, and turned it into an easy one, rewriting, overnight. I advise all writers to do their scripts and other writing this way. And be sure to send me a small royalty every time you do it.

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I think this works with any creative endeavor. The hardest part is making something from nothing. But what if that first something didn't have to be good. What if it just had to exist? Seems like it would make that part of the job a lot easier.

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

-Jake

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