Hello!

Great turn out last week for the original art sale! About 40 pieces sold! There's still 5 that are waiting to go to a good home. If they don't sell this week I'm going to put them in the archive...maybe forever. 😱

Great week here at JP Creative International. Finished another Red Shift Comic! It's a short 10 page supplemental story. (Sneak peek here) I'm going to give a digital download version of it to you for free when that is ready. Just a way to say thanks for being here.

Of course, my Patrons have been seeing the whole comic get made on a weekly basis. If that sounds good to you, join over 100 other patrons here: LINK​

Alright, read on, there's 5 things I thought you'd find interesting this weekend!

Enjoy!

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1) JOIN THE DISCORD!

From the Office of Special Announcements

This week I put together the JP Central Discord Server!

The vision of JP Central is to have a non-algorithmic influenced place to share interesting things you have created or found online and in real life with the mission to be:

- a spark for keeping your imagination wild

- a repository for creative ideas

- a center of accountability for your projects

It's still very new and you can smell that fresh discord smell when you join, but the community there is already fun and cool.

JOIN HERE: LINK​

I'm devoting a channel to this newsletter, so if you want to openly discuss anything from the newsletter with other people here, do check out the Newsletter channel.

There's also a special secret section for patrons. Nice discussion happening in there.

JOIN THE COMMUNITY HERE: LINK​

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By the way, I'm getting a TON of positive responses to my new Renegades comic. If you haven't had a chance to read it, you can snag a digital copy here:

DOWNLOAD MY NEW COMIC HERE: LINK​

​💥Download it and read it TODAY!💥​

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2) The MAUTO, Italy's Greatest Museum

From the Office of Wheels

Leave it to the Italians to have the most impressive automobile museum in the world. Turin Automobile Museum boasts one of the rarest and most interesting collections of its kind, with over 200 original cars from 80 brands from all over the world.

Putting this on my list of places to visit if I ever end up in Italy. In the meantime, their website has a nice gallery of cars you can view from the comfort of your own bed: LINK​

I picked some cool ones for the newsletter here:

(Thanks to friend of the newsletter, Laura, for this tip!)

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3) Ma-ko

From the Illustrators Division

I'm seriously in love and in awe with these drawings by online artist ma-ko. Can't find any background info on him, a real mystery of a guy!

Here's a person who understands atmosphere and composition. I love an artist who gives the back ground and world of their art just as much love as their characters (if not more).

See more here:

IG: LINK​

INPRNT: LINK​

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4) April Reading List

From the Reading Desk

As mentioned last month, I have a goal to read through my book collection this year and put myself on a book buying freeze. However, that freeze does not include single issue comics, ha.

April was crazy busy, but I did carve out some time to read some comics.

Here's what I read:

TWIG by Skottie Young (Writing) and Kyle Strahm (Art), with amazing coloring work by Jean-Francois Beaulieu.

All I'm going to say about this is: Jim Henson would endorse this comic if he were still with us. Need I say more?

It's Labyrinth, Dark Crystal, Never Ending Story, and Fraggle Rock all rolled into one. Can't wait to read the next issue.

...

Step By Bloody Step by Si Spurrier (Writing), Matias Bergara (Art)

This is an entirely wordless comic told only through the artwork, and boy is it powerful. They are creating an experience here with this comic that you can not find in movies, video games, or novels. This makes me so excited for the comics medium. Definitely a benchmark.

...

Head Lopper 1 and 2 by Andrew McLean

I've seen Headlopper on shelves for years and for some stupid reason never gave it a shot. I found these two books at a convention a few years ago and still, they sat on my shelf, unread.

I finally decided that I'd sit down and read them and I feel like such a doofus for waiting so long.

You want to know what Head Lopper is? Head Lopper is what I would expect Mike Mignola to make if he did a straight fantasy comic. If you know how much I love and revere Mignola's work you'd understand what a compliment that is to McClean.

Head Lopper is funny and smart and atmospheric and well paced and has a solid aesthetic to it.

There's TWO more of these books waiting for me when the freeze is over and I can't wait.

Oh, and if it wasn't obvious from the title, there is indeed an awful lot of head lopping in these books.

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5) On Decision Making

From the Inspirational Thought Unit

Any kind of creator is faced with never ending possibilities when it comes to what project to work on. Whether you're getting hit up all the time with offers to help out with something, or you have a growing list of ideas you'd like to tackle, or you're faced with two different opportunities and can only choose one, it is sometimes debilitating to know what to work on next.

There's two quotes I keep coming back to when I'm faced with decisions:

I like both of these because they operate on two ends of the enthusiasm spectrum. I've said yes to projects I wasn't excited about, and only took on because I felt guilty I'd regret it. Worse yet, I've taken on projects out of fear that I wouldn't succeed on the path I was currently on.

Guess what? At best they were a neutral impact project. I didn't grow at all by taking them on. The worst cases wasted my time and energy taking me down paths I never should've been on in the first place.

Don't do something out of fear or guilt. If you do take on a project, take it because your head is in that "Hell, yes!" space.

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

-Jake

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My sponsor for this newsletter is…me. It's me, because I'm not accepting sponsors for my email list, and don't plan to any time soon. Really, I'd just like people to buy stuff from my shop. If you like this newsletter, you can support it a few ways:

​Order something from the shop (Best)

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I'd appreciate any of these when you can. Thanks!

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