Hello!

This week Arizona had a rare day of rain and clouds and it was just delightful. The temps dropped and I even had to wear a sweater a couple days! All this sunshine here can start to get old so it was nice for the weather to break it up a little bit.

Thought I'd share another snapshot from headquarters here. Just another day at the office at JP Creative International Corp. Below are a couple of content wranglers from Department 7 doing some archiving:

Ok, got some cool stuff to share with you this weekend. Hope it finds you safe and sound.

Enjoy!

1) Chasing Skull Chaser

From the Making Comics Division

Getting close to having the first chapter penciled and inked. Really pumped to have this spread finished.

I hired a colorist to work on this project with me. His name is Anderson Carmen and he reached out to me last year with samples. He actually colored my entire Skull Chaser comic from Drawings 5 as a pitch for his services! It was a no brainer to hire him for this book.

These are his flats for this spread and they are actually muted by me to play up the inks. The final will be much more saturated.

By the way I've got a name for this comic!

RED SHIFT RENEGADES: Rumble on Spartha.

The Red Shift Territories are the out reaches of the galaxy, and my characters are all outcasts, outlaws, and renegades from the Red Shift...hence the name.

Can't wait to have this first chapter wrapped up!

Join the Patreon: Patrons are getting frequent updates on this comic, including more behind the scenes stuff. They've also read the full comic in both roughs and now pencils as I finish them. This week I've been posting inked pages for patrons. As well as the book title reveal. When I finish the comic I'll have an exclusive special edition PDF for patrons.

Join here: LINK​

2) Deep Sea Aquatic Aliens

From the Flora and Fauna Unit

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The MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute) recently posted this 10 minute video of creatures they found swimming around Monterey Bay. I know it gets said a lot that we don't have to go to space to find aliens, they're right here in our oceans, but boy howdy it is so true. These things defy the expected and tread into truly bizarre, majestic, and downright frightening territory.

File this away next time you need to come up with an interesting creature for your sci-fi comic.

Video here: LINK​

3) The Rotary Un-Smartphone

From the Machines Division

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​Justine Haupt's day job is developing astronomy instrumentation for the Brookhaven National Laboratory. Which means she's extra smart. In her free time she designed and built a rotary smartphone. The prototype can be seen here: LINK​

I'm a little bit in love with this. The combination of buttons, bells, and dials with current cellphone tech is like chocolate and peanut butter to my eyes. On the back it has a display screen that will let you know what calls you missed. It feels Star Warsian in its function: future technology trapped in an outdated casing.

I'd love to combine this with the Star Wars aesthetic. Like, mix it up with something like Galen Erso's Water Testing Kit and it would be golden.

For $390 you can order all the parts for one of these and build your own. Here's all the information on it: LINK​

4) Hot Dog Hot Rod

From the Department of Wheels

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Alexis Poncelet is a French designer for Volkswagen living in Berlin. When he's not designing cars, he designs more cars for fun. Most of them are pretty restrained forward looking designs, and I love them, but this one...this one caught my eye for how well he balances absurdity with edginess. At first glance this is such a silly idea, but looking at the details, engineering, and overall style, this car slaps. This thing drives right up my alley.

You can see more photos here: LINK​

and check out his Instagram here: LINK​

5) On the Random

From the Inspirational Thought Unit

I've been thinking and working on this idea of "re-wilding" your imagination for the last six months. I think it's important to have your finger on the pulse of popular culture, but that can also be a crutch for creativity. How do avoid making derivative work when you are drinking from the same well as everyone else?

How do you make something new?

This question is always sitting at the back of my mind, so when I read this quote from Gregory Bateson, it resonated with me instantly.

First, Gregory Bateson was, according to his wikipedia entry, "an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician, and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields." When you're into that many varied things, and not just into them, but an expert in those fields you tend to have an understanding of the world that your average instrgram surfer doesn't get.

Here's what he said:

Great. So how do you introduce more random into your life? Well, for one thing you can avoid anything that uses an algorithm to populate a feed. In fact, probably avoid anything that has a "feed" as a feature. The social media algorithm is designed to A) show you what you are familiar with and known to like and B) keep your eyes glued on that screen and tapping as long as it can. I can think of 5 other things you can do, but I'll save those for another letter.

Assignment for the week, seek out situations and platforms that get you acquainted with more randomness.

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

-Jake

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