Hello! Welcome to this week's newsletter! I hope you guys are all doing well, or at least the best you can these days. I myself have been trying to keep myself distracted from constantly checking the Kickstarter numbers on an hour to hour basis, but we'll get to the Kickstarter updates in a moment, first let's read some new comics! |
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Some week's I'm not in 'writer mode' which is how I describe those times when you're just out doing life and something strikes you as a funny moment, or circumstance, and you think to yourself, "that'd make a good comic," so you write it down somewhere or make a mental note not to forget it. Then there are weeks like this one where writer mode is switched to OFF, and I just go and do life. No notes. But when the latter happens I find myself at a loss when it comes to sit down to create an autobio comic for the week. This week, I thought I'd tap into a resource that's always given me good fodder for making fun of myself and it's those attempts to be a "real artist." With that, may I introduce a new little series of comics I'm calling, The Art World. Enjoy this first installment. |
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First things: For those that may not know, I'm in the middle of Kickstarting Book Two of The After Death! My ongoing all ages comic. We're in week two of the campaign, so if you haven't pledged-now's the time! A quick reminder, Kickstarter just takes pledges. Meaning, you don't pay up front, you make a promise to pay. Payments are only taken if the project hits its goal. So, feel free to pledge today and pay only at the end of the campaign, which for me will be ending on August 31st. We've now reached the nail biter stage of the campaign. After the initial launch with the surge of pledges that help get the project off the ground, things dwindle down to the occasional day to day pledge of one or two people. It's keeps the needle moving, but at a snails pace and in the meantime I just sweat bullets that we'll ever make our goal. My main objective is to just keep plugging away on the marketing side of things to make sure the Kickstarter gets in front of as many eyes as possible. Every view, every like, every reel or video or post or blog or note or write-up is the possibility of getting a new reader or letting long time fans know now's the time! In that vein, my wife and I created a promo video and slapped it on Instagram. Since we did it's garnered over 900 views, which is really good for a reel on my account. That number was mostly due to fans sharing the reel on their account far and wide. So a huge thanks to them! You can view the video yourself below: |
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Also, below are a couple of new panoramic panels I finished up this week to be included in Book Two. Creating new artwork for the launch of this book has temporarily taken place of working on new After Death pages. While I am still working on the writing side, Book Two has taken over the visual art side of my brain for the time being. New comics will definitely come, but I may have to get through this Kickstarter first before I can adequately manifest them. |
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This week I did make time to finish designing a merit badge for my wife's movie club. If you aren't following Rhea yet-@moviehag on Instagram-well you should be! She's been hosting seasonal movie watch parties on and off throughout the year, not to mention she posts year-round 80's and 90's movie goodness. We just wrapped up a month long weekly watch-along centered on summer camp movies. She had asked me to create a design that we could then get made into a patch for those participants who've watched every movie for the month. The name of her movie club is The Hag Hole, so we designed a patch to reflect both a camp theme and her Moviehag branding. She chose Meg Mucklebones (from Legend) as her mascot and wha-la! We have a merit badge people! |
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What's Making Me Happy This Week |
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I've been buying back the CD's of my youth. Oh, sorry well...a CD stands for Compact Disc. They're very thin laser discs that have music embedded in them...ha, sorry, I couldn't help it. For real though, when music became streamable online I thought I'd never need another CD ever again. I have since learned about my short-sightedness when I want to watch a certain movie or listen to a certain album that I used to own, and certain copyright laws or ownership clauses keep me from being able to listen or watch whenever I want to. So, I've since started slowly building back up my personal library of movies and music. This week I receive two out of three albums I've re-purchased from online stores, all from a little-known band called Havalina Rail Co. Out of the 5 albums they produced, only 3 are on Spotify. One is downloadable via an archived website you can access through Wikipedia, and one is only available in CD format. The one only available in CD format, is titled America and is probably their best album. It should arrive sometime next week. This act of re-building my physical media library has sparked a sort of personal project where I'm curating my new collection to include the albums that have stuck with me. So, as I comb through my memories of music I've loved I'm cherry picking the music that was with me through either a particular time in my life-high school, college, divorce, re-marriage, etc. etc. I also went through several music stages where I became obsessed with a certain artist or band: Weezer, Bob Dylan, Sufjan Stevens...and so on. The plan is to build back a music library that's autobiographical in nature. I may be channeling my inner Rob Gordon from High Fidelity.
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That's it for this week! I think last week I mentioned there'd me some new news from the Tourist book. Long story short, I started coloring the pages only to realize that I'm a horrible colorist and I'm having to sort of go back to square one on that front. I'll have a whole write up about it soon but progress on that book as been paused for the time being. Again, I've got so many plates spinning that it's gotten harder and harder for me to just create. I'm going to try and focus on what needs to be focused on, get that done, and then move on to the next. Thanks for hanging with me in the meantime you guys. Talk again next weekend! ~b |
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If you enjoy this newsletter and want to help support it and my artwork consider hitting one of those buttons below. They're all free to peruse but becoming a member on Patreon or a paid Substack subscriber are the best ways to help me pay some bills. If you don't want a long term commitment, consider checking out my Etsy shop. Or, lastly, follow me over on Instagram. Thanks for reading! |
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