This is crossposted from my newsletter
Firstly, I want to give a big thank you to everyone who backed my patreon or bought something from my store in March. Emerald City Comic was canceled roughly a week after I sent out my last newsletter and you all helped soften the blow of losing that income. Things are rough for a lot of people, so I do super appreciate you all helping me out. More and more cons are getting canceled, so I would appreciate it if ya’ll stuck around. But I understand if you can’t.
Because of the new patrons, my patreon made one of its goals. Right now, pencil versions of each finished page get posted a couple of days after the finished version. I also just added a new patreon reward level though. I was gonna add it in June. But an influx of new folks and few backing more than the current higher level ($5 a month) made me decide to launch it early. So as of now folks who back at $10 a month will get to be in crowd scenes. This is a reward that won’t happen every month, but when I have a street scene or need some background people, I’ll check to see who is a backer at that level. Right now, the next thing I’m gonna draw is Murky Water, the next book for The City Between.
Speaking of which, I finished scripting Murky Water and started to thumbnail it. Have look!
It’s a little longer than other City Between books. I was originally gonna kickstart it in June, but now I’m thinking September is a safer bet. Maybe I’ll do it in August. But not enough of it will be done in June for me to feel good about hitting go. Right now my work is still mostly management related stuff. Like I’m prepping Cautionary Fables and Fairytales: Oceania for its Iron Circus version to come out and I’m working on the beginning parts of organizing Cautionary Fables and Fairytales: North America. Oceania is getting rereleased next year and then North America is slated for the year after. It’s a lot of answering emails and organizing stuff.
Once that is all set, I have some commission to do for folks that asked about them last month. If you are also interested, I charge $75 for a black and white character drawing. Add $25 per extra character. Backgrounds are extra and will depend on how complicated they are. I like drawing backgrounds, they just take a long time. And for color the price basically gets doubled.
So once editing and commissions are all set, I’m gonna move on the drawing Murky Water. Once it’s all penciled, then I’ll start making the kickstarter. Which is why the outlook is looking like September.
Besides stressing out about money and working on editing and writing, I did a couple of new things. My pal Alison Wilgus has been making mini podcasts on her patreon. She interviewed me about werewolves and had me explain why werewolves are great. You can give it a listen here. The short answer is they are the proletariat of urban fantasy creatures.
Speaking of werewolves being the proletariat, I rewatched The Order on Netflix. If you have not seen The Order, it’s about werewolves eating the rich. Well, not really. But that’s kinda what it’s about. Basically in it, there is a secret society of magic users called Order of the Blue Rose that recruits people via ivy league schools. It’s very Skull and Bones vibe to it. Main character wants to join for revenge reasons. One of the high up members of this society did something to his mom which isn’t explained in detail until late in the show. While on his revenge mission he is recruited by a secret group of werewolves that have been fighting the Order of the Blue Rose for basically forever. Since the magic users are very Skull and Bones mixed with the Illuminati, werewolf mission statement comes very close to basically being “eat the rich”. Just the magic rich. It’s not a good show per say. But it’s clumsily dealing with some interesting themes and worldbuilding. The last couple of episodes were a lot better than the rest of the season, so I hope that means season 2 will be legit good rather than clumsy but interesting.
Also on the wolf front, I recommended Beastars last month. The anime got put on Netflix shortly after I got caught up on the manga and sent out my newsletter. I am basically obsessed with it now and have told multiple friends to watch it just so I could talk about it with them. This led to Jay Edidin replying to my text with “I will watch this vore romance cartoon. Because I love you.” It is very very good. Here is the opening credits. It has some very cool stop motion animation
More wolves (sorta), I also got Animal Crossing. So like every cartoonist on twitter I’ve been building myself a nice island. My mission for the island is to fill it with wolves. The island is called Awooo. Also, I’m very good at fishing in the game. Not so good at catching bugs.
Like last month, my Patreon is going to bills because all the conventions are getting canceled.
“They are the proletariat of urban fantasy creatures” alright! Add socioeconomic angst.