Happy New Year!
Hello everyone,
I hope you all had a restful holiday season and an excellent start to the new year. I meant to write this newsletter in December but, as is often the case during the holidays, l got swept up in a feverish pitch of last minute work deadlines, family gatherings, and dinner with friends. Thankfully I did manage to sneak in a bit of rest and recreation as well.
Before we get into what I've been up to, just a little bit of housekeeping:
In my last newsletter, I grandly declared a bold new vision for my newsletter. Rather than having a free post and a paid post, I would write just one post that would have a free and paid section. The idea was that it would save me the effort in writing two newsletters (these things take a surprising amount of time!)
Unfortunately that approach had a big problem that I didn't fore see. Some of you rightly pointed out that only paid subscribers could leave comments. That meant that 95% of my subscribers would not be able to drop me a note or leave me any feedback. This is a dealbreaker because I certainly don't want a paywall to prevent people from communicating with me.
I’m probably going to back to doing two newsletters again but I’ll try to include an interesting preview of the “premium content” (ugh…. I hate sounding like a marketing dude), in the paid newsletters.
Setting up a store is harder than I thought.
During the holiday season, I tried to setup an online store and finally cross it off my to-do list. But after a week of tinkering with Gumroad (based on the suggestion of Google Gemini), I found that the platform was not ideal for selling physical goods. Darn you AI for leading me down the wrong path!
Anyhow it's back to the drawing board, and I'm investigating other options like Big Cartel and Shopify. If any of you have suggestions, please let me know!
Retro Coziness
One thing I did manage to accomplish during the holiday break (perhaps because I didn't use AI) was setup a cozy little corner in my studio. Furnished with a tiny CRT, a couple of toys and some retro gaming, the corner doesn't serve any useful purpose (if anything it's a bit of a distraction when I mean to start the work day and end up playing Final Fantasy IX instead) but it does provide me with endless good vibes!
The soft glow and reassuring hum of that little CRT transports me back to the days of my youth. To be honest, I didn't have the easiest childhood, but I always found a sense of warmth and security when lost in a comic book, video game or movie.
As I get older I find it more necessary than ever to be able to easy access those cozy vibes, especially in these trying times. I get the feeling I'm probably not the only one that feels this way these days.
Continuing with Traditional.
I'm trying to make a bit of time each morning for me to doodle something just for the fun of it. Lately, it's usually a something from a cartoon/comic/or video game from the 80s and 90s (or at least inspired by it).
My instagram feed is full of artists that seem to casually pump out lovely, finished pieces on a regular basis. I'm envious of artists that have the ability to do that but I always need to do a lot of "leg work" before a drawing becomes "presentable".
I'm primarily a designer and comic artist rather than an illustrator so y natural inclination is solve a problem (narratively or visually). Ending up with a cool picture is a destination I occasionally arrive at rather
I have found that these design studies are a really great was to start the work day when my brain is tired. It's almost like life drawing, I'm not trying to create but understand how a character works. After a third or fourth doodle, I usually find I can abstract what elements make up the character and what elements I can discard and change and make my own. That's when the fun usually happens. Here's my take on Bumblebee:
Lately, I've been playing a lot of survival horror games as research for Oscar's new story (tentatively titled "The Hollow Shores). So of course, my morning doodles largely consist of Jill Valentine from the first Resident Evil:
I really love the goofy designs of the older Resident Evil characters. Because of the primitive graphics, the designs need to be larger than life and iconic. Why in the world does she have those giant shoulder pads? No one else on her team has them that. Where's the rest of her body armour? Why do her deltoids need extra protection? The answers to these mysteries remain lost to the universe.
AFCC
In a bit of convention news, I'll be attending AFCC (Action Figure Comic Con) on January 31st,2026. This will the first toy related convention I've attended and while I'll have a table there to sell comics and prints and meets fans, I'm also just excited to look at all the cool toys that will be on display. If you're in the Toronto area and are attending, please stop and say hi.
Progress on the new Oscar Zahn story.
And finally, work continues steadily on the second volume of "The Strange Tales of Oscar Zahn". I'm currently about 70 pages into the layouts of what will be an approximately 100 page story. Including "The Ghost of Witch Lake", the book will be around a similar length to the first book (230ish pages).
The original title for the story was "The Hollow Shores" but I may end up needing to rename it because "The Hollow Shores" is starting to feel like a much vaster and definitive part of Oscar's lore. What will end up in Oscar Zahn Volume Two may end up just being a sort of prelude to the real story in the hypothetical volume three of The Strange Tales of Oscar Zahn.
Of course everything is fluid and in motion, so who knows where I land on this. Maybe the end of this new story, I'll feel like this is the definitive ending for Oscar ... but I doubt it.
Wow, this was a long newsletter. Thanks for sticking around for the thought dump and I hope you all have a great January!
Tri