What if Indiana Jones and Magnum P.I. were chipmunks?

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From the Drawings Unit

CH-CH-CH-CHIP AND DALE!
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These guys are a couple of my favorite characters from the 90s. The Rescue Rangers show was hugely impactful on my art and directly inspired my MissileMouse comics. Love these guys!!

Still need to see the new movie. I hear it's actually good. Is that so?

You can watch a live stream of me drawing these guys here on IG: 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

-Jake

Rate vs Budget

From the Desk of Applicable Memes

This one made me laugh.

Seriously though, if it's a project I really want to be on, I'll work within the client's budget, and try to always give a little more than they asked for. Same with commissions. If I'm not into it, but I need the money, I'm working for my full day rate.

On Decision Making

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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:

If I'm saying yes out of guilt or fear, then it's a polite "no." Neil Strauss

If it's not a "Hell, yes!" It's a "No." Derek Sivers

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.

-Jake

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.

-Jake

Ma-ko

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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​

-Jake

The MAUTO, Italy's Greatest Museum

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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!)

-Jake

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

On Genius

in

From the Inspirational Thought Unit

I would say that your job as an artist isn't to make a living with your art, and it isn't to focus on perfecting your craft, and it also isn't to make a contribution to society that blows peoples minds. Those are all byproducts of doing your job. What you should be primarily concerned with is just creating.

How then do you make something that exceeds expectations, elevates your ability, and in the end pays you? Ryan Holiday has some advice on that from page 43 of his book Perennial Seller:

"You don't have to be a genius to make genius--you just have to have small moments of brilliance and edit out the boring stuff."

- Ryan Holiday

In other words, show up and create every day. Over time the brilliant stuff (those things that inspire, elevate, and are valuable) will rise to the top. All you have to do is create.

-Jake

Jimny Rod

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From the Office of Wheels

Munich based les83machines specializes in in unique modifications of cars. I really love this rodded out Suzuki Jimny they designed. This is just a render, and as far as I can tell hasn't been realized beyond the computer screen. Fun design, color choice is solid, great car.

See more photos here: LINK​

-Jake

OlliOlli World Concept Art

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From the Concept Art Division

I guess I'm late to the game with OlliOlli World since this marks the THIRD installment in the Olli Olli franchise from Roll7 games.

I love this neo-adventure time style and how they applied it to a game. Solid world building work here by Spanish concept artist Germán Reina Carmona.

He's posting all of his concept art over on Art Station, in what looks like will be 12 installments.

Installment 1: LINK​

Installment 2: LINK​

Installment 3: LINK​

Installment 4: LINK​

-Jake

Samurai Courture

From the Fashion Desk

​Jun Takahashi is an avant garde Japanese fashion designer and the founder of the fashion brand UNDERCOVER. (Of which I'm pretty sure I'm not cool enough to wear)

His Fall 2020 Menswear line was inspired by samurai culture and the samurai films he grew up on. It caught my attention when I saw one of these photos on Pinterest. Some really good reference for character design here.

See the rest of the show here: LINK​

-Jake

Star Wars Art Dump

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From the Drawings Unit

It was Star Wars day on Tuesday...but if you're like me, every day is Star Wars day in your heart. I decided to do some Star Wars fan art to celebrate. I'm really into Revisionist Star Wars and love taking a stab at what alternate versions could look like.

What's cool is the more I do my own unique take on Star Wars the more it informs me on how I should do my own work, Like Red Shift Renegades.

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​

-Jake

Edo Era Giant Mech Battle

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From the Film and Animation Division

This is fun. You know I love robots right? I think I can trace some of that love back to this 80's anime anthology of robot stories called "Robot Carnival." I didn't see this until it somehow made it's way to my friend's house in the form of a bootleg vhs when I was in highschool. I was blown away at the inginuity and creativity of all the stories.

One that stuck out the most to me was "A Tale of Two Robots." It features a giant steampunk japanese robot battle inthe middle of a Edo period city. So fun!

You can watch the short here on YouTube: LINK​

Or if you have Prime you can watch the entire anthology here: LINK

-Jake

On Deciding Your Future

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From the Inspirational Thought Unit

I keep coming back to this theme of what you do now directly effects what you become in the future, that our daily decisions actually have lasting impact. I think it's because I'm middle aged now and can clearly see how I am both benefiting and suffering from daily decisions I made 5, 10, and 20 years ago.

I like how this concept is succinctly said here:

People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their future.

-F.M. Alexander​

Now I'm looking at 20 years from now, thinking about what the Jake in 2042 wants to be doing and enjoying and deciding what habits I need to extinguish and what habits to cultivate in order to live happily in that future.

-Jake

Want a Free Antarctic Exploration Vehicle?

in

From the Office of Wheels

Check out this beast. Kind of like a mobile lab, it was designed to travel 5000 miles and a crew of two could live in it for an entire year without any outside support. Unfortunately it was lost to the inhospitable world of Antarctica. Last seen in 1958!

Might have to get some freinds together and go down there and find it! Haha.

More info here: LINK​

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

-Jake