From the Illustrators Division
Burbank based illustrator Sara Kipin has great style, color palette, and concepts. Really glad I stumbled upon her work this week.
More art on her Behance: LINK
Website: LINK
Tumblr: LINK
-Jake
From the Architecture Desk
The French Communist Party headquarters in Paris designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer looks like a set for a sci-fi film. Georges Pompidou, the right-wing French president at the time this was built had this to say about it “it was the only good thing those Commies have ever done.” haha.
I think it's pretty cool too. Definitely good inspiration for making set pieces more cool.
You can read more about this place here: LINK
-Jake
From the Arts and Culture Unit
I just discovered Propstoreauction.com. Every year they have a massive auction of movie props and the best part is you don't have to shell out any cash to appreciate these things because they have high resolution photos of them from all angles compiled in these beautiful auction catalogues that they let you download for FREE.
Check these out, lots of great reference for fan art, or creating your own IP. Also, just fun to see how these things were made by admiring the details up close.
Download the 2018 PDF here: LINK
Download the 2019 PDF here: LINK
Download the 2020 PDF here: LINK
Download the 2021 PDF here: LINK
Download the 2022 PDF here: LINK
-Jake
From the Art Department
I've been so focused on spaceships since May that I haven't really drawn much else (besides freelance stuff). Yesterday, did a livestream on the Inktober IG account for Kuretake, who's one of this years Inktober sponsors. Yeah, it was also a paying gig, BUT I just got to draw something different that wasn't attached to anything and that was nice.
I used this pen set, which it GREAT for inking controlled lines that have a little life to them.
Work continues on the Spaceships book though! I finished the last of the comic pages and they're off to the colorist. Skull Chaser makes an appearance in the book!
I posted the comic pages over on Patreon this week, including ALL the process sketches and my tricks to make work go faster.
You can see all the behind the scenes stuff and more in the creation of this book, including secret stuff I can't share publicly. Sign up here: LINK
-Jake
From the Inspirational Thought Unit
I'll just close today's newsletter with this quote:
“There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag — and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty — and vice-versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you.”
—Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
(via Austin Kleon)
From the Office of Dusty Old Books
Last, and biggest, book today is Monograph by Chris Ware and this book is BIG.
Chris Ware's comics actually make me depressed, which I know for some people is the point. However, I can't get over the mastery of the medium on display in his work. He's a fine artist who chose comics as his medium, and this book is like a portfolio of a quarter century of art making by one of the greats.
Ware doesn't just make comics, he makes sculptures, and books, and all kinds of little side projects. It's a shocking amount of material on display here; sketches, original scans, notes, photos, all a testament to his work ethic and prolificacy. These photos don't do it any justice.
You can grab a copy here: LINK
-Jake
From the Comics Division
The second biggest book of this bunch is Wednesday Comics published by DC Comics. This was an experiment/oddity and the brain child of DC artist/editor Mark Chiarello that came out in 2009.
The idea was to get 12 of the industry's most creative artists to write and draw 16 full newspaper sized page stories that would be released as a newspaper each Wednesday. It was a phenomenal undertaking and produced some incredible pages that really pushed what you can do with comics storytelling.
After all the newspaper editions came out the collected it in a large format book a year later.
Available on Amazon here: LINK
-Jake
From the Office of Dusty Old Books
Starting with the smallest of the Big Books is Hayao Miyazaki and the Ghibli Museum which my wife gave me for my birthday last year. It's actually two books.
One is all the concept sketches Miyazaki made for the architecture and layout of the Ghibli museum. They're loose and dirty and a fascinating glimpse inside the man's mind.
The other book is all the concept art and final art for the exhibits therein.
Look at those cutaways! mmmm baaaby.
The book isn't cheap, but for a Ghibli and Miyazaki fan who loves the watercolor art and sketches just as much as the films, it's definitely something worth saving up for.
You can get it on Amazon here: LINK
-Jake
From the Art Department
This week on the Patreon I shared the entire 20+ page Star Runners chapter from Kepler's Intergalactic Guide to Spaceships (Taking pre-orders now in case you missed the Kickstarter). Here's a couple pages for you to get a sneak peek before the book comes out.
I'm in the hardest part of the process of making this book and I'm still enjoying the heck out of it. Not only am I enjoying the pain right now, but I'm fantasizing about my next book project. I guess if you love doing something so much that even the boring tedious part of the production offers some form of satisfaction you gotta follow that wherever it takes you.
You can see all the behind the scenes stuff and more in the creation of this book, including secret stuff I can't share publicly over on the Patreon.
-Jake
From the Inspirational Thought Unit
I got into a discussion with a friend about getting discouraged with your work, especially when you see other people succeed at the thing you're trying to do. I feel utterly compelled to make things. I can't get halfway through a project without fantasizing about the next thing I want to make. But at the same time, I look at what I'm making and it never completely lives up to my vision, even more so, it's never quite as good as the art my favorite artists have made.
My brain: I’m going to get you so excited to work on something you will forget to eat.
Also my brain: I’m going to tell you you’re no good at what you’re doing and should just give up and go do something else forever.
Getting discouraged with your work is natural. Comparing your work to others is natural too. I don't know a person who puts their heart and soul into something that doesn't get discouraged with it at some point. But I think this kind of discouragement is also misplaced. You might feel like your work is everything...but it's just a part of the ecosystem of desires, abilities, privileges, and liabilities that make up you.
So your art isn't living up to your vision...but are you doing your best with the hand you've been dealt? Are you helping others where you can? Are you nurturing relationships with those closest to you? If the answer is, "I'm trying" then you are doing all right.
My friend put it succinctly like this:
We’re not here to be artists. We’re here to be people. People who happen to be artists, yes. But the mission can’t supersede the purpose. -Kohl Glass
From the Concept Art Division
I wish I could tell you that these are stills from a new animated fantasy film about a little dwarf and her dragon family. But it's just a concept done by Vietnamese artist Ngan Pham for the Artstation's latest art challenge Dragon's Rise. It's the second highest rated submission in the Keyframe Design section.
It's Ghibli meets Tolkien and I'd love to see this developed further.
See more of Ngan Pham's work:
Artstation: LINK
Instagram: LINK
-Jake
From the Architecture Desk
Found a cool house in located in the hills of West Austin. This was a collaboration between two friends in the 70's: Dalton Bloom and Charles Harker who wanted to build a house that was not only unique, but was eco friendly, and would stand the test of time. 50 years later the Bloomhouse is still standing, and now YOU can stay the night there.
You know I love this kind of stuff. This thing looks like it grew out of the ground made up of equal parts fungus and elf magic.
Better photos and history here: LINK
-Jake
From the Arts and Culture Unit
These art installations by Canadian artist Michael A Robinson give off a transdimensional vibe. At first glance they look like elaborate communications satellites or strange fusion devices. Further inspection reveal they're just ordinary objects arranged in such a way that they look like they're being held together by some invisible singularity of gravity. Makes me look at the ordinary objects around my house a little differently.
More here: LINK
-Jake
From the Art Department
Here's two pages from the book I finished this week. I uploaded a 20+ page preview of the Spaceships Book to the Patreon and privately to Kickstarter backers.
I'm grinding on this thing day and night trying to get it to the printers by the end of the month. The more I work on it, the more I've been improving and expanding the original scope of the book. It's WAAAY better than the book I originally pitched to you.
So far this week I've written about 4000 words to fill in descriptions of each ship. Still more to go, but I feel like the end is in sight now. I've got about 6 more comic pages that need to be inked and colored. Then a final editorial pass, and file prep and I'll be sending the files to the printer!
You can see all the behind the scenes stuff and more in the creation of this book, including secret stuff I can't share publicly over on the Patreon.
-Jake
From the Inspirational Thought Unit
I think a lot of what we consider genius or brilliance or magic is just someone focusing their time, energy, and thought on something for so long that they've exhausted all the bad ways to do it.
Composer Irving Berlin is widely considered one of the best songwriters in history. He wrote "White Christmas," "God Bless America," "Putin on the Ritz," "There's no business like show business" and I could go on and on. All classics and timeless.
But you might not know that over his 60 year career he published over 1500 songs. FIFTEEN HUNDRED! And those are just the one's published. How many songs did he just scrap and move on from?
According to Saul Bornstein , Berlin's manager, his working method was this:
"It was a ritual for Berlin to write a complete song, words and music, every day."
A song. Every. Single. Day.
If you're at bat that many times you're bound to hit a few home runs.
I like how Teller puts it:
"Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect."
From the Fashion Desk
I was made aware of the Islamic Fashion Institute this week and am really into the colors, textures, and styles coming out of the school. Great reference for fantasy or fantasy/sci-fi character designs.
More on their Instagram: LINK
Website: LINK
-Jake
From the Office of Robots
This video is just beautiful. I can't imagine how many hours went into this. Made by Chinese artist "PHOENIX0093" in Blender, rendered with EEVee.
The thing I love about Gundam is how thought through the design is from the inside out. Underneath each panel and plate is a complex array of struts, wires, and machinery. Hats off to this guy for lovingly modeling each component and putting it together in such a striking tribute to the design.
Watch the original video here: LINK
More work here: LINK
-Jake
From the Department of Graphic Design
When ever I'm designing a character or any sort of vehicle, including little touches like patches with interesting symbols on them just adds to the believability of the design. I'm always paying attention to those kinds of details when I'm looking at reference images.
This week I found a goldmine of interestingness: Patches from classified USAF programs. They are collected on this late 90's era website with a descriptions trying to parse out and decode the designs.
It's kind of fun to imagine what they could represent. A couple symbols of note:
5 stars surrounding 1 star: Area 51
IX XI: 9/11
Website here: LINK
A cool book about secret program patches: LINK
Article about the patches and the book: LINK
-Jake
From the Art Department
I know pretty much all the art I've posted for the last 3 months has been for this darn spaceships book, but that's all I've got. I'm in the why-am-I-not-finished-with-this-yet-?-?-? stage of the book making process.
I've enjoyed every minute of working on this book, but am SO anxious to have it finished. For two reasons: 1) I'm really excited about my next project and want to start on it asap and 2) I'm really excited for you to have this book. I feel like I'm making something out of the ordinary here, and I'm dying to delight people with it.
These two images are the latest images finished for the book. I colored the last few spaceships that were just line drawings from my sketchbooks. And there's about 5 comic pages left to knock out.
You can see all the process art from sketch to final over on the Patreon.
-Jake
From the Inspirational Thought Unit
I was shocked to read about Todd McFarlane's working style this week. Here's how he makes comics:
I think this is absolutely bananas...yet here's a guy who *deep breath* founded the most successful independent comics publishing company, launched a new Spider-Man comic that sold 2.5 million issues, created the character Venom, created Spawn (which is the longest running independent comic book series of all time), and I'm not even going to mention all of his other business ventures.
This is clearly a guy who knows how to ship. He found a way to make comics that worked for his weird brain and just went with it. Yes, his writing has been described as "clumsy, unsophisticated and pretentious." Luckily, his art made up for that shortfall. The thing I want to point out is he didn't let something like not being able to write very well stop him from doing the thing he wanted to do.
I'm not saying you shouldn't master your craft. No, you should always be striving to improve, just make sure perfection isn't stopping you from finishing something.
(image via @michelfiffe)
-Jake
