Hello dear readers.

I haven’t posted on like since TCAF last year! In part just busy with other aspects of life but also on Substack, ambivalencies due to the platform publisher’s policies.

I’ve been considering going back patreon recently …?… and starting a new creator account there. I’m not generally in need of fundraising right now so it’s more about just a platform for publishing and distribution of media in either case. But it would be nice to find a place I can be sure I can have full trust in.

Which is also kind of why I’ve been thinking about trying to build mailing list functions into my website here too. I think I could install a mailing list infrastructure on it? So I could use something like ghost I guess? But that takes time and it’s low priority.

Mainly I’m trying to focus on some health and life stuff, and doing the work itself. Be more focused and organized. I’m kind of hoping to get the bulk of the next Mind Engine books done before March. Which should be doable, it’s a 60 page B&W antholagy.

I was running into some speed bumps doing pencils for a set of pages I’m adding to the beginning of the next chapter of The Box to elaborate, and make a smoother transition as a standalone chapter. I think probably also just work better overall when collected.

When I was first drawing the initial pages of the story it was an improvisational automatic drawing, a joyful doodlefest. Following my emotional compass and just drawing whatever the marks suggested to me they needed to be. No plan just making up as I go.

There was a script – A reworking of The Tinderbox by Hans Christian Andersen.

In teaching how to write comics one of the strategies I proposed to students was borrowing plots from more obscure public domain fairy tales and children’s stories.

An an example of what you can do with them, I stripped out all the pronouns, titles, names and honorifics, anything that identified who or what someone was. The process was inspired by something I’d read about how the script for Aliens was initially written by Dan O Bannon.

Here I thought of it as like scrubbing the meat off the collagen and bones of a story, to create the scaffolding of plot for a new infusion of Flesh and reinterpretation of story.

I hadn’t decided too much in advance about any of the visuals aesthetics. There were a few sketches for the soldier, something interesting that came out of an exercise I was doing in a cartooning class at Syn Studio.

Once I’d had them used them both for teaching teaching a while I started to get inspired by the proposed challenge myself!

The first drawings of my character – an unnamed Fay, Goat soldier protagonist in The Box – was a couple of sketches over coffee, and then right into the first pages I did.

I didn’t do any rotations, just drew what felt right inventing it IN the story. When I wanted to make some changes in the next bit I partly masked it by them getting a bath and grooming at the Inn. But the model has drifted a lot. Was slowing me down trying to keep consistent, some angles were getting more and more challenging! The shapes were morphing and I didn’t have good rotational quarter views very well worked out. I decided I needed to model it.

Later in the day after first posting this, I made them a stand for when not in use out of a couple bits of wood from my chunky bits collection. Holds their head more at the angle it would be when standing.The following series of photos and texts were posted to my various socials before getting curated here on the work blog and for the moment, on substack!

I need to get some more stands, I had a couple from the last time I made a bust using air drying clay [see bottom]. But only have one working one attached to the board I mounted this on is left so need a new one for this figure so I can keep using the work stand.

But, because of that I made it self standing too so no rush.

And that worked out really well. The base is also a PERFECT fit for holding to pose while drawing. It’s so crazy comfortable in my hand as seen in the last pics there.

I’ve made character busts before for drawing but not in a while and not ever with polymer clays.

Fortunately my wife is a crafting witch, and has an insanely well stocked Studio so I was able to borrow a block of Sculpey white to work with.

I made a copper wire-frame using a soft copper wire as a mounting base and then built up the form some more using tin foil. This was following a lot of instructional material I found online but also reflects processes I’m familiar with from clay modeling and sculpture.

Both my mother and I are actually quite fond of sculpting but I’ve done it much less than her until recently, I think with this medium I have found a new home in art!

This project is very specific to doing the head for my comics. I don’t need it a lot more refined than it is, there’s a bit of carving left to do but it’s very close and I’ll leave it up painted.

But I was having all kinds of ideas about how I might want to abstract something like this, or do something different and there has been this coffee themed figure I was thinking about for ages of making in Copper or bronze but…Going to revisit the idea, do it in Sculpey!

The base was imagined as some kind of scrap burned wood I imagined, I bet I could fake that If I wanted to… It was going to be sized around a REAL espresso cup for a hat, done for a display window for a cafe that’s long since closed.

But now…I can make it about a foot long and be pleased too. I could make the bigger one from parts, and pinned and assembled after.

This is going to be a thing finally! Ordered a modest bulk supply of the same material both to replace what I used and have more to play with. And look into some of the metallic ones maybe…

You can read the first instalment of The Box in Mind Engine | Ignition Sequence, available here!

Last page of that seen on the right!

Been holding off setting up my new POD stuff while the postal strike issues are still unresolved but your DRM free digital copy awaits you! Ideally all goes well and it’s joined by the next in May 2026!

~

I’ve explored making CGI models as refrence guides for other comics, taking a course in 3d Coat I got a fair bit done on one for the city in Pin City [in Revolver One] before the program froze up, and crashed not letting me save the work, just this last screen grab of it before poof.