Heylo heylo!

This will be a brief update on what I've done since the last newsletter.

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🙌 Alexander Comic Update
(Book 2, Chapter 8 Page 215 - 218)

What's Happened Since

The Comic Off the Page exhibition night was a blast! It was so cool to see my fellow exhibitor's takes on alternative comics forms. Some favourites from the show:

1. Super tiny comics drawn on a stereoscopic reel and read through the viewmaster.
2. A short comic drawn on the inside walls of a box, which is designed to look like a self-contained bedroom.
3. Six panels that are felted in wool and connected to each other.

Shortout to my fellow comics-academics for organising and running this event, and thank you to the Emerging Writers Festival for hosting us!!

I made a personal zine of my rendition of The God of Arepo, out of the stacks of pages I printed a year ago (I had about $60 worth of printing credits left on my student card which I needed to use right before graduation). The zine is bound by merino wool thread in the colours of the cover that I originally thrifted for another project, and for that extra touch of hand-made madness I deckled the edges by hand.

This zine is only for myself (and for the other writers). So it won't ever be on sale!

I dangerously picked up a new hobby from a friend, which is block print making. I had never done print making before this, so I am keen to learn more about the different forms and techniques. Anyway, the photo up here is my second block print, which is a ridiculously ambitiously detailed bookplate designed for The Carpet Merchant's 10th anniversary.

I can't believe it will be 4 months until the webcomic rerun of The Carpet Merchant! Arghh!! I still have so many special projects to do for it. And now that I finally have a permanent home in Australia I can think about my even more ridiculous idea, which is a very limited collected artist edition of Volumes 1 and 2 of The Carpet Merchant...

Last I spoke I talked about doing a self-imposed artist residency. I don't have anything that I can visibly show off, since my focus during the residency was to recover from burnout and regain my writing motivation. I am getting there!! I decided to revisit my two oldest comics project and I mean it when I say "oldest": I started these 21 years ago when I was 9!

The oldest one is callupish, which I've revisited before. Fun fact, callupish was originally going to be my debut graphic novel, before my agent and I withdrew from the deal. It's been sitting in the back of my mind since then, but I had always wanted to reunite the callupish gang and fulfil the dreams of my childhood self. I started the script for callupish last weekend and I am having a fun easy time.

The second oldest one is a superhero fanfiction-original spinoff that I've now appropriated into something as original as I can get. This project is never going to go anywhere because I don't see any potential for it (I also don't want to work in the superhero genre), but I am enjoying the challenge of completely rehauling the characters/story to be more grown-up while staying true to its childhood fanfiction origins.

The residency has to take a bit of a pause this week because I was helping my friend set up his bookstore - all that hauling and lifting and stickering 100+ books is enough exercise for me for a good while. Then I am going to be gone for a long weekend to the hot springs!!!

See you in the next newsletter,