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Hi Oliver! Between the two of us YOU are the one with a debut graphic novel published so I'm going to go ahead and link to that lol. It's Space Story!

Okay, here's the post with the Lynda Barry exercises. I can't recommend Making Comics enough for idea generation & general comics motivation. Barry is a master at getting you to loosen up and then tighten back up. I've also gotten a lot of mileage out of this Before/After worksheet from Tom Hart. The random image can be anything (movie screencaps, memes you've saved, other people's comic panels, etc).

Lately I've been working on Junk World #2 which is really long. I don't worry about sticking to a daily routine because my day job is physically taxing. But I do at this point have a set "formula" for finishing pages that feels very natural & doesn't stress me out.

First (image 1) I doodle a scene with ZERO regard for panel layout or page composition. This kind of drawing is just little guys talking to each other. Like literally floating heads. Everyone can do this kind of thing, I did it in the margins of my school notebooks. Then (image 2) I go back & start chopping up the story beats into panels, pages, etc. I only do this 1-2 pages at a time. Any more and I get bored!!!

Then I lay out the panels on 11x14 bristol and pencil/letter/ink. This is a "draw the rest of the owl" ass thing to say and it takes the most time, but because I've worked out most of the problems in sketch form it doesn't feel stressful or like I'm just staring at a blank page.

I think this is different from the standard "thumbnail" advice because the first part, the part where I'm just doodling/playing around, is fundamental to the actual flow & feel of the story. I can't skip it. And it's an extension of all my favorite exercises where the focus is generating silly images/characters just for fun and not worrying about the finished Thing.

But I don't know if that answers your question really... TL;DR:

In order to get in the groove, I pretend there's no causal relationship between "doodling a little cartoon animal" and "crafting something purposeful that people will see." And the core of that is getting to a place where I can just make stuff up without worrying about it :D

by Marie Howe

I had no idea that the gate I would step through to finally enter this world

would be the space my brother’s body made. He was a little taller than me: a young man

but grown, himself by then, done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet,

rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold and running water.

This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me. And I’d say, What?

And he’d say, This — holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich. And I’d say, What?

texas tech's quartback, brendan sorsby, was investigated for sports gambling. i know sports betting is all the rage right now, but athletes themselves are not allowed to do it. it is Rule Number 1 and it is the highest priority rule for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), who governs all athletic programs at about 1,100 colleges in the US.

the invesitagetion of sorsby revealed that, not only did he place more than 9,000 sports bets when he himself was a collegiate athlete, but 40 of those bets were AGAINST HIS OWN TEAM when he was playing at indiana university. immediately, this threatens the integrity of the sport, and especially because indiana is the hottest team right now as the defending national champion.

the NCAA, which is largely a sham organization these days (they've truly lost their grasp and college athletics are the wild west now) actually enforced their Number 1 Rule and told sorsby his career is over, that he would never play college football again (and, subsequently, that he would never get drafted into the NFL because his college career was cut short).

well, because the NCAA is a husk of its former self, sorsby and texad tech immediately took this to court. MANY athletes have learned these past few seasons that if you can find a judge who's a fan of your team, you can get any NCAA ruling overturned. that's exactly what texas tech did. they filed a suit in Lubbock, where the university is located and where every judge is an alum of texas tech. so sorsby was granted an injunction and will now only be suspended for the first 2 games od the 2026 season (which are alwayd against no-name teams that will be destroyed regardless of who's suspended).

every other school in the country immediately went on the defensive because this is a very clear integretiy issue. so nebraska and georgia (sic em dawgs) released statements saying that all currently-scheduled competitions witb Texas Tech in ANY sport will be canceled and there will be no future schedulings. at least 3 of the major conferences (SEC, Big 10, Big 12) , who account for almost all division 1 sports teams in the country, are also in discussions about cancelling comtests. Texas Tech is part of the Big 12, and there is serious talk of all other teams in the conference shutting texas tech out.

now would probably be time where i say that texas tech is one of the wealthiest programs in college football becaise there is a single billionaire alumnus pouring money into the program with hopes of essentially buying a championship. so texas techs integrity has always been questionable. anyway, the university president put oit a statement that he doesnt care that sorseby violated regulation and that texas tech will sue any school that refuses to play them because it jeopardizes their championship prospects if they're umable to play any games.

Curious about the recent Valencian music scene of the last 20 years? Don't want to commit to anything, just want some fun music to put on in the background? Then I have the playlist for you!

People keep asking me for examples of the music that I study, so I've made this playlist with some greatest hits. It's missing a lot of smaller artists, so I'm going to try to add more as I go, but if you'd like some fun ska/punk/rock/rap/pop/electronica/etc in Catalan to play in the background, you've come to the right place :)