Hello!

Issue 148! I missed last week's newsletter because I was on a short 4 day trip to meet up with my family and unwind after a grinding July. Refreshed, I got down to work again on Monday. The kids started school Tuesday (I know, dumb to have school start in July, but whatever), then my poor wife Alison got covid! So I've been balancing her job and my job, and not doing a great job at either. She's in the "feels like being a chewed up piece of gum" stage of covid right now. I'll keep you posted.

Alright, read on, there's 5 things I thought you'd find interesting this weekend.

Enjoy!

1) Destiny 2 Ships!

From the Art Department

Last year I had the opportunity to work with Bungie on some designs for Destiny 2 and they FINALLY released them! Posted above are the finished assets for the game done by the artists at Bungie based on my concept art.

This was such a fun project! Here's some sketches I did:

If you want to see the rest of the work I did for Bungie, there's a TON more designs and process stuff for this project over on my patreon.

2) The GM XP 512E

From the Office of Wheels

I've been revisiting Akira Toriyama's work recently and it's peppered with these magnificent tiny vehicles. Because I've never read Dragon Ball I don't think of him as one of my primary influences, but my tendency to draw cute characters in fun vehicles certainly came from him.

All this to say, if there was ever a car that embodied the Toriyama spirit it is absolutely GM's experimental electric bubble car the XP 512E.

The proportions!

Those little wheels!

The vermillion paint job!

That white stripe!

I love this thing.

Video here: LINK​

More photos here: LINK​

3) TELLURION

From the Illustrators Division

I've been following Matt Rhodes since the early 2000s. He's an incredible artist who's work bridges the gap between concept art and illustration.

He's worked for years in the gaming industry on AAA titles, but the work that absolutely stuns me is his personal project TELLURION.

I was reminded by this when friend of the newsletter, Thomas, sent me an email suggesting this for the newsletter.

Here's Thomas's note in the email:

"He spent three years drawing more than 300 full-color panels. He said that he was terrible at dialogue and for a long time it kept him from doing a story. Then someone suggested he draw a story without dialogue. I was skeptical, but after a dozen images I was hooked, and binged the whole thing. It was surprisingly gripping.

It’s really a great example of not letting your weakness stop you from creating art."

A couple lessons here:

• There is power in slow productivity. You can create something substantial by consistently chipping away at it image by image over time. No need to sprint.
• Do work that plays to your strengths. Yes, you want to grow and improve in areas you are weak, but don't let those weaknesses be a roadblock to making something great.

Experience TELLURION here: LINK​

Matt's Instagram: LINK​

Artstation: LINK​

Also, I love his version of DUNE: LINK LINK and LINK​

4) Hashima Island

From the Exploration Unit

You've probably seen this place in different movies, or may have seen the locations it's inspired in manga and video games. The first images I saw of it where from 2012's James Bond film Skyfall.

It was a coal mine for decades, and over the years buildings were added to support the workforce there, peaking at over 5000 inhabitants in 1959. For a couple of grim decades it was a slave labor camp as Japan forced Chinese and Korean war prisoners to work the mines.

Eventually petroleum replaced coal in the 1960s in Japan and the mine shut down.

Now it's a tourist destination, and a reference for a future location in my comics.

You can read the history of it here: LINK​

5) On the niche

From the Inspirational Thought Unit

I just listened to a fascinating podcast interview with Emmett Shear who is the CEO and co-founder of Twitch. For years he was turned down by investors because his company served the gaming niche and well, you know how that turned out for him. (In 2014 Amazon bought Twitch for about $970 million in cash.)

There's an old saying, "Niche and get rich," meaning make something specific and deliberate for a small group and that group will go to the ends of the earth to support your work.

This principle isn't just for business. I think it works in life as well. I like how it's put here:

When you try to please everyone, you neglect the people that mean the most to you. As someone who struggles with too much people pleasing, I needed this reminder this week.

That's all for this week. Thank you for reading this newsletter and hope you have a great weekend!

-Jake

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