Issue 176

Hello!

The focus for the last two weeks has been robots, Robots, and ROBOTS. With the launch of my kickstarter two Mondays ago it's been just about all I've been thinking about. Also, you guys showed up BIG TIME that first day, absolutely blowing away my expectations. Thank you 🙏

Here's 5 things I thought you'd find interesting this weekend.

Enjoy!

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LATEST

I do all kinds of things that never end up in the newsletter, so this spot in the header here is just a quick run down of what I've done recently that I didn't want to devote an entire segment to:

• I'll be at the Tucson Comic Con in September: LINK
• I'll have a table at LIGHTBOX in October: LINK​
• Proud of how this IG reel turned out: LINK​
• RIP Twitter 2006-2023: LINK​
• Podcast Episode 167: Finding Inspiration with Benjamin Schipper​
• Podcast Episode 168: Can I Make Money As An Illustrator?​
• Podcast Episode 169: Should I Quit My Day Job for Art?​

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1) Week TWO of Ryder's Robot Book

From the Special Projects Unit

If you haven't checked it out yet, my new book is on Kickstarter now!

BACK THE KICKSTARTER TODAY!

I've been generating a TON of artwork lately for the Kickstarter, and thought I'd do a big art dump today.

Here's the main character of the new book, Ryder. He's a detective who investigates robot crimes. And in the book the case he's dealing with a real doozy!

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Here's the Robot King.

I did a few variants you can see in my instagram post here: LINK.

People liked these two the best. He's part of a series of chess bots that are in the book.

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I did a live stream of this drawing on Instagram you can watch here: LINK​

I had a request from a backer to draw Ripley's Power Loader from Aliens. I thought it would be fun to try and draw it from memory. I know it doesn’t look exactly like this, but it was fun to make something that has the vibe. I think I got all the right beats.

And I got MORE requests for drawings of Robbie the Robot from Lost in Space, Gizmo Duck, BD-1 from Jedi Fallen Order, and K2-SO from Rogue One. Again, tried doing all of these from memory.

Lastly, here's a cool sticker I designed for the second stretch goal. Everyone who backs it at the Signature Edition and above will get this if we hit the stretch goal.

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BACK THE KICKSTARTER TODAY!

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PATREON: I paused an 8 part series on getting a book deal while I wait for some feedback from my agent. In the meantime I'm sharing all my strategies, ideas, and the book building process of my next Kickstarter project: ROBOTS. Including raw numbers and my kickstarter dashboard info.

Patrons are seeing concept art, the process posts, the writing posts, and everything that goes into making these books. Here's the breakdown of how I made a complex cover illustration like this, with multiple characters:

Sign up now: LINK​

The amount of support on my Patreon ebbs and flows, but always hovers around 125-130 people. We are now at 137! So close to my goal of 140 this month.

If you sign up this month I'll give you any of my digital artbooks of your choice. Just DM after sign up and I'll send you a download link.

You also get a 15% discount in my shop, and at the end of the month some patrons get all my working files to learn from and pick apart. Sign up here: LINK​

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2) Rafael Sarra's Logo Makeovers​
​From the Department of Graphic Design

Portuguese graphic designer, Rafael Sarra asks the question: "What if this ubiquitous logo for a global brand was actually cool?" And then he goes and does something about it. Not only that he gives things logos that I didn't think needed logos, but was foolishly wrong: like Mars, and Tokyo.

Check out a boatload more of designs on his website: LINK​

Instagram: LINK​

and Behance: LINK​

It was SO hard picking only 5 images!

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3) Scratch Built to Perfection

From the Office of Scale Models

Arnaud Caubel is a concept artists and scratch model builder based in France. What blows me away is his powerful designs using pretty basic materials. Some of these designs are just card stock, household trash, and glue!

Look through his instagam and Artstation accounts to see the junk he starts out with and the masterpieces they end up as.

Artstation: LINK​

Instagram: LINK​

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4) Adam Murphy's Tin Tin Indy Mashup

From the Illustrators Division

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This is great, because I heard it said that Spielberg's Tin Tin movie is the third best Indy film he's made.

After seeing Adam Murphy's Tin Tin and Indy mash up all I want now is some French publisher to hire him to write and draw an Indiana Jones bandes dessinée.

Murphy is a veteran of the animation world working for all the top studios, so no wonder this looks so pro.

Check out more of his work on Instagram: LINK​

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5) On failing

From the Inspirational Thought Unit

Do not let failure stop you from creating.

Instead, what you fail at and how often you fail should be a diagnostic for how much you're growing.

When you succeed at something you are usually blind to what part luck played in it. However, when you fail you can see everything that went wrong from personal shortcomings to bad luck. The key is to turn that failure into a learning experience and to let that inform your next attempt.

I used to think that some day I'd get to the point where every drawing would be perfect, every project would be a home run because I'd have finally mastered the craft, and could just execute all the time.

What I realized 25 years into this career is that you don’t get to a point in life where you are done failing, you just fail in different ways. In fact, I would argue that if you aren’t failing, you aren’t pushing yourself hard enough.

I remember hearing an athlete talk about the "Rule of Thirds," (no, not THAT rule of thirds).

If I remember it right, she said that if you're working on something hard one third of the time it should feel really good and be a blast to do, one third of the time it should be just okay, and one third of the time you should be failing and feeling like you have no business doing this.

That’s how you know you are in the right spot. That’s how you know you’re growing.

If it’s always easy you’re not growing and you aren’t pushing yourself. If it’s always failure you’re pushing yourself way too hard and still aren’t growing.

Find that sweet spot of one third wins, one third okays, and one third fails.

(Found the video of the athlete who talked about the one thirds rule: LINK)

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

-Jake

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My sponsor for this newsletter is…me. It's me, because I'm not accepting sponsors for my email list, and don't plan to any time soon. Really, I'd just like people to buy stuff from my shop. If you like this newsletter, you can support it a few ways:

​Order something from the shop (Best)

​Back a kickstarter when I launch one (Also Best)

​Support me on Patreon (Second Best)

​Share the newsletter with a friend (Third best)

​Shop for art supplies using my affiliate links* (Fourth best)

Mention it on social media (Fifth best)

I'd appreciate any of these when you can. Thanks!

>>Any amazon link I post is an affiliate link<<

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And this cracked me up: LINK​