Good Morning! Welcome to the second Friday of 2023!

Thank you for your votes on the Skookworks banners. I’ve tallied the votes and the winners are:

My big illustration project this year is the Mighty Nizz comic. I got stalled in inking at the end of last year because of the extra hours I needed to work at USPS. With package volumes back to “normal” levels I’m able to go back to “normal” work hours. Y’know, ten hours or less instead of 12 hours and more. Less time delivering mail means more time writing and doing art. My goal is to have the second Nizz story inked and toned and being colored by the end of the month. Fingers crossed.

I was intending to do all the coloring using Clip Studio Paint but there’s enough of a learning curve that I’ll probably only do the lettering there. I’m moving toward a more digital work process. Partly that’s to make it possible for me to produce work more quickly. Partly that’s to eventually have less physical art to store. We’re expecting to move out of Seattle in a few years and the less we have to move, the easier it will be.

And partly … it’s to make it more difficult to spill ink all over my art. I’ve done it a few times on my own. I’ve moved my grip wrong and dropped my brush on the page. Mostly I’ve been able to clean that up digitally. A few times I’ve needed to print out new bluelines and start over. Most recently the cat knocked over my ink cup and got spatters on my thumbnails and the page I was inking. Fortunately, that time, the ink hit the part of the page that I was going to fill with black anyway.

I’m moving from Photoshop to CSP for two reasons.
Number One – screw Adobe and their rental model. I own my copy of CSP.
Number Two – Photoshop is a massive program and I only use a small part of it. CSP was designed for Japanese manga artists. Mangaka are expected to produce as many (or more) as twenty pages a week. CSP is designed to make that workload easier.

My first finished image done with CSP is the Mighty Nizz logo.

My other big projects are auxiliary to the Mighty Nizz comic – my Ko-Fi page and the Skookworks store.

I’ve set up three support tiers at Ko-Fi.

Nothing but the Nizz
Level One. For folks who are most interested in the Mighty Nizz. Weekly newsletter. Sketches. Process GIFs. And more!

Pulp and Circuses
Level Two. For folks who like pulp fiction and weird illustration. And the Mighty Nizz. This tier includes all the Mighty Nizz content. Regular chapters (with illustrations) of a scifi/fantasy/magic realismish serial. Plus schtuff!

All the Works
Level Three. All the Nizz. All the Pulp. Plus new short comics. Revised classic comix. Downloadable PDFs. Plus schtuff!

The Skookworks store will be similar to my current Zazzle and Redbubble stores but you should be able to make purchases directly from one of my sites – Mighty Nizz stuff from the Mighty Nizz site, Oz Squad stuff from the Oz Squad site and everything else from the Skookworks site. If there’s a design you’d like to see on a specific product please let me know.

Today is the fifth day of my six day USPS work week. I’ll get to rest on Sunday and Monday.

I hope your New Year is treating you well. Look out for yourself. Be as kind as you can. Take joy where you find it. Don’t listen to crazy people on the internet.

See you in seven!