April 2025 Newsletter
Finished back-up interiors, new business cards, first events of the year, and MORE!
Hey everyone! Hope everyone is having a good start to the month of April. Can’t wait to tell you guys what all I’ve done since March. Let’s get to it, shall we?
Back-up story for Nock #2
I mentioned in the last newsletter that I was working on a Macabre Mel back-up story in Nock #2 for Devin Arscott (you can find him on social media or Substack), which lead to some interesting roadblocks while trying to finish them. From my birthday to catching whatever bug that was going around to issues with scanning the pages, it was an interesting turn of events. Figured I would share with you all the line art:
Did some experimenting with traditionally adding marker & watercolor in the line art to create some added texture instead of just doing black & white (taking inspiration from Dike Ruan & Francesco Mobli). I will say that after massive finagling with the scan settings and post corrections to make sure that the half tones showed up, the physical pages look better in my opinion (especially with the light grey tones). I’m not sure how Ruan & Mobli are able to get their traditional washes & grey tones to look so good, but I’ll try it again another day.
It’s business (card) time!
It was time to change things up. My first cards (stylish while… sterile) were quickly thrown together about 5-6 years ago, so I had plans to revamp them around 2023. I had lost the original line art sketch somewhere in my house, but shelved the idea in my brain. This year, I felt it was right to bring back the idea of a fun business card.
I wanted to keep two of the characters from the cover of my first sketchbook, tweak them a bit, and add two more to create some… range, maybe? Thought about squeezing in a cowboy and decided it was busy enough. These new cards will be available at the Huntsville Comic & Pop Expo at the end of the month.
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Spring 2025 events!
I’ve got two weekend events back-to-back, which I’m excited to start tabling again (it’s been too long since I only did 3 events last year).
April 25th-27th: Huntsville Comic & Pop Expo in Huntsville, AL
May 3rd: Free Comic Book Day at Haven Comics in Madison, AL
I’m hoping to debut some sticker designs this year, starting with my logo/signature in either a foil or glow-in-the-dark option
I’ve always loved the idea of one’s name or initials to be a logo or their brand, especially with brush calligraphy in the design. It took some time to make it work so I wasn’t having to make my signature legible for every single piece I finished, but figuring this out years ago has helped identify myself in what pieces I’ve done. Granted, it’s not as cool as a non-de-plume like Moebius, but it’s working okay? Lol
I do have two other sticker designs in the works, with one of them being Delicious In Dungeon related. Hope to try and make more of these to sell or have as add-ons with sales in the near future.
BTL Vol 2/’Ghost Notes’ news
There’s been the off & on question I get regarding when I’ll put the launch for the second volume of my sketchbook, Between The Lines. With the unfortunate situation regarding how the American economy currently is (which is causing comic & comic art collectors to be frugal), I’m torn between launching the Kickstarter later this Spring and holding off until there is the fraction of a chance that the economy will turn upwards which would help in meeting the funding goal. I’m not alone in regards to the doubts and worries with what’s going on is impacting crowdfunding, but I also really want this first KS to go well for what it is. More updates on that later!
I’m doing some small revisions to storyboards on Ghost Notes (the slice of life music comic I’m writing & drawing on the side), and I believe that once I have some editor friends look it over that I’ll start putting pages at a time and release them as a subscriber only add-on via Substack (originally was going to do Patreon, but I think this place will be better suited).
And now to the special part at the end of every newsletter, the Secret Archives! A place where I share either a book, a movie, a video game, or an album that I’ve been enjoying and think you should check it out too.
This month’s pick from the Secret Archives is…. Her Private Life, a Korean rom-com currently on Netflix!
Since about midway last year, I decided to do some research regarding what makes slice of life dramas and rom-coms work, the tropes, etc. I started to get a bit bored with the American market and decided to look globally and I knew from years past of people with glowing reviews of K-dramas. So far, I have not been disappointed.
Before I landed on this one, the stunning lead actress Park Min-young was in a 3 season ‘reality whodunnit’ show called Busted! and was recommended Her Private Life after the last episode. Keep in mind, I’m not a fan of K-pop due to flashbacks of late 90s/early Aughts of all the pop groups in America (NSYNC, 98 Degrees, Destiny’s Child, Pussycat Dolls, etc), but I figured “Ehhh it’s a rom-com. What’s the worst it could do?”
Famous last words, I might add lol. I was not prepared for this show to just hook me in the way that it did. The main premise was simple, but then it started to take some interesting twists and turns, not settling for less. The show became less about Min-young’s character having a duel life as a paparazzi fan girl for a famous K-pop group from her day job as an art museum curator, and more about the other things we kept private and how certain characters were more interconnected than they realized. I definitely recommend checking this out, and also another Park Min-young show called When The Weather Is Fine (also on Netflix, and currently watching).
See you next month!
Thomas Price