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I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about in the past how I decided I needed to work in the personal anthology format, even though it was not particularly economically viable…

…when I’d shopped the idea of Revolver around most publishers winced and said let them know when the stuff in serial is ready to be put out as stand alone books. They always say they found them hard to sell. At least in the past before selling anything at all got hard…

Some notes from the desk, getting refocused and remembering old processes.

Thing is after doing a few Graphic Novels, 60 – 160 pages I confirmed doing the same thing a long time – working on just one long story for more than a couple months – had a greater negative impact on my mental and physical well-being than I cared to tolerate. I needed to facilitate the itch to refresh with something else for a bit or just feel ground to a halt.

But there’s no free lunch or perfect scenario.

The catch with working on multiple stories at the same time though, or in sequence? Is when your attention gets pulled away for whatever reason, feeling my way back into them as interest shifts between, or onto other tasks can be difficult. There’s inertia and uncertainties about what’s next, where the attention should flow sometimes.

My challenges with Channel shifting

What I always called it – they were one of the early red flags for me as I learned about the improved understanding of ASD and ADHD in my 30s-40s. I don’t love some of the pathologizing I’ve seen, in the past or recently. But I hear many echoes of myself in a lot of what I read around that as a common problem shared by others in the ND family.

I’ve never really multitasked, don’t have the bands – it’s always been serialized singular things getting done. Sometimes when there is competing priorities and intentions I’ll get stuck for a bit. A version of task paralysis. Once I recognize it I’ll find ways to break the stall, and reinitiate the creative cycle. Often the same strategies I use to swing out of the lows often that follow getting something big done.

I often used music for this but that was disrupted for a while while working in animation.

The last few months have been about getting a lot of other things sorted while on layoff, but looking to re focus on the comics now. Those were both tools for getting these and other things done. Right now that means sitting with the scripts and thumbs, the WIP for two of them so far – The Box & Nuts – with music I respond to well, finding the vibes.

Randomly I reconnected my player to this again, so you can see what’s playing in the studio. It’s kind of a reminder to myself to play music more. Been using a news heavy feed of YouTube too much lately, but I don’t find that inspiring to draw to at all. This is all my local system player, stuff in my own collection.

Not a new years resolution or something. But setting to do a bit more each day for the next two months. Remembering music helps me get into that a LOT easier. If music is a big part of your studio practice, what are your favorites? Have any recommendations?

To help as well, I need to have things out. I’ve hung Blue lines for good number of the two main stories pages, more to go as I think about thumbs and pencils. Those on the line are all ready for inking now. Printed on smooth Bristol 11×14 pad sheets. I use a few brands.

Always need to get them up where I’ll see them so they get done. If it’s in a stack anywhere it’s just a stack, not a thing to do.

In the past I built momentum by starting the day with ink. Will be bringing that back. Reconnecting with old paterns that did work when I had more creative soloing time. Seems like a plan but it bugs me a bit, to be doing any of this imitating of new needed changes, around new years. Do not like them being even randomly adjacent to ‘resolutions’…Grumble.

Happy New Year everyone!

Hope this next orbit is a lot more positive in many ways, but not waiting on that when it comes to my own things, make it true by doing it!

UPDATE: Three Months in…

I currently have four working thinking spots, in my studio behind this wall and here in the hall. One for digital work flow, one for analog drawing. A small working shop area for projects like this being built and the tools. And this, my brain dump and external tactile working memory, that in part is helped and prompted by movement.

All helping shape my attention a bit better.

Will probably be the last update to this post about it?

Would recomend, infinity out of a billion!

UPDATE: One Month in…

So this is proving quite effective so far. I’ve been using it for a month and it’s both doing the thing I intended, and is tactile and aesthetically engaging in the use. I’ve been fine tuning things about it, rounded the desk corners and added places to put things, and some ‘flair’ in the form of pins that amuse and please me [I’ve hade a collection for a while I used to rotate on my courier bag] and are relevent to the mindset around this station.

This is the sort of thing that’s very particular to the user and use, but if you’re dealing with similar issues around ADHD and have some means of creating a similar station I’d recomend that.

You would not have to build it, it’s just about having a dedicated place for this. In my case our place had limited options, a normal small desk would not fit and it was a chance to push my carpentry skills a bit while letting me customize it to exactly what I need from it.

Ten out of ten, would recomend! ☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Hi folks, so if you’ve been reading you know I’ve been on temporary layoff until march, and one of the ways I’m using that time was to get some big dangling life issues resolved.

Sorted out a pile of back taxes with the aid of an accountant, after hiring an OT for accountability help getting tons of paperwork sorted last year.

Now along with trying to get the next instalment of Mind Engine done I’ve been working on figuring out some things post late in life ADHD DX, confirming what has been long suspected but also getting a bit of formal help and also just resolving some ideas.

Booked a half dozen OT appointments over the winter to keep on track and help think of strategies, a lot of it has been mainly about executing on somethings I’ve been thinking about over the summer.

For about a decade and a bit I’ve been living with type 2 diabetes, which was getting somewhat under control pre pandemic but then I shifted to full time and very sedentary work in animation, and threw that all off track. Things got bad during shut down and then I was doing ok just after with going for walks but had other issues. And I’ve since fallen off the horse a few times.

For over a year, I’ve been thinking I needed some kind of new AuDHD self accommodation measure, to address the problem.

My main chronic issue has been a lack of focus mornings, remembering to take meds, what I’m doing for the day, thinking about active things and exercises, and all that. My default is to be a bit adrift for the first few hours of the day before my brain kicks in and I recall what I need to do. And I don’t mean just a bit foggy, truly blank. No thoughts, no intent, no memory internally of what I need to do.

Sometimes that’s not bad, I like a slow wind up but while that worked when I was younger and setting my own schedules, now for multiple reasons it’s MUCH more of a problem.

When I was freelancing full time I knolled my drafting table and work station the night before to remind me of things I need to do, but I’m no longer freelancing nearly as much, and I have to knoll my whole life more due to health issues, not just the days work.

Some folks can use internal strategies for this kind of thing but also being Aphantasic, that approach has simply not worked for me. Not for lack of trying, but internal systems or even a day planer once out of site, is of no use. I need something fixed in my space, that can’t be missed or hidden. That has ONE JOB. To be a brain dump/planning/medical/task station.

So I needed to set up this in a spot that I’ll see first thing. No room in the bedroom for more stuff, would get lost likely as well between my wife’s and my own clutter. So picked a spot in the middle of the apartment, across from the bathroom, feet from the bedroom but also every other space in the apartment. And designed a wall mounted secretarial style desk/counter/station for the spot. Spent some time over the last two weeks building it.

I’m not a pro woodworker but made many basic things over the years and a lot of ideas about how to build it spun out of watching Adam Savage and Dave Folgler do some things, so tip of the hat to them.

Been using it for a week and still fine tuning, seems to be working well! Much more consistently remembering to take meds, getting focused faster and making plans for what kind of gym/fitness stuff I’m going to do. Some critical life infrastructure for my home

I’m debating painting it, there’s a warp in the door I’d like to fix, water and a heat gun I read would take care of it. But think I want to use it for a bit and let ideas about any painting percolate, and for the moment loving the bare wood.

ED2: The magnetic black whiteboard material came, I cut a bit to fit the lid panel and it’s perfect, falls right on my eyeline so the place for key planning notes and To Dos.

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ED: By the by NO AI
was used for any of this.

That’s not remarkable to me or anyone who does a lot of woodwork, but these days… you never know. Best to be mindful of that IMO.

But also it occurred to me because the thought before, was I’m using this desk for doing a lot of things, people turn to AI powered apps to recently. I’m doing the tasks more manually, I don’t want those cognitive tools to atrophy. But I also deeply object to them for numerus reasons.

Ok please don’t do that if you can help it, specifically LLMs and image, video and song generators. For so many reasons, if you can help it in any way. Thanks. ~Max

Hello dear readers.

I haven’t posted on like since TCAF last year! In part just busy with other aspects of life but also on Substack, ambivalencies due to the platform publisher’s policies.

I’ve been considering going back patreon recently …?… and starting a new creator account there. I’m not generally in need of fundraising right now so it’s more about just a platform for publishing and distribution of media in either case. But it would be nice to find a place I can be sure I can have full trust in.

Which is also kind of why I’ve been thinking about trying to build mailing list functions into my website here too. I think I could install a mailing list infrastructure on it? So I could use something like ghost I guess? But that takes time and it’s low priority.

Mainly I’m trying to focus on some health and life stuff, and doing the work itself. Be more focused and organized. I’m kind of hoping to get the bulk of the next Mind Engine books done before March. Which should be doable, it’s a 60 page B&W antholagy.

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I was running into some speed bumps doing pencils for a set of pages I’m adding to the beginning of the next chapter of The Box to elaborate, and make a smoother transition as a standalone chapter. I think probably also just work better overall when collected.

When I was first drawing the initial pages of the story it was an improvisational automatic drawing, a joyful doodlefest. Following my emotional compass and just drawing whatever the marks suggested to me they needed to be. No plan just making up as I go.

There was a script – A reworking of The Tinderbox by Hans Christian Andersen.

In teaching how to write comics one of the strategies I proposed to students was borrowing plots from more obscure public domain fairy tales and children’s stories.

An an example of what you can do with them, I stripped out all the pronouns, titles, names and honorifics, anything that identified who or what someone was. The process was inspired by something I’d read about how the script for Aliens was initially written by Dan O Bannon.

Here I thought of it as like scrubbing the meat off the collagen and bones of a story, to create the scaffolding of plot for a new infusion of Flesh and reinterpretation of story.

I hadn’t decided too much in advance about any of the visuals aesthetics. There were a few sketches for the soldier, something interesting that came out of an exercise I was doing in a cartooning class at Syn Studio.

Once I’d had them used them both for teaching teaching a while I started to get inspired by the proposed challenge myself!

The first drawings of my character – an unnamed Fay, Goat soldier protagonist in The Box – was a couple of sketches over coffee, and then right into the first pages I did.

I didn’t do any rotations, just drew what felt right inventing it IN the story. When I wanted to make some changes in the next bit I partly masked it by them getting a bath and grooming at the Inn. But the model has drifted a lot. Was slowing me down trying to keep consistent, some angles were getting more and more challenging! The shapes were morphing and I didn’t have good rotational quarter views very well worked out. I decided I needed to model it.

The following series of photos and texts were posted to my various socials before getting curated here on the work blog and for the moment, on substack!

I need to get some more stands, I had a couple from the last time I made a bust using air drying clay [see bottom]. But only have one working one attached to the board I mounted this on is left so need a new one for this figure so I can keep using the work stand.

But, because of that I made it self standing too so no rush.

And that worked out really well. The base is also a PERFECT fit for holding to pose while drawing. It’s so crazy comfortable in my hand as seen in the last pics there.

I’ve made character busts before for drawing but not in a while and not ever with polymer clays.

Fortunately my wife is a crafting witch, and has an insanely well stocked Studio so I was able to borrow a block of Sculpey white to work with.

I made a copper wire-frame using a soft copper wire as a mounting base and then built up the form some more using tin foil. This was following a lot of instructional material I found online but also reflects processes I’m familiar with from clay modeling and sculpture.

Both my mother and I are actually quite fond of sculpting but I’ve done it much less than her until recently, I think with this medium I have found a new home in art!

This project is very specific to doing the head for my comics. I don’t need it a lot more refined than it is, there’s a bit of carving left to do but it’s very close and I’ll leave it up painted.

But I was having all kinds of ideas about how I might want to abstract something like this, or do something different and there has been this coffee themed figure I was thinking about for ages of making in Copper or bronze but…Going to revisit the idea, do it in Sculpey!

The base was imagined as some kind of scrap burned wood I imagined, I bet I could fake that If I wanted to… It was going to be sized around a REAL espresso cup for a hat, done for a display window for a cafe that’s long since closed.

But now…I can make it about a foot long and be pleased too. I could make the bigger one from parts, and pinned and assembled after.

This is going to be a thing finally! Ordered a modest bulk supply of the same material both to replace what I used and have more to play with. And look into some of the metallic ones maybe…

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You can read the first instalment of The Box in Mind Engine | Ignition Sequence, available here!

Last page of that seen on the right!

Been holding off setting up my new POD stuff while the postal strike issues are still unresolved but your DRM free digital copy awaits you! Ideally all goes well and it’s joined by the next in May 2026!

~

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I’ve explored making CGI models as refrence guides for other comics, taking a course in 3d Coat I got a fair bit done on one for the city in Pin City [in Revolver One] before the program froze up, and crashed not letting me save the work, just this last screen grab of it before poof.

As a secular leftist anti-Zionist Jew, I am always anti all things nationalistic, and as a result loath what the star of David has come to represent in my mind and to many others. It was never THE central Jewish Symbol, until promoted by Zionist to adorn their flag. But for many it means a lot.

SVG File – CC BY-SA 4.0

And symbols are powerful. Thinking about that last May, I put on my designer’s hat and explored ideas around an icon that rejects Zionism and isn’t visually defined by that or all the baggage, and instead works to be an affirmative table setting for inclusive community building outside of the garbage the ethno-Nationalists have contaminated our culture with and the walls of fear and hate they erected against our closest living ethnic relatives, Palestinians.

Later I saw and signed ‘A Global Jewish Manifesto for Collective Liberation’ from Global Jews for Palestine, which closely resonated with what I was going after here.

Re my flag/banner/crest here: The goal was to come up with something that was both not Nationalistic, AND not Religious while acknowledging the role spiritual practice plays in our culture.

To be an icon for a constructive path for a Zionist free Jewish culture, in solidarity with Palestinians as our closest cultural and genetic cousins.

• The only overt nod to religious ideas is the Hebrew text for Tikkun olam, which for me was presented early on as a Jewish secular vision of the call to leave the world better than you found it, work for social justice, the environment and ecology, a better future and human rights. “It’s an old idea that’s grown beyond the fait into secular Jewish culture.
  
  
• The pomegranate in the center means something to both Palestinians and Jews. The seeds of the pomegranate symbolize the 613 mitzvot (sacred obligations) attributed to the Torah, and it’s an icon for righteousness, knowledge, wisdom, and fertility.
  
  And given they are the direct descendants of the ancient Hebrews, it should be no surprise for Palestinians the pomegranate is ALSO a symbol of fertility, abundance, heritage and traditions, prosperity, and the continuity of generations.
  
  The fruit is associated with the land’s agricultural heritage, as are the olive branches here, representing peace, wisdom, vitality, and hope. And, for Palestinians those I read are a symbol of identity, heritage, and resilience. The both have some hint of importance to the religious but work as secular ideas we share.
  
  
• The central form is a deconstructed take on the Star of David, which is a symbol of Jewish identity and culture that predates the modern state and it’s flag, but has become the central one of the colonial project. So I was looking to get away from the angles and heavy single line, and reimagine it dramatically. Pushing away from the authoritarian air Zionism has brought to it, while also being largely responsible for making it a popular central icon.
  
  As I mentioned at the start It was not nearly as central before and rising to importance first in 17c European Jewish communities. I wanted that there as the key overt deconstructive element, but It was something I wanted to explicitly re present in a constructive form leaning into unity. Instead of interlocked WALLS, a Jewish fortress? It’s become the flowing forms of waves, energy, and movement. Ideally towards progress and solidarity. And after the fact it reminded me of a double helix.
  
  Ideally it suggests an open flow towards progress and solidarity.
  
  
• The white blue red black and green of course, is a use of ALL the past cultural nationalist movements both Jewish and Palestinian. But they have been made subordinate to the off white field of the flag.
  
  The blue lines on the Israeli flag are references to the blue lines of tallit, here I intertwined double lines of one part of the star form with the green white and black of the Arab Independence movements, including the Palestinian flag. Because the idea is to show them in relationship and partnership as cultural themes, together to form the whole form of the deconstructed star of David.
  
  I don’t want this to be a nationalist icon but, it is ment to promote peace and cohabitation in the land and in the world.
  
  
• And again, BOTH cultures see the white of their flags as being about “purity” and “noble intent and actions”. Don’t love the ‘purity’ part of that but the rest is a note I was going for. And because the purity thing bugs me a bit, and I wanted it to pop less and have the third white lines of the sign waves of the star stand out more, I added a very slight ivory/cream/gold back fill instead of pure white for the background field.
  

It’s ment to be a Jewish cultural flag, but welcoming to and inclusive of Palestinian culture, a people who’s genetic heritage is a direct line back to the ancient Hebrews who remained on the land, only converting to other faiths over time. So both cultures are present while having the past icons of either not dominate and instead assemble to suport something new.

Please feel free to share and use freely in the sprite it was created in, as outlined here. It’s covered by CC BY-SA 4.0 – Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

In the event my site goes down,
I’ve also uploaded it directly
to the Internet Archive here.

#FreePalestine #endthegenocide #NotInMyName
~Max

Hey all, I’m just packing, doing the day before dance. Good thing I got a noon bus, so I can sleep in a bit. I seldom get to sleep early the day before a show or travel.

I got my table info a yesterday, so for June 7 & 8 you’ll find me at the Mattamy Athletic Centre, 50 Carlton Street, Toronto, On. I’m at table 233A in the Ice rink near the Zamboni gate on the north west corner of the rink in the old gardens! Looks like I have the spot at the end of my row so easy to find!

By the by TCAF is fundraising to help pay for the new space and related expansion and keep the show free, go here to do that!

You’ll also be able to look for my distinctive new rack! Care of Andre-Guy Landry’s Sinister Rabbit Studio! Looks good eh? I think I’ll paint the bottom front plate white though and do my sig over in black paint to make it really pop. I was able to send him some custom spects for what it would look like and with a few tweeks he pretty much exactly did what i was thinking of. :D

Most of my books are with Luc from Pow Pow who’s by the way, one of the nicest people I know here in the Montreal Comics sene. But I’ll have to carry my prints because my cloths’ go in the same bag LoL. Should be fine.

True North Country Comics Podcast’s John Swinimer did a interview with me about Mind Engine and things that if all goes well will air Saturday so watch this space!

I need to book more of those, so if you’re seeing this and do interviews or reviews of comics, give me a holler?

I’ve been commenting on things where people use GenAI that one of the worst aspects is the lack of connecting with other people let alone any community building that goes into getting that slop generated. On top of all the other things about it I don’t like. Most of the good stuff and luck I’ve had has been thanks to the help of other people! Good thing to remember in these times.

Ok I need to get things packed and ready to go! Hope to see anyone who can make it at TCAF!

PS if you can’t wait until then or won’t be at the show, you can get the digital edition from my gumroad store now FYI!

Cheers!

Hello all! Hope this finds you well, I’m here wrapping up mind engine and getting ready to launch it at FBDM/MCAF next weekend!

So I’m pretty hyped if not a little nervous because I’ve left the printing so late. But I’m just doing it small press style, with a local printer I’ve used before. I’m confident given the short runs I’m doing they can get it done in the couple days I’ll have. 

Today I’m using my home printer to do a mockup proof, for going go through it and having my wife give it a look over with a highlighter to try to catch any errors and make sure everything falls into place.

One of the perks of small runs is there will only be 50 or so copies with those errors in them? LoL. I’ve not sorted out what if any Print on Demand/drop shipping option there will be for it, but a digital copy will go up at my gumroad shop next weekend.

I’ve taken the next week off so I can focus on getting that printed Tuesday, and getting things ready for the show as well as attending some of the events leading up to the weekend Festival. 

Also a little over a week ago I got very last minute news that I’ve been granted a table at TCAF!

I’d been put on a waiting list and given how close the show is getting – in early June – I’d kind of written off attending but I guess with all the unfortunate issues around crossing the Canadian border from the states for some creators spots came up free? Lucky for me I’ll be able to present my newest book there as well!

I don’t have information about where I’m going to be on the floor but soon as I do I’ll update this post with that and of course the weekend of share it on social media so you can find me.

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I’m going to cross post this update to my substack which is for now still up and I remain a little uncertain as to what to do with all that. I’m pretty confident I can recreate most of the functionality right here on my own home site the way I was thinking in the last post I shared here, but it’s going to take some time, effort and research that I just haven’t had room for. 

I don’t want to have to keep moving my mailing list looking for the best fit, and setting my own up will take a little work, so that’s why I haven’t made the jump yet. But as soon as I sort it all out expect to see updates coming from probably my own mailing list and dot com domain? 

Hope to see you at the festivals,
stay safe and keep making things!
– max

A peek at the inking on the new layout of pg10, not a ton will get done this weekend it looks good so far I think.

It continues to be interesting to work over the digital versions of this art I’d done in clip studio. It’s so overly detailed!

Some of the details when I do want to keep them, I’m doing with my draftsmen’s lamp but even then, I can only do about half the level of detail I was zoomed way in on my tablet.

And this is good, I was getting way too tight really.

This wasn’t my primary reason directly for backing away from working that way, but also these look FINE this way, it was unnecessary I think, and bogging me down. I think a lot of my peers get enamoured with the feeling of control and refinement it gives them but it slows us way down I think and in my case was constantly a fight to keep things from getting stiff.

I had a simple hack using a dot grid as my temporary backdrop with it set to on dot per half inch so I can sort of tell how close I was based on how many dots I could see. But even with the temptation to go in and clean this up more was always there. So back to paper and my old school, friendly feeling tools.

Makes drawing like a hug again. Which, we all could use right now I’m sure.

In other retro news, I’ve just joined a webring! Both this blog and Sequential are now part of WEBLOG, set up by writer Greg Pak!

You can see the link in my sidebar and feel free to use it to surf over to the next one in the ring when you’re done here!

In keeping with my thoughts in this recent post I love this as part of a move away from the walled gardens a bit. Maybe a lot, if people are brave and join us in numbers.

Randomly this reminds me of themes in my old short ‘Where the Wind Things Were’, you can read that here or get it in print in Revolver One.

Ok, have to go update Sequential with something, and wrap up for the night. Back to the animation mines doing props in Harmony 24 in the morning!

~Max

Did some editing and finished inking pg 9 over the week. Started lettering 9, cut the next page, and compressed the next three after into one.

Revised the work I had from what was planed before into new blues, and starting inking 10 now. Doing the panel boarders is a sacred ritual at the start if inking of a page.

Nuts is a sequel to Dream Life, but it will have it’s own feeling for sure. My sensibilities and wants have changed too much since I worked on the first one.

I’m still posting these to Cara by the way, and link to it or my site here on other socials.

I’m all for boycotting & counter tariffing as strategic leverage against Trump’s BS.

But there is a certain palpable, corpse ridden murderous hypocrisy, to this contrast in stances.

I’ve been reflecting on the issue of ethical and unethical platforms for publishing your work and promoting it.

Without getting too into the weeds most of you know about the issues with xtwitter. I closed all my accounts there several months ago and frankly was never a avid or heavy user so I don’t claim that that was a great sacrifice.

But I’ve backed up all my meta data and have prepared for the possibility that I’ll be shutting down my Facebook and Instagram accounts at some point in a foreseeable future. It’s the year of the snake after all isn’t it!

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I started link blogging on sequential directly again, posting new C-Lists once a week. And set up accounts on BlueSky [sequential] and Cara over the last year. Others as well but those ones are my prefered options and seem to be doing well. I’m not prepared yet to leave Meta, and I feel similarly about Substack for the moment. But to varying degrees they are both up for consideration now.

I don’t think Zuckerberg has ever been an ethical actor but he’s taken a turn for the worst more recently. And I feel that Chris Best is at best, being foolishly ideological about his idealized notion of absolute free speech.

His recent statement on Substack Reads, I take issue with giving Elon any credit at all for standing up for free speech. That claim is either knowingly disingenuous, or he’s trying to diplomatically differentially opacificate his critiques with faint praise.

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The fact that once he took over, the only actual free speech is that which praises him or agrees with him underlines the point. I left a note stating my thoughts but I’m sure that’s lost in the flood of comments there. Many have expressed their issues with his position, I will be watching what they do next.

Unfortunately I do like the platform and the independence journalism that’s thriving on it. And follow several like Drop Site and Zeteo that I find invaluable right now.

And really, I don’t want them to get into moderating, so as to maintain the unfettered journalistic landscape evolving there either frankly. I don’t think a more active hand in gating what is published is the right call at all.

But I do think morally, he should demonetize Nazis and hate based ideological content creators at the very least. It’s not so much a question of free speech but facilitating the financial profiteering off fundamentally antisocial ideologies that break the social contract intrinsic to tolerance in a free Society. Demagoguery for profit should not be allowed.

So all to say I was pondering to myself what should I do for mailing lists, and media blogging?

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A look at the first 7 [8 if you count page 0 here] from Nuts,
the second book of Dream Life | a late coming of age.
Hopefully te first chunk is to be published in may of this year!
I’ve set myself this as a goal.

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I’m embarrassed to say it took me several days to simply think ‘oh that’s right I used to do that on my own site didn’t I!‘. An old writer acquaintance reviving webrings got me going on that tack of thinking finally. So obvious this side of it.

So I’ve moved the link for my work blog back to the  top of the menu list to reprioritize that aspect of this site! There will be things to consider like increased server demands again but I think for the time being that should be fine.

And I think what I’ll do is continue to use the substack as a way to update but the body of the post will mostly direct here. But in time I can set up my own native email list via this domain too.

I think its time

we flee the walled gardens

and venture back into

the wild webs,

don’t you?

More to come soon
but this will mark the official rebooting of my old workdiary,
the precursor to the processpod! 

Stay safe and see you soon.

~Max

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When you’ve drawn 10 pages of a story digitally in clips studio, but then a full-time day job in animation and the rise of generative AI turns you off working on personal stuff digitally nearly so much?

So you decide to use those first 10 as pencils and do the rest traditionally from this point on out! I’m going to do just inks with no tones for mind engine, but for this story will probably come back to it to add the tones, like I did for the first book once collected.

I have a two and a half month crunch to get a bunch of this done and a few other things to put together a book for the Summer festival season, so when putting up the schedule in front of me everywhere I work. I have a more involved Substack post about all this going up mid day Monday here.

My alternate

portfolios on Cara.

It’s May, and I’ve got a few things to catch you up with that are going on this month!

This May, Free Art with us!

We want to free it from exploitative extractive generative AI capture and training without consent or licence! And encourage people’s human right to true self expression, rather than resorting to gamified prompting engines for a simulacrum of it.

‘Human Made Arts’ is founded by a group of artists and our tentpole action for May starting with International Workers Day, is a 31 day art challenge! We created prompts to use to inspire some drawing fun, or work in ANY human driven medium. Share the results of yours with the hashtags #ThisMAIFreeArt and #HumanMadeArts along with others like #NoAI.

If you join in, tag our social medial platforms in your posts too so we can re-share them! You’ll find those linked off of the landing page here. You don’t have to be a great artist! Just a Human. support the cause of human creativity and ethical treatment of our creative labour.

Look forward to seeing your art! Here’s the first prompt list, and the first 7 days of Daily Counter Prompts. The daily cards are inspired by Oblique Strategy cards, and can be used as foils against the daily prompts on the list or on their own.

And here are my first 5 days of work for the challenge!

I know there’s a few typos, I’ve fixed those for a little free zine I’ll be giving out at festivals this month and later posts and publishing. But posting here as they appeared on my Instagram FB and other social media.

It’s Festival Season!

I’m not big on comic conventions these days but I love a good comics festival! I’m not tabling at TCAF but going to go hang out and see folks for the first time in years there! I was a Juror for the Doug Wright Awards so thought that was good enough an excuse to go.

But later in the Month I will be tabling at FBDM! My table is D30 Between Mount-Royal and Marie-Anne!

I’ll have my usual at the table: My independent books, prints, and the zines collecting my first 5 days of the #ThisMAIfreeArt stuff too! Hope to see some of you at either of those, come by and say Hi if nothing else!

Ok that’s it for now! Hope you’re having a good one, or at least as good as can be expected.
~max

In a couple more days the main event of FBDM/MCAF starts so thought I’d add an update here!

FYI I’m tabling May 26th to the 28th. In Tent C19! You’ll see in the listing for our block, that there’s a number of us presenting in that kiosk, but not so many you’ll have any trouble finding me, OR Brendan Montgomery who will be joining me Fri and Sat in his role as publisher and editor of Sequential Magazine, a sister print and digital quarterly publication launched off the Sequential Comics news site I started just over 20 years ago!

Issue 14, and many others will be available all weekend, Sunday too I think. unless we sell out?

Of course I’ll have my 5 latest books, along with some of my events exclusive 13×19″ prints! Including this new one from a bit of fun I had creating a pin up for the future issue of Mind Engine.

The festival is free to the public, held in Montreal on Saint-Denis street between Gilford and Roy. Our tent will be about midway between Marie-Anne and Rachel, in the middle of it all!

See the maps included here below for where to find us and more info about the festival can be found here on their main site!

I took this shot of the festival last year Friday, day one walking back to my tent. It was just after some rain which isn’t great but were mostly in the tents protected and over the weekend it was dry!

Here’s a boisterous clip from the festival promoting this years show!

One of my all time favorite books is Dave McKean’s epic, Cages [1990-96]. 

I’ve recorded a short overview of these two sequences on my YouTube channel here, and a presentation I gave of them for FBDM is posted here as well!

There are many lovely sequence with no words in this book but one of them documenting a conversation between the main character and a new romantic interest always stuck with me as a great example of how things like sound mood and movement can be captured in comics.

Along with several other visual gags like word balloons filled with pictograms and fluid shifts in style to effectively communicate changed in the emotional content of the encounter.

It’s notable how being wordless not only does not hamper it, it probably facilitates it.  It also takes more space than an actual conversation can if it’s just text but this may have more to do with pacing. Still, sometimes a picture is worth a million words, but other times it takes a lot of them to get across the idea.

A classic case of making the reader a participant in the writing. Often the best way to get something profound across is to not actually say it, but imply and leave space for the reader to project what they think. And how that can be a lot more profound than explicit text.

I was then reminded a LOT of this when I first read another scene, in Fabrice Neaud’s Journal T3 [2002].

The book was published later but it’s about a time period in his life around the same as when Cages was published, so I often wonder if he was influenced by it.

ED: I later talked to Fabrice and he told me that the work in Cages very mush inspired his scene, it was done as a homage!

There are ways in which his is more efficient, and clearer in what’s been talked about. His art is more draftsmen like so it tends to be less organic and brushy. And he used a lot more repetition. But still keep a a good amount of flow in the reading and captures many of the same feelings and ideas in term of the formal tools working to play with time, movement, and communicate emotions. And he’s even bolder in shedding any text in the lean in and exit of his chapter compared to McKean’s.

Fabrice is depicting a ‘true’ event, where he has a crush on a straight guy but by the end of it there’s a hint of how they end up not connecting as much. 

He used much more specific symbolism as well during the wordless conversation, while Dave has 9 pages of dialogue conversation before the wordless sequence, to frame and set it up [i’ve included those for context]. 

So Cages actually wordless conversation dance is only 13 pages long, compared to the whole 19 page wordless scene in Fabrice’s. Fabrice thus is doing more literal narrative work with it by far, between the specific symbols and the page count. While Dave is using it more evocatively. In Cages, a work of fiction, the story builds up the synergy of their feelings to a more positive outcome by its end.  The morphological visual metaphor is built around music at first, and in Journal T3, it’s dance. 

Sound versus physical motion and rhythms, all things not native to the medium of comics, leaning on visual stylizations to suggest the lived sensory experience of them. 

Both of these are examples of decompressed storytelling, so they take up a lot of real estate to get the job done. You could use similar tools in a short story but you’d have much less space to get the idea across…I’ll have to see if I can find an example of that too.

And here, side by side comparisons of what I think are examples of how each artists handled a similar moment.

ED: 28-11-25 | I’ve not closed down Substack, but have reservations now about it due to issues behind it’s founders response to current issues. Inclined to move my mailing list fully to just my own site here, but not had time to work out how to do that or if it can handle it. And simply haven’t had time to do much with the podcasts.

Hi folks, with the new job I was delaying payments for a while on Patreon but eventually just shut that down with the plan to move all my content posting over to Substack!

It took me a little bit but I’ve done that now! You can subscribe to my posts there for free, for now it’s podcasts once a week or so, and when I’ve got some art done I can share I’ll post it there too!

Check out the posts so far and sign up here! You can also sub to the podcast on it’s own via Anchor.

What up everyone!

So I’m coming up on a month of working on the new show? My time on season 5 of F is for Family was quite the ride. Straight up fun for preproduction for 3 months, once things got under way with the main production period and I took on supervising three departments, it was a bit intense!

But I got it done, and with the help of a great crew my departments were pretty well positioned when animation got underway. I think I might have even been ok at the job! Got a lot of praise from the director so yeah, hopefully did not wrap up my departments with too much suckage! Pleased with all that. The image here is my likeness as an extra, you’ll spot me and a bunch of the crew in the crowds watching the Thanks Giving parade! ;) Not really suposed to show anything but I think I can take a small liberty with this one given I posted the head on social media already. :D

The Next Thing

On the new show I’m just a prop designer, by request. Wanted some comparative down time after that run. I’m also helping with some of the Sup work and doing a bit of detailing for Backgrounds, so far it’s pretty good.

I have been working on my own comics very very slowly, it seems like it’s been longer than 7 months since last Oct, the routine and and regular income have been good for things on the personal front, I’ve got a stack of things backlogged to get done for old Dracula Kickstarter backers still, some art to ship and need to figure out what we’re doing for the hand full of high end leather bound books.

The print edition of that book is finally coming out this coming September from Dark Horse Comics, with all the hiccups along the way I’m a bit holding my breath until one in my hands though to be honest. But fingers crossed, there will be no more delays there.

Patreon has been on payment hold all year, been thinking about what I’ll do with that in terms of long term plans. Not sure yet. Not sure how long I’ll be in animation but right now it’s a good thing for my future plans economically so will have to consider if I keep it around, revamping dramatically.

I thought I’d post an update but that’s all there really is to say for now, you can catch live streams with me over on youtube now and then still, I’m up about once a week still. I’ll leave you with this page from the latest instalment of A Bastards Tale, and see you around the inter webs!

It’s been a while since I updated this here! FYI I’ve been using my Patreon as my work diary blog for the last year or more. Go there to fill in the blanks!

I wanted to post a general career update here, things have changed! After 7 years of paying the bills in part by teaching art part time at Syn Studio, I decided it was time to find something more lucrative.

I’ve lived through a few economic down turns now at 50, and the one’s I weathered the best were when I had solid full time work of some kind. The school was not willing to host more classes by me or pay for my prep time, even was reducing my classes in the wake of the pandemic so that simply wasn’t going to cut it anymore.

And while I’m still with Three in a Box, and had hoped for more, freelance illustration work has not been forthcoming this cursed year.

So when I was talking with my old friend Eric Theriault on discord and he mentioned Oasis, the local studio he works at was gearing up for a new season of F is for Family, I got their HR info from him [application portals suck and given I’m a high-school dropout they always screen me out before anyone sees my work], wrote a friendly cover letter and sent them some samples. I got asked to do a test, which went well because they hired me on the spot!

These three images are the test art I did.

So the last few weeks now, about a month I’ve been working full time designing props for F is for Family pre production for season 5. All goes well when full production kicks in I’ll be supervising the dept. Exciting and while a bit intense deadline wise, I’ve been managing well I think? The work is all remote so still in my studio at my desk. I am having to get up much earlier than has been my norm for the last 20 years though, find Saturdays are becoming the sleep deficit catch up day.

I wouldn’t call it hard work but there’s a lot of it to do! Honestly though compared to my personal stuff which is very labor intense, I enjoy the relative simplicity of commercial animation art. And it’s offered a few fun challenges along the way. I’m also looking forward to training on Harmony around the holidays.

I don’t have a lot of time left after work for my own stuff now, but I do have lots of gas in the tanks at the end of the day creativity wise. Same experience I had working at Nelvana in the 90s. So still working away on personal stuff in my spare time, slower than ever but eh, that’s fine. Here’s a chunk of a wordless story I’ve been working on for Mind Engine recently.

I’m still teaching one class a week of cartooning, but it will be my last class for a while when it wraps up in 5 weeks. I loved teaching but it also always feels good to change things up when it comes time.

I’ll be halting all patreon payments, probably as long as I’m doing this job? I can neither work on my own stuff fast enough to justify them i feel, nor need the $ right now. But I’m still updating the blog there and will post what I do get done.

I’m not sure if you’ll still be charged for the first time if you pledge right now, but for sure that will be the only time for a while, so might be a good time to join my Patreon and read the over 400 pages of comics and get all my updates in your inbox?

My YouTube just passed 10k subscribers and I’ll still be updating there when I can too so if you haven’t, go subscribe and hit the bell!

There’s also a series of interviews I’ve conducted with Sam Noir just before the new job started that I’ve got to edit, and will be hopefully not the ONLY episodes of a new Sequential Vodcast/Podcast program, it has it’s own channel here and you can catch them via the Sequential site or FB page. I’ve already published a short version of our talk with Ho Che Anderson, which a text version as well can be found in Issue 7 of the magazine!

See you all around the inter-tubes!
Max

Hey all, so I’ve got some new clips i’ve posted over the last while,
and i’ve added Ko-fi to my funding options too.

 I like Patreon, plan to keep using it, but I’m aware some folks are falling of love with the platform, and some people want a more low commitment option than a monthly pre programed payment to help out. So you’ll find buttons like this in the widget section of my site just under the Patreon logo, if you would like to help out you can use that now!

I’ve posted several clips since I last updated
the workblog about my activity there.
Here’s the highlights!

This one documents some of the last bits of inking for my work on Dracula Son of the Dragon.

Here I talk about a basic inking tip re how to place lines relative to the forms you want them to describe.

This one about is how I digitally colour my work.

This one, relates to the last in that it’s about line weight and values.

And these two are about how to draw a horse, but also using gesture, constructive anatomy, and figurative contour, and how Aphantasia does not get in the way of my work.

And last, i’ve made a video presentation of a talk I given in my Making Comics class and at events on the mechanics of sequential art, you can watch the 4 part series here!

I’ve been doing some catching up with things this fall, this commision is one of the last two outstanding I had backlogged.

Details of the work are posted to patreon here, here, here and here.

 

And here’s a time lapse clip of the inking and washes posted to youtube.

I posted on Patreon about profiling your clients desires and helping them to visualize what they want more clearly so they can share that with you enabling you to actualize it more efficiently. It’s a key skill in a freelancers toolkit.

The job in question was this one.

FBDM/MCAF is coming up, along with tabling [#72] i’m also hosting a workshop talk on comics this year!

Snakes, ladders & closure:
The mechanics of comics art.

Sun 27th in the ‘studio’ 4pm-4:45pm.

I’m going to try to record the session so I can post a clip of it on Patreon, though not sure if i’ll be able to pull that off.

If you’re in town for the fest come say hello and make sure to remind me if you’re a patreon patron!

Just got back from the Ottawa Comic Con, wasn’t a great show for sales this year which is sad, but had a really good time visiting with some fellow comics people.

I had an online commision that didn’t get started before I left so I didn’t necessarily expect them to show up for it, but happy with how the art came out, I put it up for sale on my store now! It could be yours for $100 cnd.

 

Hey folks, I posted a process post about this job here on my Patreon blog, and added this new work to my illustration sets! Nice little gig for local band Le Trio BBQ.

Lots of notes on it on the blog post. Just wanted to point out here, it works both right side up and upside down! Catch the development process here on Patreon. It’ll go with their album Mirage.

 

Hello! For ages I kept a work blog on this site, which over time kind of drifted to become a mashup of personal blog and stuff basket. The Feature image you might be seeing on the workdiary page on this post is from one of the last incarnations of that blog.

Over time social media sort of took over for such things and the need for one on my site seemed to end. Especially once I started posting my blog like things on Patreon.

I plan to continue doing that, but I’ve decided to start the home site work blog back up fresh, it’ll host some cross posting with Patreon, but mainly I feel like it might be a good idea to keep the home base at least a little bit more active than I have.

This is going to be a trade and craft space exclusively this time though, sketch posts will be the most personal things, nothing else goes here. News about my work, posts that come out of my teaching, how two clips like the recent YouTube clips embedded below, that kind of thing. Hope you enjoy it if you stumble in here, let me know on twitter or facebook if you do!

So yes, here’s a set of more recent work clips from YouTube, i’ve been posting instructional desk side stuff there for a while, subscribe here if you want to get updates as I post!