Issue 154

Hello!

If you missed it yesterday, Will, Lee and I answered questions about the new CHILDREN'S BOOK PRO sessions starting next week. You can watch it here: LINK​

If you've ever wanted to have a shot at illustrating picture books professionally this 10 week course will get you up to speed on the current state of the industry and show you how to learn the craft of illustration. This is our 4th time running it and every time people walk away completely astonished at how much practical information is in the lectures.

Sign up for a free preview of it here: LINK​

More info here: LINK​

Alright, here's 5 things I thought you'd find interesting this weekend.

Enjoy!

1) Spaceships Book Progress

From the Art Department

I know pretty much all the art I've posted for the last 3 months has been for this darn spaceships book, but that's all I've got. I'm in the why-am-I-not-finished-with-this-yet-?-?-? stage of the book making process.

I've enjoyed every minute of working on this book, but am SO anxious to have it finished. For two reasons: 1) I'm really excited about my next project and want to start on it asap and 2) I'm really excited for you to have this book. I feel like I'm making something out of the ordinary here, and I'm dying to delight people with it.

These two images are the latest images finished for the book. I colored the last few spaceships that were just line drawings from my sketchbooks. And there's about 5 comic pages left to knock out.

You can see all the process art from sketch to final over on the Patreon.

2) Patches from classified USAF flight test programs

From the Department of Graphic Design

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When ever I'm designing a character or any sort of vehicle, including little touches like patches with interesting symbols on them just adds to the believability of the design. I'm always paying attention to those kinds of details when I'm looking at reference images.

This week I found a goldmine of interestingness: Patches from classified USAF programs. They are collected on this late 90's era website with a descriptions trying to parse out and decode the designs.

It's kind of fun to imagine what they could represent. A couple symbols of note:

5 stars surrounding 1 star: Area 51

IX XI: 9/11

Website here: LINK​

A cool book about secret program patches: LINK​

Article about the patches and the book: LINK​

3) Insanely Detailed Gundam Render

From the Office of Robots

This video is just beautiful. I can't imagine how many hours went into this. Made by Chinese artist "PHOENIX0093" in Blender, rendered with EEVee.

The thing I love about Gundam is how thought through the design is from the inside out. Underneath each panel and plate is a complex array of struts, wires, and machinery. Hats off to this guy for lovingly modeling each component and putting it together in such a striking tribute to the design.

Watch the original video here: LINK​

More work here: LINK​

4) Islamic Fashion Institute

From the Fashion Desk

I was made aware of the Islamic Fashion Institute this week and am really into the colors, textures, and styles coming out of the school. Great reference for fantasy or fantasy/sci-fi character designs.

More on their Instagram: LINK​

Website: LINK​

5) On magic

From the Inspirational Thought Unit

I think a lot of what we consider genius or brilliance or magic is just someone focusing their time, energy, and thought on something for so long that they've exhausted all the bad ways to do it.

Composer Irving Berlin is widely considered one of the best songwriters in history. He wrote "White Christmas," "God Bless America," "Putin on the Ritz," "There's no business like show business" and I could go on and on. All classics and timeless.

But you might not know that over his 60 year career he published over 1500 songs. FIFTEEN HUNDRED! And those are just the one's published. How many songs did he just scrap and move on from?

According to Saul Bornstein , Berlin's manager, his working method was this: "It was a ritual for Berlin to write a complete song, words and music, every day."

A song. Every. Single. Day.

If you're at bat that many times you're bound to hit a few home runs.

I like how Teller puts it:

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

-Jake

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