Hi pal!
Today marks a milestone for Indie Notebook, this is the 50th issue! That’s nearly a year of weekly publishing! (give or take because a few of those were written before this was a weekly endeavour)
Thank you all so much for following my journey and reading my ramblings. It’s great to know there are people out there paying attention.
I caught a small flue (or something) this week and am still recovering. So I’m taking it a bit easy, I’'ll just show you something I’ve been saving for a day like this where I’m a bit under the weather.
Back in May I talked about making a comic about an old character of mine called Space Deer. Not long after that I wrote a script for it and not too long ago I began sketching out a few of the pages.
Space Deer comic sketches
These aren’t exactly the first three pages in the story, but aaalmost. I’m taking a lot of inspiration from my younger self, taking some of the things I liked about my old Space Deer comics.
As you might see Space Deer is a bit wonky and off-model, I’m not 100% sure of how I want to draw them yet. But that’s fine cause these are just rough sketches to know what I need to draw and how to tell the story. I’ll make it prettier later!
I don’t draw on this regularly at all (which I like), but when I do it’s very fulfilling. It feels like this is something I really need to do.
I’ll probably share more progress on this from time to time!
Mini Notes
📝 Article - The Strongest Girl in The World
I didn’t realize Pippi Longstockings had such a strong connection to the history of Studio Ghibli and also influence on Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service. When I read about what could have been I feel like the world really missed out on the best interpretation of Pippi that there might have ever been (and the concept look amazing).
💭 Game - thoughts on Death Stranding
I’ve been playing this game on and off since the year it came out and I still haven’t completed it. I have such a love-hate relationship to it.
I LOVE that in theory it’s just a game about hiking and delivering mail.
I HATE that it’s a Kojima game. The story is so convoluted and messy, when my partner asks me what is going on in a cutscene I can’t really explain it.
I honestly just wish someone else had made this game instead and just made it a smaller, more human story about connecting people. The best parts are when I hike to moody music, place a ladder or climb on a rope.
Thank you once again for reading! Have a creative week and keep an eye on your inbox so you don’t miss the next 50 issues of Indie Notebook.
Loving your sketches, Jonas. Enjoyed catching up on your newsletter. Your warmth and delightful energy always comes through in your writing in each issue!
& Congrats on 50! You're a few issues ahead of me, so I know it's no small feat.
Keep up the creativity and play. And hope you feel better!
Thanks for sharing those Space Deer sketches. It's super interesting to see a more narrative approach to the character just in these few pages - and of course what your current interpretation of Space Deer might be. Really cool! - I also get the reference of "This is beauty, this is grace" :)
Edit: Oh! And congrats on 50 issues. If this was a comic book, it might have had a special sparkly cover to entice would-be collectors to buy a bunch of copies - only to find out that so many others were doing the same, leading the whole market to crash and a bunch of sparkling #50's to be collecting dust in various attics all around the world. Well done! lol