September Roundup! (Patreon)

The best of Wasted Talent is live! Wow!! 100 amazing people already subscribed on Webtoon and I'm over the moon with everyone who came out to show support for the comic. It's good to be back <3 Here's the launch post with all the details, if you missed it.

So far, the comics that have been posted are:

• Caffeine Love
• The Life of a Second Year Mech

How amazing are Jon's colours by the way?? They're such a perfect match and I'm so grateful for all the hard work he did on this.

Here's what went down on Patreon this month...

$1 Patrons - Early Access

•  Food Zine - Smoothies
•  Food Zine - Quesadilla
•  Food Zine - Chili

$2 Patrons - Sneaky Peeks

•  Intro Comic for Webtoon
•  Shenzhen Fast update - p 12 pencils
•  Shenzhen Fast update - p 13 pencils

$5 Patrons - Behind the Scenes

•  Website work
•  Webtoon work and FAQ

Technical Links I thought were Interesting!

• An astronaut raised baby geese so she could test them in a wind tunnel. for SCIENCE.
• I really enjoyed this long read about uncertainty. Uncertainty is something that is built into our everyday existence, and is becoming an ever-more prominent fixture in our lives. Right now I'm learning a lot about designing for robustness and it has really shifted my perspective. Noise and uncertainty was always something I tried to control OUT of the system - build in contingencies, and try to predict everything you can. But now I'm learning how to EXPECT noise, and build quality systems that are insensitive to them. So this article really resonated with me.
• Due to my work on Shenzhen Fast, I've been paying fairly close attention to recent events in Hong Kong. I thought this was a really interesting ground-level view of what's happening there. It's written by a foreigner, so please take it with a grain of salt, but I did really appreciate the insight this account provided.
• Simone Giertz (big fan) posted a really interesting update on her "everyday calendar" project. Hardware is Hard... and I thought this was a really honest and interesting reflection on how the process went.

What is Jam up to this month, art-wise...

• I've spent most of this past month getting everything in order to get Wasted Talent relaunched! That was huge... I probably spent several months just doing the back-end work to make this a reality. Now that it's actually live, I've been taking a step back to re-examine priorities and decide what the next big push is going to be. I think it's going to be a deep dive into Patreon and making it the best experience it can be :)
• I was super fortunate to meet Joanne Hastie - a local artist who uses machine learning to train a robotic arm how to paint! She was super generous and invited me into her studio and told me a lot about her process. I was blown away!! Please check out her work, it's SO cool.
• I've been reading Junji Ito's UZUMAKI for the next Tradewaiters. It's really long! Like over 600 pages of horror comics about spirals. Last week the queue for my bus curled in on itself and formed a spiral and I nearly lost it!!! I've also been catching up on some anthologies, specifically The Witching Hours which was really cool, and Sweaty Palms 2 which definitely resonates with my experience.

Jam IRL

I've been playing a classic game of Dungeons and Dragons with a bunch of my friends, and I just wanted to mention that I have the coolest DM on the planet??

Alina is the creator of Weregeek... which is all about DnD... so maybe I shouldn't be suprised, but dang! She recently went to Gen Con and picked up these custom 3D printed versions of OUR CHARACTERS from HeroForge. I can't even explain how perfect all the characters are. And she made us these neat cards of our spells for easy reference! Anyway Alina is the best, I just had to gush U_U

That's about it for September, more posts coming :)) thanks for being here, you all rock!