Here’s the fourth and final installment of kid’s comic “Beating the Loneliness Monster” from Youkie Magazine in its July 2023 issue. Co-written with my niece Kelly, this is an awesome 8-page story suitable for kids aged 8-12, and for which Kelly has gotten a few fan mail about! Thanks to editor Nicky for making this happen!
Here’s some more School Magazine art, for issues 4-6 of this year. I’ll be doing some more great art for School Magazine in 2024 as well, so stay tuned! Always great to work with awesome authors – in this case, the first is “Sai Wen Loses a Horse” by James Bean and Gillian Flaherty, and the second is “The Aeronaut” by Paul Malone.
Part 3 of “Beating the Loneliness Monster” is in Youkie Magazine‘s April 2023 issue, which is co-written with niece Kelly Tao. The final issue of Part 4 will be out in the July 2023 issue. Meanwhile, this issue also has a 6-page short story by my good friend Julie Ditrich (Writer) and Angie Spice (Artist) called “Fade”, which is a fantastic look at girls who get too drained when they are too much of a people pleaser.
I recently had a go at screen recording my art in Clip Studio Paint, and discovered that you can do some fun animation stuff with it. A lot of work, but fun to play with.
Part 2 of my story “Beating the Loneliness Monster” is here, in Youkie Magazine‘s January 2023 issue! Its 4-parts in total, and the story is actually by my 11 year-old niece Kelly Tao (I helped a bit). Excited to see Parts 3&4 come out in the next 6 months!
“The Dreaming” is being republished in 2023 by IPI Comics, an imprint of Australian publisher IFGW Publishing! This story is a Lovecraftian take on the Australian classic “Picnic at Hanging Rock”, about twin sisters who attend a remote Australian boarding school where schoolgirls have been known to disappear.
The original story will have some minor rewrites/updates to suit a more modern audience, so it’ll have some new pages and redrawn art. There will also be a vol4, which will be a standalone story set in the same universe involving characters connected to some of the original characters, and hopefully the main storyline can continue in a part 2 after that.
Here is an interview with Soda and Telepaths about this, thanks to Anthony Pollock.
Here’s an interview with me from a while back, by Bettina Burger who is researching Australian Speculative Fiction. This interview was done before the rights to “The Dreaming” left the previous publisher, so what I say about “The Dreaming” will be different now that the circumstances are different.
I have an interview up with ALIA CYS Scoop, a newsletter for librarians. It’s on my work and also the Australia Comics & GN Database that I set up, and which is managed by ALIA librarians. Many thanks to Petrina for organising the interview and putting it up!
I have an interview with Jun Sugawara-san (and his translator Garrett Hudspeth) of Animator Supporters, who are a charity that supports underpaid animators struggling in the anime industry. Underpaying animators has been a long-time problem with the anime industry, to the extent where the industry could collapse, so here is Jun-san explaining why that happens.
This interview was conducted with a pre-prepared, bilingual Q&A document, so here is the full transcript with the original Japanese text. We didn’t cover the political aspect of underpaid Japanese animators, but that’s in the transcript. This interview was also hosted by the ACA, at their yearly Stanley Conference, many thanks to them.
