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USDN Podcast is a cinematic indie comics interview series hosted by the USDN_Chairman and the Council of Nerds spotlighting the creators, storytellers, and worldbuilders shaping the future of independent comics.
Each episode dives beyond headlines into the real journeys behind the books from Kickstarter launches and creative struggles to the philosophies driving today’s indie storytelling movement.
This isn’t about rumors or recycled news.
It’s about the people creating the worlds.
Through in-depth conversations, creator spotlights, and crowdfunding discussions, USDN explores:
• The rise of indie comics
• The business of crowdfunding
• The art of worldbuilding
• The realities of independent storytelling
USDN is where indie comics come to life for the fans, by the creators, and powered by the community.
You are listening to the USDN on the
DFPN.
Thanks for watching!
what is up everybody and welcome to the
united states department of nerds where we
are for the people by the people and
of the people the human body has always
had its limits but what happens when
technology gives us the power to replace
them
When flesh can be augmented,
damaged bodies rebuilt,
and the line between human and machine
begins to disappear.
The question is no longer what technology
can do, it remains.
It's what remains of us when it does.
For more than a decade,
Australian creator S.K.
has been telling stories through
independent comics,
building a body of work that has earned
industry recognition and found its way
into library shelves around the world.
And with Transhuman,
Steven takes us into a science fiction
world built around augmentation, identity,
consequences,
and one deceptively difficult question.
What does it actually mean to be human?
Now, I think it's Rivka.
Yeah, it's Rivka, yeah.
Boom.
Her story continues with Transhuman,
Volume Four, Betrayal.
As Steven and artist Raz push the series
into its next chapter and open the door
for new readers to experience the journey
from beginning through a brand new
Kickstarter campaign.
Ladies and gentlemen,
the Council of Nerds is now in session.
SK, my friend, welcome to the USDN.
What an intro.
Thank you so much, Chairman.
It's really great to be here.
Dude,
we've had you on the schedule for a
while now as everybody right now is
waiting like anywhere from thirty to
ninety days to come on the podcast,
which is a great place for me to
be in.
And I'm always excited when I finally get,
you know, to interview these creators.
And you were a bit of a surprise,
man.
You gave me some stuff,
everything I needed to build this
interview for us.
But then I deep dived you and you
were throwing me surprises left and right.
A Ringo nominee, Aaliyah Awards,
you name it, you have it.
And I was just like,
this dude's a sleeper agent on me.
Oh, look, awards are nice.
And I really have to admit it.
But the main thing is to tell the
story.
I don't write the stories for awards,
as you probably can imagine.
It's always...
And look,
you probably realize I actually do work
for a whole bunch of different publishers
as letterers, editors, you know,
that type of thing.
But the one thing I do like about,
say, the indie crowdfunding spaces,
it lets me tell stories.
And that usually is very difficult.
Like comics are a niche of a niche.
If you think about the art world,
we are a niche of a niche already.
And then you go, okay,
you have stories within comics,
which are...
much more mainstream, for example.
I'll give you one of the best-selling
graphic novels out there.
It's The Babysitter's Club.
On Scholastic, it's one of the, you know,
the biggest ones.
So, or Dogman or those type of books.
And then you've got all your superheroes
and then you've got your,
like the big mangas,
you're talking like the free rents.
And then you get to tell.
So I'm now telling a niche of a
niche of a niche and I get to
tell all these really cool stories.
Yeah.
That's why a lot of people move into
independent publishing.
It's because we get to tell these stories.
It's like a lot of these stories I
think will be missed because it's very
hard to consider them,
very hard for publishers to pick up
certain stories.
And there's a whole bunch of reasons.
And it's ninety nine percent.
It's never personal and it's never the
story.
It's it's it's businesses.
It's hard to be discovered.
How much money can we make out of
it?
Or if at the time it was,
is there a zombie in it?
If you go back about ten, fifteen years,
if you had a zombie in it,
oh man, your pitch was sparkling.
Not so much now anymore, but back ten,
fifteen years ago,
you needed a zombie in your story.
It doesn't matter.
And that's what publishers were looking
for.
So they do go through different phases of
what they're looking for.
But
Like I said,
thank you so much for the thing,
but I do it to tell the story.
And sometimes when the story gets loved,
that makes me happy.
I think that's it for all of us,
right?
If what we do at the end of
the day brings happiness to not only
others, but to ourselves.
it's all the more reason to do it.
But Steven, for you,
for anyone discovering your work for the
first time tonight,
give us your quick story of who you
are and kind of how you found your
way into creating independent comics.
Um,
So what happened was I had a kid.
It's probably the best story you'll get.
Look, like most of us, I would imagine,
yourself included, Chairman,
I know we all quit out about this.
Yeah, dude, I got a junior in college,
so yeah.
My kiddo's in high school talking back.
It don't change.
Yeah.
So, but...
Before that, everybody tends,
as if most comic readers were,
tends to have a story in them.
And it's just something they want to tell.
And like I said, it's a niche.
Like my first story,
the first book I ever got published was
Romeo and Juliet with Tabby.
Yeah, Tabby, back in twenty fifteen.
Yeah, Romeo and Juliet with cats.
Which is cool.
I love cats.
I'm a cat guy.
Yeah.
And it actually starts – but the whole
point is it lets me – like that's
a – if you can imagine me pitching
that to Marvel or DC,
nobody's going to touch that.
But the point about it was before I
got my little girl,
it was a case of –
you know, I'll write the story.
I'll do it.
I'll do it.
I'll do it.
And you just procrastinate.
And I'll freely admit,
I'm one of those guys who goes,
you know what?
We'll get done.
And then I suppose it's one of those
things where you go, you know what?
If I don't do it and I,
you know,
when she's eighteen or twenty one and she
goes, oh, what did you want to do?
Oh, I want to write the story.
Where's the story?
I never did it.
It's really hard then for you to go
to your kiddo and say, hey, look,
you know, to follow your dreams,
you need to work hard.
We'll support you.
We'll do that.
but you need to put the hard work
in if you yourself don't do it so
for me it was one of those light
bulb moments to go you know what i've
got to write the damn thing i've got
because a lot of the ideas in your
head but when you actually put it and
this what i usually advise young writers
young creators and whenever i had a chance
to chat to them is there is a
huge
power when you change that changes
everything when you actually write it down
because when it's your head it's perfect
you like you it's got you you've got
the scene it's action or whatever but when
you write it down for the first time
on your first draft it is rubbish
like it's not a bad thing it's really
not but you wrote it down and that's
the important part is that you put the
pen to the paper correct so in your
head is it's this fantastic story with um
human emotion beats i mean you write it
down it's like oh my god this is
such rubbish but the good thing about that
is it's the draft because what people
don't realize is your first draft
It's garbage.
I'll call it out.
Like everybody's first draft is garbage.
I'll let you read some of the outlines
before you just go, whoa, that's bad.
But what it lets you do,
it lets you do a second draft and
a third draft.
And honestly,
that's where the hard work is to be
able to take something.
It also reminds you that you need an
editor.
Exactly.
But this is pre-edited.
This is before you made the interface.
This is even to get it to some
semblance.
I like the Simpsons quote,
the boy can't read good when Homer can't
talk.
And that's how your first script looks.
It's like, that's not a sentence.
And by the time you polish it,
even before the editor,
that's where the hard work really is.
And
That's what a lot of people want to
avoid because you've got this perfect
script, the perfect story,
the perfect one in your head,
and it's not perfect when you put it
down to paper.
But it exists.
So for me,
I went through that entire process.
I deleted a lot of stuff.
I redid a lot of stuff.
But I have to freely admit,
I look back at my earlier stuff,
even stuff that got picked up for
publication,
got published and stuff like that.
I look back at some of that and
I'm going, I cringe.
I cannot read my old work.
I'm also a letterer, as you probably know.
My first few lettering things I did,
my first few jobs,
my first few gigs and whatever,
I look at it and go,
oh my God, mistake, mistake, mistake,
mistake, mistake, mistake.
But in my headspace, I'm going,
but if I never did it,
I would never learn and I would never
make set mistakes.
So...
I got the first story out and then
the second story after that made another
story after that.
And it kind of snowballs after that.
And if you probably know the,
the comic world community, it's, it's,
it's a wonderful place because as you
start reaching out and like me reaching
out to you and you probably go to
different conventions and stuff like that,
you start to see a lot of like-minded
people and it builds your,
So I thought I would be a one
and done.
One story, tick in the box,
move on with your life.
But second story came, third story came.
In Australia, I don't know.
I think it's similar to the US.
They have different government grants.
So yeah,
I don't know if we have them per
se for like the creative arts,
like comic books.
But I do know that Canada has a
lot of stuff like that because I got
friends of mine that live up there.
They've been on the show before and
they're constantly applying for these
grants to make their work.
Correct.
In Australia,
there's actually a crowdfunding-based
grant.
So what happens is there's two types of
grants you get in Australia.
One of them is to build an artistic
endeavor.
So let's say you have a project.
You want to paint the Mona Lisa.
As an example,
you need six months to do it.
You say to them, I'm so-and-so.
I want to paint the Mona Lisa for
six months.
I need to live and I need to
eat.
And if they deem your project is
worthwhile, they'll go, well, six months,
don't worry about food, whatever.
We'll take care of you.
Make the model Lisa.
That's really cool.
I wish we did stuff like that,
but we do not do that here.
Oh, it really,
it honestly helps like a huge amount.
The other type of grant is the,
and this is the ones I actually,
I also really like,
and I think it's very smart is the
business based grants.
So it's like,
Most artists don't understand business
properly.
They want to create and totally
understand.
So what they do is they said, look,
we understand crowdfunding and Kickstarter
and that type of thing is becoming very
prevalent.
So what they'll do is they'll run courses
where they'll teach you certain things and
At the end of the course,
what they'll do is for the grant is,
and it's called Match Lab.
If anyone wants to look it up in
Australia, you apply for it.
And at the end of the grant,
you run your campaign and the government
will match it dollar for dollar.
So if you raise one dollar,
the government will kick in a dollar.
The amounts change.
Right now,
I think it's up to ten thousand dollars.
I actually went on that grant a long
while ago.
So I was actually more than ten years
ago.
And I remember they actually had
professional fundraisers talk to us.
And you're talking like,
We talk, oh, if you raise ten K,
oh, happy days, right?
There are people who work for, say,
the ballet or work for, like,
certain key industries.
When the ballet goes to a big bank
to ask for money,
they're not asking for ten thousand.
They're asking for ten million.
Yeah.
Like, be a patron to the arts.
And having...
those type of insights,
because as part of the grant,
there's also a, you have to learn,
which I think is fantastic.
It's not a case.
That's great that they're not just giving
you the money.
They're like,
you're going to earn the money.
And this is how you're going to earn
this money.
And we're going to give you the steps
to learn it as well.
So they said, look,
you're all going to turn up to this
course.
And in this course,
you will have the Australian Ballet
fundraiser person there.
And to hear how they do it, like,
again,
like talking about the millions of dollars
of patronage and stuff like that to the
arts, it's such a learning experience.
And then they're going as well,
how to structure your business,
because it is a bit,
if you want to do it,
it is a business and it's fantastic.
So I was lucky in the earlier stages
to get a couple of those.
That really boosted the career going.
And it allowed me to learn not just
the creative side of things,
but also to learn the business side of
things.
And yeah, it snowballed.
And I was then approached by different
people saying, hey,
would you do this job for me,
this job?
And yeah.
And look, a lot of serendipity,
a lucky right place, right time things,
but oh my God.
It's cool though that they take care of
you and they make sure,
like if that's a path you want to
go down,
that they give you and help build those
tools for you to put in your tool
chest to use when you need them.
Exactly.
And I do my best to give back.
So I have lost count on the number
of people who have hit me up going,
can you tell me how do you start
lettering or how do you start doing
things?
And I always make it a point to
say, if you're really interested,
happy to talk to you.
Just note,
this is my number I always give out.
You probably need to let about five
thousand pages out.
Yeah.
Before I would even consider you to be
a beginner.
It's that number because the first one
thousand pages, you're going to waffle.
You're learning the tools.
The next two thousand pages,
you're developing a style.
And then, you know, I mean,
it takes the I think the number is
ten thousand hours to be good at
something, to really be good at something.
Ten thousand hours for any any craft.
Ten thousand hours.
Did you ever see Knock Around Guys?
No, what happened?
So Vin Diesel, right?
I think it's knock around guys and Vin
Diesel's like the enforcer or whatever.
And he gets in,
like his friend is being pit Donnie.
He walks in and he just says like,
I think it was like some weird number,
like five hundred, for instance.
They're like, well, what's five hundred?
He's like five hundred.
That's the number of fights you have to
get into to be a knock around guy.
and uh then proceeds like to whoop
everybody's ass you know but that when you
said that like ten thousand i was like
oh he's gonna he's gonna pull the knock
around guys joke oh no numbers are it's
out there like and so for me when
i started uh doing anything like the
writing the lettering or whatever it
I always had that in my mind that
my first batch of stuff will be utter
rubbish, utter garbage.
And it's actually, I would say,
especially for people who want to go down
this pathway,
is not to get too discouraged and not
to, again, I'll say to you before,
I have received so many no's.
And you're looking for the one yes.
And you will get the yes every once
in a while.
And it makes it worthwhile because you
will forget the no, no, no, no,
no obsession quote.
And that's how I ended up here right
now is
I put a random post out on social
media.
It's like, Hey, if you're a creator,
I have a podcast.
I would love to talk to you.
And then it kind of just was like,
one person was like, Hey, yeah,
I have a project starting.
Like, let's do it.
And I was like,
I didn't know a damn thing about what
I was doing at the time.
And I put together like a half ass
interview.
I did some half ass social media stuff.
And you're like,
I mean, granted,
I've come a long way since then,
but I just needed that one person to
kind of help guide me into this and
then me to go...
I really like this.
This is where it's fun.
I'm talking to creators who may or may
not be big in the grand scheme of
comic books, but in indie comics,
for this one hour,
two hours that they're on this show,
they're going to be that rock star for
the time they're on this show.
And the other thing would be is,
and I would imagine it's sharing people's
experiences.
Like,
like when I know we were talking a
little bit off air, it's really,
really good to share other people's
stories and,
and not their creative stories,
but their own personal stories.
So yeah, it's,
it's been an interesting road.
I've been, I get to tell those stories.
Yeah, I know.
And,
So I've been invited to different
conventions and different pieces.
If anybody does want to hit me up,
I am SK on Facebook.
Do look me up.
More than happy to,
especially if you're a new creator,
to help you take the other journey as
well.
Because I've been really lucky.
A lot of it has been different people
at different times who go different.
He will help you.
I'll shout out one particular person.
Her name is Karen Duarte.
So she was a librarian in an area
near me.
She picked up Tabby and she loved it.
That was my Romeo and Juliet with Kat
story.
So speaking of Tabby, though,
that came out in twenty fifteen.
When you look at who you were in
twenty fifteen as that creator who
produced Tabby,
you look at yourself today getting ready
to release Transhuman Volume four.
What has changed the most in the way
you approach making the comments that
you're making?
In terms of the actual creative process
and stuff like that, it's still the same.
It's an absolute mess.
It's just creators in general.
We're messes.
Absolutely.
But the one thing that I have nailed
down a lot
and it's a learning experience,
is a lot of the business and logistics
behind it.
Like, especially around Kickstarter,
you will tend to get a little bit
overwhelmed.
Like,
I remember the first time we had to
ship off about, you know,
people who bought, bought from me.
And,
i you know you get paralysis it's like
oh gosh how do i do it you
know do i buy labels do i write
it by hand and it is very overwhelming
um but that aspect of it actually does
go away i think with the transhuman three
i had to ship close to five hundred
different packages and but the whole point
is once you i actually have things set
up now i'm gonna place the
Correct.
I've got a long table.
I've got an assembly line.
They don't have Gemdai mail list in
Australia,
but there is something equivalent.
I've got a stack of that equivalent,
like five,
six hundred of them in boxes all set
up.
And you do learn...
that part of it.
And so that part of it is a
lot less stressful than, than.
But the creative part of it,
which is why a lot of us go
down this crazy journeys to tell stories,
that's still all messy.
It's like, um, um,
the way I do tend to do stuff
is I tend to do outlines and link
it afterwards.
But then you go,
when you do your outline, you're like,
wait,
but that doesn't make sense because he
will say that after this,
and then that was going to happen.
Yeah.
It's, it's an absolute mess.
And my editor hates me for it,
but we, we,
that's why it works because I would say
is if it gets too structured to think
it takes the fun out of why you're
doing it.
Like,
Like I said,
there are projects I work on for higher
projects where it is very structured.
It is this, this, this, and you just,
you get paid, you do as you're told,
which is absolutely fine.
But when you do it yourself,
that's where the fun comes.
I find it a lot more fun to
work on my own project than to work
for, and to be fair,
to play in other people's spaces as well.
Like I've got projects where I say, hey,
look, this is my character.
Go write me a short story.
Go write me what happens.
And you have to take a lot of
input for it.
Sometimes restriction actually makes it
fun as well because you can't go totally
crazy.
You've got to stick to your vision.
But there's no...
the most amount of fun is when you're
in your own head, your own universe,
your own characters.
I got notebooks upon notebooks.
So just,
and we were talking beforehand about some
of the stuff that I'm working on behind
the scenes.
And right now,
all those ideas and characters,
and I like just like parts of a
story I want to explore or just in
a random, like the, the,
the work in titles are written on the
front of the notebook.
So I won't get them confused.
but I'm pretty sure I have like notes
from like each story in each other's
notebooks.
And it's just like, like, Oh,
I like this part of a story.
Like I'll wake up and I'm like, Oh,
let me write that down real quick.
Or I'll be at work and I'll shoot
myself an email.
Like I'll keep up emailed up at work.
And I just write notes in there and
then I'll send it to myself at the
end of the day.
So I have it.
You should do what I,
what I do is I used a,
It doesn't really matter what you do.
There's like people use different
notes-based programs,
the one that syncs to everything.
I live off that notes-based program
because whenever I get something- I wish I
could do that, but my work,
I can't do that.
So email is,
I just keep a blank email.
And then if I'm sitting there or somebody
will say something to me and I'm like,
ooh, I pick it up real quick.
And then at the end of each day,
I just send that to myself.
And I do,
I do interviews that way too.
I'll be sitting there at work and I'm
like, Ooh,
I want to ask them about this.
And I'll just type that in real quick.
And like,
so I'm breaking down this segment.
So my, my,
my comics I'm working on like interviews
I'm working on are just like a social
media thing I want to do.
And,
and I just type it in this email
and then every Friday before I,
or every day when I leave,
I just hit send.
That's a good idea, but because,
but that's the part of the really fun
creative process.
I freely admit, um, again,
it's also working out of people's, uh,
probably also fun, but you there's,
that's the most amount of fun you're going
to get.
And yeah.
Um, I, like I said,
one of the things which I, again,
to inspire a lot of creators and to
hopefully inspire yourself is once you
actually hold that physical product,
it doesn't matter.
And I've said this to everybody.
I already know.
Like I can't, I will cry.
I will cry like a little baby with
the moment I have my own book in
my own hands.
It's, it's, it's hard to describe.
And you know what's the best thing about
it?
it doesn't go away.
So volume two, volume two feels different,
but it's still,
the feeling is still there.
And I've received like,
I've got copies of stuff I worked on
it.
Every time I received that package from
wherever, you know, from a publisher,
whatever you open it and you see your
copies in there, it,
It's hard to describe unless you've got it
and you've done it.
But it's worth doing all that just for
that ten seconds of opening that box and
going, that's mine.
I did that.
I already know.
I already know.
But let's dive into your IP real quick.
Let's talk about transhuman.
For anybody discovering transhuman tonight
for the very first time, who is Rivka?
And kind of like what kind of world
–
Are we stepping into with her?
I mean, you're on volume four,
so she's been around for a while now.
Yes.
Look, so with Rivka,
the initial concept of transhumanism is
basically replacing body parts.
So if you lose an arm,
you get a new artificial arm.
But the concept about,
my initial thought about it is what
happens if you really push the envelope?
And you start going, you know what,
if you lose an eye,
how about we give you an eye that
has night vision in it?
Or if you replace a hand,
what if we give you a hand that
can crush bricks or whatever?
Or instead of,
we'll give you gills and all the really
fun stuff that you're going, wait,
you're not just doing light for light
replacements.
You're doing weird and wonderful things.
You're modifying it at that point.
Yep.
So the initial story is really Rivka was
assigned as a bodyguard to a scientist.
And there's a lot of religious backlash
against transhumanism because they're
saying, hey,
you're changing God's plan and things like
that.
The one thing I was actually really
cognizant of when I was writing the first
volume of Transhumanist,
is not to take sides because the,
the stories I absolutely always love is
stories where it just happened,
where you just present a worldview from
both sides and have the audience take one,
one, one view of the other.
And that's,
that's the approach I took because I want
to make sure that, and a lot,
and I'll,
I'll show you some of the comments I've
received.
It's like, you didn't take sides, did you?
No, I don't want to take sides.
But Rivka is that human component of this
whole argument because she's an
ex-soldier.
Unfortunately, she just, I think,
an eye and a year during an explosion.
And she's like the personification of what
happens afterwards.
But you think that she's this elite
fighting, killing machine or whatever,
but she's messed up.
Like she's going through a divorce.
She blames herself for her kids.
She has a daughter who unfortunately
passed away.
But the daughter,
and this gets back into the whole
discussion,
the daughter passed away because of a
genetic disease.
So she blames herself as the carrier.
And then it's like...
What could I have done to save her?
But I caused all this.
So there's a whole bunch of this tapestry
being woven together.
And then it explores her trying to figure
it all out.
And one of the aspects I did about
Rivka was that as far as personality goes,
you need to give your character a lot
of personality.
She would be happy to run into a
firefight to get you out of a tough
situation, that type of thing.
You want to talk about your,
you want to,
she wants to have to confront her
feelings.
Nah, she's so fast out of there.
We're all that way.
Yeah.
And so that's the whole dichotomy of her
too, that, you know what I mean?
You know, there's a fight to have,
she's there.
You need to talk about your feelings.
I think I'll just bugger off.
And so that's the whole,
that's her dichotomy.
And as the story progresses,
She does change.
She regresses.
She changes.
She's back again.
Look, Volume Four is the penultimate one.
So it will end in Volume Five.
So it will end, end.
But what I try to do is like
the first story, Volume One,
I did craft it in a way that
if you never read beyond Volume One,
it's still a full story.
But I really hope that you enjoyed it
so much that you come back for Volume
Two and Three.
And I'm really lucky that people have been
coming back
uh, to it.
So, but in terms of stories, like, uh,
Rivka, I think volume two,
or don't quote me on this was actually
picked up by the Australian library
association.
So for the,
there's three categories of like, uh, uh,
kids, teens, and adults.
So it's, this is, uh, it's an adult,
uh, more mature book.
A lot of it is in the themes
behind it.
They, they, uh,
So you got picked up for the award
for that category.
So I was lucky enough to do that,
and I was lucky enough that a lot
of different libraries have enjoyed it.
Oh, no, not five dollars, five hundred.
Five hundred, yeah, five hundred.
That's impressive for an indie comic book.
Let's keep talking about this.
So
What originally made you want to explore
the transhumanism in this series?
Was there a movie you saw?
Something had to trigger this.
Star Wars?
I do love Star Wars,
but I am a sci-fi nut.
Not just sci-fi,
I'm actually of a lot of practical
science.
I actually subscribe to different feeds
where they just tell me
new stuff got invented.
Like for example,
I think it was a couple of years
ago, artificial chlorophyll got invented.
So for space travel,
one of the issues that you have is
you couldn't resynthesize carbon dioxide
because you've got to think about it.
You have a space shuttle and everything
you have is in that space shuttle.
It's your own ecosystem.
And to waste energy to change it back
doesn't make sense.
And plants don't like to live in space
because there's no gravity.
I mean,
they do a lot of experiments for it.
So they actually invented artificial
chlorophyll, which is basically...
And what the original case study for this
was, in bus stops,
they're going to put the artificial
chlorophyll on top of the bus,
the bus stop,
or in an area where it's outside.
So when sunlight hits it,
the artificial chlorophyll reacts and it
releases oxygen around that area.
So it's like almost a fake tree.
Dude, that's so cool.
Anyway,
so I love all these things where it
all happens.
All this little science can happen.
And there's a billion of them.
So if you ever want to see all
the cool stuff that's out there,
there's so many good feeds.
I would say go to Reddit.
Yeah, Reddit.
Make yourself a GitHub that feeds you all
that stuff.
That's what I do.
I love it.
But what it really started was,
is a lot of the, uh,
I remember reading an article just about,
uh, how to replace the human eye.
And they were just talking that, uh,
when you replace the human eye,
you can actually give it more colors than
your brain has receptors for because your
brain has two receptors.
But that's only because your brain was
designed that way.
You could design your brain to have four
receptors, like five colors, six colors,
and you can start seeing things that you
could never see before.
Or you let your brain be able to
process ultraviolet or color ranges that
you've never seen, you know,
that you're...
Current eyes can't see.
And then they were going, wow.
And then you just take that as extension
and go, well, what else can you do?
And then that started the journey down
there.
You're starting to make humans do things
that you naturally can't.
And I loved it.
I absolutely love that concept behind it.
And then I wanted the conflict,
just because we can,
does it mean we should?
Which is a great segue, actually,
to my very next question.
So science fiction often asks whether
technology will save humanity or destroy
it.
But transhuman seems much more interested
in what happens fundamentally when flawed
human beings gain access to increasingly
powerful technology.
Was avoiding that simple good versus evil
relationship with technology important to
you in the series?
A hundred percent.
The other thing would be is technology
itself is neither good nor bad.
I always think it is.
It's the hands that hold it, right?
Correct.
So a lot of the concepts behind a
lot of things that happen in it is,
hey,
what can we do?
So there's, for example,
there is people who traffic transhuman
augmented limbs, for example, as weapons.
So that's the whole segment behind it.
And their whole purpose is money.
And there's people who believe in the
conflict, that believe in certain things,
and people who don't.
And they're going, you know what?
It's a weapon.
I'm selling it like I sell a gun
type thing.
So there's a lot of all those concepts
that come behind it of
just because it's technology doesn't mean
it's bad, doesn't mean it's good.
It just, it's how it applies.
And then you can kind of see it
doesn't make people,
it sometimes doesn't make people's life
easier.
It actually makes it worse.
I just want to explore a lot of
that.
Saying that though as well.
It's also a really good action story.
There's lots of it.
She's an ex-soldier,
so she does go on some really kick-ass
missions.
I love also setting up some really cool
action set pieces.
It's a lot of fun that way.
So when I do tend to write stories,
it tends to be that you can just
read it as a really cool action once
through it,
or you can take the time to go,
hey,
I didn't think about that that way.
And I like it to,
I like to try to do the pics.
I like the Pixar concept that a kid
will see a Pixar movie one way and
adult will see a Pixar movie a whole
totally different way.
So I have a philosophical question for you
though, to follow this up.
So if eventually every physical part of
Rivka is,
could be replaced while her memories,
her personality,
her experience remain intact.
Is she still that same person?
And at what point, if any,
would you say she stops being human?
That's a really good question.
Have you seen one show called The Digital
Circus?
I have not.
Is it on Netflix or Hulu?
It's on Netflix.
Okay, perfect.
I'll check it out.
I will, again, I'll put that usual.
Spoiler.
I will talk about The Digital Circus for
the next five minutes.
If you want to see it or you
haven't seen it, next five minutes.
I will watch it no matter what.
But if you want to give us the
synopsis real quick, then by all means.
It's an artificial world where basically
some people have scanned their brains.
They've gone through a brain scan to
preserve themselves.
So they're still living in the real world.
They're still happy in the real world.
Nothing's changed.
But they just went through an experiment
to be brain scanned.
And so then what happened is...
So it's like a reverse matrix, right?
Where instead of being unplugged,
you're being plugged in.
Yep.
So once their brain has been scanned,
so you've got all the zeros and ones
from your head,
these people just live their normal lives.
And the normal people who got their brain
scanned, it doesn't affect them.
They just go back to normal lives.
But these brain scans are then put into
an artificial world.
So these brain scans,
they think they are stuck in this
artificial world,
but they're
Do they exist?
Are they real?
Do they not exist?
All the personalities and all the,
you know,
they're still that person who's outside
the real world,
but they are stuck in this digital world.
So it's kind of like that movie that
Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson,
where they were like... The island,
I think.
Yeah,
where they were just like raised and
they're humans on this island just waiting
to be...
Exactly.
So they're stuck in this thing and then
you're just going...
So are the brain scans who are sentient,
are they worthy of life?
Are they really human?
Because they've been... So...
The question of Rivka is, look,
she doesn't get fully replaced,
which is good.
But it's still, I think, in the end,
I always say it's Rivka's story because in
the end, she does, hopefully,
and without too much spoilers,
I do want her to find some sort
of peace in the end because the problem
isn't with the science.
The problem is with her own life.
She blames herself for a whole stack of
things.
She can't commit.
There's a whole bunch of stuff within her
that she's messed up,
that she knows she's messed up.
So a lot of it is that
She needs to solve a lot of the
problems inside her before.
And that's something that, you know,
an artificial arm, leg, whatever,
doesn't fix.
Yes.
That's a great way to lead into volume
four that we're about to talk about,
Betrayal.
and so the fourth volume of course of
transhuman is called betrayal without
spoiling the journey for somebody
discovering the series how has rifka
changed from the person we meet in volume
one until what we're going to see her
as in volume four so volume four is
a fun one your your mic is currently
rubbing your zipper yeah oh sorry so
volume four is the the fun one because
um
Initially, when she's a soldier,
she leaves.
She leaves to work in private industry.
And then what happens after in Volume
Four,
she actually comes back because they've
convinced her to come back.
And something happens that actually...
There is a betrayal.
The title does give it away a little
bit.
But the whole concept, she comes back.
She's leading a squad again.
She's kicking ass.
She's doing all the leading missions.
But then when she gets betrayed,
it really sets her off again.
And it leads her down...
a spiral of how do I get out
of it?
Because her life's on the line.
It's not a simple,
I forgot to pick you up from the
airport betrayal.
It's one of those,
I could have died betrayal.
It's deep.
Yeah.
So a lot of it is,
it's all linked up to that.
So it's, she, it's,
that's one thing I love about writing
stories and writing characters is,
is
it's the journey is never, I'm better.
I'm better.
I'm better.
I'm better.
And by the end of the story,
I'm the best, best version of me.
The best stories are,
I take two steps forward.
I fall a few steps back.
Yeah.
Take another few steps forward.
I fall back again.
It's that constant moving forward at the
back, moving forward and back.
I think that makes the best stories
because that's how we are.
Yeah.
When a story ends and the character is
just kind of like that happy point in
their life where they can say, I'm happy.
Is their life better?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Is their life worse?
Not really.
But they find that good,
happy spot in their life where they can
just sit down on the front porch,
have a glass of tea, and just go,
okay,
I think I'm good where I'm at right
now.
Mm-hmm.
But that's why I love, like,
there was actually one story I wrote,
which hasn't been published yet.
But we've got probably halfway through
production.
Actually,
I killed off one of the characters.
And the editor who has been working with
me all the time says,
if she stays dead, I quit.
And it's, I have to say.
What the fuck?
You better bring it back.
I did.
You don't want to lose the energy over
that.
It was that emotional for her to go,
you can't kill her.
You can see I'm actually leading up to
it.
I told you.
By the way,
if you want to make somebody cry in
a comic or book or whatever,
it's really easy.
Have somebody die unfulfilled.
That's the absolute way to really,
really mess people up is if people invest
in a person to go, okay,
this person is going to live the dream.
He's going to ride in the Tour de
France.
He's been riding his bicycle.
He's practicing, practicing, practicing.
He gets the call up to go to
France to make it.
He rides home to celebrate.
He gets hit by a truck and dies.
Yeah.
That's the most messed up you can do
to anybody because they've invested and
they actually want to see the guy make
the Tour de France and you kill it
before.
And it's like, that's story writing.
That's the most horrible thing a writer
can do to you.
By the way, it's the absolute pinnacle of,
I hate my audience.
I'd rather you kick me in my knee.
Kick me in my knee.
I'd rather you have me do that.
But yeah, so you got stories.
But that's how the editor saw how I
did that story where I killed off that
character.
And I left a lot of her story
unfulfilled because I actually wanted
another character to fulfill it for her.
And the editor was going,
you can't do that.
No way in hell.
I don't want to see character B take
on the legacy of character A.
oh there she gets back so uh what
happened uh you know she magically
survives the fall she's messed up by
broken bones and all the rest of it
but she's there that she's alive and
that's i love it i love how sometimes
some people get so invested that was your
editor of all people you to be invested
in that story as hard as it is
and who you know
they're a professional editor and for them
to go,
you will bring this character back or you
will not have me as an editor.
She gave a lot of really good reasons
though.
Like there was a lot.
And if anybody knows the story as well
as you, it is that editor.
yeah but I I let that person live
the story's not out yet and I really
hope to bring it to life one day
but I'm keeping on the toll on the
wraps until we are a bit further along
but yeah oh man and that's why I
love the character journeys the character
stories the I I rise I fall I
rise I fall again you know it's so
how she's changed fundamentally I don't
think she's changed all that much because
she like in Transhuman Rift Car is still
always going to be that same person it's
the acceptance of different things and
like like the first book she's going
through a divorce in book four the she
gets back she her ex-husband um
comes back into life and it's that story
that's that wraps a bit of it on
the story i don't want to give too
much away but she's messed up again uh
you know it's like she thought she ended
that one part of her life and the
worst part about all that is and is
the husband and i love i hate this
thing
he's a really good guy.
He's like, she didn't do anything wrong.
I have to,
the blame is all on her this time.
And so it's, and he,
in the beginning of volume four,
it's not like even he wants to,
he doesn't want to rekindle anything,
but he just wants to have the chat
to close things off.
And it's,
There are that emotional moments in the
story.
So I love this.
I love to tell these stories.
And like I said,
there's amazing action set pieces as well.
So I love, I love the,
the almost the days of our lives,
the X-Men, the Chris Cameron X-Men.
It's not just, yeah, sure.
You fight the Sentinels.
Sure.
You did this.
But there's an actual underlying story
being told underneath all that.
Yep, and I love it.
Those are some of my favorite books.
Yeah, it's action-packed.
Yeah, you're having fun reading it.
But when you start stripping that stuff
away,
there's a really good story in there as
well that you should be paying attention
to.
Exactly.
So I don't know if it leads to
the next segue because like I mentioned.
We're ready to talk about some of the
art.
So you're working with Raz.
I'm going to pronounce his name, try to.
Salman?
Yep, that's correct.
Holy shit.
See,
he'd do a T in there when he
didn't need the T. I know,
it's like night.
Exactly.
So you worked with him on multiple volumes
of this now.
How has that creative relationship evolved
as y'all spent more time together with
Rivka in this world of transhuman?
The one thing I love about working with
artists after a while is,
and this is the lazy part of me,
the first few scripts are huge.
Like, you know,
this shot and this and this and this
and this.
And like what panel has about
that much, like a paragraph of text.
Nowadays, it's like, yeah,
she throws a punch, make it epic.
It's, it, it, it's, I, I love that.
Oh, oh, Rivka Sach is crying.
Give her, give her some wine.
You know, I, I love that,
that when you reach that point with an
artist, um,
that they are so invested in the
characters as well that you don't longer
have to write that paragraphs and
paragraphs of seed setup, paddle setup.
Yeah,
you can just do like that one to
two sentence like, hey, here is this,
this, and just call it.
Yeah.
Exactly.
And so I've been lucky that I've been
working with him for volume two, three,
four, and five.
So five actually has been...
The artwork is in progress for number five
as well.
Oh, wow.
And I've been so lucky that when working
with him, it's... I don't...
The work is so much easier for me
because I can actually now focus on
telling the story and he can focus on
what he does best.
And there's so many times he's come back
with...
that's not the layout.
It's so much better than I would have
done it.
Yeah.
Like, um, sorry,
y'all at a point where you're finishing
each other's sandwiches now, baby.
Uh, I, I, I absolutely love it.
Like I would set up a, uh,
like when I said the script,
he'll come back with the layouts and he'll
go, yeah, this doesn't make sense.
I did this.
This doesn't make sense.
I did this.
I think that's a level of comfort in,
uh,
you want to be with your artists and
you, you,
I've talked to many of us writers and
stuff who are at that point with their,
their artists where they can just,
just send a script.
They don't need to storyboard.
They don't need to do none of that.
They just send like the words and
basically go, Hey, here you go.
And then it comes back better than they
would have ever, you know,
fully done in it.
And I'm at that point with him that
he's such a fantastic guy.
And it's reached a point where it's so
easy to work with certain people.
And yeah.
And again, like I said,
I know you're going your own journey as
well.
I hope you find somebody who wants to
get invested in it.
It becomes.
Yeah.
So he actually is.
Like when we were going back and forth
on the, on the,
the second book I was telling you about,
I'm not going to throw the name out
there.
But he's like, hey,
we have this one spot that's missing in
this story, and I think it needs this.
And I was like, well,
what are you thinking, man?
Like, what do you think?
He's like, it should be this.
And I was like, dude,
I didn't even think about that one.
Like, that's some, yes.
That's, dude, absolutely.
That's, and it's kind of like this weird,
its own,
the character is its own plot twist.
I'll put it like that.
Like how can you be both the good
guy and the bad guy at the same
time and be the same person?
So I will leave it at that,
but it's going to be a really cool
twist within the story.
And the,
and I always like to shout out colorists
as well.
So I've actually worked with two colorists
on this and colorists is look, they, the,
And I've always said this,
and the one thing that's probably keeping
a lot of, and I'll use this,
American style comics have a very
different coloring scheme.
Let's say to European comics,
like the Tintins,
there's a lot of bigger Mobius and stuff
like that.
They're actually much more watercolor,
much more softer palette.
America has much more the...
uh brighter palettes and things like that
so with coloring as well it's the one
part of comics that uh the japanese side
hasn't done yet so japanese a lot of
manga and they they turn to churn stuff
uh a lot faster bigger stories faster gray
scale exactly but there is something
really magical about color so like they
i've worked with two cars one is uh
chiara she said she worked on image comics
before she spoke for scholastic
And there's a guy called Wilson.
He's worked for IPI.
He's worked for Comics to Movies,
worked for all these different publishers.
And with the colors,
it's a lot of times.
And if you're ever writing scripts,
one of the things you always tell colors
is what time of day it is,
which a lot of scripts do not put
in there.
And my colors have been yelling and
screaming at me so much that I make
it a really point to go, okay,
I'm going to put the time of day
in.
It helps with the shadows and all the
rest of it.
It really does.
It goes into the psychology of the colors,
right?
We were talking about that literally
before we went live and how when I
had Frankie walk on a PigmaCast studio,
he broke down the psychology of how he
does colors on books.
And like how like certain colors like reds
and yellows and oranges,
that's like fast paced, right?
You're expecting action and stuff like
that.
Yeah.
Greens and yellows would be like fast.
That's why when you see this,
like the flash in a comic book,
his suit is red and yellow.
Why is it red and yellow?
Because it's a fast color.
Yep.
It's what we associate with going fast.
Correct.
I'm going to ask you to share my
screen because there's a lot.
I'm actually the letterer for my own work
and I actually letter professionally as
well.
So if you ever get bored.
That's what we're getting to, actually.
So I was going to,
we were going to talk a little bit
about libraries and NDCU recognition,
but you've already brought that up.
You've already brought it up.
So, I mean, you brought up that you,
you know,
you're in five hundred plus libraries
around the world.
You've been recognized by the Australian
National
Canada has a lot of my books as
well.
The Canadians like me for some reason.
What's not to like about you, man?
They're great people, man.
They're great people.
But yeah,
you've already kind of covered it.
So we can go ahead and talk about
lettering.
I know you were really excited.
I'll talk about lettering.
I said, hey, no,
we can't mess up the flow.
But now we're there, man.
SK, we're there.
Let's talk about lettering.
I'll bring it up right now.
So here we go.
I'll tell you the two fundamental rules of
lettering.
And then basically,
I'm going to tell you the rules.
I'm going to break them all.
So the first rule of lettering basically
is... There are no rules.
No, we can't talk about Fight Club.
But the first one,
there's two rules of lettering.
It's basically, number one,
you move from left to right,
top to bottom.
Why you do that is because that's how
you read.
So your eyes naturally go read across the
page.
No, no, no.
Because that's how you've been taught to
read.
The second rule,
and this is much more comic-based rule
rather than letter rule,
is one action per panel.
Because you can't tell the artist, oh,
I want in one panel for you to
draw him punching and kicking.
You can't.
One panel is the punch.
The second panel will be the kick.
So you don't do two actions per panel.
But what lettering does is it actually
lets you break the one action per panel
rule.
And I'll show you the example here.
So I don't know if you can see
the screen.
I'm hoping everybody can see the screen.
Yeah, yeah.
It's being shared.
They can see it.
You see the guy talking.
So he's talking.
And halfway through the sentence,
you can see it with the way the
art goes.
He wipes his mouth and then continues
talking.
So in this one panel,
there is more than one action happening.
Again, standard comic rules,
one action per panel.
The lettering or the dialogue,
the break of the dialogue shows that he's
doing more than one action.
He talks, wipes his mouth,
and then continues.
And it's recognized by the ellipses,
right?
Yep, by the ellipses.
And more importantly,
it's actually recognized by how the art
breaks.
That's actually like,
you can see how the guy in the
middle, he breaks the panel to two parts.
So it's one panel,
but there are two actions.
So he talks, wipes his mouth,
and then continues talking.
So there's three actions here on one
panel.
So I've broken the one action per panel
rule.
The other thing,
and I'll show you another example of it.
And so here we go.
is this one.
And I'll give you a couple of standard
comic rules.
A double dash.
Ellipsis means there's a pause.
So you take a breath.
A double dash means you've been
interrupted.
So you're still talking,
and somebody just interrupts you halfway.
So in this one,
you can kind of see here, she's talking,
the lady on the left.
And the lady on the right is just
about to talk.
So it was cold, like dot slash slash.
She's being interrupted.
And then the hug comes in.
So there's actually two actions here.
They're talking and she goes in for the
hug.
Now,
the action really shows one part
happening, the hug itself.
But because of how the dialogue is
structured and how...
I have fun manipulating the words,
it actually shows more than one action
happening in the same panel.
Your brain actually registers it as
they're talking,
she's the lady on the right talking,
and she gets stopped halfway with the hug.
So lettering allows you to actually set
different pacing and actually put in more
things that are happening in the one panel
than they should be.
So it's a real,
and just on that top left,
bottom right row.
And so if you give it any comic
page and I'll give you a couple of
the, comics have,
they're not just a storyboard.
There's actually different parts of a
comic that's actually more powerful.
Like you're talking about,
The top left of a comic page is
more important.
It's the most important part of the page
because that's where the reader's eyes get
drawn to first.
Top left of the page,
that's where you start.
And the second most important part of the
page is the bottom right because that's
where the eyes drift off.
So if you were doing a murder mystery
and you wanted to hide the murder weapon
in plain sight,
put it into the bottom left and you
would find a lot of people would just
miss it.
So if you're a smart writer, colorist,
artist,
and you want to do certain things that
you want it in plain sight that people
don't pick up until after the fact,
bottom left, top right.
People will just miss it.
Absolutely miss it.
I always like to, when I talk to,
when I'm lettering,
I'll talk to different people and say,
hey,
I could drop a clue here for you
to your next part of the story if
you want me to.
And
So many times they'll just go, yeah,
that would be awesome.
And I guarantee you,
if you let your editor read it,
they'll miss it.
They'll totally miss it.
And nine times out of ten,
it gets totally missed.
And the other thing which I don't know
if you've heard the concept of,
and this is very much also the literal
actually can help with this.
You've heard the concept of the page turn,
haven't you?
Yeah.
So every odd page is worth more than
every even page because an odd page
Bottom panel of the odd page,
you want to convince them to turn the
page.
So they turn the page right so they
can see the page spread.
So you can see page two and three
once you turn the page.
Page two, exposition.
Knock yourself out.
Who cares?
Page three,
you have to have something at the bottom
panel that makes it important.
Why that's really simple to fix.
Ask a question in the bottom panel that
doesn't get answered to the next page.
Have something they said that's not
complete.
So when you're doing dialogue or lettering
or stuff like that,
always have something that's not finished.
ellipses or all the tricks so that you
convince them to turn the page and that's
really unique to the carpet medium it's
yeah it's like a mini cliffhanger on every
single page yeah so it's so cool it
is what makes you love it man like
honestly that's just one of those things
that just
It's a special unique thing only comets
can get away with.
A hundred percent.
So the other thing I absolutely love is
when I can make my lettering part of
the art.
So I become an artist as part of
it.
So you can kind of see here,
this machine is analyzing this gold sample
that's there.
You can see the special effects.
I make that very, very bright,
very bold so that you can kind of
see it's a, you know,
the sound when you do the analysis.
But
On the screen, on the right,
it's part of the art.
I blended it all in.
I've blurred it.
I've adjusted it so that it's not...
The artist didn't do any of that.
That's all me.
And I love to be able to do
things like that where because the special
effects are nice and big and bold,
you'll draw yourself to this.
But because this is part of the...
story it looks like as though it's really
just part of the art it doesn't look
like it's anything that's different the is
different at that the reason for it is
you want the special effects to pop but
the screen oh gosh
Did the artist do it?
Did the letterer do it?
Who cares?
It's done.
And I love it that I could do
stuff like that to really just blend in
with it.
And it's all readable.
You find out how much gold is in
there and all the rest of it.
But it's part of the story.
So another example would be something
like...
The other example that's really cool as
well, why I love lettering,
is able to draw the reader's eyes.
The other rule about lettering is bubbles
float to the top.
So where possible,
bubbles have to go above somebody's head.
That's one of the rules.
So that one could easily go to the
right of this bald guy's head.
Very easily.
There's more than enough space for you to
put it in there.
The reason I put it down at the
bottom,
which again is breaking one of those
rules, is you want to draw,
and I put the red arrow to make
it very clear,
you want to draw the audience's,
the reader's eye from what he's saying
into where his hands cut off and it's
like it just your eyes hyper focus into
that red part where his bloody hand is
to go he did this to me you
scroll down and then you see that that
red bloody hand now if that what had
been up the top the reader would probably
just read at the top and then move
across it then down
Correct.
And so I'll show you,
this is actually from Transhuman.
I'll show you a really complex example of
it.
This is a really complex example.
And you can imagine the original artwork
for this page is actually very empty.
Yes.
But where this one leads there,
and this is, again, with comic things,
this is actually one of the really,
really cool examples of an establishing
panel.
And I know I'm getting technical,
but this is what it is.
I love this kind of stuff.
Because for me,
my eye is starting at the top left.
It's going straight down over.
Correct.
It moves across so that you go down
to where Rivka is to the left-hand side.
And, oh, hey, I hope you're enjoying this.
There always are rules.
Goes across to the other characters.
Look,
there's a couple of great things with an
establishing shot.
And this is where, to be fair,
my artist probably hates me for this page
because I said, establish shot,
put a lot of detail in there.
He's going, do I draw the buildings?
Yeah, you have to.
Yeah.
But so the other thing where a really
good establishing shot is,
is
everybody, every character,
there's five characters on the screen.
All of them get, gets named.
So you actually get the name of every
single character from this established
shot.
You understand exactly where this is
actually the first panel of transhuman
volume four, you know, where they are,
you know,
all their names and you need to figure
out what's happening just from one panel.
So you can kind of see here that,
um,
Maxim and Mikhail, these two guys,
are your arms dealers.
You know, you see that.
They say, you're the arms dealers.
Then it scrolls down to Rivka,
whose information has been sent.
You know, have you received it?
She goes, ah, you know,
she's acknowledging she's received it.
And so then you notice that it goes,
happy hunting, Rivka.
So her name also gets dropped.
So you know who she is.
And then it goes across where you go,
blah, blah, blah, blah,
following the trail of lettering as well.
And then they're having a silly
conversation here about Jacob's new boots.
In the meantime,
you got the guys behind them actually
shooting at them as they're having this
friendly conversation.
That's when you know you've been around a
lot of stuff being shot and just gunfire
and stuff like that.
When you can just have a conversation
like, hey,
what do you want for lunch later?
Oh, they just stopped.
You jump up.
Go back down.
Exactly.
And so with this,
as a really good establishing panel,
you know exactly what happens and you know
everybody's name.
So if you were just jumping in the
transhuman for the first panel,
you see everybody's name,
you know everybody's name on that page
already.
It's actually really funny when you're
lettering.
And I've actually picked this up to a
lot of writers and creators is,
In the script that you write, you write,
say, this is the chairman, this is Bob,
James, whatever, you put it all in.
But when you talk normally,
you don't actually always say somebody's
name.
So I've been through entire scripts where
the protagonist's names never gets
mentioned.
And I always say to them, look,
it may seem a little bit unnatural in
talking, but you have to put it in.
Why do you think they always go,
who is he?
Bond, James Bond.
Who is he?
John Wick, the Baba Yaga.
They keep repeating names because there's
an unwritten rule that you actually need
to say.
It's a psychological thing.
You have to say the main character's name
in the book, not the book,
in the comic or in the movie,
you have to say it at least six
times for the audience to actually click
the name in.
Especially if you're introducing,
like it's an issue one of a book
and it
how else are you going to establish those
characters?
Exactly.
So in this, I've done it once already.
I did it five more times.
And it sounds a bit unnatural when you
go, oh, hello, Rivka.
Like, oh, hello, chairman.
It seems unnatural,
but you actually have to put that into
your script because it actually,
it's part of the comic that it has
to be included as part of it.
And this is the one fun one I
always love to show.
So when I got set the script for
this, let's just give you a heads up.
When I got set the script for this
in each of the panels,
there's no paragraphs.
It was blobs of text.
Text, text, text.
So when the writer did this,
it was just blobs of text.
So as a letterer, you've got two choices,
and it depends.
It depends on the creator, the publisher,
whatever.
You say to them, look,
how much freedom are you going to give
me?
If you tell me to do as I'm
told, I will do as I'm told.
I will put it in one giant word
balloon,
blob straight in the middle there,
if that's what you want me to do.
Or if you trust me and you make
me part of the process,
I will actually make this readable for
you.
And ninety-nine percent of the time,
it's like, that's why we hire you.
You have a say in what to do.
So you can kind of see here,
go panel by panel.
It's that left, right, left, right, top,
bottom thing.
So you can kind of see here,
it goes left, right.
And it's so much fun for me to
pick out key elements of the dialogue to
show off.
Like if you look at, say, you know,
long...
This one actually was, I have to say,
I'll zoom in a little bit because the
dialogue for this,
and the guy who wrote this dialogue,
I think it's a really sharp dialogue.
I love it.
So the idea behind it is it's about
a suicidal vampire.
So he wants to die,
but he doesn't know how to kill himself.
He's hurt so many people.
He's lived so much life,
and he wants to end himself,
but he doesn't know how to.
Can we pause real quick?
Yeah, sure.
So I just had to ban somebody.
People,
when you jump into comments and you
immediately start saying negative things,
you're going to get banned.
Please don't do that.
All right.
Escape that to you, man.
No stress.
And you can kind of see here,
it's that left, right, left,
right thing as it goes through.
And what you do is you pick up
as, because I'm a writer as well,
you pick up the key things,
enough killing, enough stalking.
Every bubble becomes a different emphasis
as it comes through.
So this is, I have a
I've said this to the writer,
this particular writer,
this is really crisp dialogue.
He actually did a really,
really good job of the dialogue.
I need to do my absolute best to
really enhance it.
So if you just pick up key speech
bubbles, you can go, oh gosh,
what's happening?
And it also gets that flow really nice,
really smooth that it goes through that
it's,
really easy to read and it's a lot
of text it's a very heavy and i
you know i understand it but it makes
it into a way that it's very easy
to digest and that's what i absolutely
love about if this is the art of
lettering not just the technical thing
i'll put the words and put a bubble
around it is being able to read it
and actually analyze it and actually make
it yeah
elevated so the next the guy who reads
it will go oh my god it's readable
and it's such good and it it's fantastic
and i love it so for me that's
why i always say like
A decent letter will just put the words
on the page for you.
A good letter makes it into a story.
And so when I...
And I say one of the jokes I
always have with a lot of people,
once you know a lot of these things,
the sad thing about it is... Oh,
thank you.
Thank you.
One of the absolute sad things about...
I can't read comics properly the same way
anymore.
Yeah,
we were just talking about that before we
went live.
A twenty two to twenty six page comic
book for me is literally a a forty
five to ninety minute affair to get
through because I understand color theory.
Now I understand lettering.
I understand how to look around the comic
page for things that are hidden,
those Easter ads and that kind of stuff.
So I may read through it.
once like at a normal pace,
but then I flip it back.
I go, okay,
now it's time to actually study and learn
and dig through and see what I can
find.
But for me,
it also breaks my heart a bit because
sometimes where,
and it breaks my heart and actually
sometimes it uplifts me as well because
sometimes when I read really good
lettering and I hyper-focus,
I don't know why I hyper-focus.
You go, oh my God,
that was done so well.
Or, oh my God,
I didn't think about the way they did
certain things.
And in my head, I'm like,
got to lock that away.
Got to learn that.
But the reverse is sometimes where there's
bad lettering and your heart breaks.
It's like that big center text box.
Oh,
I've seen people use the bubble and they
cover someone's head.
And it's like, no, no.
Half the action is missing.
I know.
And it breaks my heart.
And you just like, no, no,
don't do that.
And they don't have bubbles.
That's another one I've been noticing.
It's like, there's no bubbles.
It's just the words on the page.
And then you're like, oh, there it is.
There are times where actually that's
actually not too bad.
It can work.
It can really work,
especially on a heavy action sequence,
right?
Or there's like fires and there's like a
gunfight.
That's really cool.
I like seeing when it's a gunfight or
an explosion.
And the explosion itself is kind of like
that word box for text.
I will show you something that's give me
an example.
Let me see if I can find it.
Yep, here it is.
So I'll just drag this here.
I'll skip through.
I'll show you my sample portfolio.
This is the ones I use as a
sample.
And I'll just show it to you super
quick.
Let me share it again.
Here we go.
So this is my sample one.
So guys, if you're ever looking for work,
always make sure you have a small
portfolio.
It makes a world of difference,
especially the comic world,
because portfolios will show people in ten
seconds what...
So yeah,
his camera has a glitch every few minutes
for some reason.
Oh, I do apologize.
No, you're good.
It's not affecting anything.
It's just like every now and then,
it's like a weird little glitch that comes
across your screen.
So this is examples of, say, dialogue.
And I like to show you heavy dialogue
pages.
So you can kind of see a bit
heavy dialogue,
getting it to all fitted in and without
covering anything and still keeping the
correct reading order.
So like heavy, heavy dialogue,
like where the dialogue leads you to the
character, you know,
all this is heavy dialogue pages and like
dialogue where it bounces left, right,
back and forth.
Yeah.
That's some of my favorite ones.
like it's the other ones, which,
and this is the example I wanted to
show you is this is where they,
you know, the,
it becomes part of the artwork,
but what you were saying before.
Yeah.
This is perfect right here.
So in this one particular story,
it's a ghostly voice.
I'll just zoom out a little bit.
You kind of see here,
it's like he's hearing things.
They're exploring this dark,
superstitious place.
And these soldiers,
they are hearing things in their heads
going, do it, give in.
And I could do this in bubbles,
but it wouldn't have the same impact.
No,
this is one of those times where it's
like a ghost.
a ghostly voice in the background and I
love this kind of set up.
Yep.
And, but I have to say, uh,
from a lettering point of view,
oh my God,
it's so much more work because every
letter is individually put in because you
can't have it like straight.
Yeah.
Which is the easier thing to do.
You just draw lines or you put the
letters nice and straight lines because
it's a ghostly voice.
Of course, it's going to be messed up.
And so you can kind of see here.
I'll show you this little trick as well.
And I love this way it came out.
Look at this panel, right?
The cool thing about, say,
this panel here is the guy in the
middle is your panel break.
He's your natural panel break.
Yeah, that's actually really cool.
So by having the words left and right
of him,
you know which order to read it in
because you read the left-hand side first.
There's a guy in the middle with the
black space above him that breaks the
panel for you and then the guy on
the right.
So this is the case I was saying
before where they actually forgot to put
the guy's name in.
So
What I did in this particular panel is
I had a bit of fun.
I made sure to include the guy's name
twice because, like I told you,
my object is six.
Your name gets told six times in the
comic.
I just did it twice in here.
So Ambrose gets mentioned twice.
So it's the trick.
I shoved his name in twice.
I got to find four more spots to
put the guy's name in there.
There's Rook there too.
Don't forget about Rook.
He's there.
Yeah.
So, for example...
But this is actually one of the cool
things you can do.
The other things you can then do is,
like,
you can kind of see here is by
putting the dialogue behind the bubble,
you kind of make it like it's coming
behind them.
It's like it's coming all over them.
And so, yeah, so I love it.
Like, you can kind of tell, like,
I'll jump up from there.
It's...
It's absolutely why I love comics.
You can use lettering to really enhance
the comic, enhance the story.
So for me, it's amazing.
And ladies and gentlemen,
that is why he is a Ringo nominee.
No, it's something I really enjoy.
So for me,
and that's a whole art to it.
If you do it properly,
it gets the story to be a lot
more enhanced.
In that twenty minutes,
and I've talked to other letters and I've
had great conversations with letters,
but in the twenty minutes that you just
did that, my brain is now like,
It's messed up even more.
I was telling you before,
my brain in reading comics is really
messed up because I literally have to
break it down.
And it's a good thing.
It's never a negative thing,
but I now psychoanalyze a comic and I
look for things like this and...
You know,
and like you just gave me another twenty
minute crash course and lettering and I
fucking love that.
Like I love if I'm not learning at
the same time,
I'm getting to do this and to tell
your story.
Then what the hell am I doing?
And I love the learning.
Trust me,
like learning about this stuff makes it
ten times more enjoyable for me because.
I know what I get to do with
this later.
Remember how I was telling you before we
went live,
I have something called a chairman's cut.
That I will cut out that whole section
about lettering.
It will then go to become a chairman's
cut.
And hopefully somebody else can go, hey,
I wonder about comic book lettering.
They can hopefully find that chairman's
cut of us discussing the comic book
lettering.
And now they get a twenty minute crash
course in comic book lettering.
I hope they do.
And so for me,
it's why I really enjoy it.
And the thing is, for me,
when I first started,
it was more practicality.
It's like something I want to learn and
something I was interested in.
But once you deep dive into it,
it's something I love now.
And the psychological things that you can
do with it and how you can guide
eyes around the screen and...
Just make them follow with what you wrote.
That to me is the coolest thing.
I know.
And so it's probably a good place for
me.
But look, thank you so much.
I had so much fun explaining all of
these things to you.
And thank you so much for having me
on.
And thank you so much, Paul.
So let me talk about CanSum.
No, we got some more to talk about.
Are you ready to bounce?
Yeah,
we're going to talk about crowdfunding
this book, man.
The Kickstarter is close, right?
Oh, it's going to open in,
whatchamacallit, it's going to pre-launch.
Yeah, it's in pre-launch right now.
Yeah,
we're going to talk about the
crowdfunding, bud.
Give me one sec.
I thought we were wrapping up.
No,
I just let you have your way with
lettering.
Oh, thank you.
Give me a sec.
I will move.
I'll send a message out.
I'll move a couple of things around.
Yeah,
we only have about fifteen more minutes.
We can move.
Yep.
All to you.
So you've successfully crowdfunded
transhuman before,
and now we're asking readers to come back
from volume four, which by the way,
that link is down in the description of
this video that you're watching right now.
What has been your biggest lesson
crowdfunding has taught you about earning
and maintaining the trust of your readers?
Because you don't get to volume four of
a book through crowdfunding without having
a good reputation,
having a good respect for those people who
back your books.
The main thing is updates and being
accessible.
So for me, it's a whole case of,
hey, it's... Whatchamacallit.
Are you keeping people up to date?
And more importantly,
not just keeping people up to date,
are you...
regular feeling what you're saying.
Like,
it's not just about keeping up to date.
It's also, Hey,
if you say you're going to do a,
are you actually doing a,
and so for me,
it's been important that you also maintain
that, that you basically,
you keep your word on stuff.
If you say, Hey, look, I've started to,
I'm packing it and should be packed within
the week.
You finish packing within that week.
If you're going to tell them to take
two weeks and,
You take two weeks,
you know what I mean?
But you can't be a case of, oh,
I'm going to do it tomorrow,
and then you don't do it for the
next six months.
You need to be able to maintain what's
happening,
and you need to be able to maintain...
what you say you're going to do.
So it's just basically, it's really,
it sounds really silly,
but it's just keeping your word.
It's like saying,
if you're going to do something,
you're going to promise something,
deliver on it.
And if you're not, make that update.
Correct.
That's literally,
the moment you update Kickstarter,
Kickstarter blasts that message out to
everybody following it.
In all your backers.
So that's always my biggest thing is,
I love to get those updates two times
a week, three times a week.
Just something that says, Hey,
today I called a snag at the printer.
It's okay.
We're still on track.
That's update.
That's perfect.
That tells me there's going to be a
delay in shipping, right?
And that's all you need to do.
It's just a case of saying, Hey, um,
when you say something,
be a man of your word,
commit to it, make sure it happens.
And that's it.
And,
The whole point of it is,
I have to admit, I've been delayed before,
but it's a case of under-promise and then
over-deliver.
That's a great way to look at it.
Yeah, put risk into it.
For example,
if you think you're going to take a
week, say you're going to say, look,
two weeks just in case something happens.
And then if you deliver in the week,
happy days.
If you take them two weeks,
also happy days.
You're excited because they got it a week
early.
Exactly.
The one thing would be is don't say
you're going to do it tomorrow when you're
not going to do it tomorrow.
Yeah.
know that type of thing so um but
the main thing would be is it it's
commitment and the one thing which um i
would say which and this is the two
school of thoughts on crowdfunding and you
can go either way one of them is
hey look i need the money to pay
the artist and pay the production team or
whatever so i will front up for the
first five pages to show you my concept
and all the rest of it
our crowdfund and the rest of the money
will be to build the book that's one
way to do it the other way is
the guy is ninety percent complete and
you're going to get your comics relatively
soon after it's finished because it's more
or less done both approaches I think are
absolutely valid absolutely fine but you
have to be up front with which approach
you're taking yeah and that should be in
that pre-launch page that should be on the
front page of your kickstarter as a matter
of fact
If you know you're using this Kickstarter
to fund that whole book,
that very first paragraph says, hey, FYI,
what we earn from this,
if this Kickstarter is successful,
all this money goes to pay the artist,
the letter, the color,
And that's how this book is going to
get made.
Correct.
Put that up front before you ever put
the description of what this book is in
there.
That way people know.
It erases any doubt.
Correct.
And also if you put it into your
when the date's coming out,
because Kickstarter actually has a release
date.
Yeah, you have to, yeah.
So the main thing is,
I think that's where a lot of people
get caught, is they don't tell you,
in most cases, which way it's done.
Now, you can infer most of it,
to be really fair.
And in most sections in the bottom,
people say,
this project's almost completed,
we need to... They will write it in.
But a lot of people don't write it
in.
And so...
You might, hypothetically,
let's say you're the first category.
You've upfronted five pages and you're
basically crowdfunding to get the money to
do the other twenty pages.
That project's going to take a lot longer
because when you get the money,
the artist still has to produce the final
twenty pages, colorist needs to do that,
printing,
all the happy fun stuff needs to happen.
That's a longer project.
And if people know it's a longer project,
it's not the end of the world,
but they know.
But if they're expecting the project to be
ninety percent complete and they're just
funding the printing,
which some creators do as well,
they're going to get really annoyed.
You're going, where is it?
Where is it?
Where is it?
You're going, we're still making it.
And the whole point would be is it's
that communication.
And if you tell them upfront,
problem goes away.
Problem solved.
There's no issue because the problem all
goes away.
Because guess what?
Oh, yeah, you're still making it.
You're getting about a page, two,
three pages a week, twenty pages.
It'll be done in two months.
Happy days.
Lucky.
Unless something comes up with the artist,
right?
Correct.
So that's how you maintain that.
And to be fair,
I've actually done it in both situations.
There are situations where I had it ninety
percent funded.
I mean,
I created it and the crowdfund was just
to get the book out and get people
to see it.
And I've also had the other situation
where, hey,
I don't have everything finished.
I'm about halfway through.
The money will help me accelerate things
through because I can then pay the artist,
hey, I've got the money, let's...
Take the buff off.
Here's the money.
Finish off the work.
But in both cases,
as long as you're upfront about it.
In the case of Transhuman, though,
it's the ninety percent done one.
It's artworks all done.
We're all ready to go.
It's all been colored.
They'll hold up for me lettering.
To be fair, it's on my day.
But that doesn't take too long.
I'm the fastest part of the equation.
And we should be able to get through
it.
I put a long time frame in there.
but it's not going to take that long.
We've got to get it to you much,
much, much, much quicker.
So what do you think keeps people coming
back to transhuman?
I mean,
this is your first Kickstarter to sell in,
in doing this book.
What do you think they keep coming back
for?
I hope, I hope it's the story.
I hope it's, I,
like I mentioned with the editor,
so I hope people just love the character
as much as I love the character.
And,
it's one of those things is if you
enjoy the character,
you enjoy what's happening.
It's one of those things where you go,
I want to read more.
I want to see more of what happens.
And for me, I think that's absolutely key.
Like it's, if the characters are beloved,
you know what?
It's easier to tell that story.
And yeah, that's what I,
that's all I hope for.
That's really all I hope for that.
They love the story.
So the Kickstarter is in prelaunch right
now.
It is.
When did you say when it was launching?
It's on this Sunday.
This Sunday at...
So this Sunday at ten o'clock,
Australia is the standard time.
So it'll probably be your Saturday.
I'm going to run it for about thirty
days.
Saturday night, I think.
Yeah, Saturday night.
And it will just run through.
And look, the other thing is,
it's always nerve wracking to hit that go
live button.
It really is.
I've never heard a person say, oh, yeah,
you know,
it's great when you hit that go page.
I'm like, you're fucking lying.
Yeah.
It's nerve-wracking because now the work
has to really start.
The marketing,
the social media stuff has to start going.
All this stuff has to go into this.
Your next thirty days revolves around
Transhuman Volume Four.
I know.
It's scary.
Can you walk us through the campaign real
quick?
What are you offering?
What's going to be different with this
one?
It's in pre-launch now.
So what I'm happy to do is I'm
happy to show you the...
I can bring it up for you.
Hang on.
No, no, because it's in pre-launch.
So I can show you,
I can give you the exclusive scoop,
the behind the scenes.
Perfect.
That's what I'm talking about.
That's what's up.
So let me get this logged in.
Give me a sec.
So I always like it when the creator
sends me the pre-pre-launch.
That way I can get what I want
early.
That's my favorite ones.
Okay, so give me a sec.
But while you're bringing that up,
can you kind of...
beyond simply reaching the funding goal of
the book,
what would you like to look back at
this campaign and say Transhuman Volume
Four was a success?
What would make you look back and just
go, hey, this was it.
This was the money.
There's only one metric that's ever
important to me of any campaign I've ever
run.
To be fair, the money is always good.
I won't lie about that.
The money is great.
We're not going to lie to nobody.
The money is always great when it's
funded.
Back a number.
So as long as the backer number goes
up project to project,
that's the one that makes me happy because
we do, I mean,
I use the Royal we like because of
other creators,
we do this madness because we want to
be read.
We want to tell stories.
And for me,
it's so important to be able to tell
the story.
If more people are reading it than before,
that's what makes me happy.
And so my success really is,
I think the last campaign I had six
hundred and ninety something backers.
That's amazing though.
So for me,
what would make me happy is hitting that
six to seven hundred backer mark.
So my true goal with any campaign,
and I haven't reached it yet,
is to hit one thousand plus backers.
Do you know how many pre-launch followers
you have right now?
Seven twenty something.
Oh, that's nice.
That's nice.
But for me,
it's that one thousand markers.
You'll get there, dude.
A hundred percent.
It's going to happen.
So for me, what I always do is,
for the campaign things,
is although it's volume four,
I include the digital of volume one, two,
and three in almost every single reward
tier.
so they're going to get the whole story
exactly so if you jump in on if
you buy a physical volume four you'll get
the digital one two and three so you
can get if you want a physical copy
you can still read up and get to
exactly where you need to be that's really
cool the other thing would be is if
you want physical copies of it it's all
available as add-ons as well and on
selected reward tiers yeah so if you're
absolutely new to it
Don't stress because you can come straight
onto it.
Now,
if you're absolutely first time in
Transhuman, if this is your first rodeo,
you can just pick up the digital for
four, if that's what you want.
But beyond that point,
every reward tier will include all
previous copies of digital.
So digital is really easy for you to
catch up, to go, hey,
I want to catch up.
I want to get to where I need
to be.
Boom, you've got digital for all of it.
You want the physical copies?
Yes.
Also all available.
And if you've been following along the
journey, pick up what you want.
Pick up what you need to.
So in terms of the covers, look,
I've been really lucky to work with
Michael Shelford.
He's from Superman and X-Men Dominion.
He did a lot of the covers.
I have Abri, I've always worked with.
And I love,
it's always a bit of vibe.
This is a foil cover.
So it's actually- So the foil is actually
what I use to make the thumbnail.
Oh, cool.
So that's that.
And I just stripped the background off of
it,
the foil off of it and just used
her character because I thought it was
really cool.
And then I found the cybernetic thumb like
background and I just popped it on and
just took the logo and then done it
and just kind of like it looks almost
like it's just one thing until you get
to her and then she just that pop
on the.
Oh, cool.
I've seen that one.
I've seen your thumbnail for this image.
It's really cool.
Dude,
that's been my Achilles heel and I'm
finally finding a good groove with
thumbnails and kind of just doing my own
unique thing with them.
So for me,
it's like I love the covers.
The other thing with all the VR covers
as well is...
I'm one of the things that with variant
covers,
I want to give something back in terms
of a variant cover that isn't available.
So with the variant cover,
there's actually more story pages.
Oh, that's really cool.
It's always worth spending that extra four
or five bucks to get that variant cover,
to get that extra pages of story.
If you like the cover as it is,
get the main cover.
That's absolutely fine.
The story doesn't change too much.
But the variant gives you about ten extra
story pages so you can actually go, wow,
that's a... Because...
I love dialogue.
I love people.
You're a letter, man.
Of course you do.
So for me, having the extra pages,
it actually lets you go a deeper dive
into small characters.
They can actually say a lot more things.
But if you're ever in making a film,
movie, and all the rest of it,
you want the dialogue to be nice and
concise.
If you get the variant,
you're saying you want the director's cut.
So you get a little bit more of
that.
That's the variant.
This is the first panel,
and we've discussed this.
You get to know everybody's names.
They're on an early mission.
It's...
You know, like I said,
there's a lot of really good action
sequences.
There's also a lot of really soft,
happy scenes as well.
So I actually do make it a point.
Then you have all the different rewards.
The other thing would be is in terms
of digital as well,
I always make it a point.
I love that Immortal Coil cover.
Yeah, this is by Gerald.
He does amazing work.
I like those covers.
It's like two color covers and they just,
the black and the red.
There's a few artists that do those types
of covers and they just pop so good.
I know.
The other thing would be is when you
do digital packs is, you know,
people just go, you know,
why am I forking out X number of
dollars for one PDF?
Yeah, totally agree with you.
You'll get...
a thousand cuts you've got immortal coil
and guess what uh before the end of
it i sound like a used car salesman
now you'll get i love it keep going
i love this you'll get you'll get a
i will promise you like it by the
end of the campaign if i'm successfully
funded you'll have more than three hundred
pages of digital reading because we'll
just keep adding more and more digital
comics more add-ons right exactly um
We'll just keep throwing more stuff in.
And the more stuff I find,
the more stuff I throw in.
And other stuff that's available is you
get the four covers you can choose from.
Every physical reward tier gets this
really cool card.
It's a trading card size.
Everybody will get that.
They are a really cool print.
If you like original artwork,
you get detailed original artwork.
This is my favorite one.
And I really hope there's a couple of
people who do get this.
I'll stop on this one because I love
to be able to give a custom cover.
So by the end of the campaign,
I'll ask for you to send a photo
through and I'll put you on a cover
custom cover and the print run for that
will be
However many people buy the book, I mean,
buy that particular award and one copy for
myself.
And I don't know if you know,
with printing, there's always a,
if something gets damaged, extra.
But the print run will be psychotically
low.
You're talking,
if say five people back this tier,
I will have seven copies.
That's about how it goes.
And this one was a lot of fun
because you could see that person to the
right.
She got drawn in and that person to
the left got drawn in.
And it's a lot of fun.
It's really cool.
And I love unique things that people do
for Kickstarter.
You get to be killed in a comic
book.
You get to be the governor for a
day.
And that's the one thing that Kickstarter
gives you because Kickstarter actually
lets you do certain things that if you
were just putting the book out to a
bookstore or comic book store,
they don't get that fun.
And in terms of the add-ons,
like I mentioned,
you can pick up volume one.
Volume one is still available.
You can kind of see it.
And as well as you've got all the
volume twos still available.
And again, same thing,
volume two and three,
the variants contain extra pages.
Same thing with all the variants of volume
three.
And here's our happy team who's working on
it.
And currently we put the stretch goal at
six hundred backers and at twenty five
thousand Australian dollars.
What I'm really hoping for is, look,
to be fair,
that backer number is the one I want
to break.
Yeah, we can do it.
Happy days like seven hundred.
I really do.
I really think you can get it on
this one.
And I know you're kind of getting short
on time as well.
But what's next, man?
You spent a decade creating independent
comments and, you know,
what's something about this business
you've had to learn like the hard way
and you wish somebody had told you when
you were making like, I mean, you know,
twenty fifteen.
But, you know, what's next, man?
What's next?
Look, my biggest regret of everything,
and it's something I really hope I can
impart on anybody who's listening,
is don't procrastinate.
Don't wait the ten years to get started
on stuff.
That's probably my absolute biggest
regret,
that if I had started this journey ten
years ago,
I would be in such a better place
than I am now.
Yeah.
Because I would be ten years further
along.
But for, I would say,
for about ten years, I was thinking, oh,
I would love to get into this.
Like,
I want to move from being a consumer
to a creator.
It hit my head.
I just wish I had started that.
I just wish I had gone,
you know what?
Decision made.
I would start putting pen to paper,
putting notes, things, reading, learning,
figuring out how things happen because it
just would have been ten years more of
doing this.
And that's probably the biggest regret.
The regret isn't doing stuff because
learning and making mistakes and stuff
like that is all part of the process.
And you have to screw up.
Like I said, your first draft is rubbish,
absolute garbage.
My first drafts were all the same.
But you need to get through all that.
And if I had started earlier,
so that's why I remember talking a bit
offline is I just encourage you to like,
seriously, when, when,
when should you have started yesterday?
That's,
that's the advice I give to everybody.
And what's the second best time to start
today?
What's the worst time to start tomorrow?
You know,
that's, that's what you need to live by.
Like, and for me,
it's being able to have this journey
behind me.
I've met some incredible people like,
like yourself who have been, again,
giving up their time for me and it's
like, it makes me so happy.
You meet all these incredible people on
the journey and,
You just need to start it, really.
And so, yeah,
if you end with nothing else from this
is when should you have started?
You should have started yesterday.
When's the other time you should start?
You should start it today.
And that's the best advice I can give
anybody.
I love it, dude.
Tell people where they can find you on
social media.
And yeah.
Look, I'm a bit of a boomer.
I freely admit it.
I'm on the wrong side of money already.
So let's just end it.
I feel that.
I feel that.
So look,
so I don't know what these kids are
up to with their TikTok and get off
my lawn.
The oldest social media...
Old man yells at clouds.
But so for me,
I do try to get to the other
platforms.
I have to admit,
it's a learning experience for me,
and I'm trying to get better at it.
But if you go to Facebook, it's Sigmate,
S-I-G-M-A-T-E, Studio, S-T-U-D-I-O,
one word.
If you click on there,
you should be able to find me really
easily, Sigmate Studio, one word.
And it will be in the description below
as well, hopefully.
But the main thing would be is I
do try to post up as much as
I can.
Look, I have to freely admit it's,
I'm not the absolute,
I'm actually not the best at it and
I'm learning a lot about marketing as I'm
going through.
But if you ever want to contact me
just in terms of to have a chat,
to have a, um,
I have a conversation.
Look, dude,
just reach out that I'm relatively easy to
meet and I don't bite.
So at least I try not to too
much,
but definitely reach out and I'm more than
happy to have the chat with people.
Bro, I appreciate it so much.
You coming on and talking to us.
All the links that he just mentioned are
actually down in the description,
including the pre-launch page to the
Kickstarter that is kicking off this
Sunday,
Australia time.
That's sometime in the afternoon Saturday
for us in the U.S.
Make sure you hit that Kickstarter link.
Go follow the pre-launch.
That way you're notified at the moment it
goes live.
And it gives some love.
This is a volume four of a book
and you don't get to volume four of
a book or a graphic novel without it
being live.
Really good.
So, Stephen, with that, dude,
thank you so much again for joining us
tonight.
It was a pleasure having you on.
I apologize to you for keeping you longer
than I had intended.
It's all good.
It's all good.
That lettering conversation,
I couldn't stop you because I was learning
so much.
So I just let you cook with it.
That's the abridged version.
I actually have a proper version.
If you ever want to come back and
give us the full version of the letter
in psychology,
you are more than welcome back for that.
I will show you the part that's hidden.
whatever you want to talk about, dude,
because this was a lot of fun.
But again,
thank you for joining us tonight.
It was great learning more about your
journey through independent comments,
the world and philosophy behind
transhuman,
your work with Raz and the importance of
libraries, of course,
and the crafting of lettering and
everything that you brought to us about
Rivka's story in volume four of
Transhuman.
Honestly,
we want to wish you the best of
luck with Transhuman Volume Four.
Again, kicking off this Sunday, ten a.m.
Australia time.
I hope you get that thousand on this
one.
I really do,
because that would be so awesome.
But to everyone watching.
All the links, again,
are included in the description.
If you've enjoyed today's conversation,
please be sure to like this video,
subscribe to the channel,
and share it with someone who loves
independent comics.
And, you know,
they want to know about science fiction or
they want a really good how-to on
lettering.
They get a good twenty-minute how-to on
lettering right here in the middle of this
podcast.
But, ladies and gentlemen,
Steven, one more time,
thank you again for joining us today.
But this has been the USDM Podcast,
where indie comics come to life.
Ladies and gentlemen,
the Council of Nerds is now adjourned.
Y'all be safe out there.
Steven.