I created this little animated piece to celebrate Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse FINALLY entering the public domain.

I did all the key pose and breakdown animation drawings on paper, then in-betweened the rest digitally using Toon Boom Harmony, which I also used for digital ink and paint. The three backgrounds were done traditionally with ink wash on watercolor paper.

I cut up the original soundtrack to piece together the music and sound effects. It took me about 38 hours to create these 38 seconds of animation, mostly late at night after my kids went to bed.

It felt like an animation history lesson animating these characters! It was also really freeing to animate in the ‘20s “rubber hose” style. Need the character to grab something? Just stretch their arms! Any time I tried to add some overlap, I had to go back and take it back out, because it looked wrong in this context.

Anyway, you can learn more about the importance of the public domain at the Center for the Study of the Public Domain.

I will be exhibiting at the Short Run Arts Festival on Saturday November 4 from 11am-6pm in Seattle, WA. I'll be at table J59 with my friend Nicole Georges. She'll have copies of her new book Dog's Breakfast and I'll be debuting the second volume of Isle of Elsi. If you are in the Seattle area, don't miss it!

Now that all the Kickstarter copies of Isle of Elsi Book Two have been sent out, it is publicly available for purchase online! You can also download a pay-what-you want PDF eBook over in my Ko-Fi shop. You can see a preview of the hardback print edition below:

This second collection of my award-winning, Eisner-nominated webcomic Isle of Elsi contains the fourth, fifth, and sixth storylines. These were originally serialized online from 2018-2022 and were reprinted in Isle of Elsi Adventures #1-5. If this sounds confusing, check out the new Isle of Elsi Continuity Chart that I set up to help people understand where stories have been printed before.

There were so many Isle of Elsi comics available, I decided to set up a Big Cartel online shop, to help simplify the online shopping experience. You can easily add activity books, or copies of Book One to your order. Check it out!

On October 21st I will be hosting an info session for The Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin at the east branch of the public library. I'll be there from 3:00-4:30pm to share some information about the school's programs, and then I'll be giving a free lecture about my experiences creating and self-publishing my first graphic novel Basewood.

You can find more information about this event and RSVP on the CCS website.

Today is the release date of Dog's Breakfast by Nicole J. Georges. I published and edited this 492-page collection of Nicole's diary comics through my Phase Eight Publishing imprint. It collects a dozen issues of her long-running zine Invincible Summer and includes over 100 pages of diary comics that have never seen print from Nicole's archives.

Nicole and I will be exhibiting at the Small Press Expo September 9 & 10 in Bethesda, MD. If you are in the D.C. area, please swing by and pick up a copy of Nicole's new book! I will also have various Phase 7 minicomics and collections, and Isle of Elsi books and comics too! We will be at table W68.