Hello world! Welcome to fall! Everyone in Montreal suddenly becomes fashion models this time around, with classy jackets, scarves and boots and everything. And there’s me, in a 5$ thrift store jacket that was shat on by a crow in Japan. Fancy!!

If I had one word for September, it would be ” apprehension”. It’s a daunting word to describe one’s state of mind but if there are a lot of changes coming up and me no like stepping into the unknown. So yeah, it’s been a challenging few weeks mental-health wise but I managed!

Late this month, I announced the official launch of Utown as a webcomic. Having done a good amount of pages, I felt ready to make it official. On the span of two days, I frantically designed a poster for the announcement and posted it everywhere. Making comics is fun, sure, but… designing posters or covers is honestly what I love the most. Add the fact that it depicts my characters and voila! One my favorite piece of the year. All that to say, Utown will launch in December, on Patreon! There will be more details later, promise!

In August, after much deliberation, I took on a basic Photoshop teaching job at a newly-opened animation school in the Mile-End. Since then, I’ve been slowly driving myself insane with disaster scenarios, like I always do when faced with an unfamiliar situation. Thank God, a few friends chimed in, providing much appreciated advice and comfort. Classes start next week and even though I’m still very nervous, I really want this to work. Sharing knowledge is such a core value for me that I simply couldn’t turn this offer down. I wasn’t expecting the ensuing insomnia though. We’ll see how it goes!

Finally, after ten years of sluggish but faithful services, I’m retiring my old, old Macbook Pro. I wrote, thumbnailed and and partly colored every single one of my comic projects on this laptop. It taught me patience, and that despite their reputation, Apple makes (or at least used to) long lasting machines. I mean, ten years, geezus. And it’s still working! But I decided to make a technological leap and get a Surface Pro for home. We’ll see if I can layout the rest of Utown on it!

So that’s it for September. It lasted for what seems 40 years. Oh and don’t forget: next month is INKTOBER!! This year, I’m drawing the ol’ Nuclear Winter crew, as a final goodbye to all the characters and their universe. As usual, I’ll follow the official prompts so head on over Instagram, where I’ll be posting a drawing a day, until I finish or collapse. Should be fun!

Here what got me excited this month.

Reading: Laura Dean Keeps Breaking up With me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell. I’m just a quarter in but wow, it’s a class in layout and cute girls.
Watching: All the fantasy shows. I binged Disenchantment‘s 2nd season in 3 days. I love the writing, the clever, not too in-you-face humor, the artwork, everything. I also got sucked into the Dark Crystal series, which is as geeky, earnest and unapologetic as fantasy gets. Plus, the level of craft behind this show is mind-boggling.
Listening: Old CDs. Yup, while I still have an ancient computer with an optical drive.
Artist: I’m thinking a lot about design lately so I revisited some of Paula Scher‘s pieces. Her body of work is beyond impressive and keeps on blowing my mind.

Good afternoon, friends! I hope you’re having a nice “second half of the summer”, aka “should I wear pants today?!” period of the year. It’s one of my favorite season, honestly. You can often catch me whispering “would you look at that nice light” towards 4 or 5 in the afternoon, like an old painter from Baie St-Paul.

August has been all about things falling into place. The rest of the year is pretty much set for me, starting with the real start of production for Utown. The progress Excel sheet has been made, the page tracker printed, the tests are done, so now it’s time to get into second gear and churn out pages. Rendering in black and white halftones is fantastic. I went from taking between 2 and 4 hours to colour one Nuclear Winter page to just about 40-45 minutes to letter AND do the shading on a Utown page. It’s… so liberating.

I also took a 4-day vacation with some friends, in what is now our traditional annual cottage getaway. For a long weekend, I left my phone in my bag. I took no picture of the event, made no idyllic Instagram stories of the glistening river and took zero selfies of me #livingthecottagelife. It was a good break from the ceaseless need (guilt?) of having to promote everything because of business business business! We played a lot of Telestration. It is the best game of all time.

A podcast I listen to sporadically called “Beyond the To-Do list” had host Erik Fisher saying how life has different seasons (unrelated to the Earth’s rotation or anything). Nuclear Winter 3 is coming out September 4th, in just a few days, and this led me to think on how the whole Hiver Nucléaire season is really coming to its end. Signing and touring for the third book has been quieter than for the second volume, for all sorts of reasons. The English release didn’t cause much commotion, for other reasons. With the third book out in English, that makes it the sixth time I need to do promo for the same series and yeah, I’m running out of steam a little bit. It’s time to move on I guess! Starting new projects is where the fun is, isn’t it!

Lots of things are coming in the next months, but since this is a recap, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I hope you guys have a great month of September! As always, follow me on Patreon for more regular updates!

Here are a few things that made me happy this month:

Reading: Sports et Divertissements, by Jean-Philippe Baril Guérard. This author writes the most despicable characters and yet, I can’t stop reading. I love what he does.
Watching: Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus. I’m probably too biased to form an honest opinion on this, but goddamn, I watched it two times in a row. A revamped cartoon is always a treat!
Listening: Comic Lab, my new favorite podcast. It’s very, very niche but hello, I’m the target audience!
Artist: Oooh, I just love what Artyom Trakhanov does. An artist that makes drawing look that easy always amazes me. It’s a real appealing black and white style and I’m all for this right now.