All said, let’s begin!

Intro

Hello! I’m a comic book artist and author leaning into science fiction, and I’m here to share thoughts and tidbits about the things that I try, whether they fail or succeed. You can see previous posts at blog.claudiamatosa.com or some info about my work at claudiamatosa.com.

The machine

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to balance creating work that I love and keeping an online presence without burning out. There is so much content out there these days, with and without “artificial intelligence”. For a long time, I’ve been feeling like I’m adding nothing to the mix, apart from feeding a soulless entertainment machine. An infinite-scrolling beast that chews up my motivation and leaves me wondering what I’m doing this for anyway. (I’m sorry about the pseudo-philosophical rant.)

While trying to grow my following on social platforms, I’m not spending time learning, practising and creating, which is what I really like to do. Everyone says that social media is necessary for a healthy artistic practice, and maybe it’s true, but the amount of time and management it requires these days feels very unhealthy. Especially because, while using it, I have to interact daily with content that constantly manipulates my mood.

It shouldn’t have to be like that. I want to share, but I want to do it at my own rhythm and with people who might be interested in what I have to show them.

This is why, since last year, I’ve been running an experiment with a small group.

How a comic book comes to life

Since I started working on volumes three and four of The Last Day of Rain, I have been sending updates on the process and progress of creating the books to a small list of people who pre-ordered them via Kickstarter. I call it an experiment because I didn’t feel confident enough to present my messy process to the world, and this was a good compromise.

The plan was to send something every week to a smaller group, and a monthly update to all backers of the project. Below are some of the images shared during that time. The updates varied and included world and character building, sketches and finished artwork, and also thoughts about the process.

I think the experiment worked well, and gave way to many interesting conversations throughout the year! And especially, it gave me the chance to look back and think, sometimes to celebrate, and others to reflect on what could have been done better.

And so it’s time to try this with a larger audience. As I work on the final volume and finish the graphic novel, I will use this newsletter/blog to share my process. There will be sketches, snippets of writing, character designs and others… hopefully! I’ll do my best to keep it interesting and will not flood your inbox! At most, you’ll receive an email once a month with a summary of what’s been done.

It won’t always be pretty: there are many elements involved in creating an illustrated book, and more often than not, you need a lot of structure before reaching the final result.

Either way, I hope you find some of it interesting! My inbox is always open for suggestions or complaints. 👂🏻

(Of course, if you prefer to only receive e-mails about other subjects, hit “manage my subscription” at the end of this message and untick “Work in progress”)

Recent watch: O’Dessa

I recently watched a film about a girl who sets up on a journey to save the world from an entertainment machine that consumes people’s dreams, by playing her dad’s old guitar across the country. It’s described as a rock opera, and I found it so different, quirky and interesting. It’s sci-fi. It’s dystopian. It’s steampunk of sorts. It’s been a while since I saw something this original. The visuals are saturated with colour. The story flows in a different way than usual, but I didn’t feel that as a weakness: it made me want to keep watching.

The first IMDB reviews are quite bad, but once I started reading further down, I noticed that the film eventually found its fans.

Maybe it’s not for you if you don’t like musicals and weirdness. But if you do, you might just love it.

That’s a wrap-up!

See you soon!

- Claudia

Thank you for reading! The four chapters of The Last Day of Rain are available in my online store at shop.claudiamatosa.com, as well as a few other books and art prints.

You’re also very welcome to subscribe to this blog if you like reading my ramblings (for some reason)! I don’t e-mail every post, but once in a while I send a summary of what I’ve been up to, so you can catch up:

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For bits and pieces, you can also find me on the following socials:

• Instagram

• Bluesky

• Mastodon

• LinkedIn

Dear friends,

It’s been a while since I used this mailing list, but the new chapter has been progressing quickly (finally), and I wanted to send you an interim update.

As a few of you may have read in the previous e-mail, I decided to have a go at modelling the backgrounds for this chapter in 3D. For a few of reasons:

• A bit of added realism and details.

• Saving time (maybe).

• Building up skills to find an art job.

I have already finished a few of the backgrounds, and my approach at the moment is to create them in 3D and then export them as line art, which I will later paint and adjust by hand.

Here’s an example of one of my favourites: the observatory floor (where you can spot one of your cameos: extra cute if I might say so)!

In this image, the characters were drawn by hand, and everything else was created in Blender, as 3D models. It will need a bit of cleanup and a few adjustments to the thickness of some lines, but I’m quite happy with the general result!

And here’s how this looked when initially sketched:

To build the 3D floor, I used a lot of reference images of star observatories from all over the world, so it ended up looking a bit different from my initial idea.

Finally, here are a few unfiltered renders of the 3D model, which look a bit lo-fidelity but you may enjoy seeing a bit of behind-the-scenes!

There are some hints here at the final colour palette, perhaps! 🤓

This is it for now! I’m hoping to hit the April deadline for deliveries. 🤞 Will keep you posted with updates.

Thank you so much again for your support!

- Claudia

Thank you for reading! The four chapters of The Last Day of Rain are available in my online store at shop.claudiamatosa.com.

You’re also very welcome to subscribe to this blog if you like reading my ramblings (for some reason)! I don’t e-mail every post, but once in a while, I send a summary of what I’ve been up to so you can catch up:

Subscribe now

For bits and pieces, you can also find me on the following socials:

• Instagram

• Bluesky

• Mastodon

• LinkedIn

Hi there,

Time flies! 🪰 I hope you’re doing well, settling into the first days of Autumn, or Spring, if you happen to be reading this from the other side of the Equator.

From Storyboarding to Comics

I don’t have flashy visuals for you yet, but I’m getting back into the flow of things. The two courses I finished a couple of weeks ago made me rethink the way I compose images, and I’ve been using the new chapter as an excuse to experiment. Below are two pages where I tried different brushes and different levels of detail to work out which one feels more comfortable (and faster!)

I’m trying to worry less about details during the first step of sketching. To not be afraid of making mistakes with anatomy and perspective, and focus on where the characters and elements will be positioned. If I were working for a client, this step wouldn’t be presented to them (unless they specifically asked): it’s just a bunch of lines that make sense to nobody else but me, but it’s a necessary part of the process. I’m a lousy sketcher, eh.

The next pass of pencilling, followed by the line art stage, is where the shapes will be solidified. Eventually, you’ll see some of that too!

This 3-step technique (thumbnail → rough → clean-up) is commonly used in storyboarding, and it makes it easier to focus on different aspects of the scenes one at a time. For example, if I’m thinking about whether my character’s face looks accurate at the same time as I’m thinking about where to position her, it will take me much longer to finish the panel because I’m making multiple decisions at the same time and it’s counter-productive.

Cheating with Blender

Something else I’ve been playing around with is using my 3D model to generate lines that I can incorporate into the drawing, to save some time. When I worked on the last chapter, I drew over the 3D models because I didn’t know it was possible to do this. The technique is commonly used in feature animation films, and maybe in TV too. Yet another tip learned from studying.

Here’s something I’ve been playing around with for one of the spreads:

It’s not quite there yet, and I’m playing with the settings still. I’m considering adding more details to the 3D model, so I don’t have to draw all the windows and street elements. Then I can take pictures of the backgrounds from multiple angles and cut even more drawing time. 😈

Here’s the current status of this image on the actual page, with very rough thumbnails of where the characters are going:

This is it for now in the world of Carol and Art!

See you soon and have a great rest of the weekend!

Claudia

Thank you for reading! The four chapters of The Last Day of Rain are available in my online store at shop.claudiamatosa.com.

You’re also very welcome to subscribe to this blog if you like reading my ramblings (for some reason)! I don’t e-mail every post, but once in a while, I send a summary of what I’ve been up to so you can catch up:

Subscribe now

For bits and pieces, you can also find me on the following socials:

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• Bluesky

• Mastodon

• LinkedIn

Hi there,

I hope you’re all doing well!

A couple of weeks ago (or was it just one?) I dropped you a message explaining why the fourth chapter was late. In case you didn’t read it, that’s mostly because I have been studying so that I can find a job as an artist in the animation or games industry, and I put too many things on my plate, as people often do. 🥲

But this Wednesday was the end of both the storyboarding and the background design course, and I’m getting back into working on the chapter. I chose these subjects because they were aspects I needed to improve in my comics, too. Hopefully, that will show, even if only in drawing speed!

While there are no new sketches, I’m leaving you with a playlist preview. It will change a bit yet, but you can see from the get-go that it will be considerably cheesy. 🧀

The order of the songs also says something about the plot itself; I’ll leave you with that thought.

See you soon and have a great weekend!

Claudia

Thank you for reading! The four chapters of The Last Day of Rain are available in my online store at shop.claudiamatosa.com.

You’re also very welcome to subscribe to this blog if you like reading my ramblings (for some reason)! I don’t e-mail every post, but once in a while, I send a summary of what I’ve been up to so you can catch up:

Subscribe now

For bits and pieces, you can also find me on the following socials:

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• Bluesky

• Mastodon

• LinkedIn

Dear friends,

I thought I’d give you a quick update, as I missed last week’s! I’ve been studying storyboarding, composition and environment design for animation, so I can find myself a job when the industry gets better. It’s been very fun, and exhausting, but I'm hoping everything I’ve been learning will help me level up the next chapter of the comic, too.

However, the sketching hasn’t progressed much in the last couple of weeks, because I underestimated the amount of course assignments I would have to do. And that my hand would start hurting from drawing so much. I will, however, speed this up and am planning to have chapter four printed by the end of October so I can take it to the Thought Bubble Festival in November.

Also, I’m trying something new this time. As an effort to make the compositions in my panels look more dynamic, I’m first filling them up with boxes that approximate the position of each character. It’s all just boxes right now!

The next update will hopefully bring actual sketches, so stay tuned!

As a bonus, here are composition studies from film or one of my course assignments this week. Can you guess the films?

Looking forward to sharing more news with you. Have an excellent weekend!

Claudia

Thank you for reading! The four chapters of The Last Day of Rain are available in my online store at shop.claudiamatosa.com.

You’re also very welcome to subscribe to this blog if you like reading my ramblings (for some reason)! I don’t e-mail every post, but once in a while, I send a summary of what I’ve been up to so you can catch up:

Subscribe now

For bits and pieces, you can also find me on the following socials:

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• LinkedIn

Hi all and Happy Friday!

I’ll spare you the weather talk this week because it’s depressing, and dive right in. 🌧️ I’m starting to draw this book, and I’m getting chills down my spine. It’s the fourth chapter, and we’re past the middle line (it rhymed and it’s okay).

Which brings us to the title of this email: the splendid opening sketch.

I briefly considered leaving it like this instead of drawing. Maybe the new chapter could be a collection of sketchy emojis, and that’s it sorted. It would be fun, but it didn’t happen, so here’s the first sketch of that page, so you can try and guess what’s coming:

I also spent a few hours creating a character design sheet for Carol, so I’d have an example of character development to add to my portfolio.

I used this as an excuse for practising a different technique for shading and doing lines that has slightly more realistic-looking results. I quite like it, but need more practice! I also see more than a few anatomy issues looking at it now, but I’ll do better next time. 😅

I hope you’re all doing well, and wish you an excellent weekend!

Claudia

Thank you for reading! The four chapters of The Last Day of Rain are available in my online store at shop.claudiamatosa.com.

You’re also very welcome to subscribe to this blog if you like reading my ramblings (for some reason)! I don’t e-mail every post, but once in a while, I send a summary of what I’ve been up to so you can catch up:

Subscribe now

For bits and pieces, you can also find me on the following socials:

• Instagram

• Bluesky

• Mastodon

• LinkedIn

Hi there!

I hope you’re all doing well! It looks like sunny days are gone in most of the UK, and we have a rainy summer ahead of us. So hopefully the fictional extra warm London of The Last Day of Rain will give you some solace if live around here. 🥸

The weekly update is turning into a bi-weekly update, by the likes of it, but I’ll get my act together soon. I’ve been building up my online presence to look for freelance work, and it’s been taking a lot of my time, but it has to be done. I have a shiny (cough) new portfolio at claudiamatosa.com now, should you be interested in checking it out.

Buuut there is still time for the comic, and chapter four is progressing! Yesterday evening, I placed the last exclamation mark on the last page of the script, and it’s ready for drawing. As ready as it can be, of course! 😆 I’ll still run a couple of revisions to hone in final details before I put pen to screen.

Writing a script feels more intimate than drawing a comic. Because I’m not worried about the technical aspects of drawing, I think about what’s going on in the minds of my characters a lot more, and the story sometimes takes a few unexpected turns.

Before I leave you, here’s one of those turns:

Because yes, dogs are also characters and their noses are windows to their minds. 😎

I bet you didn’t see that coming.

Have an excellent weekend and see you soon!

Claudia

Thank you for reading! The four chapters of The Last Day of Rain are available in my online store at shop.claudiamatosa.com.

You’re also very welcome to subscribe to this blog if you like reading my ramblings (for some reason)! I don’t e-mail every post, but once in a while, I send a summary of what I’ve been up to so you can catch up:

Subscribe now

For bits and pieces, you can also find me on the following socials:

• Instagram

• Bluesky

• Mastodon

• LinkedIn

Hi there, happy Friday! ☀️

(I probably should find a different way to say hello - the repetition is getting to me. 😆)

Quick update for you this week. After a dip in motivation, the backgrounds are finally progressing. I’ve been working on a train station scene and it’s been fun carving a coloured, detailed version out of loose sketches.

What you see here isn’t the final page yet, but it’s getting there! The current colouring is called “flatting”, before shading and final effects are applied. And don’t fear: the characters will also be coloured! 😎

Here’s the next page, where you see a pod car park in the background. I saw chargers with solar panel roofs in a motorway station and thought something like that would look interesting in Shiba Town.

I’ve been watching Avatar lately and wishing my backgrounds were more painterly. Might do away with lines altogether in the next volume, if it still fits the style, but we’ll see. 👀

This is it for this week. Slow but steady. Looking forward to showing you more next Friday!

Finally, if you are subscribed to my main newsletter and didn’t receive anything last week, it’s because I didn’t send it. I failed my promise! But I hope to eventually restart regular posting there, once both books are finished. 🥵

See you soon!

Claudia

Thank you for reading! The four chapters of The Last Day of Rain are available in my online store at shop.claudiamatosa.com.

You’re also very welcome to subscribe to this blog if you like reading my ramblings (for some reason)! I don’t e-mail every post, but once in a while, I send a summary of what I’ve been up to so you can catch up:

Subscribe now

For bits and pieces, you can also find me on the following socials:

• Instagram

• Bluesky

• Mastodon

• LinkedIn

Hi there!

Hope you’re doing well! I’m running out of weather talk after many weeks of nonsense, so I’ll crack on with the update. 😁

Progress

This week, I didn’t do much. I decided to take a break, as the line art for the characters was a bit tiring, and I’m just beginning to work on the backgrounds. I’m painting them as I’m drawing them, so I’ll have at least a complete page to show you in the next update. More than that, hopefully!

For the last three weeks, I’ve been drawing on my old, slow iPad while travelling with my partner and a friend. I’m looking forward to working on my large screen again, now that we’re going home. 📺

Carol’s Family Background

A few months ago, a friend asked me a question over lunch: “What’s Carol’s ethnicity? I’m curious, but I can’t tell by looking at her.” I answered him with a vague “Exactly! She’s a Londoner. That’s the effect I’m going for.”

But this reply feels a bit lazy to me. I know exactly what her origins are, but I didn’t go through the trouble of writing it down properly. So let’s do that here!

When I first thought of her, I knew her family background would be important: it would affect parts of her personality, and of the story. People don’t exist in a vacuum, and we all carry influences and trauma from previous generations.

I wanted her to look like a Londoner. Because she was born in London, and her genes are the result of many cultures and ethnicities coming across each other throughout the years. That’s why it’s difficult to pinpoint her origins. If I had made her similar to what people outside the UK imagine Londoners to be, then perhaps she’d be closer to this instead:

But I think that wouldn’t be faithful to the world of my story, and I wanted to pay tribute to the multitude of people I see walking the streets of London. She’s the result of many generations of immigrants who worked hard to create a good life for their children.

Here’s a breakdown of her family history quickly put together:

This said, I imagine her family sort of descending from my own, so I don’t think we are different at all. We’re both Londoners, just living in different times, and we share a megacity brimming with its very own culture.

After all, if we go back far enough, each of us is a bundle of mixed genes and influences, and that’s part of what makes humans fascinating.

See you soon, and thank you so much for reading!

Thank you for reading! The four chapters of The Last Day of Rain are available in my online store at shop.claudiamatosa.com.

You’re also very welcome to subscribe to this blog if you like reading my ramblings (for some reason)! I don’t e-mail every post, but once in a while, I send a summary of what I’ve been up to so you can catch up:

Subscribe now

For bits and pieces, you can also find me on the following socials:

• Instagram

• Bluesky

• Mastodon

• LinkedIn

Hi there, and happy Friday! What have you been up to this week?

I’ve been inking more pages, so I don’t have a lot to show that doesn’t look very similar to what you have seen before. So instead, I’ll show you how I’m using a 3D map to help draw the scenes that happen in Shiba Town.

In case you missed this in the description of the Kickstarter page, Shiba Town is an underground neighbourhood excavated in South London, where Surrey Quays and Canada Water used to be. Most Londoners moved there when the rain stopped falling, except for those who couldn’t afford it. It’s the new city centre!

In order to visualise how the underground neighbourhood would look like, I created a 2D map and a 3D model of the city. The map looks very rough around the edges, because I’m using it only as a guide, but I promised you behind-the-scenes content, so here it is!

The yellow bit is above ground, and it’s where Carol, Art and Pepper live with their pets.

I then placed the map in Blender and began creating the city.

And finally added the three areas and some buildings. The buildings outside Shiba Town are imported from Google Maps, so I didn’t need to model them myself!

And it’s an underground city, so it features a roof made of solar panels on top:

I didn’t add details to all the buildings, as the model is mostly there to help me place the characters as the story unfolds.

Here’s an example of how I used it to speed up the sketching process, and so the city looks more consistent throughout:

I used a similar process in the cover. Here’s the final image:

And the 3D render underneath, which is a zoomed in view of the map you saw above:

It’s the first book where I’m using 3D extensively and I’m hoping that it will make things look better in the end. But I’ll be waiting for you to tell me if that’s the case, when you receive the comics! 😁

And this is it for today! I hope you have an excellent weekend and looking forward to catching up again next Friday. ✨

Claudia

Thank you for reading! The four chapters of The Last Day of Rain are available in my online store at shop.claudiamatosa.com.

You’re also very welcome to subscribe to this blog if you like reading my ramblings (for some reason)! I don’t e-mail every post, but once in a while, I send a summary of what I’ve been up to so you can catch up:

Subscribe now

For bits and pieces, you can also find me on the following socials:

• Instagram

• Bluesky

• Mastodon

• LinkedIn

Hi there, and Happy Friday! ☀️

This week, I have been focusing on inking the chapter. This is the part of the process that takes the longest, as the lines will be the final ones that make it to the comic. They also need to be made in a way that speeds up the colouring stage.

Since working on the previous chapter, I have studied the process that animators follow and am applying some of their ideas to speed up my workflow. I’m doing all the characters first and the backgrounds at the end since those can sometimes be repeated throughout multiple panels. It’s all about efficiency; no need to draw the exact same thing over and over again!

Here’s my favourite panel so far, where Carol tries to work out how to fix an implant. When you draw your characters a hundred times, you start to develop love-hate feelings towards them, so the best remedy for me is to make them engage in funny poses.

And yes, she’s not holding that tool properly because she’s so focused on the screen that she can’t see what she’s doing.

Here’s a sneak peek at the full page, before adding backgrounds, colours and text:

This is the scene where Carol and Art meet for the first time!

Next week, I’ll give you an insider look at the map of Shiba Town, the 3D model that I created to visualise the different neighbourhoods, and hopefully a few more previews. :D

All the best and see you soon,
- Claudia

Hi there, and happy Friday!

The third chapter is progressing: the rough pencil art is done, and I’m moving on to inking, which means I’ll draw the outlines and add extra details before popping in the colours. The cameos are also in place, but I’ll leave those for a future update when they are more detailed. 🥸

While the campaign was running, and based on feedback collected from multiple sources over the last year, I reviewed the plot and made changes to the ending. This included removing an important character from a central role. Even though it was emotionally complicated for me, the story as a whole feels solid now. It is more straightforward but stronger and aligned with Carol and Art’s lives and personalities. And I want to tell you, but I don’t want to spoil it!

There are things that you only see when you’re in the thick of it. And I realised how badly afflicted by grief Carol is, how grumpy and sad that makes her, and how it affects the way she moves about and interacts with other people. I want to hug her and tell her that it will be okay, but I don’t think she has enough self-awareness to see that she’s not fine, so she’d probably rebuff me.

This chapter needed a few extra pages to accommodate the new ending of the story. I didn’t want to compromise on quality, so it came out slightly longer than I expected: 48 pages in total, including the cover. I’m hoping to meet the deadline still, but I will keep you updated in case it overruns. Either way, if all goes well, it won’t be more than a couple of weeks!

In the meantime, here’s what my books look like in the early stages. Consider this perhaps a weird-looking teaser! There’s a watermark hiding some scenes because I don’t want to reveal them just yet. 🐶

Thank you for reading, and hope to see you next week. ❤️

- Claudia

It's nice to see you again, and I hope you’re doing well. I’ll save you from my musings about the weather this time and jump straight to the content! “But, but… I finally ordered that raincoat, and I wanna talk about it…” Shush Claudia, people are here for the drawings.

In the previous newsletter, I asked you which kind of content you were more interested in, and you said:

• Behind the Scenes - 50%

• Original Art and Stories - 33%

• New Releases and Shop Updates - 17%

Even though you’re more interested in my usual behind-the-scenes content, I was also happy to hear that you’re looking forward to original art and stories, and that aligns with what I want to do, so I’ll try and bring more of that in! As a matter of fact, you’ll help me. Reach the end of this post to see how.

That said, you asked for behind-the-scenes, so that’s what you’ll get today. Scroll down for a first peek at the concept art of Shiba Town, a neighbourhood in future London that will feature in the next issue of The Last Day of Rain. Most of you are hearing about it for the first time today, and I’m excited to show you!

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Building a Neighbourhood From Scratch!

In retrospect, I’m still unsatisfied with my art in chapter two of The Last Day of Rain. Because I wanted to get it out in time for the fair, I didn’t develop the concepts enough, so the backgrounds weren’t as exciting as I had hoped for, and I felt that I could have done more.

And, while I could work without concepts in the past two chapters because they were set somewhere that already exists (Rotherhithe), the next chapter features a fictional eco-neighbourhood in future London. And I want it to feel real.

So, I decided to spend some time thinking about its history and what it would look like. The neighbourhood is called Shiba Town, and it’s under the ground to keep its inhabitants protected from heat waves. I’ll tell you more about it in due course, but in the meantime, here are some very early drawings of what its buildings look like.

By 2091, when the story's events happen, the town has grown across three different stages, so there are a few different architectural styles. Can you spot which ones were constructed at the same time?

Once I had rough drawings of the buildings, I began assembling the city in 3D, using Blender. It’s still far from done, mainly because it’s been over a decade since I last worked with 3D, but creating something from nothing is very satisfying.

I’ve been looking at references, thinking about how people live in cities and what spaces they need, how certain features and buildings can work from a construction point of view… There is a lot to it. IT’S FUN!

Let me show you a couple of images. Maybe you’ll want to come for more. Or maybe not!

Yup, that’s Canary Wharf in the background. And below is a sneak peek at what’s under that giant solar panel. This is the “bohemian” part of town, which won’t make it to the books. But it’s part of Carol’s backstory, and it’s there in a corner, so I’ll come back and make a comic in here one day. Perhaps it will be about Carol’s parents, as they struggled to provide a comfortable living for their daughter in a rapidly changing world.

I also flew to Lisbon recently and saw this bicycle park in the airport that I’m absolutely going to pop into Shiba Town at some point. It’s all in the details!

This is what I have to show you for now, and some more will ensue!

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So when’s the next book coming?

I’m slowly beginning to work on chapter 3 of The Last Day of Rain, and it’s inching towards becoming a 44-page book, as I’m including some of the concept art above as a bonus! So, I may try launching my first Kickstarter ever. 😳

If you have any tips for crowdfunding comics with a small social media following, I’d love to hear them in the comments below.

This will be the third out of six volumes, and I’m slowly accepting that getting to the end of the story may take a while. But all good things take time, and it’s happening slowly but steadily!

📝 You can order chapters 1 and 2 from the website.

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Other updates

• I’m very excited to see The Last Day of Rain bundled in the stretch goal of The Dancer, Issue 4. It sounds like a fantastic book, and I’m going to back it as well. Stories about dance and martial arts tend to have raw, emotional content that speaks deeply to the heart, and this story contains both.
  
  Here’s the premise, should you be curious:
  
  “They Call Her...The Dancer is a story that focuses on the beauty and brutality of dance and martial arts, delving into the morally grey psyche of a professional dancer and assassin.”
  
  If you back it and it reaches 8k funding (which it looks like it will), you’ll receive a bundle of six indie comic books, including mine (and I feel honoured!)

• I will write for VOICES from , so stay tuned for that, too! My first post will be about my recent visit to the Comic Arts Museum in Brussels, which fueled my inspiration.
  
  VOICES is a section in the online publication that allows creators to share their content in 300 words or less, and if you’re a creator, you can do it if you’re a creator, too. It’s a fabulous idea, and I look forward to seeing where it leads.

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Next issue: help me write a short story!

Following the poll results above, I plan to write a small original story to send out in a future issue of this newsletter. I may or may not illustrate it, but it will surely be a story.

Would you like to help me out? I used a website that generates opening lines, and here are some huh, interesting ones that it gave me:

1. I always wanted to be an ant.

2. 91 people died looking for the magic teapot.

3. Dylan had grown accustomed to seeing werewolves on a regular basis.

4. Kalayna was known for stealing other people's husbands.

5. So, I suppose you want to ask me how I pulled it off.

Vote away, and I’ll begin the story with whichever line gets the most votes!

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See you soon!

And thank you for reading! As usual, while the following newsletter is in the making, you can find me on the regular socials:

• Instagram

• GlobalComix

• Mastodon

• Bluesky

• Ex-Twitter

And also, my online shop for books (and e-books!) and prints:

🏪 https://claudiamatosa.com/shop