Monthly Round-Up: December! (Patreon)

Happy new year, everyone! We made it!! Up top is a chilly little painting I did because I was nostalgic about the ice-covered trees you find at the top of mountains. An UHD wallpaper is also attached, let me know if you'd like other resolutions. 

Welcome to 🎉K.S. Brenowitz, 🎉John Scott, and 🎉Kai

EXCLUSIVES

In case you missed it, I summarized a whole year of Patreon content into one big PDF! It's right here:

[Patreon Rewind 2022 and Solarpunk AMA Comics | Jam on Patreon] 

QUALITY TESTERS

This month, I wrote about one of my favourite anime films (Macross Plus) and how I'm using it to study COLOUR. 

I also posted two more pencilled pages from the upcoming "Moat Method" zine.[Moat Method - Pencils page 3 and 4 | Jam on Patreon] 

LAB TECH

Speaking of colour, I went a bit more in-depth into a few things I've learned recently, and how I'm trying to get better at planning my palletes. (I will have a lot more to say about this soon...)

I also wrote a long post about my current "zero waste" practices. Many photos! (of JARS!)

COLLABORATORS

Collaborators get the best and earliest previews ;) I got put into crunch for the Hydrogen Comic a bit abruptly so it went from "scratchy" to "finished" with not a lot of time in between, but I will be posting a behind-the-scenes for it this month.

State of the Patreon

It's 2023! That means I do the annual State of the Patreon update. Things have been chugging along so I will keep this farily condensed. 132 amazing people have decided to make more rad comics happen, collectively raising over $400/mo for the cause.

This year I transitioned this Patreon from four pledge levels to three. If you're still at one of the old levels, you may be missing some content so please check in on your pledge 😱

I've updated the "reward matrix" so things are a bit easier to understand. The content is the same - the next milestone is $500/mo when I will do a MONTH LONG CHALLENGE in November. Can we get there?? Let's find out! Oh, the only other thing I changed is I moved request day from March to April (i.e. not when I'm overwhelmed with taxes.)

I still can't dedicate myself to comics full-time so whenever possible I use these funds to accelerate the process of making new and better comics. This year I'll mostly be in the writing mines, so I think I will allocate some funds towards website improvements. There are various broken things and loose ends that are just a bit beyond my expertise and capacity. Thanks so much for making getting help for this a possibility!!

This year I will be focused on TWO NEW PROJECTS that I will be announcing in dedicated posts **THIS MONTH**!

Hey... Concerning?

Ok, so I'm not an expert on this, nor do I have the wherewithal to dig really deep into this, but I just wanted to say Machine Learning ("AI") is moving REALLY fast right now and I think more people need to be aware of it.

The new hotness of the moment is ChatGPT. TwoMinutePapers released their video on this topic which is characteristically thorough and optimistic. 

If that doesn't seem too impressive, here are two of the most innovative uses I've seen so far - one using it for music, and one using it for Blender scripts. Note how the tool is used with other tools and existing skills to produce some fascinating outcomes. On the scary side, this video (whose vibe I don't really dig but I think presents interesting info) shows how this can be leveraged for business. Most concerningly of all THIS video shows how quickly it can be used to produce a video of low-quality info with high-quality veneer.

Honestly, this concerns me a great deal because I think our ability to quickly locate quality information on the internet could PLUMMET just for it being flooded with ML-generated plausible-sounding garbage. There is no fact-checking in this algorithm (and it doesn't give sources) and it has already been shown to give results that are straight-up wrong.

My recommendation: be aware of what is currently possible with this technology, and (defensively) think through what impact it might have on your industry/life. I think it's so important to be able to spot when this is being used and also knowing its flaws and limitations.

I think we're currently racing up the "peak of inflated expectations" for this tech, but that doesn't mean it won't do a lot of damage on the way up (or down).

(src: wikipedia)

Jam IRL

To tie this Lonnnngg letter up, I made a little watercolour painting as a holiday gift :) I call it "Blep Not Afraid".

Ok, see you all soon! ^^