Writing New Stories & Discovering Old Anime!
New scripts, Anime, and a Legendary Ufologist Interview
Known Facts of Events to Come:
I Am Writing New Comics!
After months focusing more on the business side of my comics, I have finally gotten back to writing some brand new stories! While the artwork for The Airship is being completed, these stories will be for a paranormal anthology that will be my second comic book. The plan is to create three or four original short stories about cryptids, ghosts, aliens, and maybe a few other weird things mixed in.
I have already completed one story for the series, but I struggled for a long time on a second that I just haven’t cracked. So this week I brainstormed some fresh story ideas and settled on two. Both are loosely based on real world stories I heard on podcasts. One involves a fighter pilot and the other a strange house some kids discover in the woods.
In the coming weeks, I will work on a blog post to give more insight into my current writing process and how I develop ideas, so keep an eye out if that interests you!
New Column!
Unknown Japan: Discovering Anime & Manga!
I am relatively new to anime (Japanese animation) and manga (Japanese comics), but in the last couple years, I have become obsessed.
I am sure some of my readers could easily school me with some “otaku” knowledge, but if you are like I was, you may be intimidated by the vast assortment of weird, WEIRD options this genre may throw at you. And—like me—you may not realize anime has so much more to offer than just demon slaying magical beast people fighting time traveling giant robot princesses.
This week I am sharing a few recent discoveries that really impressed me. These movies are a little more grounded in real world drama than fantasy-based, but you can still get a fair share of that trademark anime magic and creative storytelling. Whether you are a seasoned anime watcher or you are looking to just dip your toe in, I promise each one of these movies is an amazing work of art.
Secret Arts & Forbidden Knowledge:
Free Webinar on Digital Painting from Real Life!
If you use Clip Studio Paint drawing software, the company offers free webinars about once a month through a service called Graphixly. I got on their email list and occasionally sit in to see what I can learn. The webinars are usually digital artists who demonstrate their workflow using Clip Studio, but often the insights they offer could be applied to any drawing software or traditional art.
Last week’s was an artist named Mariana Noronha. It starts a little slow, but once she got to painting, she was dropping nuggets of art wisdom left and right. Things like finding colors to exaggerate in photographs that appear mostly grey and making choices on what details should be left in and taken out of a painting. I found it to be some really useful advice!
Recommended Haunts & Carnies:
Serious Talk About U.F.O.s
Title: Somewhere in the Skies
Format: Podcast
Where to Listen: Apple Podcasts and other platforms
In my satirical column, The Latest Strangeness, I tend to take a more light-hearted view on weird news stories for entertainment purposes. However, if you are interested in a more serious look at unidentified aerial phenomena (U.A.P.), I highly recommend Ryan Sprague’s podcast, Somewhere in the Skies.
This past week he featured an outstanding interview with Peter Robbins, a legend in the field of ufology. It is a long interview (I broke it up into chunks), but in it Peter talks about how he got into the field, his approach to research, and some of the most famous abduction cases for which he recorded first hand data. Peter’s interview also reflects some points I brought up in my last blog entry about the importance of keeping an abundance of caution when speculating what these phenomena are or are not.
For more guests like this, Ryan does some great interviews and shares incredible eye witness stories. Despite writing his own book on U.F.O.s and being featured on countless shows, Ryan is always the first to admit he has no idea what is really going on, and anyone who says they do is likely not being completely honest with you or with themselves.
BONUS: The interview he does with the military guys who were involved in the 2004 U.S.S. Nimitz “tic-tac” encounter is fascinating.
Sterling Martin is an artist and designer living in Chicago, IL. His background includes drawing, writing, theatre, teaching, improv & sketch comedy, and whatever else he can get his hands on to be creative. You can find him on the internet at:
Instagram: @sterfest.art
Website: sterlingmartin.design
Twitter: Maybe someday?
Linkedin: I’m pretty sure I have one of those
Facebook: Ugh, do I have to?