Post of Gratitude

You've cracked my second goal!

Wow! Wow!! WOW. I am so very thankful for your generosity!

First of all I should say that I am really looking forward to starting my tree book. I've got lots of ideas including some long-form autobiographical stories which would be new for me! Anyway I will save information about that project for another post.

Right now I would like to share a little bit of my process and life with all of you since you have all been so friendly and open with me.

Where are False Knees?

I live in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada! This dark corner of the attic of my apartment is where all False Knees comics have been made for the past two years:

Beautiful.

If you were able to increase the quality of this photo you would see a preview of an upcoming comic! (Spoiler: bird contemplating death)

How does False Knees?

Ideas come at me erratically throughout my days, but more so when I'm walking around outside creeping on critters. I then spend objectively far too long thinking about minute details of the comic that no one will ever notice nor care about! After that is done and I take a cleansing shower, I am ready to pencil the thing down and then ink it using an inky pen nib and inky india ink or just some pens.

At this point, if I've had the foresight to do the comic on an appropriate paper, I will paint some or all of it with water colour and gouache. Most of the time I leave the backgrounds untouched. This piece of culture then goes into my top-of-the-line flatbed scanner (I'm just kidding, they gave them away for free in 2009) and is somehow made into, like, some sort of picture on my computer? I'm not sure how this works.

On the compy (which was not free in 2009), I use a totally legal copy of Photoshop CS4 (totally legal in 2008) to colour and prepare my children for the harsh climate of the internet. They are usually still much too thin-skinned for the cruel environment of Reddit.

If I am fortunate, people will want to purchase prints of this comic! For this, I become a shill for the Moab paper company and change this beautiful product:

... into this:

... using the giant behemoth of a printer that you can see in the first picture lurking under my desk which YOU all helped me buy months ago with my first Patreon goal! That goal was passed a while ago, but I never took the opportunity to thank those who helped me accomplish it. It allowed me to take myself seriously and buy quality products that I could handle personally–in stead of being processed by a big company with unpredictable output. I print, sign, pack, and ship all of my comic prints myself thanks to you!

Which leads me to...

Why do I love you?

I love you for being so generous. I appreciate that you do so despite having busy lives of your own with dozens of things on your mind and never-ending lists of things to do. Your support allows me to have the job I want. A little over a year ago I was doing manual labour for a large, faceless, private industry that left me exhausted at the end of every day. You remind me not to take this for granted!

This ended up being longer than I expected, so thanks for sticking it out. I can't thank you enough! 

Joshua