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Posted June 20, 2015 at 06:41 pm

Missed a week, but we're back! What IS the letters column? Every week we round up the questions we receive from Patreon backers and answer them! In case you're confused, here's the deal: patrons can ask us questions by hitting this link. Don't be shy! Ask away! If you'd like to become a patron, head over to our patreon!

Video games this time!
Hey guys,
Playing any games right now? anything catch your eye at E3?
 
Ananth: Oh yeah! Yuko's burned through every route of Starfighter: Eclipse in about 3 days. She's mostly been playing Nekoatsume since then. I finished Dangan Ronpa 2 a little while ago. I play FF14 every once so often with some friends, and Yuko and I are still finishing up Dragon Age 2. 
 
As far as E3, yes! Looking forward to the next Tomb Raider, and the trailer for Horizon Zero Dawn was really surprising and cool. And I didn't expect to an FF7 remake announcement so get me all nostalgic, but it did. My favorite thing about that is probably all the reaction videos
 
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Posted June 8, 2015 at 07:58 pm

Late letters column this time! What IS the letters column? Every week we round up the questions we receive from Patreon backers and answer them! In case you're confused, here's the deal: patrons can ask us questions by hitting this link. Don't be shy! Ask away! If you'd like to become a patron, head over to our patreon!

Here we go:
Hi Yuko and Ananth!
 
I noticed that Cecilia from Girl with the Skeleton Hand was used as a character in Lucky Penny. What was the reason for that? Were there any other characters from other projects used as background characters in Penny?  Thanks so much for sharing your work!
 
xoxoxoxo
 
Haha... a lot. We had this idea about doing a Tezuka style star system (he used to use and reuse a roster of characters in a lot of his works)-- it seemed fun, but the thing we didn't realize was that Tezuka churned out a huge volume of work, and that kept his star system relevant. It was a tool for him, but it's not necessarily a great tool for us and I think we're going to avoid it in the future (for the most part). 
 
As for the specific references-- I'm gonna keep it brief... I'm not a big fan of pointing this stuff out because it means talking about work that hasn't been made, and ideas are a dime a dozen. But anyway! Here we are:
 
The lil punks: my buddies from DC, Mike, Joe and Archer
The D&D kids: friends, including Jamie, George and a character from Yuko's Fallen universe
Penny's imagination: Couple of characters from projects past & future. North appears in a lot of Yuko's tumblr art. Jayce from Applegeeks. 
Walter's friends: Cecilia of Girl with the Skeleton Hand, Alice from Applegeeks, and Katherine is a character of Yuko's that started life as a Pokemon OC... an umbreon I think
Four Horsemen: Death from Girl with the Skeleton Hand, and a couple of characters from future stuff, including Dhio from Yuko's work on tumblr
 
That pretty much covers it!
 
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Posted May 29, 2015 at 05:50 pm

Another letters column! What's the letters column? Every week we round up the questions we receive from Patreon backers and answer them! In case you're confused, here's the deal: patrons can ask us questions by hitting this link. Don't be shy! Ask away! If you'd like to become a patron, head over to our patreon!

Two short questions this time. 
 
Dear yuko and ananth,
Are you guys going to SDCC this year?
 
Not this year! But we WILL be at NYCC:Special Edition with Topatoco this year (June 6-7, very soon!), and we'll have copies of CUTTINGS with us! Come by and say hey! It's looking to be a lot less hectic than the regular NYCC, which is great... more time to chat with you guys. 

Does Yuko need more mugs? Where should we send cute mugs to? :D

- Kim N.

Yuko: I LOVE MUGS

Ananth: Hey Kim! Did you hear something? Anyway, Yuko doesn't need new mugs. Can we mail you some of hers? (The best way to give her mugs or anything else is probably to catch us at a show!)

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Posted May 29, 2015 at 04:48 pm

Hey guys!! Big news!! Which I'm sure you can see clearly!! We got a new website! I've had this design sitting around for a couple of years and had a lot of false starts on it (sorry Scott & Conrad!), but it's finally come together thanks to Erin and Hiveworks! Thank you guys (and Scott and Conrad) so much, the new site is a dream! We're sooo pumped. 

One thing you'll notice is the new buttons on the sidebar, for Autobio, Penny and Fiction. This gives each of them a landing page that's easily linkable. Likewise, the Archive had been reorganized... this is to make it much easier for people to read the stuff they want. The archive was our biggest priority, and Erin was super patient with us in getting it to where it needed to be.

We'll be working out all the kinks over the coming weeks-- let us know if you see any issues. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy the new look!

Tags: news
Posted May 22, 2015 at 07:05 pm

FRIDAY LETTERS! We round up the questions we receive from Patreon backers and answer them! In case you're confused, here's the deal: patrons can ask us questions by hitting this link. Don't be shy! Ask away! If you'd like to become a patron, head over to our patreon!

Question time!
 
this one is for Yuko... a while back you guys did a comic about Yuko's mug collection...... does Yuko have any cute new mugs........................
 
Yuko: YEAH. Here's a few:

Ananth: PLEASE STOP BUYING HER MUGS

One more!

Ananth and Yuko,

You've said in a couple of places that Walking Gods isn't your next project, but the one after. Can you tell us something about your new project? btw I like the pictures of the girl character you posted to patreon!
S.
 
Oh thank you! For those curious, this is the character:
She's the protagonist! I can't say a lot about her, and in truth I can't say a whole lot about the project just yet except to say that I've written 90+ pages of it and that it'll feature the return of some characters you might be familiar with... and we're VERY excited about THAT! More about this in the coming months. Thanks for the question!
 
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Posted May 15, 2015 at 07:05 pm

Hey everyone! It's the letters column! This is where we round up the questions we received from Patreon backers. In case you're confused, here's the deal: patrons can ask us questions by hitting this link. Please send us questions! If you'd like to become a patron, head over to our patreon!

Here's this week's questions!
Er, hello! This may be too personal a question, but was there ever a moment for either of you where you knew or decided that you weren't going to follow the 'typical' job route, but were going to make it as artists? If there was, did you do anything to make sure that was a dream you could follow?
I mean, I know you guys went to college and all for your respective creative fields, but was there maybe something before that?
Thanks for reading my question - please continue being awesome.
Regards,
Scott S.

Yuko: I knew since I was a kid and my dad was crossing his fingers through my entire childhood that I'd change my mind. I made comics all through high school but assumed it could never be made into a career. I majored in animation in college and figured I would get a storyboarding job or something to support myself so I could do comics in my free time. But then half way through my senior year I was hired to illustrate a comic and it snowballed from there. After college, I've managed to almost exclusively do comics, illustration, and design work.

Ananth: Hey Scott! I worked a full-time job as a designer for two years, and when I left I had an idea it might be the end of my traditional career path. I had been working on comics since sophomore year of college and that had continued through graduation and my dayjob. During my two years as a staff designer, I was basically working two jobs at once-- designer during the day, comics at night. I saved as much money as I could during this two-year period, I think partly because I knew I was going to try something dumb, and partly because I was working so much that I barely had time to go out and spend money anyway. In any case, the cushion helped me land on my feet. If you have a nontraditional dream you want to follow, planning for it financially goes a long way. It's a boring, practical and unsexy answer, but it's the realest advice I can give. 

I should mention, my idea of making it as an artist is getting to a point where we can just be making art, expanding to work with others, and handling less and less aspects of running a business. With that in mind, I'll be honest: I don't know if we've made it! I feel like we're getting close. We really want to make more work for you guys, you're the best, and your support keeps us striving to do more.


Hi Yuko and Ananth!

What are your favorite anime shows/movies? Also, what's the possibility that you two will be appearing as exhibitors in any California comic conventions in the future?
Best,
Strea

Hi Strea! Anime! Hmm. Miyazaki and Satoshi Kon-- Yuko's a big fan of Tokyo Godfathers... I really like all the surreal imagery in Paprika. We loved Wolf Children. Dennou Coil was great until the last few episodes. A recent favorite was My Eccentric Family. We also fell into the deep end with HunterxHunter earlier this year. I have to admit, it's hard for me to cite favorites! Our tastes have changed so much in the past few years. We've most recently been enjoying My Love Story, it's cute. 

 
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Posted May 8, 2015 at 06:52 pm

Hey everyone! It's this week's letters column! This is where we round up the questions we received from Patreon backers and respond. In case you're confused, here's the deal: patrons can ask us questions by hitting this link. Please send us questions! If you'd like to become a patron, head over to our patreon!

 Time for questions!
 
Who do you love more, Rook or Cricket?
Will
 
Ananth: HAHA. Are they reading? No? Good. No I'm kidding, I like both of them... I like cats because they mostly do their own thing, and I like to do my own thing, so it's a good human/pet relationship for me. On a bad day, I like Rook a lot because he's very forgiving, so you can kind of pick him up and make him spend time with you and he's pretty content. He's also VERY SOFT! Cricket is a lot more aloof, and also bananas. Watching her dash around and drift first thing in the morning is entertaining. Cricket is also the quietest cat I've ever met, and I appreciate that because Rook is the LOUDEST cat I've ever met. Anyway, I think we got pretty lucky in the cat department.
 
Yuko: HOW DARE YOU MAKE ME CHOOSE BETWEEN MY CHILDREN
 

 
Yuko and Ananth,
I was just curious about what you are reading? Do you read comics mostly? 
 
Ananth: Comics are definitely a minority on my reading list these days... In terms of written-word books, I recently finished The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath), and the force of her voice and her grip on language has me wishing dearly she'd written more novels. She's unbelievable. Before that I read the Earthsea series (Ursula K. Le Guin), and before that was The Panopticon (Jenni Fagan), The Golem and the Jinni (Helene Wecker), This is How You Lose Her (Junot Diaz)... I'm forgetting past that. Reading book-books is what gets me thinking about WHAT I'm writing and that's been on my mind a lot lately. 
 
Yuko: I most recently read Tehanu (Ursula K. Le Guin). I usually listen to audiobooks while I work. Don't ask me about the majority of audiobooks I listen to.
 
Ananth: Ummm we usually pick up comics together, and mostly we get them for the art... it's at the point where we're mostly picking up foreign language books. I think our top two are Freaks Squeele (Florent Maudoux) and Gray & Wonder Around Her (Aki Irie)? Besides that, I've been reading Ms. Marvel.
 
Yuko: Yeah. Freaks Squeele was recently picked up for localization... I really hope the Aki Irie book gets localized too! Umm, yesterday I finished reading Tesoro, a collection of early short stories by Natsume Ono. 
 
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Posted May 1, 2015 at 06:52 pm

Hey everyone! It's our fourth letters column! This is where we round up the questions we received from Patreon backers and respond. In case you're confused, here's the deal: patrons can ask us questions by hitting this link. Please send us questions! If you'd like to become a patron, head over to our patreon!

Only one question this week! Please send us more! We'd love to answer a bunch next week. 
 Hi Yuko and Ananth,

Do you guys prefer to work on autobio comics or longer fiction stories?

Thank you!

C.

The short answer is long. Longer fiction stories.

The long answer is that we enjoy doing the autobio comics, but there’s no room for us to write about conflict, or hardship, or any kind of narrative at all. There’s no way for us to translate many of our personal experiences into a palatable one-page “story”. Some stories are too complicated for that. And ironically, as we talk about investigating those more personal experiences, we have less of a desire to be the “characters” in the story.

I really like what we’ve been doing with the autobio comics-- I love when people come up to us at a show and say, “This is just like my friends!” I like when people can relate to us. We want to explore that in new ways.

That's all for us this time! Send us questions, and we'll catch you next time!
 
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