This is the last week of our PIXELS OF YOU preview! The final page goes up on Thursday. We really hope you've enjoyed what you've seen, and if you're interested, you can preorder it on the landing page from the retailer or bookseller of your choice. Thank you SO much for reading! Happy holidays!



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Pixels of You was written by Ananth Hirsh & Yuko Ota, and drawn by J.R. Doyle.

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Today's preview page introduces one of our sleeper favorite characters! It's Fawn's mom! This is the first of a few appearances that she has in the book. There was a lot of talk about her appearance and presentation between us and J.R. Doyle... the contrast of the faceless head and the cozy cardigan is really fun. I won't say too much more this time around-- I'd rather let Fawn's mom's personality speak for itself. 

Thanks for keeping up with the preview! Page 16 will be the last one, so we'll be wrapping next week! Happy holidays!



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Pixels of You was written by Ananth Hirsh & Yuko Ota, and drawn by J.R. Doyle.

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More silent pages.

I wanted to share today an article that helped me understand the difference between AI and neural networks. It's a short read. The big takeaway is that AI and neural networks are not one and the same. The mythic idea of AI that we see in fiction is an AI with general intelligence-- the furthest from where we are now. AI today tends to be highly specialized for specific functions, like winning chess games. So, there's a gap to cross-- how do we go from AI highly specialized in one function, to general intelligence? This is where neural networks come in. I recommend you give the article a quick read-- it's a great, concise explanation. 

We did a lot of reading that informed how we approached Pixels of You in order to get the feel right, but the story itself is very light sci-fi, so don't expect pages of technological explanations. We were more interested in how things play out at a social and cultural level-- basically, how do people live in this world. 

More next time!



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Pixels of You was written by Ananth Hirsh & Yuko Ota, and drawn by J.R. Doyle.

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A short post today! We just wanted to say, thank you for following along with the PIXELS OF YOU preview and hope it's piquing your interest! We're a little more than halfway done, so stay tuned.

PIXELS takes place in New York! It moves between Manhattan and Brooklyn. We had a lot of discussion on how far to take the future jump visually, and in the end we kept it simple. The new tends to get built on top of the old, and also tends to not be as sturdy as the old either. It didn't seem realistic to do a visual overhaul of the city either-- change is slow, and incremental, and mired in bureaucracy. Even today, the city doesn't look too much changed from 10 years ago-- it looks the same, just littered with Revel and Lime bikes in gutters and haphazardly on street corners. 

The thing that lends a futuristic quality to the book, then, is J.R. Doyle's visual choices, both in terms of abstraction and color choice. It feels near, but different. J.R. really got the story in a way that we could have only dreamed of. 

That's all for now! Let us know if you're curious about something, and maybe we can make it the subject of one of these posts. Thanks for reading!



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Pixels of You was written by Ananth Hirsh & Yuko Ota, and drawn by J.R. Doyle.

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What a great meetcute! If only we could all be so lucky. 

I mentioned last time that we had done a lot of reading in AI and kept up with the news around the subject. It informed the background of the story and how we thought about certain dynamics, but not necessarily in obvious ways. In the end, Pixels of You keeps with the fantastic elements we gravitate towards, and this is embodied best by Fawn herself. She's a self-aware (questionable lol) AI who is making a choice to present herself in the way that she does, and likewise she makes choices in pursuing her interests like photography.

This "AI as a person" element is probably the most fantastic element of the book, and it was there almost from the beginning. The first thing I knew was that I wanted it to be about two people who were rivals who were then forced to 'get over it', and in the process they grow closer. Fawn being an AI or android was the second big decision we made. From there, I kind of went into the fugue state of outlining and writing and drafting until there's something substantive that I can discuss with Yuko. Our collaborative process is very tangled, but over the years we've developed a method that works well for us. 

If you have something in particular you'd like us to address, ask on twitter or patreon! Thanks for reading!



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Pixels of You was written by Ananth Hirsh & Yuko Ota, and drawn by J.R. Doyle.

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First-- we're running a holiday sale! Many items are marked WAY down, and we're running a 10% holiday code on top of that! Check it out!

Now, on to PIXELS OF YOU! PIXELS OF YOU takes place in a near-future, where AI is ubiquitous in the technology that helps keep the world running. Fawn herself is an AI, given form in a chassis with a human appearance. By contrast, Indira is a flesh and blood person with an artificial eye. They both see the world differently, and thus their eye for photography is different in form and subject. 

The goal with PIXELS was to depict two characters navigating an evolving relationship as they negotiate the world around them. This book took a lot of research! AI is in use everywhere, to a degree that is impressive and frankly disturbing. We were constantly updating the manuscript because every week brought fresh news regarding AI research. Our approach was to nod at many of these realities without dwelling on most of them-- we wanted to create a textured feeling, where people who live within a system do their best to get by. Our focus was character, so the world-building exists to inform that. 

If you have something in particular you'd like for us to talk about, feel free to ask on twitter! Thanks for reading!



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Pixels of You was written by Ananth Hirsh & Yuko Ota, and drawn by J.R. Doyle.

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Styling the characters was an important part of bringing out the differences in their personalities. Indira wears dark colors, tends towards street clothes, and brings a touch of practicality with her wardrobe.

By contrast, we wanted Fawn to appear ethereal, with billowy, flowy clothes that looked a little like dressing a doll. Indira wants more to disappear into the background, while Fawn presents to draw the eye. The way J.R. Doyle colored Fawn emphasizes this-- Fawn always pushes up from the background and is frequently the palest part of the color blocking in a shot. Likewise, Indira is frequently seen in blacks and darker colors. They're two people who seem quite different at a glance!

So how did we go about being consistent with their individual looks? On every project that we do, we have a step where Ananth goes sifting through styles and clothes online, with the aim of creating a folder of reference that helps fence a character into a particular look. For a book of this size, it was about 20 pieces of reference per character. This is enough to get a 'feeling', to be able to mix and match pieces, and to generously toss out some looks that don't quite get there. At the scripting stage, Ananth creates a folder per scene per character, with fairly meticulous notes about how to mix and match, customize and simplify (for instance, we generally omit patterns because they're a headache to draw over and over again). 

Hope that highlights some of the process behind the scenes! Next time we'll cover another aspect of Pixels of You! If you have something in particular you'd like for us to talk about, feel free to ask on twitter! Thanks for reading!



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Pixels of You was written by Ananth Hirsh & Yuko Ota, and drawn by J.R. Doyle.

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We're so excited to share this book with you! The heart of Pixels of You was conceived years and years ago, when I got it in my head that I wanted to do a book that captured some shred of that feeling of the complicated nature of living in a shared world. Whether or not we succeeded is up to you to decide! Oh, and we'll be talking more about the characters and the world as these pages go up, so be sure to check back with the updates. 

Pixels of You was written by Ananth Hirsh & Yuko Ota, and drawn by J.R. Doyle.

Lastly, there are a lot of silent pages in the book, so bear with us!

If you're interested, you can preorder Pixels of You at this landing page, from the retailer of your choice!

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PIXELS OF YOU

Releases on FEBRUARY 8TH, 2022

>>> Preorder now at your retailer of choice! <<<

Hi everyone! PIXELS OF YOU is a book about Indira and Fawn, two young photographers living in the near future. It's meant to be a messy, textured look at the way technology intersects with life and how we can find connection in the chaos of the everyday world. We'll be running a 16-page preview beginning next week. J.R. Doyle of Knights Errant fame drew the book-- they are an exceptional talent.

We really hope you enjoy this preview! More from us as the pages go up. Thanks for reading! And if you're interested, you can preorder at this landing page, from the retailer of your choice!

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BARBAROUS CHAPTER 6 IS OVER! 

Thank you SO much for reading! We left it on a bit of a cliffhanger lol... what can I say, we like to keep it spicy lmao

The updates will continue with PIXELS OF YOU!

We're running a preview of our upcoming book, PIXELS OF YOU! It's drawn by J. R. Doyle of Knights Errant fame, and will be published in full by Amulet, an imprint of Abrams. The preview begins on Thursday! The book will debut in stores on February 8th, 2022! You can preorder it from the store of your choice here. 

As always, thanks so much for reading!

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