I'm very excited to be part of this comic book anthology with so many talented artists and writers! I'm doing two stories in there (both horror/comedy) with two amazing writers. Please check out this link to follow the campaign ..
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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/theraidstudio/barada-nikto-genre-comic-anthologies?ref=3yq6ly

​One of my stories is about werewolves and the other one about maggots... they're both going to be really wierd and funny!

Firstly, I was so suprised to be nominated for the Divisional Award in Book Illustration for my work on Princess Pru and the Ogre on the Hill with Owl Kids and Maureen Fergus. I have always dreamt of attending the awards and stepping on the stage and getting the award. Although I didn't win the award (it went to the amazing Mad artist Tom Richmond!), just being there among other humorous illustrators was incredible.  I hung out with so many cool people. To mention a few, Scott Ketcham (Dennis the Menace), Jeff Keane (Family Circus), David Blazek (Loose Parts), Johnny Sampson (Mad Magazine), Tauhid Bondia (Crab Grass), Phil Witte (Funny Stuff: How Great Cartoonists Make Great Caroons), Nancy Beiman (Fur Babies), Milburn Taylor (Texas Cartoonist), Hilary Price (Rhymes with Orange), Peter Maresca (Origns of the Sunday Comics),  Lynn Johnston (For Better of for Worse), Kevin Segall (collector), Andrea Beizer (Alice), Mark Parisi (Off the Mark) , Sam Viviano (Mad Magazine), Johnathan Lemon (Rabbits against magic), Chuck Dillon (Monopoly) and Dan Misdea (New Yorker Cartoons). Just writing all these names down made me realise what an amazing event it was. I think it was really important for me to attend the event as a nominee, and I hope to be one again soon!

Wanted to do something quick with today's news, something fun and experimental! Such an interesting thing that one update for a software that's supposed to protect your stuff on the internet leads to this giant IT disaster where planes get cancelled and the Times Square screens get replaced by that dreaded 'Blue Screen of Death'!

Are you going to watch the Euro Cup Quarterfinal today between Germay and Spain? Did you know that it's been 36 years since Germany defeated Spain? Do you realise how different the world was in 1988 when that happened? Or perhaps, how similar things were? 

I just finished taking this course in Toronto, down at the new Brainstation Location on Front and Spadina at the Well. I was very excited to take this course as I've never taken a marketing course. In fact I've never even taken a business course! Apparently I was the first artist they've had taking this course.  

My professors were Kirin Sennik and Lavanya Kalesswaran.  They were both really great! Both are professionals in the Marketing field, so all their knowledge is very current and relevant.  The course consisted of 8 weeks, with the last week being for presenting the final project.  What really drew me to the course was this final project. The final project was to take a look at the digital marketing efforts of a current brand and improve them using what we learnt in this class. This felt like a perfect opportunity to improve my own current digital marketing efforts as an illustrator. 

This was the class structure:

1. Introduction to Digital Marketing
2. Content
3. SEO
4. Paid Search
5. Google Analytics
6. Social Media
7. Email Marketing
8. Project Showcase and next steps

I live close by, so I would bike down in excitement up across Bremner and up Spadina everyday at 18:00 with the thoughts of learning something new. It's that excitement of learning something new that one constantly needs to stay energised and fresh in your career! Ofcourse I was sad when it was ended, but also motivated to apply everything I learnt to my own business. 

My final project was so involved, and the feedback was so thorough that I'm instantly able to apply all I learned to help me improve my business instantly. In fact, I'm so excited about what I learned that I haven't been able to stop talking to people about it, even going as far as giving them marketing advice!  

I would recommend anyone to take this course, if you can in person, because there's somethign about involving yourself physically and emotionally in the learning process that helps deepen understanding and retention. 

Some of the top things I personally learned..

• Understanding who I was as a brand
• Understanding my purpose and who I was doing this for
• Creating goals with real achievable monetary results
• Utilizing SEO and Keywords to make smart content decisions
• Understand what Social Media Platform is for what audience and purpose
• The marketing life cycle and how it applies to all of this
• Understanding my competition and how to seperate myself from them.

 I would especially recommend artists in toronto to take this course, garaunteed you'll get better at what you do.

Part of this post is a testimonial that I wrote for my Creative Coach Murielle Marie.

In October 2023 I was in a desperate state. Completely blocked. A million ideas were fighting for attention in my mind, and not one was converting into action. It was a creative coma of some sort. I couldn’t move in any direction, there were too many possibilities. I knew I needed help. I interviewed a few creative coaches before I got to Murielle. Right away, I felt she would be the right one, and though it was a big investment for me, I did not hesitate… my creative sink had to be unclogged (Or I would end up sinking). And so session by session, things unravelled. Murielle was brilliant in listening and actively dismantling the problems I had. We had a focused session every 2 weeks, zoning in on a specific problem. And then I would go off and put those ideas into action. In the next session, we would talk about it, and then discuss a new problem. As each session progressed, a new roadblock was removed and the horizon got clearer and clearer, and my excitement and potential increased. Today, I still fee rejuvenated and confident about what’s to come. I can assureedly say that I’m the master of my own destiny, and it’s up to me to continue the momentum of the wind that Murielle has provided to my creative sails.

The biggest thing that I overcame was getting stuck in a rut of overthinking and over analyzing. I can now recognise when I'm in this siutation and instead of just thinking about it, take action. Action is the key. Only action lead to a different way of thinking. You cannot solve thought problems with thought! Most of thinking consists of hyphotheses based on assumption. For real results you need experimentation.  Also when you act, it's a more wholistic way of thinking, that involves your whole body and your emotions.  Over the upcoming weeks I can talk more and more about all I learnt in this course, this is just the first session that I'm summarizing!

On June 24th, 2023, the Wagner Chief Yevgeny Prigozhin lead a mutiny to march towards Moscow. Eventually he cancelled it after talks with the Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko. Prigozhin has a really interesting story as he was once in jail, and then he apparently started the first hot dog business in St Petersburg, eventually opening his own chain of fancy restaraunts where Vladamir Putin frequented. Later he catered for high profile meetings in the Kremlin and eventually ended up heading a group of mercenaries called Wagner. These mercenaries play a crucial role in conflicts around the world such as in Mali, Ukraine and Syria. In the cartoon there are diamonds and minerals in the hot dog as these are some of the benifits of their operations. I just put a bell on Lukashenko as a joke on 'Belarusia', whether it can have more meaning than that, I'm unsure! Overall this cartoon, if you haven't guessed already is about Putin creating this Frankestein monster that eventually turns on him.

Here is my contribution for the RAID Creator visions Trading card set! This is a character created by myself and Andrew Healey. My favourite part of the illustration is really subtle, and that is the stethescope that is casually thrown across his shoulder like a scarf. To find out more about this Card Series, take a look at this link

From our apartment window in downtown Toronto, we had a great view of the fireworks this year. A thought that always runs in my is that anything that we get enjoyment and entertainment from has some root of fear and anxiety in it. Fireworks are these giant explosions in the sky and we love them, but they are kind of like bombs going of. They're not though, and thats probably what gives us relief and thrill at the same time.  

The final version for this amazing infographic poster is finally here... well almost! I'm running a kickstarter campaign to fund it's printing. If you're reading this, check it out on  www.kickstarter.com/projects/daneshm/timelesscharacters