Louie Joyce

Peter Wilson (00:12):
Hello, good people of YouTube. Welcome to, I believe is the eighth episode of Sunday Spotlight with me, as always, founder of Comex Sizzle. Hello everyone. Special guest, Louis Joyce. Give it up.

Louie Joyce (00:26):
Hello.

Peter Wilson (00:28):
How are you doing tonight, sir?

Louie Joyce (00:30):
I’m doing very well. I think I just went for a swim in the ocean. It was lovely and lovely. Yeah, Sunday, Sunday evening. It’s a nice time. Absolutely. I’m doing well. How are you guys doing?

Peter Wilson (00:43):
I’m solid, man. I’m good. This is a good way to cap off the week for me. Always look forward to it.

Louie Joyce (00:48):
Yes.

Peter Wilson (00:51):
Hello all. So tell the good people, what do you do in comics? What’s your bag?

Louie Joyce (00:56):
So I’m an illustrator, so I’m a comic book artist and creator. I predominantly illustrate, I draw comics, but I also, I do zines and short comics and things where I am coming up with a story and doing the whole thing, like printing and binding. And so I kind of will just say a comic book creator sometimes. Sometimes I collaborate, sometimes I do the whole thing myself. Most of my stuff that I write is usually shorter form, but I’m working on a few bigger projects for a long extended time, but I got some stuff lined up. So yeah, mostly I draw, but I also do a little bit of writing.

Peter Wilson (01:43):
That’s cool, man. Alright. How about we do some warmup questions to get into it?

Louie Joyce (01:47):
Yes. All right.

Peter Wilson (01:48):
These are just quick. I’ve usually made them up on the spot.

Louie Joyce (01:51):
Oh no, here we go. All right.

Peter Wilson (01:53):
Okay. Which duck is best? Howard Daffy or

Louie Joyce (01:56):
Donald Howard?

Peter Wilson (02:03):
Good choice.

Louie Joyce (02:03):
Yeah. I wanted to go Donald, just because Huey De and Louie mad respect, but I got to go, Howard,

Peter Wilson (02:15):
I’ll go specific and say which Disney duck next time.

Louie Joyce (02:17):
Yeah, right.

Peter Wilson (02:19):
Would you rather go to the bottom of the ocean and be totally fine or just out of earth atmosphere at the beginning of space,

Louie Joyce (02:27):
Bottom of the ocean, flash back to my Aquaman drawing at the,

Peter Wilson (02:34):
You can try one mythical slash fictional piece of food from any story or movie. Which one would you pick? Oh,

Louie Joyce (02:44):
Ah, I don’t know. That’s tricky. Yeah. Wax, I’d go off. You would go Butter is

Peter Wilson (02:55):
Oh yeah. And butter.

Louie Joyce (02:56):
It’s all good. It’s not even mythical, but I was just talking to my kids watching Hal’s moving castle at the moment. Oh, good. And there’s the bit where Hal is frying the bacon and frying the eggs. I was just talking about how hungry I get and how much I love any kind of food thing that Studio Ghibli does. So it would be something, it would be one of their meals, even if it’s not, it’s just like bacon and eggs. It would still be like the anime, the studio jiggly bacon and eggs. That would be it.

Peter Wilson (03:25):
I’d be just like the parents from Spirit of the Way turn into a pig. I would shout

Louie Joyce (03:29):
Out. Oh yeah, totally. That feast, that thing. Yeah, I would go full pig for that.

Peter Wilson (03:36):
Paul looks amazing. Who else? I can’t read my writing. That’s all right. Let’s just dive into the interview. Let’s get into the big questions. Have you always been a creative guy?

Louie Joyce (03:51):
Yeah, I don’t know. I guess so. I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember. I’m creative when it comes to drawing, I guess, but I’m not creative in every facet of my life. I can be pretty uncreative in certain areas, but yeah, I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember. It’s always been. And I love the idea of telling stories and through the medium of comics especially. So that’s been something that I’ve been kind of obsessed with for as far back as I can recall. So yeah, I guess so. Cool.

Peter Wilson (04:25):
So have you always been a reader of comics and what kind did you sort of get into? Yeah,

Louie Joyce (04:30):
Yeah, I have. So my dad is a comic reader collector, and so comics were around as far back as I can recall. And he has a very eclectic kind of collection. He has a lot. He had a lot of the Allen Moore stuff, a lot of Mike, a lot of Jamie, the Hernandez brothers and Robert Crumb, and really all over the spectrum kind of collection. So I grew up with a lot of that stuff all around me. So yeah, it was something that I had discovered pretty early on, and certainly at a young age I really glommed on to superhero comics, the X-Men. It was the time of the X-Men animated series and the arcade game and stuff. So that was my real early comics obsession was the X-Men world and those characters. But I was also looking at mad band comics and all kinds of stuff across the spectrum. But yeah, predominantly superhero comics for a really long time. And then as I got older, I discovered more slightly alternative stuff and no, I remember my dad, pardon me, he had two X-Men comics that I had to ask to look at, and it was the two Barry Windsor Smith X-Men issues, life death, the two storm storm focused issues. And so they took on this kind of mythical,

Peter Wilson (06:17):
It’s a bit fruit

Louie Joyce (06:19):
Idea of what comics, and at the same time as I’m looking at that, I’m looking at the nineties craziness, which is amazing as well in a lot of different ways. So yeah, I have this kind of all over the place. I remember being a kid and reading Promethean at a really early age and not having a fucking clue what was happening in that comic, but just being absolutely amazed by the art and the storytelling and all of these things were happening. And that was a lot of Alan Moore stuff that I like Watchman completely over my head so many times that I read it, but I knew there was something in there that I was just like, oh, this is amazing. Something in here is just I was connecting with. So yeah, I think I got off track a bit.

Peter Wilson (07:12):
That was great. One of the first super comments I ever read in a similar vein was from my older cousins. I’ve only met them twice in my life and I was quite young and they had a bunch, basically they didn’t want anything to do with me, so they said, yeah, you go read them. And one of them was the death of Superman and just being utterly traumatized at the innocent age of them going, they didn’t actually, and they’re going, oh yeah, he’s dead. Sucked in for a long time to recover from that. I didn’t realize they could go so dark.

Louie Joyce (07:43):
Yeah, it’s like

Peter Wilson (07:46):
Superheros don’t dry.

Louie Joyce (07:48):
Yeah. Well now, yeah, it’s cool how intense that stuff is in your mind when you’re a young reader. It really, really resonates so completely. And you kind of lose that a bit as you get older. But I find that my attention shifts to focusing on storytelling and draw or artistic elements. So I still really love a lot of superhero comics. I still read some and I can still find things to appreciate across the board. And so I read now, I read Heaps of Mango, I read heaps of alternative comics, I read heaps of zines. I read everything I can get my hands on essentially. And I try to just absorb it as much of it as I can because I still love the medium as a reader and as a creator. And I think the two things really inspire me to keep going.

Peter Wilson (08:46):
Having a wide range is definitely helpful, I think. Yeah. Was there a particular project or even just a moment where you wanted to pursue it more seriously than just a hobby?

Louie Joyce (08:59):
I don’t know. I remember trying to do comics of my own as a young kid, and I would start lots of projects and never finish them. At some point I tried to adapt that Gly film Romeo Must Die Into, oh wow. So somewhere, I dunno where I can’t find it, but somewhere there’s like 10 pages of me trying to adapt to that thing into comic format. And when did that come out? I wouldn’t have even been that young, but I think definitely going to a zine fair was really a significant moment for me because I think early as a kid I was like, oh, I’m going to make comics. But it would’ve just been a kid’s proclamation of their dreams. There was not much more to it than that. But going to a zine fair was really significant because I met people who were actually in the same country, the same town, the same space as me that were making comics that were incredible and selling them.

(10:08)
And I got to meet them and talk to ’em. I remember meeting Maddie Huon at a zine fair in Newcastle and just being absolutely amazed by his work. He’s always been so good. This is when he was going by Stickman, I think. So way back, Tim McEwen and just a whole bunch of cartoonists that would be doing it. And that was really a moment where I was like, oh, it is possible to kind of have a proper crack at it from this area. But even then, I still was still just a hobby for a really long time. And I started doing fairs and making my own comics and selling them at scene fairs. But it wasn’t until I was an adult in my twenties that I really, drawing was always a hobby, a thing that I did in my side in my spare time and a passion. But working in graphic design and for years and then my wife’s encouragement to actually study illustration kind of put me on the path of giving it a proper go as I got older. So yeah, I dunno that I can transport figure out it in exact moment, but it was a whole bunch of little things that kind of guided me towards it.

Peter Wilson (11:33):
That sounds great. You touched on a graphic design. Do you have formal training in that? Is that your background?

Louie Joyce (11:39):
No, I was mainly self-taught a, what did I do? We got a computer that had some graphics programs on there like Photoshop and Illustrator, and I just started messing around in those programs and trying to create work. I think I was on internet forums at that time, so it would’ve been the early two thousands. And I was on anime and comic forums and just making silly little graphic banners to put in your signature underneath your post with your favorite characters in them and shit.

(12:22)
But through doing that, and I remember there were battles where you would battle someone, you would both have to make a graphic and then people would vote on whose was better. And so through doing these things, I figured out how to use Photoshop and how to use Illustrator and how to compose images digitally. And I would go out and take a lot of photos and then collage them and create crude vector, not even actual vector, because I was doing it in a bitmap program, but these kind of vector prints. And I was never really comfortable with color in traditional mediums. So working in a digital space really allowed me to explore that a lot more. So I think I did that for years. And then I was self-taught mostly. And then I got a job at a screen printing company where I was mainly doing color sets, but also graphic design stuff for the company. And so just kind of went from there. Oh,

Peter Wilson (13:23):
Cool.

Louie Joyce (13:24):
Yeah.

Peter Wilson (13:27):
So if you had to put a label on it, what’s the main requirement for a creative person would you say?

Louie Joyce (13:38):
What’s most

Peter Wilson (13:38):
Important feature?

Louie Joyce (13:41):
It’s a good question. It’s a hard question. Curiosity I think is a good one. I think a lot of creativity comes from asking questions and maybe not knowing the answers, but not being afraid of not knowing the answers. Just searching for answers. That’s a very meta way to put it, but I think it’s like, how can I draw this thing? How can I create this page? How can I tell this story on a single page through this many panels on a thing? And what happens if I do this and what happens if I do that? And how does changing this affect it? And a lot of that stuff is the stuff. It’s all problem solving. Essentially. You’re trying to figure out the best way to transport something that’s in terms of drawing anyway, that’s in here onto this page. And I guess that applies to other stuff, talking about being not very creative. I’m not very creative when it comes to cooking. I just don’t have the mind for it. But my wife is super creative. She’s really, really good at cooking, and she’s just able to put together flavors and to have these elements which she can problem solve into this amazing meal. And it reminds me sometimes of where I’m taking a script or taking an idea for a story and trying to transpose it onto this page through panels and drawings and words and all of these things. So yeah, I guess curiosity is my answer.

Peter Wilson (15:27):
No, that’s a great one. We haven’t had curiosity yet. That’s good. So when you are just absent mindedly, doodling when you’re on the phone or supposed to be paying attention to something, what’s the one thing you find yourself drawing more than anything else?

Louie Joyce (15:41):
Probably roller blades.

Peter Wilson (15:45):
That’s interesting.

Louie Joyce (15:46):
Just roller blades. Yeah, I’ll do a lot of zigzaggy patterns, just random patterns and stuff. I’ll draw roller blades, I’ll draw just random characters. I draw Spider-Man a lot. He’s always something that comes out when I’m just doodling because most of the time when I’m just doodling, it’s with my kids at the moment. So we’ve got a piece of paper and it’s random colored pencils from pencil cases. It’s just been poured out everywhere. My kids are usually grabbing the pencil off me halfway through whatever I’m drawing, so I’ve got to grab something else. But it’s actually a really fun way to draw kind of, because it mixes up colors in interesting ways and I’m usually pushing hard and just going at it. And it’s been a real creative kind of inspiration for my drawing. I think that’s great. I spend so much time digital drawing, drawing digitally these days as well. So it’s really nice to be on paper with a more tactile kind of medium.

Peter Wilson (16:55):
We hear a lot kids evolve style quite a bit with a lot of our guests and always in a very positive way, which was nice to hear.

Louie Joyce (17:02):
Yeah, definitely. I think I’ve noticed that I’ve got three kids, and so it’s a long time that I’ve been, my eldest is seven, and so I’ve been reading lots of kids’ books, reading lots of comics that I might not have otherwise read, reading lots of, looking at a lot of illustration and art that I might not have gravitated towards. And it’s definitely been a major contributor. I would say during the last three years I’ve gone through a big stylistic shift in my work and how I approach each drawing, and that’s one of the drawing in pencils with my kids is one of catalysts for that kind of change. There’s a few catalysts, but that’s one of the ones I attribute to it.

Peter Wilson (17:57):
That’s cool. Speaking of your style, how do you describe that to people? Do you have a pitch or

Louie Joyce (18:02):
No, I always find this question really tricky. Yeah, kinetic. I’m always trying to make drawings that feel like they’re moving. They could be moving if you look away from ’em, they’re just in this moment in time captured. But yeah, it’s pretty cartoony and as this stylistic shift that I’ve gone through, it’s quite stylized now. It’s quite based on exaggeration and wacky proportions and things like that. But yeah,

Peter Wilson (18:38):
I guess I have no, it’s very cool.

Louie Joyce (18:41):
I’ve been

Peter Wilson (18:41):
Digging it myself.

Louie Joyce (18:43):
Sorry,

Peter Wilson (18:44):
I’ve been digging it myself. I like what you’ve been doing.

Louie Joyce (18:47):
Thank you very much. Yeah,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (18:48):
It’s awesome. I’m going to have to dig back further now to see these changes. I’ll have to go back through your Instagram.

Louie Joyce (18:53):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, you can go through my Instagram is actually quite a good, because I’ve been just posting stuff up since 2011 or 12 or something. So it’s an interesting time capsule I think. But yeah, I do find that I do like to change things up every now and again as well in how I’m working just to keep it interesting and exciting.

Peter Wilson (19:20):
Yeah, it feels good to challenge yourself too. Just shake things up for sure. Do you have any non-com influences?

Louie Joyce (19:29):
Oh yeah. Animation is a huge influence, but that’s a lot of crossover with comics, but animation and film, film is really influential to my storytelling and my work and what else? I don’t know. I like just life. Life is very influencing now. The kids, the, again, just watching them emerge as people and how they interact with the world and their perspective on things is a very enlightening and creatively inspiring thing. I think for me,

Peter Wilson (20:14):
Harvey Peacock said, ordinary life can be pretty complex stuff, and I think that’s true.

Louie Joyce (20:18):
Yeah, yeah, totally. That’s a good quote.

Peter Wilson (20:22):
So when you are starting a new project, do you start with a script or do you talk with the writer first for a while or,

Louie Joyce (20:31):
Yeah, it can change. It depends on the project really. So in my collaborative works, it can be different. So sometimes a writer approaches me and they have a script already written and they’re like, Hey, I’ve got this idea and I think it’d be great to draw it. And they might just give me a brief outline of what it is, and it can go from just being a script page to me, then taking that and starting to do my part of it. But sometimes also it can be a writer telling me, oh, I’ve got this idea for this thing. I think it’d be cool. What do you reckon? I think a Fistful of Pain, which is my latest book that I’ve illustrated or comic that I’ve illustrated with Ryan Kay Lindsay, who’s a Canberra based writer. And so we kickstarted that last year, but we started talking about it back in probably 10 years ago. I don’t know, it was a while ago. So I’ve got rough sketches that I did back in the mid two thousands in relation to this book, and it’s gone through all these kind of transformations over the years.

(21:44)
It’s kind of gone from being at the forefront to being put on the back burner by both of us. And we finally gotten it done, but it was a very kind of organic way that it evolved. And a lot of the time it was like he would do a script, he would have an idea, and I’d be like, oh yeah, I’d send through some sketches and then he would do a script and then I’d be like, oh, actually. And then years have gone by and I’m like, oh, actually now I think the characters should look like this, or I have this idea and then I send that back to him. Then he changes the script and then we’re like, oh, actually it’s not going to be this, it’s going to be this. And so it kind of changes across its evolution. But in the case of Hap Haven, which is a YA graphic novel that I illustrated in, it came out in 2019.

(22:31)
That was a case where the writer approached me, norm Harper, he’s a fantastic writer, and he approached me with the script and a basic idea and he said, he’s looking at a few artists, but he thinks I’d be a good fit. And so I sent through some sketches and he picked me to be on the book, but he hadn’t written the full kind of script for the entire graphic novel. So stuff that I’d done in my sketches had affected how things played out or certain things where certain things were taken within the story. And also I was drawing and finishing pages while certain elements of the script were being finished on the latter end of the book.

(23:18)
Then sometimes it’s people who have a finished script and they just want me to draw it, and I’m also happy to do that. So collaboration can be all over the place like that. And it’s usually project dependent and artist dependent with my own stuff. Normally shorter form, I usually just do sketchy thumbnails and go from there and then it kind of evolves from that. And sometimes I haven’t figured out what the full story is until I’m doing those sketchy thumbnails or until I’m even taking those sketchy thumbnails and turning them into pages. I’ll do these sketchy, I’ll have story ideas and I’ll do these sketchy thumbnails, but they’re so sketchy that if I look back at them months later, I don’t have a fucking clue what is going on. So I’ve got to kind of strike in the moment. I’ve done sketchy thumbnails for stories and not acted on it soon enough where I’m like, ah, it’s gone. No idea. No idea what was happening here. So yeah, it’s project dependent. It changes all the time and I think I like that. It depends on who I’m collaborating with or what the aim of the project is or where it’s going to be and how it’s going to play and yada, yada yada.

Peter Wilson (24:40):
That’s cool. So tell us about your workspace. Are we seeing it now? Is that your office or,

Louie Joyce (24:47):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It’s pretty messy at the moment. Hey, I’ve got a big shelf of comics. I’ve got three kids, so it’s a room that usually has a lot of shit just shoved in there to make the rest of the house seem cleaner. But yeah, it’s just a table I’ve got. I’ll see if I can. So I work digitally and I work predominantly on an iPad these days with all my digital drawings. So I’ve got my iPad and then I’ve got a drawing table thing here. I’ve got this X-Men main, so I do my traditional stuff on there. And then I’ve just got my laptop, it’s a bit cramped. I’m actually in the trying to kind of rework rejig my workspace a bit at the moment so that I can get a little bit more desk space happening. But it gets the job done. I’ve got lots of books there. We’ve got lots of comics and books in the house. It looks like a house. Yeah, it’s not organized. Since we moved here. I used to have my comics organized and I dunno how it was organized, but it hasn’t been organized for years now, which is kind of nice because you just go look at a shelf and they’ll be like, sex criminals next to X-Men legacy or Preacher next to 52 or whatever it is. Just random assortments.

Peter Wilson (26:24):
Good lucky dick,

Louie Joyce (26:26):
And I like that.

Peter Wilson (26:28):
So besides the iPad, have you’ve got any sort of go-to tools in use every time or

Louie Joyce (26:34):
So on the iPad, I draw in clip studio paint, which is what I used on the desktop. I used to have a Wacom, it’s back there, but I kind of shifted to the iPad when I needed to. I was going and working in libraries a whole bunch, so the iPad was portable. So I use Clip Studio paint, which I find is the best drawing app for me. It’s really comics focused and it’s also got some really great animation tools. I’ve been using procreate a lot recently as well, and running some workshops in procreate digital painting workshops and things like that. So those are the programs that I use on that. In terms of drawing, traditionally it’s mostly fine liners and the AK brush pens

Peter Wilson (27:26):
Very nice

Louie Joyce (27:27):
And poca when I can. And then yeah, just sometimes I use some watercolory elements, but as I said, I’m not fully confident in just a travel painting thing, but I’m not really confident. I’m not super confident in traditional medium colors. So most of my work tends to be colored and finished digitally. In my ideal world, I think I’d love to do all my line work traditionally and just have that nice time of drawing a pen and ink on paper and then finish scanning it all in. But in reality, it’s usually just working digitally so much faster. It’s so much easier to edit so much, there’s less cleanup time, all of that stuff. So yeah,

Peter Wilson (28:20):
We touched on it before the show actually, but do you have a time or space where most of your ideas seem to come to you?

Louie Joyce (28:27):
Well, yeah. As I was saying last night, a bunch of ideas. So I got a big project coming up, which I can’t talk so much about right now, but it’s exciting, but also super fucking intimidating. I’m pretty all over the place emotionally and how I feel about it, but for the most part I’m really excited. But a bunch of ideas came to me last night between stopping reading and going to sleep. I was falling asleep reading and I turned the light off and I’m going to sleep. And then a bunch of ideas hit me and I’m like, oh yeah, this is the stuff that I’ve been waiting to, the ideas I’ve been waiting to have, and then should I get up and just do work on this? And it’s 11 o’clock and they’re like, nah, I’m not doing that. That’s crazy. And so I went to sleep and I’ve forgotten all the stuff that came to me.

(29:24)
So that definitely happens a bunch. Late night inspiration. It’s a treacherous, it’s a treacherous thing, but it can be a really good time for ideas in the shower is always good. I usually find that walking around is good. Sometimes I find I’ll have to, certainly for the early parts of creating something, so I really struggle with the early parts of a project, the conceptualizing rough, not so much character designs, but planning the story like character designs, sketching out pages. I do find that stuff the most demanding creatively and the rest because it is where most of the hard work is done. You kind of figuring out the core storytelling or the core most important elements. So as I, I’ve lost my train of thought, where was I going? Yeah, walks are good. Sometimes procrastination, sometimes I need to not do or I need to procrastinate for a day or two and then I need to butt my head against a wall for three days to get to a breakthrough. I dunno if that makes sense. But

Peter Wilson (31:00):
Yeah,

Louie Joyce (31:00):
Definitely. Certainly in the past it’s happened. I remember doing a short comment called Footsteps, and we only had one child, but my wife had gone away with the child and I just had two days of not, I had all this pressure on trying to be productive, two days of not meeting that pressure, and then this moment, this kind of turnover happened where I was able to click through and I just kind of, something happened and I just started churning it out and it’s the flow state. I was talking about this to someone earlier today, it’s like in skating or he was talking about carving, but you arrive at this flow state, which can be really, really hard to get into, but when you do find it, things are flowing naturally and instinctually. And so that is often a time that I find most creatively fruitful for me. But achieving that can be really tricky, especially as I have more children, less time.

Peter Wilson (32:14):
It’s interesting how many people I talk to who say their ideas come to them when they have no access to a pen, sleep in shower, walking, all that.

Louie Joyce (32:26):
Some kind of sick joke.

Peter Wilson (32:29):
It must be, I like to think it’s the minds way of saying you needed a break for a bit. Okay, that’s enough break.

Louie Joyce (32:35):
Yeah, I mean, my mom’s a writer and I know that she’s always had notebooks around. She’s gotten used to that and she will get up and write stuff and she’ll try to kind of capitalize on those moments, which I guess is what a lot of people do, but I just don’t have the energy for it. If it’s at 11 o’clock,

Peter Wilson (33:02):
What kind of stuff does she write?

Louie Joyce (33:05):
She writes a lot of pros. She’s like a slashy. So she’s been doing a lot of different things for as long back as I can remember. She’s a singer, a songwriter. She wrote a movie. She’s done standup comedy, she’s written poetry, she’s written books. She’s done a whole bunch of stuff. She used to draw little cartoons that I remember from when I was a kid as well. So my dad is definitely as a comic. He’s also a writer slash theater director, so there’s a creative and a storytelling background in their parents.

(33:49)
Yeah, so that’s really nice. It is really nice to have them. They’re both really positive about what I do and really helpful. And if I ever need advice or any of that kind of stuff, they’re kind of there for me, which is really nice. I think for a long time I was like, oh, I’m not going to do right. I’m going to draw. I’m not going to be a writer like them. I’m going to draw instead. But then I realized it’s all just kind of storytelling. I thought I was rebelling, but really I didn’t. It’s all just storytelling,

Peter Wilson (34:25):
Like every kid. Yeah, I thought I was being a badass. No,

Louie Joyce (34:30):
Not at all.

Peter Wilson (34:32):
Do you have any little rituals or superstitions you like to do when about to start or during a drawing? S some people need a specific drink or have book nearby.

Louie Joyce (34:43):
Nah, I like to have my coffee in the morning, but nah, I don’t think I’m particularly superstitious. Or

Peter Wilson (34:53):
Some people might have a show. Music.

Louie Joyce (34:56):
Music, music is dependent on what stage that I’m at in my creative process. So that early conceptualization, writing, planning, thumbnailing, all that stuff. I can’t listen to stuff with lyrics. I need to have, it’s mostly instrumental or soundtrack lyric free based stuff. I just find it distracting. But the rest of the process I can listen. I kind of go all over the place. Sometimes I’ll have shows playing. Usually it’s shows that I’ve seen before so that I can split focus. If I try to watch something I haven’t seen before, I won’t be able to do it. It’ll either be too distracting or I’ll be annoyed that I’m missing out, whatever it’s, I love watch XFiles until the day that I die. That show is so fucking good and it’s really nice background. I know I’ve seen it so many times, so I know I don’t have to even watch it. I can just visualize what’s happening. Or often I listen to podcasts, roller skating podcasts or rollerblading podcasts. Mangu Blading is a great podcast. I listen to heaps X-Men podcast. Yeah, it’s all over the joint really.

Peter Wilson (36:22):
So we’re nearly at the end here. So last question, what is the best bit of criticism or encouragement you’ve ever gotten that’s really stuck with you?

Louie Joyce (36:38):
I don’t know. I can’t remember who said it, but I think being told to make sure that I

(36:52)
Work on things that I find inspiring or that I’m passionate about is a good thing. Drawing for me was for all those early years was just a passion thing. So very easy to lose that when you move into, especially as a freelance artist, I don’t just work in comics. I can work in a lot of different fields like publishing and storyboarding and advertising and all kinds of places that can suck that ride out. And so making time to do stuff that is similar to what I did when I would just love drawing so that I can maintain that thing. But yeah, I can’t recall who exactly said it to me.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (37:49):
Makes a lot of sense.

Louie Joyce (37:51):
I might’ve heard it in a podcast or something, but a critique. I can’t think of a critique. Sorry. That’s

Peter Wilson (38:03):
Alright. It’s blended into the subconscious somewhere. Yeah, that’s all right. We like to end on a plug here. I mean on a quote. Sorry.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (38:16):
I was going to say,

Peter Wilson (38:17):
Sorry, Shane. I threw him there.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (38:20):
Cool. I’ll put it up.

Peter Wilson (38:23):
I may not be smart enough to do everything, but I’m dumb enough to try anything by Jeff Jones. I’ve been reading a lot of him this week because I scored a couple of omnibus from a secondhand still.

Louie Joyce (38:33):
Nice.

Peter Wilson (38:34):
Sweet. And is there anything you’d like to plug?

Louie Joyce (38:37):
Ah, yeah, what am I going to plug? You can find me@louisjoyce.com or at Louis Joyce on most Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr. Yeah, most platforms. I’m at Louis Joyce plugging things. I’m going to be at Goulburn Comic-Con on the 18th of March. So Goulburn does a really great comic convention show with heaps of local artists and interstate artists and workshops and

(39:13)
Games and all kinds of stuff. It’s like a Comic-Con. It’s great cosplay stuff. So if you’re in that area, definitely worth going to a fistful of pain. My most recent book that I did with Ryan Kay Lindsey is that we kickstarted last year and that smashed all our expectations and is published by Comics Tribe and was their biggest kickstarter that they’ve done. So we’ve managed to produce this incredible hardcover with gold foil and Die Card eyes. And the story is about two sisters essentially fighting over the family dragon in a big kind of grindhouse, epic kung fu showdown. It’s kind of like a love letter. Oh, that sounds great. Yeah, so be that should be, it’s printed now and it’s in transit, so I should have that with me at future shows. And yeah, definitely keep your eyes peeled for that. And yeah, I’m not sure what else I would plug at the moment. I think that’s it.

Peter Wilson (40:24):
Awesome. How about you, sis?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (40:26):
I’ll just do the usual. Don’t forget to the video and subscribe to the channel

Peter Wilson (40:33):
And Cirus perceptions. We are funding that at the moment.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (40:39):
I haven’t got any things to put up. Let’s see, I didn’t come prepared. There we go.

Peter Wilson (40:44):
Cirus got

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (40:45):
Comic Studio. That’s a bit of a pre-order campaign. It’s not really a Kickstarter or anything like a crowdfunding, so that will be happening no matter what. It’s just a pre-order campaign. So yeah, get in there, buy a Cirus comic.

Peter Wilson (41:03):
Awesome stuff. Alright guys, thanks for watching. See you again next week. Leave your comments if you’ve got any and I’ll read ’em out next week. Thanks again, Lou, for being on. It’s been great.

Louie Joyce (41:13):
Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

Peter Wilson (41:16):
Awesome man. Alright, thanks everyone. See you next time.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (41:19):
See yous all. Thanks.

Voice Over (41:30):
This show is sponsored by the Comics Shop. I.