A 9 minute long BBC documentary, originally broadcast 15 April, 1964.
Cathal O'Shannon reports from the shores of Shetland, where television has arrived for the first time. How will this impact traditional life on the islands? Will the hand knitting industry be irrevocably damaged? Local residents give their views and an of...
2025-05-29 20:51:59 +0000 UTC View Post
Just sharing a quick life update for my wonderful Patreon supporters.
A couple of months ago, my wife and I became parents for the second time. The labour happened very suddenly one night, and we were back home for breakfast the next morning, which is a sign for how uncomplicated the birth was for my wife and baby.
2025-05-23 06:20:29 +0000 UTC
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Hi Patreon supporters,
It's time to give you an update as to what I've been working on!
Rolling a whole bunch of miscellaneous news into this big post, broken up under the headings below:
As you probably gleaned from my earlier Patreon updates, 2023 was a year where I largely adapted to t...
2024-04-04 20:14:40 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi Patreon supporters,
You might have seen this info through my regular email list, but I thought I'd post to Patreon regardless.
I have just released printed versions of Energy Slaves, Peak Oil, War on Drugs, and Supernormal Stimuli 2023-11-09 09:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi supporters,
A quick note to let you know about a new option that I am offering to my Patreon page.
You can now choose to pay for your Patreon support to me on an annual basis. It’s a great way to show your s...
2023-08-04 00:21:24 +0000 UTC View PostHi everyone,
I'll get it out of the way: my big news is that I am now a first-time dad!
Actually, my wife and I welcomed this wonderful arrival a number of months ago, but we've been spending 2023 largely in the 'baby bubb...
2023-07-27 07:59:13 +0000 UTC View Post
Today I am proudly announcing that I have signed a contract with Scribe Publications for my debut graphic novel The Town Without Television.
Here is a video that I just pu...
Hi everyone,
I spent the bulk of this afternoon writing a submission to Australia's new National Cultural Policy.
Australia has effectively had no national arts/cultural policy since the last days of the Keating prime ministership in 1996(!) The reason for this? A series of conservative/neoliberal governments.
Hi everyone,
A short update about a few things that have been happening here.
My comic Rat Park is being included as a reading in a new textbook aimed at U.S. college students.
All in all, my comic takes up 11 pages of the textbook, (the 40-page comic is printed as ...
2022-04-01 01:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Some good news: I have just published The Town Without Television, Part 2!
Here is the blurb and link to the comic on my website:
The Town Without Television, Part 2: Unitel
How are childre...
Hi everyone,
It took me a little longer to wrap up Part 2 of The Town Without Television than I expected. Part of the reason is that it is the longest comic that I have yet published, with 144 pages in total.
I spent the last few weeks making lots of little artwork tweaks here and there. T...
As with past years, I am using this as an opportunity to declare my favourite books that I read during the past two years. Here’s my Top 5 countdown of the best books that I during the period 2019-2021:
Jimmy Barnes is well-known to Australians as the frontman of Cold Chisel, ...
2021-08-02 21:01:00 +0000 UTC View Post
I have now mailed all of my postcards to my Patreon supporters who are on the 'postcard' reward tier. Australian supporters have probably got their cards in the mail already. Non-Australians will probably get their cards next week.
See the five postcards' artwork in the short video attached with this post.
If you'r...
A video from my living room. A look at my work-in-progress on Town Without Television, Part 3.
I had gotten to the point where I had too many ideas to keep track of, and needed to physically move around sentences on a table, using sticky notes.
Thanks for supporting my work already via this Patreon donation...
Hi again Patreon supporters!
I just wanted to tell you about an unexpected series of events that occurred in the past two weeks. Here is a brief timeline:
• Tannis MacBeth, the scientist behind the Notel experiment, died on 15 June. (I told you about this with 2021-07-01 21:01:01 +0000 UTC
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I am saddened to learn about the passing of Professor Tannis MacBeth, who died on Tuesday 15 June 2021.
As you know, I am covering her work through my non-fiction comic The Town Without Television, which I am publishing ...
2021-06-17 13:24:50 +0000 UTC View Post
As promised in last month's post, I have just published Part 1 of my Notel project, which I have renamed as The Town Without Television.
2021-05-19 09:42:49 +0000 UTC
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Hi everyone,
It is Thursday afternoon here in Australia, and I'm about to go away for a four day family Easter holiday.
I just wanted to share a short 6-minute video that I just got back from my video editor. It is about what I've been working on lately, and what you can expect from me in 2021.
In short, I have two major proj...
Hi everyone,
As mentioned last month, I am in the middle of a project titled Basic Income Comics, which will be profiling experimentation into universal basic income. The first major study that I will cover will be the Mincome Manitoba experiment that occurred in Canada during the 1970s.<...
Hi everyone, I just wanted to thank you for your ongoing Patre...
2020-09-28 06:17:00 +0000 UTC View PostHi Patreon supporters,
Just messaging you to cover a handful of things.
From July 1, Patreon will begin charging sales tax on certain pledges that supporters make to creators via its platform. This is Patreon catching up to laws requiring them to collect this tax on behalf of various nat...
2020-06-26 01:40:23 +0000 UTC View PostHi supporters,
I just wanted to write a short note to thank you for supporting my work during this current coronavirus pandemic.
So far, I haven't had a single Patreon supporter cancel their pledge since the WHO declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic on 11 March. That is a testament to the value you see in my work. As with other artist...
I've just released a new comic to my website:
Doing It All Alone
Many successful people view other members of society as irrelevant to their own personal fortune. Those who "did it all themselves" overlook many important ingredients to their success.
2020-02-27 06:22:04 +0000 UTC
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Happy new year everyone.
Just a quick update to remind you what your patronage is supporting at the moment.
I'm still in the process of stockpiling artwork of the sequel to my Notel comic, about the effect of television on children in a remote Canadian town in the 1970s.
Attached is a recently-completed four-page sp...
Hi Patreon supporters,
It's been a couple of months between posts, so I thought I'd update you on what I have been working on lately.
Notel comic
In short, I have been completing pages of my comic Notel, which I will release in early 2020. This is
Hi Patreon supporters,
Last weekend I participated in an Open Day event here at my Canberra art centre. 13 of us artists opened our doors to allow members of the public to see inside our art spaces. Here is a look inside my studio, as I spoke to a visitor:
2019-11-22 05:42:15 +0000 UTC
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Today I am releasing my new comic What the Dumbwaiter Hides:
What the Dumbwaiter Hides
Thomas Jefferson invented the dumbwaiter to hide the slaves that he used to run his mansion. Today, we ...
New blog post: Did you know I've been cartooning full-time since 2011? That I love Led Zeppelin? This is a list of 12 things you probably didn't know about me.
I wrote this piece for another publication, so decided to share it here also.
h...
![Podcast interview about Buckminster Fuller [62 min]](https://img5.samukata.com/storage/10/je/xn/4e9b88-019e8708-85b4-7b0b-a71b-65a23d54d2f1.jpg)
I was interviewed by podcast Utopian Horizons about the life and work of Buckminster Fuller, who I profiled in my Energy Slaves comic. I discussed his utopian vision of a future, as well as his ho...
2019-08-08 23:27:55 +0000 UTC View Post
As with past years, I am using this as an opportunity to declare my favourite books that I read during the past two years.
Note that these are all 'pleasure reads, and have no...