Works

Insufficient Stories

January 2015 (released)
A series of extremely short, weird and funny stories, between eight and 1900+ words each. Written over a number of months, then released on this website, one per day over an entire January, with accompanying YouTube videos. Also performed live a few times at comedy and burlesque shows around Melbourne.
Insufficient Stories sub-category on this website. Playlist on YouTube.

The Frightened Meow

February 2012 (released)
A parody ‘lost chapter’ of Murasaki Shikibu’s Genji Monogatari (The Tale of Genji), chock full of sensitive weeping, gentlemanly attempts at sexual assault, and ’80s pop music references hidden in tanka poetry.
Read on this website.

Bee and Puppycat story proposal

May 2023
Client: Frederator Studios
Worked with series creator Natasha Allegri on her outline for a possible future season of the animated show, resolving plot and character issues in line with her vision and intentions. Outline delivered to Frederator Studios.

Shplibzo and the True Prophets of God (TV series pitch)

July 2020 – June 2021
Client: Sony Pictures Television
Developed an original TV animation concept into a pitch presentation, with illustrated ‘bible’ and presentation deck including character profiles, episode summaries, series arcs, themes, etc, taking notes from Sony executives. Coordinated the budgeting, assignment, and creation of additional material.
Pitched live over Zoom to executives from eight US TV networks over three weeks, and successfully sold the show to a major cable network. However, the Warner/Discovery merger announced in May 2021 ultimately ended the deal.

Final Fantasy Brave Exvius (Translation editing)

February 2016 – January 2017
Client: Square Enix
I was the English localisation editor for the launch and first year of popular mobile game Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius. Essentially copy editing, line editing and proofreading rolled into one, adding liveliness, colour and character to ‘raw’ English translations, in large volume and with ongoing deadlines.
Blogged about.

Eegra (Videogame website)

September 2007 – June 2009
Deputy editor, employed by Eegra Pty Ltd
Writer, creator, editor and community manager for Eegra, a special interest/humour website for videogames. Responsible for reviews, feature articles, op eds, event coverage, and a weekly comic – as well as videos and podcasts on a less regular basis. Eegra had a unique tone, attracting a dedicated audience that editor Dan Staines and I cultivated into an inclusive, enthusiastic community.
Sadly no longer online, though the comics and videos mostly survive elsewhere.

Total Gamer (Videogame magazine)

October 2004 – May 2006
Deputy editor, employed by Next Publishing / Nextmedia
Editor, writer, and cartoonist for Total Gamer, a videogame magazine targeting tweens and teens. Wrote features, reviews, and assorted content, helping to establish the magazine’s fun, off-kilter vibe.
Behind-the-scenes duties included subediting/proofreading, liasing with design and writing staff, spot illustrations, prize mailing, attending industry events and meeting with publisher representatives.
Issue 16 on the Internet Archive. Retrospective podcast and supplemental blog by Sky Pirate Radio (overlapping with GBA World and Eegra).

GBA World (Videogame magazine)

2003-2004
Client: Next Publishing / Nextmedia
I did a lot of freelance writing during this time, but most frequently and enjoyably for this GameBoy Advance-focused magazine. I contributed (increasingly strange) reviews and eventually comics and illustrations too. This led directly to my subsequent position at Total Gamer.
Four issues on the Internet Archive.

Patrick Alexander’s World of Content

August 2007 – Ongoing
Originally ‘The Patrick Alexander Memorial YouTube Channel’, this has been an off-and-on repository for silly weirdness and creative projects. Lately I’ve been drawing and ruminating on the creative process, mixing in titbits of Japanese history and culture. But anything goes. (Link.)

Let’s Plays the Lord

May 2024 – Ongoing
We started playing old computer games, and you can watch. Extremely casual fun with friends. It’s Let’s Plays! (Link.)

Comedy Purgatory

September 2021 – Ongoing…?
“Where comedy goes after it dies.” My inexplicable sketch comedy podcast. Only one episode so far, but more to come sometime. Mixing comedy writing and performing together with sound design and audio engineering is some of the most fun I can have.
Basic website at Podbean, but should be available everywhere.

Eegra YouTube

November 2007 – October 2008
The video bits of the sadly vanished Eegra website. A ghost channel, home of old internet fun like Brian Crecente’s review of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. (Link.)

Sons of Comtec

Upcoming graphic novel collaboration with Ben Hutchings

Squishbook

March 2024
Comics, illustrations and articles
Anthology, edited by David Blumenstein
An anthology book for kids, with comics, information about how to make comics, and other fun and games. Edited by David Blumenstein and featuring various Melbourne-oriented cartoonists from the Squishface Studio stable.
Blogged about here. Available to buy here.

Tobias and Jube and the Something Hat Mystery

September-October 2017
Serialised mobile webcomic, published by Stela
Colours by Lin Visel; edited by Jim Gibbons (who called it the funniest comic he’d ever read)
A fresh, five-part Tobias and Jube story, commissioned by comics app startup Stela. I was so excited about this comic that I turned it into a cross-media project with music and video! Altogether, one of the best things I’ve ever done.
Blogged about here and here. Listen to the companion album at Bandcamp, or listen and watch on YouTube.

Dark Horse Presents

2011-2014
Humour comics, published by Dark Horse Comics
I was invited by Dark Horse owner/president Mike Richardson to contribute to this relaunch of Dark Horse Comics’ flagship anthology, and produced a number of multi-page Hilarity Comics for it during its run. My pieces were often cited by reviewers as stand-outs.
Blogged about under this tag.

Hilarity Comics

September 2009 – March 2019, irregularly, may be ongoing…?
Webcomic
A non-videogames-related continuation of the bizarre humour of Eegra Hilarity Comics, often cynical and taboo-injuring but just as likely to be benign, philosophical, or cute. Featuring Dicknose, the Worst Unicorn, and Indecisive Man!
(Currently available to read on tumblr and Scrampbonk, though the tumblr archives are damaged. I intend to move them to a better web-home soon.)

Mr Frisky’s Unbelievable Planet

May 2007, printed September 2022
20 pages. A friendly, funny, all-ages comic I drew for a competition. It finally saw the light of day when I designed and had it printed as a slim, attractive volume fifteen years later. Currently available in that form, at my Ko-fi shop.

Eegra Hilarity Comics

September 2007 – April 2009, plus a few irregular ones beyond that
Webcomic, published by Eegra
A weekly webcomic about videogames. Absurd, grim, vile, directly insulting to the target audience, and the most consistently popular feature I produced while working for Eegra, a website for gaming news and nonsense.
(Currently available to read here, though the tumblr archives are damaged. I intend to move them to a better web-home soon.)

Raymondo Person

March 2004 – March 2009, irregularly
Webcomic
A cute, rude, and very silly webcomic I did for a while, with a near-stick-figure main character and increasingly intricate and effortful black-and-white artwork. Included Tobias and Jube in the cast, having a break from the restraints of children’s comics.

Tobias and Jube

2002-2003/4
Serialised comic, published by Mania magazine, Nextmedia
My second comic for Mania, under the pen name Dot McSodden. Two blobby friends conjure up rollicking capers to have, driven by zig-zagging non-sequiturs and punctuated by long, confused silences. Completely absurd, always comedy-first, and holds up well decades later.

Pink Chickens

2001-2002 (14 episodes)
Serialised comic, published by Mania magazine, Nextmedia
Monthly, serialised comedy-adventure comic for kids’ magazine Mania, sold across Australia and New Zealand. A pair of twelve-year-old weird girls, Dolly and Mustard, and an uptight mutant goldfish named Basil, have zany yet slightly dramatic adventures in outer space! The subject of a lot of fan art sent to the magazine.

24-hour comics (misc.)

24-page comics drawn in 24 consecutive hours! That’s the idea, anyway.

• Lords of the Future (June 2013): Intensity and nonsense from Dimension XQXON.
• Mr Fuzzywhee (October 2007): Funny and sad and a little bit creepy!
• ****! (June 2006): This one’s only for people who were there.

Nuts

November 2019
A half-album of further instrumental fun, synth- and sampling-heavy, aggressively weird, irresistibly cute, energetic, eclectic, and appropriately nutty. I call it ‘jumblepop’! Briefly but enthusiastically reviewed on Discchord and Beatradar.
Blogged about here. Listen and purchase at Bandcamp.

Relax, Will Ya?

October 2018
A sampling- and sound-design-heavy album of playful, meandering, low-tempo ‘instrumental’ music to relax and wonder to. Heavily influenced by Art of Noise, but has also been likened to Enigma, Jean-Michel Jarre’s Zoolook album, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, and even Sigur Rós. Very positively received.
Blogged about here. Talked about on the Audiobus forums! Watch a drawing video accompanied by the track The Coming of the Snail God. Listen and purchase at Bandcamp.

Tobias and Jube and the Something Hat Mystery: the Euphonious Companion

September 2017
An album of silly and excellent songs to accompany and promote my comic, Tobias and Jube and the Something Hat Mystery. Made entirely on my iPad, as a casual throwaway thing at first, but then I got really into it and spent months teaching myself music production, audio engineering and so on. Oops!
Blogged about here and here. Listen and purchase at Bandcamp.

Sound Club Sweet

2009-2010
A short album of ‘chiptune in spirit’ music, actually made in the under-known and (even then) deeply obsolete Sound Club for Windows. The final album was expanded from a handful of tracks I created for TIGSource/Derek Yu’s collaborative-indie-game-making Assemblee project. This was my first semi-serious project using a piano roll to digitally create music, and the bug gnawed away at me for years…
Blogged about and still downloadable here. Or, listen on YouTube. Original TIGSource forum thread here.

Christmas, Christmas, Christmas

2007
Not so much an ‘album’ of ‘music’, more an experiment in sound design using a cheap microphone and Audacity — and also, a prank. The idea is to sneak these chunks of bewildering festive cacophony into your household’s Christmas music playlist on shuffle mode. Many have reported to me that not only did they do this, they have continued to do it every holiday season to the present day. So the madness of Christmas, Christmas, Christmas is a tradition, now.
Still downloadable here, and listen-to-able (but not shuffle-able) on YouTube.

You Can’t ‘Waste’ Your Vote!

2013, 2019, 2022
An informational comic explaining how Australia’s preferential (or ‘instant runoff’, ‘ranked choice’) voting system works. The original version was whipped up in time for the federal election in 2013 and went immediately, explosively viral. Since then it has remained part of the fabric of Australian election seasons, and (according to campaigners) helped to boost the minor party and independent vote during that time. It’s popular internationally as an explainer, too.
Completely remade in colour in 2019, and followed up in 2022 with a much-requested sequel to explain how voting works for the federal Senate. Blogged about here.
(There was also a lesser-known sequel-of-sorts in 2014, regarding proposed changes to Medicare.)

ESL teaching

2013-2015 (mostly)
As a high school English teacher on the JET Programme, I found myself with sufficient free time and energy at work to design a ton of illustrated activities, games and worksheets to engage my students. I shared some of these online and they remain popular with other ESL teachers.
Many can be seen on my old Tumblr, mostly under the ALT lessons tag. Some, compiled into printable PDFs with instructions, remain for sale at this Gumroad store. (I intend to re-compile them and add them to this website properly, someday.) Briefly blogged about here.

Coaster/Postcard drawing project

2005 — Ongoing
I started doing little painted drawings on beer coasters (as described at the start of this video), and kept doing so in little bursts over the years — expanding the project to include postcard-sized canvases as well. When I hit a big, round number like 100, I’ll make a book of them, probably.

Catbug animated sticker concepts

2021
Client: Frederator Studios
Concept illustrations for animated social media stickers, featuring Catbug from Bravest Warriors. These were adapted into looping animations by Natasha Allegri.

Terrible Unicorns

January 2020 — Ongoing
This will be a colouring book someday. I started making silly, hideous unicorns as a way to start drawing again while recovering from a broken hand. One of these appeared in Squishbook (2024).

Tobias and Jube’s Quality Assortment

2016
Line stickers
I thought it would be cool to make stickers for the Line social media app, so I did! I’m sure that most people who’ve bought it never read Tobias and Jube in Australia in the early ’00s, which is gratifying. The “We’re doomed!” sticker is particularly popular, so much so that I turned it into a real sticker in 2022.
Blogged about. Line stickers, via Line. Real sticker in my Ko-fi shop.

Spectrum Spelunker backgrounds

2011
Client: Tim Jenkins / Battle Studio
Scrolling backgrounds for the ‘time attack’ mode of an indie action-puzzle-platformer videogame. I love making things for videogames! (This one, sadly, seems to no longer be available.)
Blogged about here. Original trailer survives on YouTube.
(T. Ashley Jenkins’ subsequent projects, including Petal Crash, have a home at itch under the name FlutterSprite, which is nice.)

Raymondo Person Standing Next to Trees and Things and Waving at You

2009, 2010
25 postcard-sized line drawings of Raymondo Person, well… like it says on the tin. Followed by 25 more! Just a nice reason to draw some tidy, weird little landscapes. Each set of drawings was turned into a zine. A few of them appear in this YouTube video, where I talk a bit about my drawing habits.

Bad Crosswords

2022 — Ongoing
For a while I was doing crosswords, so of course I started making crosswords too. Despite the name, they are actually pretty well-constructed and very entertaining — just a bit rude, though, which most crosswords strenuously aren’t. Of course they are also impressively designed and illustrated (by me).
Limited zine in my Ko-fi shop.

Fun Zone

2015
A board game, for practising the difference between ‘so’ and ‘because’. An example of the more elaborate ESL teaching activities I created (see above).

Chu-Chi

November 2006
A music/rhythm top-down shooter, made in Game Maker (probably version 5.x), entirely using drag-and-drop visual programming — an impressive yet absurd feat. Someday I should do a postmortem video explaining how it all works.
Blogged about and downloadable here. (However, it seems not to run on Windows 11, at least.)

Be A Man: Association

December 2013
Voice acting, animation by David Blumenstein
I lent my nuanced shrieking to the character of ‘Jerome, the Policing Owl’ in this short satirical animation. At the recording session, I met Dave Graney, which must have been exciting for him!
On YouTube.

Deadly Rooms of Death: The City Beneath

2007
Voice acting, game published by Caravel Games
I did a fun assortment of minor voice roles in this tremendously excellent puzzle game for Windows.
Official (old) webpage. On GOG. On Steam.