Newsletter

Cartoon Gravity 28

Crowley, Club news, Kenris Macleod, Non-US apps, Sunday supplement.

Julian Simpson

13 Apr 2025 • 4 min read

I miss doing a regular newsletter. This one is being pecked out on a Voyager keyboard, so please excuse any typos that may not get filtered out. I'm slowly getting to grips with the thing, but my current speed on it is about 9wpm.

Last weekend saw me move the Development Hell newsletter off of Substack and onto Cartoon Gravity. I did this mostly because I wanted as much of my stuff as possible to be in one place. If you're interested in writing-related posts and newsletters, or want access to the archive, existing Cartoon Gravity subscribers get a month free by clicking HERE.

The big news this week was "The Lovecraft Investigations: Crowley" moving into pre-launch on Kickstarter, for a May 1st launch date. This is the first time I have ever crowdfunded anything (it turns out it's a LOT of work). The general advice is to look at what people in similar fields are offering, but I decided instead to put together an offer that I would get excited about. And I think we've achieved that. There's still some fine-tuning to do before launch, but I think the rewards we're offering are pretty awesome. For more on the project, and to register your interest, head to the Crowley pre-launch page.

I've also been pretty good at posting near-daily journals on here this week. I don't send those out via e-mail because no one needs the hassle. If you have an RSS reader, hook that up, or check into the site, or join the Cartoon Gravity Club if you want to be super up-to-date on what is happening.

Here's the round-up:

On Monday I offered up a video tour of Walton Goggin's astonishing Hudson Valley home and a variety of links.
On Tuesday, I posted some musings on AI.
Wednesday was a dive into process, with the help of Nick Milo's charming and crystal-clear videos on Obsidian.
Thursday was also a process post, featuring a short hymn to Notion

Cartoon Gravity Club News

A new section of this newsletter, which might be better suited to a noticeboard in a village hall.

We debuted the new Crowley key art by the brilliant Carl Pugh
The Coffee Shop, Snug and Gallery are going from strength to strength.
The Gallery, especially, has been showcasing extraordinary work from Carl Pugh, Chris Prince, Kenris Macleod, Seb Pugh and Simon Birks.

Branching off from that last point, I want to especially highlight the work of Kenris Macleod, because I have never seen anything like it. Kenris works in freehand embroidery, creating pieces with a sewing machine (I'm not going to pretend to understand how). The results are impossibly detailed, like this:

You can check out more of her work at kenrismacleod.com.

Club Members have access to all of this stuff at The Cartoon Gravity Club.

Non-US Apps

This might expand to a bigger piece at some point, but given the current political climate, a few people have asked me what non-US apps I would recommend. Given the fact that most of us are either on Mac or Windows, it is neither possible nor desirable to ditch all American software. I also don't think it's a useful form of protest because even some of the biggest and best American software (the Arc Browser, Highland Pro, MyMind etc) is made by small companies that are in no way affiliated to, or supportive of, the current administration.

That said, attempting to answer the question does reveal something really interesting; the vast majority of the most innovative, best-designed apps are already made by non-US companies.

Notes and Writing

Capacities - Germany
Obsidian - Canada
Ulysses - Germany
Scrivener - UK
IA Writer - Japan
Aeon Timeline - Australia
Craft - Hungary
(beat) screenwriting - Finland

Organisation/Tasks etc

Spark e-mail (Readdle) - Ukraine
Calendar (Readdle) - Ukraine
Things 3 - Germany
Proton Mail - Switzerland (also ProtonDrive/Calendar/Password etc)
Akiflow - Italy
Routine - France
Milanote - Australia
Tana - Norway

Creative

DxO Photolab - France
Qobuz (music streaming) - France
Affinity (Photo, Design, Publisher) - UK

I'm sure I'm missing loads. And do remember that with the current market turmoil, smaller companies may have a hard time keeping their heads above water.

For my money, you cannot beat Ulysses (on which I am typing this very newsletter) as a prose writing app. And anyone still paying an Adobe subscription should immediately check out DxO and Affinity products, not for geo-political reasons but simply because they're cheaper and better.