Yes, I was born on the first day of the year. I was a New Year’s baby. I know. It sounds cool at first. It makes it easier to keep track of how old you are, were, or will be any given year. When I was younger, it usually involved a two-day party with my friends in the real Everly Heights (Wheeling, West Virginia). My stepdad would also take me out to a breakfast buffet every year, which was always hard with a hangover. It’s a tradition I’ve kept up with my wife and kids almost every January 1, minus the drinking too much the night before.
It’s been a rough last half of 2024, in part due to getting laid off from my day job as a podcast producer. The silver lining is that when I’m not on the hunt for a new day job I’ve been able to tell a lot of new stories in Everly Heights, including a heartfelt story about a silly man’s life falling apart in Mr. Matheson’s Arithme-TIPS and a sci-fi coming-of-age story in Infinite Tina: Worlds Beyond. I’ve also released a range of web apps and related creative tools, mostly for free. To cap off the year, I’m dropping some more free stuff + discounts on paid products as a “thank you” to the people who care enough about my Everly Heights project to read this newsletter.
FREE BOOKS
In 2025, I’m going to be turning the Everly Heights script Fanboy into a graphic novel. My old book series Dogboy Adventures exists in the Everly Heights universe as a syndicated TV show from the 90s that never got a proper conclusion, much like my book series. If you want to catch up on Dogboy before the Fanboy graphic novel releases, you can grab all four books + bonus content for free at EverlyHeights.tv.
GET DOGBOY FOR FREE WITH PROMO CODE: makeyourownluck
DISCOUNTS ON FONTS
I designed two custom fonts for Mr. Matheson Arithme-TIPS: Everly Heights Retro Comic Strip and Everly Heights Scribeline Ink. If you want to use them to make you own creative stuff, have at it! Use the promo code below to purchase any font for just $2.99.
SAVE $8 PER FONT WITH PROMO CODE: comicfonts
NEW FREE MODELS
I have two free Stable Diffusion models to cap off 2024 and celebrate the two years I’ve been working creatively with Stable Diffusion. The first is Everly Heights Anthology, a merge of every custom FLUX model I published in 2024. I’ve also trained versions for SD 1.5, SDXL, and Flux. I consider it a worthy replacement to my previous “everything” style model Everly Heights TaleSpinner. It’s the culmination of the project I started two years ago, with these weird t-posed characters:
The other new model in this drop, Everly Heights Weirdos, is a Flux model trained on the original batch of renders from my first experiment in using AI to make characters for animation. I (over)trained on 12 pieces of original vector artwork inpainted with my face before I really understood how to adjust the settings, leaving me with a weird model that made weird characters. This week, I took the original test renders from my desktop wallpaper (above) and trained a new model which makes some weird trippy characters. If you like weird, this is the model for you.
🎨 Everly Heights Arts Board Membership
Like I said earlier, I don’t like getting presents, but if you must get me one, I’d really appreciate your support for the Everly Heights project. I’ve made it easy, with no reoccurring charge like Patreon, plus you get some cool stuff!
Become a Patron of the Arts and help Everly Heights thrive! If you’ve enjoyed the stories we’ve told and the tools we’ve built this year, consider a one-time donation to the Everly Heights Arts Board. Membership includes goodies like personalized thank-you letters, exclusive cards, and your name immortalized in our Hall of Fame. Support the arts with a one-time donation!
This is a great way to help support Everly Heights financially so we can keep telling compelling stories about nostalgia and afford to pay other artists to participate. It also helps me with costs like new equipment, online services, and rent/electricity so I can keep telling these stories.
I hope you have a happy new year, and I can’t wait to share even more cool stories and tools with you in 2025.
Not as young as he used to be,
Bill Meeks
