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The Returned…

Got internet back! Meanwhile the day job is breaking my back (actually, mostly my legs, but yesterday my arms got it pretty hard too) so it’ll take a while before I am settled back into some sort of a creative pattern.

Carnivore Carnival is buffered until the end of August, so there’s time.

Current project upheaval…

Inkbook #2:

No progress since the last update, still stuck on nine pieces. I’ll try to squeeze in some once I’m further ahead with comics work.

Moon Jade Angel #2:

This one’s being set back a bit. Why? Because I have decided to separate the comics content basing it on a simple equation. People who want my comics in print will probably be unwilling to pay 6$ for a book that has 10-20 pages of comics, whereas people who buy these for the art pages alone won’t really care if the comics are gone. So the current amount of finished art is probably below 10 pages.

Coilstar Illustrated #1:

So far it’s a working title but it’ll probably stick. 52 pages of comics and nothing but comics, full color and priced 5.99$. Got at this point 34 pages ready and two more half-ready (a short comic that needs some edits). It’ll also reprint the 14 pages of comics from MJA #1 (which is part of those 24 pages) and contain every short color comic that I did up until this day. Well, every existing one that is. I can’t reprint work from my childhood or the 90s for a simple reason, those pages don’t exist anymore. Hoping to have this one finished for June.

Robyn Hood:

No change since the last update, except I’m pretty certain it’ll end up in Coilstar Illustrated #2 (if it’s finished in time for that).

“nanowrimo novel”:

Still in proofreading. Maybe I can have it out by the time next nano happens? Hopefully.

Amen City Chronicles:

Not really moving forward as I’m trying to build a large buffer for Carnivore Carnival first.

Carnivore Carnival:

Currently have a buffer of 12 pages (pages 3-14 of The Herb) and I’m trying to find the next story to work on.

Script Frenzy:

It appears this project is off, sadly. Unfortunately it’s too late to start this or the planned “Thumbnail Crazy” variant for I was way too busy working on The Herb.

other projects:

I’ve been toying with the idea of an improvised b&w heroic fantasy/action comic, but I have no idea whether I’ll start working on it soon or not. Also, other projects are bumping around my brain, making it difficult to focus on a single thing. We’ll see what comes out of this.

Race against the clock…

All fourteen pages have been written, pencilled, scanned, inked (pretty much redrawn during that phase), edited, lettered and partially re-written, flatted… and now I’m ready to tackle the final part of the equation. The coloring…

I have about 8 hours to finish the work. Damn, that’s going to be one heavy night. But I’ll give it all that I can so that The Herb can not only go live on Monday, but so that I can have it all uploaded before the Taxi! 1-pager debuts in the morning (or at the midnight, according to whatever timezone the server is in).

Back to work for me!

Coming soon at Carnivore Carnival: The Herb

The Herb is based on a sci-fi story I wrote about ten years ago. That’s all Im’ saying for now. 14 pages, and if nothing goes wrong, it should start April 12th. Of course I need to finish the damned thing and have barely began inking. Still, I should make it in time (I hope).

Here are the inks for the first page:

Thumbnail Frenzy…

So, on April first Script Frenzy shall start, right?

Well, I have decided to do a variant of that, a variant that I call Thumbnail Frenzy. This still involves writing scripts, but specifically for comics/graphic novels and rather than write 100 pages of text (as measured by however many pages the printed version would take), I decided to try and do 100 pages of comic scripts (as  measured by the number of finished comic pages it would give me), and to do the thumbnails for each and every of these pages. Perhaps even attempt full pencil layouts, although I’m not sure I can achieve that. The focus will be on doing short stories for Carnivore Carnival. Just burn through the huge archive of story ideas sitting in my notes.

I’ll try and update this place with some progress info.

The current state of projects...

Inkbook #2:

There are nine new pieces ready. I haven’t decided whether I’ll do the book in the same fashion (that is 40 new and 10 old pages) or whether I’ll fill the book to the brim with new drawings. I’d love to go with the latter, so that would mean 43 pieces to go.

Moon Jade Angel #2:

Tricky math here. I have 5 pages of comics ready and also five pages of art. Also, a b&w 2-page comic that I want to run on the inside covers. There’s a couple more pieces that resurfaced after I assembled book 1, and one or two that simply didn’t make the cut, plus a four page section on my really old drawings and digital doodles (I was unhappy with the written part so I cut these pages out entirely). I’m thinking about taking a bunch of b&w drawings that simply don’t have what it takes to make it into Inkbook and applying some good colors on top of them. That could take few more pages I guess. So I don’t really know how many pages I have at all, haha. But 10+ is a good guess at this point.

Robyn Hood:

I’m still not sure on whether to draw this one now or not. I could do it and just get it out of the way but it doesn’t feel right so close to my grandma’s death. We’ll see… I’m thinking of rewriting it a little and either expanding it to 40+ pages, adding a second story to fill up a full 48-52 page book, or compressing and streamlining this one a bit to get it below 24 pages. Depending on the choice, it’ll either become a larger oneshot, or a long tale inside of one of Moon Jade Angel issues.

The “nanowrimo novel”:

Still hasn’t returned from proofreading, although work is progressing on it. Slowly, but surely forward. Hoping to have more news on that one soon.

Amen City Chronicles:

I’ve redesigned the structure and will aim for 250 page volumes (or closely thereabout), and a 5-7 days a week updating webcomic. Depending on whether I can achieve a tempo of 3 pages a day or have to stick to drawing one page a day (depends on day jobs and such) I’ll be either looking at roughly simultaneous publishing online and on paper OR the webcomic going at its own speed with the printed volumes coming out every 3-6 months, so faster than online.

How’s the story? I have v1 partially rewritten and expanded to contain majority of v2 + a bunch of new scenes that did not go into Din Krakatau, but it needs a finalized script. Also, I have the opening sequence and the following 50-70 pages of v2 written down. Beyond that all I have is loose ideas and plotlines, nothing set in concrete.

Carnivore Carnival:

I’ve been a bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of my ideas that could be adapted into short comics. In short, I don’t know what to focus on next. I’ve been slowly chipping away on several scripts though. The plan for the webcomic is to continue as it is and then put the stories either into Moon Jade Angel, or as standalone oneshots (if they’re long enough for that). I will try drawing them in the “sketchbook method” I wrote on about in this post. Got a bunch of cheap notebooks bought specifically for that.

So this concludes the update session. There are other things in work, neither of which will see the light of day this year probably, so it’s too early to write about them.

New Project: First Sketch…

First sketch for my next comics project, Robyn Hood.

A 32 page oneshot, full color.

What you see above is the current design. I might still tweak it a bit (perhaps the colors?) but I’m quite happy with it as it is. Robyn Hood is meant to blend together Robin Hood and Red Riding Hood into a single character, and in the course of writing and designing it became a sort of “mythological action fantasy”. More art and notes as the project develops.

A little birdie told me…

It appears both Inkbook #1 and Moon Jade Angel #1 are one step closer to being available. How do I know? Well, first thing I did this morning was to check on Ka-Blam (as I did EVERY morning for the last week, not to mention the 20-30 times I checked afterwards during the same day) only to find out that the list of orders has changed and that I’m in the red. That means I was charged for the two barcodes necessary to sell my books through Comicsmonkey.

I guess that means they have the barcodes ready for me. But are they being put onto the covers? Are they already there? Will the books be available tonight? Tomorrow? Next week? A month? I wish I knew.

Still, progress is always welcome, and the moment these are available on Comicsmonkey and Indyplanet, I shall make a post about it.

A good start regardless…

I slept only three hours. I don’t know what’s going on with my sleeping pattern these days, it’s so chaotic. Regardless, the day started quite good, as the first thing I did was sit down and rewrite the outline for future Amen City Chronicles stories.

First, Din Krakatau shall be redrawn (as planned) and there won’t be any major changes. The storyline shall remain intact, I just plan on adding a couple pages here and there to stretch out a few scenes that feel a bit crammed at this point. And of course it’ll be b/w. I’m expecting the overall pagecount to jump up to 150 pages or whereabouts.

Then, volume two will follow the previously written unfinished script with a new chapter that’ll basically deal with the new major character I was going to introduce (and focus on) in volumes 3-7. Instead old volume 3 shall fold into the last 70 pages of 2 (which will be longer as I’m hoping all the future volumes will be too, around 192-196 pages, I can afford to do so due to b&w printing being much cheaper), whereas volumes 4 and 5 will become the new v3. But I don’t have that one written yet so I don’t want to head too far into the future at this point.

So the big question remains… When the hell am I gonna draw all of this?

Currently in works…

Already completed:

Moon Jade Angel book 1, a hybrid sketchbook/artbook/short comic anthology. It consists of 48 pages of art and comics.

Inkbook book 1, a b/w sketchbook collecting all of the 40 digitally inked drawings that I did between September and December 2009, plus additional 12 from earlier months. A total of 52 pages of art.

Both books are completed and have been sent off to Ka-Blam and I’m currently awaiting for them to be added to Indyplanet and ComicsMonkey. I’ll post an update once they’re accepted.

Still in works:

Two more projects. The first one is my NaNoWriMo novel which turned out well enough to publish it (or at least I’d like to believe so) and is currently going through proofreading. I’m expecting it back in a month or two, so if nothing goes wrong, it’ll be made available for March or April. No official title yet as I don’t want to simply name it after the main character.

The second one on the other hand IS named after the main character and it’s a oneshot comic that I scripted entirely on January 1st. It’s going to be a little 32 page  mashing together the concepts of Robin Hood and Red Riding Hood. I’m currently stuck in the visual reference/character design phase, but am hoping to start drawing shortly. If nothing goes wrong, it should be done early February.

There are also two more comics projects based on my older scripts, but both need heavy rewrites and I have no idea which one I’ll focus on first, so I’m not writing on these two yet.