The Books are IN! But I can't get them yet.

Well the books are IN! It's very exciting I have one here, and even though I had seen all the proof and I went to the press checks and even have the actual uncut and bound version of the book I wasn't really prepared for how incredibly awesome it is! Not just the art, the quality of the printing is amazing! You can actually see all the little details I put in the comic that I thought would only be visible in the Flash version. Like on page 89 you can read the computer monitor ;D I can't wait to send these babies out.

I'll be picking them up Monday morning and I'll be working on sending them out over the next week.

The Book!


The Back of the Book!


Next to a can to show scale


Here it is open


Out of focus, but next to Boris


Not a good picture but Boris has the face I had when I saw it

Convention Display

We are going to Anime Central this May 13th and for the last month or so we have been scrambling to get everything in place for when we go. We will have a merchants table there, It was important to have something to sell (we needed to get the book done, which it is, I'll be picking them up Monday), but It is also important to have a halfway decent booth. So I made up some display elements last night and delivered them to the printer today.

8' table cover

Crappy 10 minute mock up

I probably could have held off on the three four foot posters, I'm not even sure if we will have a backdrop or not at the Anime Central booth (I hope so.) I'm having pages 77, 90 and 92 printed out because I think they represent a nice cross-section of settings and styles from our Alpha Shade.

I told the printers that I need them by the 10th, it's a little closer than I'm comfortable with, but I wanted to give them time to get it done right.

We will also be presenting at a couple panels while we are there, I'm not sure when that will be, I think they are going to post the final schedule on the 30th of April.

Movin' the Server

Supposedly we will be moving the Alpha Shade server tonight, well this morning, the server guy was supposed to call me at midnight, they like to move them at low traffic times, of course it's 12:17 now. I figure I'll give him until I finish this entry then I'm calling him up.

I really hope that this fixes the problems we've been having with random people mysteriously not being able to access our site. I'm also adding a new DNS with a different ISP attached to it. It would be REALLY nice if this fixed the problems. We've had people not able to get to our site since February and it's really not good for PR, our numbers or, lets face it, book sales!

Page 92 - the nib wear

When I bought my Intuos 3 tablet last Christmas, it came with a couple new kinds of nibs for the pen. Previously the nibs came in white and were relatively hard, which meant that they would slide on the tablet surface in a way that made it hard to draw slow lines. The way to get around this was to place a piece of paper over the surface of the tablet and that would give you pretty much the same drawing resistance as you would get drawing on an actual piece of paper. One of the new nibs is the felt tip nib, which ups the nib resistance on the tablet giving much the same effect as using a piece of paper without having to actually use a piece of paper.




Nib wear after page 92


I really like these new nibs, however, as you can see in the picture above they don't last long. That nib was new when I started page 92! Unfortunately, the tablet only came with one felt nib which I had rendered useless within a week. When I went to the Wacom store to order more they were out of stock. ( apparently I wasn't the only one who was excited about the new nibs )They finally got them back in stock at the beginning of this month so I ordered up about 35 of them. It's about $5 for a 5 pack.

It would probably be more economical to just use the paper, but I think that it kind of messes up the eraser on the pen when you do.


Is Alpha Shade Manga?

Well yes and no..I would defanitly say that manga and Anime have strong influences on my style. I was never all that interested in Superhero type comics, the muscle bound hero in tights formula seemed just that.. a formula. But I enjoyed many western style graphic stories as a kid: Elfquest, the short stories in Heavy Metal, some collections of SciFi comics, and a bunch more that I can't really remember the names of right now. It's true that most of the comics Chris and I collected were Manga: Area 88, Naussica, Akira, Crying Freeman, Mai the Psychic Girl, Grey, Outlanders etc. The point I'm trying to make is that I've had plently of exposure to all sorts of comics.

But is Alpha Shade Manga? If you mean did I find a Manga Artist I liked and copy their style exactly, then no. If you mean I live in Japan and I'm Japanese ( which I don't, and I'm not ) so any comic I produce is Manga, then no. If you mean that my style has Manga influences, then I guess so. Personally, I think that it's not really the right question, my style is my own style, it's got influences from all over the place, but it's all mine. When I first started the comic I was swayed by the idea that I should try to conform to some sort of Mangaish style, but as time goes on I've abandoned that altogether and gone for drawing the way I want to. Things have gone much better art wise since then, it was too limiting and lets face it, what's the point of drawing exactly like someone else, or in a particular style? It's not going to make you famous, it's going to make you a follower.

Interlude

Well I'm in the middle of drawing page 92 right now, I'm just taking the time to eat some popcorn and as everyone knows, it's hard to eat popcorn and draw at the same time.

Laura and Nicole


I think it's going pretty well, I'm taking a little bit more time on the characters then I normally do, because I'm trying to upgrade my style a bit, and Nicole needs to look good.

Anyway, I'm going to get back to work. I want to get all the people draw in tonight so I make sure I can finish the page Sunday night.

Crazy piles of prints

So I went to bed about 9 this morning, well yesterday morning now, and got called at 11:30 for the press check for the cover at 12:45. So much for sleep. When I got there they had already finished printing out all the pages for the book, it really brought it home exactly how massive the job I'm having them print is. There were five or six stacks of 2'x 3' printouts about 4 feet tall each.. I'm kind of fudging the exact numbers here, because it was kind of overwhelming. I wish I had remembered to bring my camera, I meant to. Oh well.

Anyway, I approved the cover after we played with the color a little, it was coming out more brown than maroon at first. So we got that all sorted out. A bunch of the people working on other jobs in the shop came over to ask about the comic and tell me what a great job I'm doing. Always a nice feeling.

I also got to take home a sheet from each of the page groupings, so I have uncut sheets of everything but the inside covers. Movin' right along! I thought about assembling an actual book from this, but then if I wait a couple days I've have more of them than I'll know what to do with, So I passed. Besides, there is always the possibility that someone would be interested in buying an item like this..You know.. When we are famous - er.

One whole uncut book, rolled

I need to find a place that sells bulk envelops to send all this stuff out. Once I finish the current page I'll have to get serious about finding a place that does that.

another thing I need to get going on is some signage for our convention tables. That's coming up in a couple weeks. I want to use the guy who did the giant "Cats in Hats" job last year.

happy customers

If I don't hurry up he won't be able to get it done in time. And that would be a shame because they do a good job there and they can print on a variety of materials.

Press Check

Went to the printers for a press check today. That means that I get to check the colors and quality before they print out 60,000 pages ( there are 8 up on a page ). Anyway, I couldn't be more pleased, it looks completely awesome and I'm very happy.
(large version here)
I'll be going in tomorrow for a press check on the Cover, they are doing that on a different printer.

Nicole

I'm finally getting to Draw some of the main Characters of Alpha Shade. It's been over two years since I've drawn Nicole, so it's cool to see what she looks like now that I'm better at drawing.



I'm changing how I do somethings like Hair, I don't think I'll be doing black outlines on them anymore, I think it looks much better with colors.

Anyway, I'm prety happy with how the new chapter is going. The Todd Character is on this page too, I never have figured out what he's going to look like.

Happy Birthday to Me

Well today was my birthday, when it started out I didn't think anyone was going to remember at all, but it turned out everyone did. Still it's kind of depressing to turn 31, somehow it doesn't seem right to be that old yet. The last couple years have been kind of nuts with All the work I've put into Alpha Shade and it's almost like I've been frozen at 28. The time has gone so fast and yet it seems like I've been doing this forever.

Chris says that I have to get at least two pages out a week, and he's right, the story is never going to get anywhere unless I get the pages out quicker. Now that Chapter two has started I really should come up with a better work schedule. Right now I work every day unless I'm obligated to be out of town or something, but I think I get burned out and end up working slower. Or maybe I need to stop thinking of it like a job. I mean, YES it IS a job, but it's more like a lifestyle. MM, I don't know, I don't want to sound like I'm whining, It's great to be able to work on a project like this, and my art has gotten TONS better on the last two years ... I guess it's just that there really isn't any end to it. If I think of it more like something I want to do and less than something I have to do...

Speaking of A-S the preorders for the book are going amazingly well. I was getting pretty apprehensive about the whole thing after the low T-Shirt sales, but I think it's going to be okay ;D
It's only been four days or so and sales have already paid for 1/5th of the printing costs. That doesn't sound like much, but 5000 really high quality books are REALLY expensive to print, so I'm quite pleased with that number. We only need to sell 640 book to pay for the printing costs, which leaves us with 4360 books that sell for pure profit. Not that I expect that we will sell anywhere near that many this year, but since I'll be doing this so many years I can't even think about it, we will have plenty of time to sell them.

I'm going to go back and reread the story tonight. I haven't really read it for more than a year. Since I'm going to have to figure out what most of the main characters need to look like in this chapter, I figure I need to re-acquaint myself with who they are.

I might take a couple days next week to go hang out at the UofM too. I was just there with JQ tonight and it's funny how only a college campus can feel like a college campus. College students too, there is something about them that is so obviously college. Like a slouchy-optimism coupled with a "I just gotta be me just like everyone else" dress code. It would be nice to portray that in the comic.