Trainz

Test about the stuffs!

Might as well

Well it's been a while since I posted in the blog - there were a lot of reasons for this - The biggest being the disaster that printing the books turned out to be with Chapter 2. Most people know the story by now - but the nutshell version is that the printers did a good job, but the binders screwed up the binding and it had to be redone. That meant that they had to crop the book down slightly and hand replace 6 or 7 pages and the covers. This was on all 5000 books. Then they weren't careful and screwed up a lot of them, then we got screwed out of the discount we were supposed to get for screwed up books, THEN to top it all off now that the books were smaller when I actually sent them out in the envelopes that I used to mail out Chapter 1 the books would shift in the package, and the covers would get snagged on an internal seam. I had to send out a lot of replacement books... Anyway... I couldn't bring myself to write about it until I knew everything was okay. After that the plan was to integrate the blog into the new website design, which hasn't happened yet. Since November of 2006 I've been doing quite a lot of Contract work. It pays really well, and sometimes it's even fun, but it doesn't leave a lot of time for Alpha Shade... I still try to get a couple pages out a month, but it's been hard lately.

So, I've been thinking of restarting up the Blog, it's something I can do somewhat regularly even if I am fairly busy. Maybe I can even post some snippits of things I'm working on from time to time ;)

Back from ComicCon

Well I'm back from the San Diego ComicCon -I detailed it pretty well in the latest Rant, but I thought I'd post some pictures for your viewing enjoyment - I didn't get a chance to take many pictures actually since the only time I really got out and about I forgot my camera at the booth O_o oh well! I got to meet a bunch of people I've been wanting to meet for a while, the Penny Arcade guys, the Apple Geeks guys the producers of Last Exile ( who confirmed that we are NOT in fact copying their anime ) I couldn't hook up with Fred this time, but I talked to Sarah and got a copy of Megatokyo 4. I talked to Brion from Flipside as well, he and his girlfriend from Mystic Revolution got upgraded out of the small press alley and I was extremely jealous! As you can see in the pictures below the small press area was sort of a shanty town this year.

I was in the booth a lot by myself at this con - my sister-in-law was there but I let her go do stuff with her friends who live in the area most of the days of the con so I didn't get around as much as I would have liked. Still I did pick up a copy of Flight 3 and the first two Red Star Graphic novels - everyone keeps comparing Alpha Shade to Red star so I thought I should find out why.

Diamond distributors stopped by the booth and told me to send me one of our books - we'll see how that turns out ;) a bunch of TV producers wanted to pitch Alpha Shade to TV stations - one said, and I quote "Well we'll have to take the guns and violence out, but other than that! Pure Gold!" I think I'll pass on that offer! LOL

The French want to translate our comic into French and distribute our comic there and EVERYBODY wants me to work for them, of course they "can't pay much." I love these guys!


Cosplay madness! My sister-in-law as Laura and a fan as a Soldier


To the right of me - These guys made some pretty cool homemade action figures!


to the left of me - These guys had some stories printed in some anthologies - AND they sold t-shirts with their logo on it.. Not really small press, but whatever! ;D


across from me - to the left - mmm sandwiches + sketches = no sales. To the right - Screen savers prints + nice printing but no display or attempt to sell your work = no sales. It was actually kind of sad to see the people around me not selling anything - but you need to try to sell stuff to sell it.
People don't seem to get that.


Behind me - Hippies! WOOOO + Bags on head but nothing to sell = no sales.

Back from Anime Expo

Well I'm Back from LA, Here are some pictures for you to enjoy ;) The convention center was pretty impressive, and apparently open 24 hours a day. It looked like everyone was having a pretty good time.
Our Booth, it was only a 6 foot table so it was my first chance to test out my modular table cloth.
The new display and the completed Destroyer model. Also notice the Emily Handout, they only lasted the first 2 days with extreme rationing. They were way to expensive for that so those of you who got signed copies now have colectors items! :P
A cute Alpha Shade fan! YAY ^_^b
Ron and Cindy my helpful In-Laws! It was their first Anime convention. Cindy's favorite cosplay were the guys dressed up like the Happa-tai guys?! What the!
Going home - we lucked out on the way home and got transferred from our crappy flight with a transfer in Vegas ( bleck - hideous terminal ) to a direct flight on Northwest that got in several hours early. I was disappointed that I didn't get to perform my exit seat duties, but I guess there is always NEXT time!

Destoryer Update

Even More destroyer Progress Pics

It's getting close to being complete, The decks need to be painted and there are a bunch of little things left but it's getting there.

You know Blogger REALLY needs to let you upload more than 5 images at a time, it takes way to much time to upload this many images , It also doesn't upload them in order, maybe they are trying to discourage people from uploading images? Who knows? Anyway enjoy the pics!