Light at the end of the tunnel!

Hallelujah!! A real page! I've been working a long time with this vision in my head and finally am able to start showing people what I've been envisioning....and (drruuuuuuum roll) TA DA!

An Israelite father and his son travel to Jerusalem to sell their olives at the market. Life is good. They live during the time of Solomon the Wise, about 950 BCE. Who said the Bible can't be fun? It is my conviction that many of the greatest stories of all time are contained in the Bible, irrespective of religious content--they're good stories!!!

So this is what the comic will look like. In fact, it is now what it DOES look like. I have completed the color keys for the entire comic, which was more work than expected (I was hoping just to do the first 9 pages which only has 2 lighting schemes, however, the entire comic has like 7 or 8...maybe more...). It set me back 2 days and the inks took an extra 2 days as well. Right now I will be lucky to have the first 9 pages colored by the end of next week.

But quality over quantity. I don't want to sacrifice story or art for speed...especially since I am pushing my limits in all of these areas, and now that I've set this page as the standard I think I have a lot to live up to.

Good luck to me.

First 9 Pages!

I will have completed pages to post next week! I am in the process of inking them and will be coloring them all next week.

An important part of any production is testing the "pipeline" or the workflow to make sure there are as few kinks as possible. I think of it like a well-oiled engine where all the pieces work together perfectly with very little wasted energy.

I decided to complete the first 9 pages of the comic (the total comic is now closer to 40--basically a double-issue!!) in order to make all my mistakes early on. It has been very effective since I've made a bunch of mistakes!

But I am very pleased with how it is coming along. Here's an inked panel:

Have a great week! Gotta get back to work!

SURPRISE!!

Having written loads of material, I have shifted gears again and am back producing artwork. The writing diversion helped with defining my evil characters, which to my great delight are suuuuper plentiful. I mean, we are telling the story of the disintegration of a nation! Everyone's a bad guy. I love it!

Also of note: I got the first draft of a new score for the "film" (okay...I call it a film but it's just a comic book...for now). What's that? You didn't know I had an old score, either? SURPRISE! Music is a necessity for epics...right??!!

And the new score rocks (as does the old, which will also be included at launch). It's working title is "Nephi's Love Theme". Once I have a professional, mastered recording of it I will post a snippet as a teaser. Right now it is still being composed, however. A few revisions and then we will progress it to the recording phase.

The current plan is to have both scores available for download on iTunes.

More surprises to come in the future. I love surprises! So expect them! (Does that still make them a surprise???!)

And here's a random ink from a panel:

Update!

The project has definitely evolved significantly in the last 30 days. I will be publishing it as both a comic book series and a graphic novel series.

It will start small, just one comic at a time and I will likely be selling them door-to-door on nights and weekends until I am able to get them into retail stores like Deseret Book. The business side of things has been a real challenge. I spent over a week just working out the mathematical requirements for establishing a publishing company, and as it turns out subscription services and digital comic books get very complex very quickly. Until demand merits subscriptions and digital versions, I will be publishing strictly print comics and selling them via retail or direct sales. I am pretty sure each 40-50 page comic will retail for $4.99.

I have cracked 200 pages of story, which translates into 1.5 graphic novels or about 450 pages of comics. I'm focusing of course on the first one, but in order to make it a comprehensive, epic story I necessarily have to delve into all of the novels to know where my characters will end up and how they will progress from book to book.

Currently the story consists of 6 graphic novels, and each one will be about 300 pages in length. Yes, that's nearly 2000 pages of story, and it may very well be one of the largest graphic novel series in the world...when it's finished.

I have also been busy improving the style of the artwork. I don't have any finished pieces, but here's a low-res color draft of a panel. I am confident it will continue to improve from here.