1/26/09

January Projects Update

First monthly update of 2009! Here's what has been keeping me busy as of late.

Creating Comics! Class
  • Creating Comics! starts up again this week, this time as an after-school club that meets once a week for students in my local area in grades 6-8.
  • I've been fine tuning my syllabus for this class and I think it'll be a good time. We'll spend about half the time working on understanding comics as an art form and developing skills as storytellers. The other half will be focused on improving art skills. I'm looking forward to it.
My Writing Process Articles
  • I've enjoyed writing a series of articles on writing process here on this blog, and been receiving some quality feedback. It's been a chance to reflect on the leaps I've made in my own writing over the past several months and to distill the pearls of wisdom I've been picking up from the many books on craft I've been reading.
  • If you're new to the site, check out the first in the series right here.
  • I'm planning this series to run for ten installments. Then I have some big plans for developing the content used in those articles further, but I'm going to keep that under wraps for the time being.
  • The next article in the series will debut this week and it's all about creating great characters.
Tears of the Dragon
  • This month I launched the Tears of the Dragon Production Website. It's still very bare bones, but new content will be added soon.
  • I commissioned Koko Amboro to draw another pin-up for Tears and he went above and beyond the call of duty. I flatted his drawing with a general color palette, and then turned it over to series colorist Paul Little who absolutely killed on it.
  • I'll be taking some prints of the Tears pin-up to New York Comic Con to hopefully turn some heads.
  • Fingers crossed that I'll hear word from publishers in the next month or two.

ICE
  • I've received the hi-resolution files from artist Damian Couceiro and finished the lettering. They look stunning in black and white.
  • I'm waiting to see what happens with Tears before I make any decisions on ICE going forward. Paul Little is ready to jump on board as colorist for ICE, after doing an awesome job on the ICE Pin-up. But I'm probably waiting until after NYCC to give him the greenlight to start coloring Damian's gorgeous pages.
Original Graphic Novel Project
  • I shifted gears on this project, and changed it from an original graphic novel to a screenplay. And working on this screenplay has been an incredible writing experience. Last week I finished the second draft of the screenplay, and am pleased with the results. I'm getting feedback from a number of sources now, and will probably do a final re-write sometime next month. I'm actually very proud of the work I've put into it, and it's probably the hardest I've worked at any piece of writing I've ever done. While the work isn't quite done (is it ever?) I'm happy with the product.
  • Now I've started the process of turning my screenplay back into an original graphic novel. Yesterday I put in a few hours at the drawing table, the first in a long time I've spent focused on art, and produced a few character concept drawings. While I'm still keeping this OGN project underwraps from the public for now, I'll start to show some sketches and art and things in the weeks and months to come.
Super Seed
  • No Super Seed news. Updates continue at the website. That's all I got for you.

CounterTERROR
  • Waiting to hear from a publisher regarding a CounterTERROR submissions package I sent last week. This specific publisher specializes in comics content for the iPhone. To prepare the package, I had to format CT especially for the iPhone screens. I think CT actually works well in that medium. But we'll see what happens.
  • While I may talk to some publishers at NYCC about CounterTERROR, I'm most likely going to shelve working on CT for the time being, in favor of Tears, ICE and my OGN. If I don't hear anything, I'll debut the work Stefano and I put into CT on the web in March.

Now you're caught up!

No comments: