For a number of years I have jokingly referred to the tower of overstock books and comics in the basement as the “Mountain Of Broken Dreams”.

For a long time the dream of being a successful self publisher/comic creator seemed out of reach and the sheer volume of dead stock in the basement was a daily reminder.

Tuesday night, in anticipation of the new books arriving, I removed all the boxes from the pallet in the basement and reorganized and re-stacked them. I put the boxes of single comics to the side and lay down two solid layers of Wahoo Morris Book One boxes on the pallet and a single row on top near the back end. Then I re-stacked the dead-stock single comics as an end cap at the back in one teetering row with my 4 remaining boxes of the Free Comic Day Book easily accessible.

Today I filled in the space with three layers of Wahoo Morris Book 2 and put my active convention stock boxes on top. As is, I can access a good chunk of all the different books I’ll need without having to go digging. Previously all my Free Comic Book Day Books were on the very bottom of the stack! Very poor planning.

So, now the mountain needs a new name as it is no longer a “Mountain of Broken Dreams” and is instead a mountain of saleable books. It might take me a few years, but the only thing stopping me from whittling the pile down is my sales technique! Now there is only a teetering and towering “End-Cap of Broken Dreams”, but I’ll eventually use all those books as give-away teasers, so they’ll go too!

I now see a “Mountain of Possibilities”.

And I’m starting to plan the next layer!

The Books came today!

Well, yesterday actually, as I am writing this Tuesday afternoon, but let’s not complicate things! 🙂

The truck arrived just after breakfast delivering 1300 copies of WAHOO MORRIS Book 2 in 21 boxes. They are going in the basement with the rest of my stock, so I had them drop the pallet on the driveway and I carried them in one box at a time.

It’s a feeling that never gets old, holding a book you created in your hands for the first time.
And, while I’m having the usual feelings of insecurity over the quality of the story and art (all artists deep down fear that they are actually terrible), I’m pretty happy with the way the books look and turned out.

I think it’s a nice looking book if I do say so myself and the prettiest package I’ve ever turned out! 🙂

Now, I have to figure out what to do with all these books!

I’ll be shipping out Kickstarter rewards starting this week, but that’s only going to account for a tiny fraction of the print run.

I’m currently working on getting the books into comic shops, but that’s a few months away.

In the meantime I have to store them. Ack!

Happy New Year to one and all!

I’ve been back at work for a week and have been ticking tasks off the to-do list for getting the Wahoo Morris Kickstarter fulfilled.

The bookmarks arrived yesterday to go alongside the Bookplates that arrived before Christmas.

I think the actual book itself is done, as of yesterday.

Though I will probably triple check all the files a couple more times before sending everything to the printer. It’s been a while since I’ve done this so I want to make sure the colour separations and trapping is all done properly. I don’t want any spelling mistakes or printing boo-boos to suddenly appear when i get the book back from the printer.

After I send the book to the printer, the mini-poster will be the only physical thing left to get done before shipping out rewards to the Kickstarter backers.

It’s getting close!

The Wahoo Morris Kickstarter was a success.

The final tally came in at $3763 with the support of 89 backers.

I couldn’t be happier with the result, and wish I could thank everyone who pledged, shared and tweeted in person. I couldn’t have done it without you!

So, WAHOO MORRIS Book 2 will be going to print the first week of January.

I expect to have the books in my hand in mid to late February, and I will add them to the store as soon as all the pledge rewards have been sent out to all the backers.

I have had a very sporadic experience with color.

I have primarily worked in black and white comics. The real exception has been for covers and I haven’t had the opportunity to do that many of them. So when I have had the opportunity/need, it seems like I am re-learning a new method each time.

Way back in the stone age at Aircel Publishing, the method everyone in the studio was using for colouring was to colour directly on the inked original art using Markers and coloured pencils. There was an air brush attachment nozzle for using the markers with a can of compressed air even.

I used that technique on a back cover for Samurai #11, two covers for Dinosaurs For Hire (Graphic Novel Vol. 2 shown), as well as two unpublished short stories, and most of an issue of a comic I ended up scrapping when Aircel stopped publishing colour comics.

And that was it for colour for a loooong time. I just didn’t have the need.

When I started self-publishing Wahoo Morris I did a lot of research trying to find out what the best method for colouring was. Digital was still not the norm, especially for self-published books. Influenced by artists like Michael W. Kaluta and Charles Vess, I decided to go with a combination of painting with Dr. Martin and Kohinoor water colour dyes.

For the first issue I photo copied the line art at print size onto a small sheet of bristol paper and coloured in the hopes of getting sharper black lines. I wasn’t crazy about the results, but it sufficed. I continued the next 3 covers (the last one shown unpublished) by painting directly on the original art.
           

I went digital shortly after this using Photoshop. I didn’t have trouble with the flatting process (picking the basic colours), and adding a few gradients and highlights here and there,  but I would always then freeze, unsure of what to do next.
    

For the cover for Wahoo Morris Vol. 2 # 1 (issue 4) a did a few colour holds, turning black lines into colour lines which made the colour job look a little fancier, but the technique still remained pretty flat.

For my story (with Jim Bricker) in the Image Anthology Comic Book Tattoo,  again, I coloured it using a pretty flat technique. In that story’s case I was going for a bit of a Tintin lingue claire style, so flat colours were appropriate.
    

After that, I didn’t need to colour again until I decided to start publishing Wahoo Morris digitally on Comixology as singles and I ran out of left over covers to use.

I have had a number of finished B&W covers waiting in line to get coloured for several months.

The biggest change came a couple of months ago when  I switched my drawing software from Manga Studio 4 EX to Clip Studio (Manga Studio 5). It has all the functionality of Manga Studio for Black & White line art, but it adds the functionality of really good painting software. And the Ray Frenden Brushes are the most natural feeling digital brushes I have tried yet. I’ve been itching to try them out for colour for awhile now.

And, about two weeks ago, wanting to add new comics to my email newsletter opt-in sequence, I quickly coloured the front cover to Sîan #1. While I’m not unhappy with how it turned out, it probably won’t make it to print as the cover was drawn as a wrap-around and I haven’t finished inking the back portion and that might change the colour choices.

A few days later, needing a piece of art for a new convention banner and cover art for the Kickstarter page, I forced myself to sit down and colour the wrap around cover art to Wahoo Morris #10 (Comixology Edition).

I’m actually semi-pleased with how this turned out, though I will probably go in and fix a few details before it gets used in print. I feel I’m starting to get the soft modeling and more painterly approach that I was able to get with Dr. Martins and water colours fairly easily.

I have continued to get a bit more colouring practice in over the next few weeks, finishing the covers for Wahoo Morris #8 and #9, the front cover of my Unknown Vistas One Shot, and I have begun colouring the interior pages of Sîan. Though for that I am using a simper technique, as the water colour painting technique I have been using for covers would be too time consuming for an entire book!

I’m going to continue picking away at colouring Sîan over the next few weeks, and I have a few other Wahoo Morris goodies that need colouring, so I should be posting more soon!