What’s my goal?

Lots on the go right now and we’re steaming along with the story at this point. This was a fun page to do and I really liked how the camera angle changes between the panels. It looks really nice with the previous page which will be on the facing page in the print version. That’s actually something that I’m trying to wrap my head around whether I like or not. I design and draw all the pages as spreads but then publish them online as single pages. This works for the most part in pacing things out except that you lose some of the flow that you’d get seeing the pages together. I guess that’s the drawback to how I’ve set this whole thing up.

In the end, I guess you just need to trust me that this looks awesome with the other page! Here’s the art:

(Love the first panel and I really love the second panel. Can’t really explain why, but I do)

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What’s my goal?
As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been busy with all sorts of other work lately. What’s interesting is what a little distance from this project does – providing some room to figure out what I need to do next. The past couple of weeks spike in visitors got me to wondering what my overall goal for the project is.

What is my overall objective with On the Verge? What am I looking for? I don’t expect to hit it big. I’d like to find a group of loyal people who really dig what I’m doing. I just want to share my story and art with people and hopefully they like it. Whether that’s some form of a “community” based around the world that I’m creating or something like that, I don’t know.

I’m not doing this to make money. To be honest I don’t think I have the scale to make enough money to justify that type of thinking. There was a really good post over on remindblog about what it takes to make money doing this.

What I do want is to be able to cover the costs of production.

So this leads to…
I’m curious what type of promotions I should be doing? What is going to get the word out the best? I’m posting pages and artwork as I produce them, but I’m posting online for free. So what is a good way to get the word out that is low cost but effective? All of this requires some further research.

I think that this is the next thing that I need to wrap my head around. Writing and doing artwork is the easy part for me. I’ve got posting artwork pretty much taken care or. So now it’s all about marketing and spreading the word…

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Just finished up reading Batman: The Long Hallowe’en last night (I know, great Easter reading!). I’ve read it before, but the last time was about five years ago. I mentioned way back in my very first post that before I did any work on my own story I spent a good deal of time re-reading comics that I grew up with and maybe that would give me some ideas of what I wanted to do with my story. Anyway, I couldn’t find The Long Hallowe’en at the time but I have since then and I finally got a chance to read it. The point it is it’s reminded me why I started this whole process and inspired me a little bit to keep going. For anyone who hasn’t read it, consider this a small recommendation to go out and read it if you like good Batman stories.

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Is anyone tired of seeing this? Maybe I need to find another convient place to put it so it’s readily available. I know I’m tired of sticking it in these posts every week. Anyway, if you’re enjoying the story so far than please take a moment to spread the word and vote for On the Verge by clicking the link below. Thanks to everyone who’s taken a moment and voted so far. Keep voting!

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I’m out of breath!

I’m really happy with how this page turned out from a design perspective. You’ll notice that the top three panels sort of repeat what I did on way back on page 4. This is the sort of design element with page layout that’s really changed for me since I drew pages way back when. I think my experience as a designer has really helped change the way that I approach page layout and design in that I will repeat elements whereas in the past I wouldn’t. Repetition is one of the fundamental elements of design and I think when used effectively can actaully add to the overall experience and storytelling.

Anyway, enough blathering… here’s the new page:

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Next up, let me apoligize for anyone looking for my “really good ideas” for a post that I wanted to publish last week. Life got nuts for me and posting anything just didn’t happen. Bad blogging, I know. I’ll try to finish off what I intended to put up and actually post it this week instead.

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As always, if you’re enjoying the story so far than please take a moment to spread the word and vote for On the Verge by clicking the link below. Thanks to everyone who’s voted so far. I’m continually surprised that you have taken a moment out of your day to do so and I really appreciate it. Word of mouth is really the best way to go, so tell everyone you know!

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It’s now a sprint to the finish…

It really is s bit of a sprint to the finish around here. Page 9 is ready to go. Really happy with how it turned out, so here it is:

I love the textures on this page mixed with the colours. It’s a nice break from the white gutters that are on almost every other page. Looking back on it, I guess I was doing this page as I was doing the artwork for the background of the site!

I mentioned with last week’s page that it was the left-hand side of the spread and that I had designed them to be seen together (a t least more so than I normally do!). So for the sake of showing what I mean, below there is the full spread that you can check out. I worked really hard on the design and layout for the first twelve pages (I’ve posted about it a couple of times) and you’ll notice that I’ve really stuck to the underlying grid that I established at the start. I really wanted to play off that with this spread of Hannah running outside and hopefully the idea comes across. The other thing that I came up with right away when doing thumbnails was the silhouettes that run (pun intended) along the bottom of the spread. Maybe it’s a cheater way to show her running, but that freed me up to do the tighter shots in the panels on this page.

Anyway, here’s the full spread. Does it work?

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Some other quick thoughts…

Busy week again last week, but I hope people liked the post about reMIND. I’ve got a couple of other recommendations that I’ll be posting in the future.

I’m also debating on what I should post about later this week. I’ve got a couple of really good ideas so we’ll see. Does anyone have anything that they want to hear about? Or are you tired of all my talking?

I’m also debating with myself about the website design. I keep learning more new stuff, so maybe I’ll take a bit of break from all of my other stuff and figure out if things can be spruced up around here. If anyone has any good sites that they’d recommend for their design or something that they do extremely well, feel free to post a link. I’m always on the look out for new ideas and ways of doing things.

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Finally, if you’re enjoying the story so far than please take a moment to spread the word and vote for On the Verge by clicking the link below. Thanks to everyone who’s voted so far. I’m continually surprised that you have taken a moment out of your day to do so and I really appreciate it. Word of mouth is really the best way to go, so tell everyone you know!

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RECOMMENDED – reMIND

I want to share some of the great work that’s out there with anyone that reads On the Verge on a regular basis. So to start things off, I want to let everyone know (if you’re living under a rock and haven’t heard about it yet!) about reMIND. I found reMIND through a different route than most comic readers. A blog I follow (magCulture.com) had a post about Kickstarter that I bounced over to check out. On the main page there I saw this fantastic piece of art and watched the video that its creator – Jason Brubaker – had created to try to raise money to fund the printing of his graphic novel.

Anyway, I was intrigued by all of this so I visited his site and was blown away by what I found. Here was someone that was doing what I’ve always wanted to do: creating a graphic novel and publishing it – all on his own! He also tracked all his progress as well as tips and tricks in blog postings that I spent several days digging through. I’ve posted a couple of times about my history with comics and I’ve always intended to actually do one of my own some day, so seeing someone actually doing it really spurred me on and this site has been both a huge inspiration and a wealth of information.

So if you’re not familiar with the story, here’s a brief synopsis: 

reMIND is a mystical, sci-fi about faith, love and brain transplantation.

Sonja, the lighthouse keeper at a seaside oil drilling town, loses her cat, Victuals. Everyone blames the Lizard Man, the local boogeyman, which Sonja knows is a myth created by her late father to generate interest in the town. But when Victuals unexpectedly returns and has the brain of a strange intelligent creature; it seems someone is doing experimental transplants. With the brain of a lizard and the body of a cat, Victuals must now fight to recover his original lizard body and confront what he thought was the all-powerful god.

Continue reading →

pass it on

How do you find cool new stuff to stay excited about art and design?
That’s always a really good question and there’s no easy answer. After a lot of years of being in the art and design industry I’ve learned to trust people whose work I already like. It’s sound simply enought, but I love recommendations from my favorite artists – whether illustrators, designers, musicians, directors or animators. I love to find out what they’re into and what’s inspiring them to do the work they do. In fact, I find that most of the illustration, art, design, music and movies that I pick up for the first time nowadays is because it was recommended by someone who’s doing something that I already enjoy.

So what I would like to do is share some of these types of things with everyone. Hopefully this will give you a little insight into what I’m reading and following at the moment. What’s influencing the work that I do and where might I take things in the futyre. My plan is to recommend something new maybe a couple of times a month. I’m not quite sure what I’ll cover, but to start it will definitely be comics and illustration related. I’ll also offer some comments and hopefully that starts some kind of discussion or at least introduces something new to someone who hasn’t seen the work before.

So starting tomorrow I will be posting my vary first recommendation. Keep an eye out for the badge above and stay tuned…

holy traffic!

So last week On the Verge was linked to on Reddit which was kind of cool. A whole bunch of new people were visiting, so if you are new around here, “Hey, what’s up? Say hello if  you want to.” I’d love to hear any kind of feedback that you might have. How’s everything looking so far? Don’t be shy and I’ll try to get back to you as quickly as I can. Feel free to comment on the posts and pages or drop me a quick email through my contact page.

Anyway, on to the fun stuff… here’s the new page (click the image for a bigger version):

My first splash page (I know, page one was kind of a splash, but I’m not counting that since it was the first page!). I’m going to keep my thoughts about the design of the page until next week when the rest of the spread is posted.

I really tried to squeeze a lot about Hannah into the first chapter and this section is definitely part of that plan. It always drives my nuts in movies and TV shows when there is a main character who sits at a desk all day and who when the shit hits the fan is a super-athlete. So a simple page to tell the reader that she IS an athlete and then I can do what I want to later on with the story. Hopefully this works for everyone else as well. So indulge the digression…

I’ll have another quick post tomorrow and then a longer one on Thursday, so do check back in!

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For anybody that is new, stay connected with On the Verge through Facebook, Twitter, RSS or Deviantart. And if you have a preferred way of staying connected that I haven’t covered here, feel free to send me a quick note and I’ll look into it for you.

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Thanks to everyone who’s voted so far. If you haven’t, well… If you’re enjoying the story so far than please take a moment to spread the word and vote for On the Verge by clicking the link below. Thanks for voting!

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