Chapter 2, Milestone 4 reached!

(little Lucas is busy learning to stand on his feet these days)

We are getting close! I can almost see the finish line and we are not even close to December yet! It's pretty save to assume that the artwork of Chapter 2 will be finished in early December. 

It's interesting how, at least up to now, all the individual milestones took nearly exactly 40 hours to accomplish. The space I'm covering in each milestone is the same but the amount of panels differs vastly. Milestone 1 and 2 both had 14 panels. Milestone 3 had 23 panels and Milestone 4 even had 29 panels. I really thought that the more dialog heavy milestones (with more and smaller panels) would take much more time but that doesn't seem to be true. I think that is due to the fact that I'm able to reuse backgrounds in dialogs where the camera switches back and forth between the characters. 

Well, and another thing is amazing: when I add another 40 hours (for the last milestone) to the total sum of hours that I've already worked on Chapter 2, I land at 200 hours. This is 10 hours less than I needed to paint Chapter 1! So, although Chapter 2 will be 25% longer than Chapter 1, I will probably spend less time on painting it, which really is amazing. And I can assure you that I'm not rushing things here. I would definitely say that the quality of artwork even has improved. 

Alright, I'll stop boring you with numbers now. Instead, here's the preview panel from Milestone 4:

And this is in fact the only panel of this milestone that I can share without giving away too much of the story. 

On a sidenote:

Video2Brain has finally published the last of the video workshops that I have recorded in July. It's the German version of the "Focus on Digital Painting" workshop:

On the product page you'll again find 25 minutes of preview videos! Enjoy! 

All workshops I have recorded this year are now available in German and English language.

Kickstarter Rewards Finally Finished!

Yesterday I finally was able to finish my work on the rewards for the kickstarter campaign that funded the Wormworld Saga App back in April. From local artist Dirk Gross, who also does picture framing, I received these nicely framed watercolor paintings for the three top tier backers of the kickstarter campaign:

Dirk did a wonderful job and I have no doubt that the three backers will enjoy these extremely exclusive items. To make them extra special, I signed them on 11th November 2011.

I also want to share with you a photo of the complete package that will now go out to each of the three backers within the next few days. It's a collector's dream come true and I have a bit of a hard time to give them away to be honest :)

And of course I'm trying to wet your appetite here. Christmas is coming and maybe some of you are interested in purchasing Wormworld Saga artwork form the print store. Except for the Wormworld Saga map, the watercolor painting and the kickstarter exclusive print of "Treehouses & Skycastles" you can purchase the items above in the 'Ultimate Fan Collection' (which comes with an original pencil drawing) or seperately or in smaller collections. All prices in the store already include shipping to any location in the world!

I didn't promote it up to this point but since I still have a lot of the Wormseal pins left from the kickstarter campaign (I ordered more than I needed on intention) for the time being all orders from the store come with one of these:

the pins are printed with a metallic effect

Ok, I hope some of you take my bait. I'll be happy to send out some nice packages for you!

You'll hear from me within the next few days. Only a few panels left until I finish the next milestone!

Chapter 2, Milestone 3 reached!

And there it is - Milestone3! As you can see, my Wacom stylus is glowing red hot as I managed to reach the 60% mark in 1,5 weeks. That's the way it's supposed to work! It's pretty save to say that milestone 4 will be reached way before the end of November and that I'll finish my work on the final artwork of Chapter 2 early in December. That would give me enough time to prepare the special content for the App and handle the essential translations.

It really wasn't easy to choose the preview panels for this update because nearly every panel of this milestone contains major spoilers. Out of the over 20 panels I really only had the choice between 4 or 5 panels that I can show you. I chose a big panel that isn't a spoiler right away but which shows Jonas exploring unfamiliar ground:

And here's another panel that doesn't spoil anything but gives a hint on the plot. Is someone getting suspicious here?

And I'm right off to work on the next milestone!

Second English Video2Brain Workshop Available

There's another english video workshop from Video2Brain available now and in this workshop I concentrate on digital drawing. It runs for 2 hours and is a nice companion to my 'Focus on Digital Painting' workshop that was released a month ago. You can find all the detail about the new workshop and over 25 minutes (!) of sample clips on the product page.

And look, there even is a trailer on YouTube:

I hope some of you find this workshop helpful. It was recorded in July and represents my current digital drawing workflow. I use all of the described techniques everyday to create the Wormworld Saga graphic novel.