Chapter 8, Milestone 3 reached!

This was a fast one! Milestone 3 took me exactly 3 weeks or 15 days to complete. The next two milestones should more or less fall into the same category so we should begin to mentally prepare for an April release of Chapter 8. Here's the preview image of milestone 3:

In other news: we've reached 100 patrons on Patreon and as a little gift I've created an original gouache painting that was given to one randomly picked patron:

A 25 minutes long commented timelapse recording of the creation of this painting is available to all my patron on Patreon.com!

And now I'm going to start work on the next milestone!

Chapter 8, Milestone 2 reached!

It feels good to finally be on track again! Today I've finished the second milestone of Chapter 8 and it was about time to reach that point. The last milestone had been reached 3 months ago and I was beginning to feel nervous about the progress of Chapter 8 although I knew exactly what caused this delay.

In November the fulfillment of the last kickstarter campaign took much too much time from my production schedule and when I had finished the main bulk of that work, I had already decided that I wanted to produce the Christmas Special. The last third of December was eaten up by the Holidays and I was able to start my work on the second milestone not earlier than January. And I still wasn't going full steam.

An important part of my kickstarter fulfillment hadn't been finished yet. I had to paint 4 original gouache paintings, a task I originally had planned for the evenings. But it turned out that I wasn't able to do the paintings in the evenings, there just wasn't enough creative juice left after a long production day. So I decided to take a day off from production for each painting, and although I lost 4 production days (which is nearly a week) doing that, it was a good decision. For 4 weeks, every Monday was "Gouache Monday" and I really enjoyed these days. It was hard work for me to paint those paintings and I felt like a complete newbie. Mixing real colors is such a hard challenge when all you know is the Color Picker in Photoshop. I became better with every painting and in the last one I was actually able to mix and put down exactly the colors I was looking for. Here are the results:

  

My original plan was to finish the milestone in January but it turned out that this milestone contained a lot of complicated artwork. The protagonists are leaving the big city and I want it to be a proper farewell with lots of majestic vistas. I worked nearly 140 hours on this milestone which comes close to the 160-hours-monster-milestone of Chapter 6. However, the rest of the chapter is promising to be finished much faster. There's still plenty of ambitious imagery ahead but it's going to be nature scenes  (and some of them quite dark) which will take much less time then the detailed cityscapes I commited to in my depiction of Kingspeak. I'm really relieved that the story moves on to new sceneries now. Painting architecture is exhausting. Everything has to be in perspective and you can't be as sloppy in the details as you can be in nature scenes. Still I'm going to miss the narrow alleys of Kingspeak. Of course we will see more of it in later chapters but this will be more like short spotlights. The big exploration of the city is over. I guess it will be fun to return to the chapters 6, 7 and, 8 now and then to dive back into this place.

Here are the preview images from this milestone:

As always I'd like to remind you that I'm posting weekly updates on my Patreon page so if you are interested in much more preview images for this milestone, and other behind the scenes info, have a look!

I hope to finish the third milestone before the end of this month. See you then!

5th Anniversary Christmas Special

I proudly present the 5th Anniversary Christmas Special of the Wormworld Saga Digital Graphic Novel!

Go read it on wormworldsaga.com!

So, it's been five years since Chapter 1 of the Wormworld Saga has been released. That's quite some time! First I thought I might launch this episode accompanied by a complete reminiscence of the last five years. A LOT happened during that time but, to be honest, I just don't feel like it. I don't want to look back just now. I feel as if I have only just started on this adventure. There's so much left to do, so much still to accomplish. One of my big goals for the next five years is to create chapters faster and maybe even finishing the First Journey during that timeframe. Considering the circumstances of the production right now, this actually seems to be an achievable goal.

But even if I'm already eager to publish the next chapter, I had a total blast creating the Christmas special. It's been a lot of fun to revisit some old characters and places. And even if 5 years is not really a lot of time, I felt a bit of nostalgia painting Jonas' room and the cobwebs in the attic. It's where everything started and it felt nice to stop by Grannie's living room and rest a little bit before the adventure continues with Chapter 8 in a few months and we'll be thrown right to the center of the Wormworld again.

I hope everyone enjoys the special episode and I'd like to thank everyone who has supported me in the past five years. Nothing of what you can see of the Wormworld Saga today would have been possible without the interest and support of you, my readers. And I would not dare to continue on this adventure without knowing that you are there.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

-DanieL  

Announcing the 5th Anniversary Christmas Special

I'm very happy and proud to announce that this Christmas you won't be left without an update of the Wormworld Saga!

On Christmas 2010, Chapter 1 was released. So, THIS Christmas marks the 5th anniversary of the Wormworld Saga. And of course I won't let that go by without a proper celebration!

I took some time off the production of Chapter 8 (Ha, and you've thought I'd just be slacking!) and invested about 100 hours into the Christmas Special. Of course I wasn't able to create something of the size of a full chapter in such a short time but I think you will enjoy it anyway. I had a great time creating the Christmas Special and I can't wait to release it.

The Christmas Special will be released on Christmas Eve at 10:00pm German time. You'll find a countdown on the Wormworld Saga Website that will help you to figure out when exactly the release happens according to your timezone.

See you then!

New Wormworld Saga Goodies!

I've been busy with fulfilling the last kickstarter campaign during the last few weeks. We've had a big signing and packing event at the Tokyopop offices in Hamburg and finally it's done - the backers of the "Wormworld Saga Print Edition - Volume 1 campaign" have received their packages. Well at least they've been sent out. Some of the packages might still be on their way.

Now that the backers had their turn it's time to provide the new English Wormworld Saga book to all fans. Today we've updated the Wormworld Shop with new products including the resin figure, the keychain pendant, and the German book 3.

Aaaaand I'd like to introduce you to a new digital edition of the Wormworld Saga. The HD Collector's Edition has been designed with the digital collector in mind. It is an offline, DRM-free, high resolution (2048 pixels wide) version of the graphic novel you know from the website. It looks fantastic on high resolution screens, tablets and phones and you can easily store and display it on any device that runs an ordinary internet browser. You can dowload the HD Collector's Edition on Gumroad. Chapter 1 can be downloaded for free/pay what you want so you can test the new edition on your devices.

Ok, sorry for getting all merchant on you but after all Christmas is coming soon and you might find some of these things worthwhile.

I'm back in the production seat now and right at the moment I'm cooking up something special. I won't tell you what it is but I've got a hint for you: This Christmas we'll be celebrating five years of Wormworld Saga. That's right! The first chapter was released on Christmas 2010. Time flies. Let me asure you that I won't let this anniversary go by unnoticed!

Chapter 8, Milestone 1 reached!

I've reached the first milestone of the Chapter 8 production! 20% of the illustrations are done. Here's this milestone's preview image:

And I'd like to point out that I've started to frequently share concept art and panel illustrations with my patrons on Patreon. For as little as $1/month you can join us: https://www.patreon.com/daniellieske

Chapter 8 Production Kickoff

You'd think that after 7 chapters I've become used to starting a new chapter production. But it's every time the same: I'm scared like hell when I see all the work in front of me. But I'm also excited to create the next chapter of my story and, seeing the finished preliminary version before me, I can't wait to share it with you.

The title of the upcoming chapter is going to be:

Chapter 8 – Ambush in the Mushroom Forest

As always I will keep you updated on my progress as I work my way through the five production milestones and there will be preview images at each milestone. One thing that's new is that I've launched a Patreon page. Patreon is a crowdfunding website where creators look for ongoing support from their fans and in return offer access to all sorts of exclusive content. I'd like to make it a place to hang around and get into touch with people, since most other platforms kind of don't accomplish that for me. I will post additional behind the scenes stuff over there and for as little as a dollar per month, you'll gain full access to it. Please have a look at http://www.patreon.com/daniellieske

Blog Block

It's pretty pathetic that my last blog post is from the middle of the last kickstarter campaign. I'm almost ready to send all the rewards out, that's how long there has been radio silence here on the blog. It's not that there didn't happened anything in the meantime. The kickstarter closed with a whopping $46K of pledges, I attended a comic convention in Paris, which was an awesome experience, and I received the wonderful resin figures that were unlocked on kickstarter, just to point out a few highlights. So, enough material to write several blog posts. The only thing is, that lately I'm just not feeling like writing blog posts.

I've got the feeling that reading blogs generally has become a little bit old-fashioned, or is it just me? I personally stopped using an RSS reader quite a while ago because it just stressed me out to see all the content that I didn't have time to read through. The little time I've got left for reading content from the internet now is occupied with (way too much) Facebook and Twitter. When I'm lying in bed at night I prefer to check my YouTube subscriptions instead of reading blogs.

I  noticed that there has been an ever decreasing amount of comments here on the blog during the last two years so maybe I'm not the only one who has changed his preferences? Or maybe it's just that I'm not particularly asking for reader engagement.

Anyway, I actually don't know how many people are reading the blog nowadays. Different analytics provide me highly divergent figures. I'd just like to pass the information to everyone around that if you're following this blog to receive news about the Wormworld Saga, you might consider to join the Wormworld Saga newsletter to which you can subscribe here and the Wormworld Saga Facebook Page. If you are interested in my digital artwork and like to see some new paintings from time to time you can check out the dedicated Facebook Page that I've started earlier this year. I normally also post Wormworld Saga news and new paintings on Twitter.

Ok, thanks for reading the blog so far. I honestly don't know where I'm going with it. Production of Chapter 8 will start soon and normally I'd have to prepare milestone updates for that but right now I'm really not motivated to do that. If you're willing to give me any feedback on this matter please feel free to do so. I will keep an eye on the comments (that unfortunately had way too much spam lately...).

Final Week on Kickstarter!

Yup, we're already three weeks into the ongoing kickstarter campaign for Volume 2 of the English Wormworld Saga Book Edition. And we've already come a long way, unlocked a pile of free goodies and there's a resin figure - a  R E S I N   F I G U R E - available for a moderate upgrade fee:

It's not that the doors are closing any moment but if you'd join the ranks of the backers now, we would be able to unlock even more free stuff for everyone!

Half-Time at Kickstarter!

Last night we've reached the half-time mark of the current Wormworld Saga Book Edition - Volume 2 kickstarter campaign. And just in time for that turning point I was able to announce an awesome new stretch goal for the campaign. If we reach $30.000 I will produce a resin figure that everyone will be able to add to their rewards for a moderate additional shipping fee. I also plan to offer a "figure only" reward for everyone who isn't interested in the books but who want's to have a figure.

There already have been some nice additions to the reward (a poster, two collector cards) and we've got a little bit over 2 weeks left to reach this next goal. The reward package of this campaign promises to become even more awesome than last year's.