Chapter 2 - The Journey Begins

I proudly present Chapter 2 of the Wormworld Saga Digital Graphic Novel!

Go read it at wormworldsaga.com!

It's been an unbelievable year for me. The Wormworld Saga Digital Graphic Novel startet exactly a year ago and from that moment on it was a constant ride of surprises, disbelief, excitement, and a lot of hard work. This year saw hundreds of thousands (822.000 to be more precise) of people from all around the world visiting the Wormworld Saga website and reading the first chapter which - as of today - is already translated into 11 languages (I just added the Italian and the Dutch translation). This year saw a more than successful kickstarter campaign which provided the budget for the creation of the Wormworld Saga App that is available since October, bears a five star rating in the Apple App Store, and has been downloaded nearly 2000 times up to this day. This year also saw a deal with a comic book publisher who is going to release a book adaption of the Wormworld Saga Digital Graphic Novel from summer/fall of next year on. And this year saw me quitting my job and producing Chapter 2 on a fulltime schedule in a bit less than 3 months. Above all these awesome things hovers the one event in January that constantly puts everything into perspective for me: the birth of our first son Lucas. I'm so looking forward to read the Wormworld Saga with him when he's old enough and tell him that he just came to the world when all of this started.

'The Journey Begins' is an appropriate title for the second chapter of the Wormworld Saga. Jonas leaves his troubled life behind and starts into his adventure. What will he find inside the Wormworld? At the same time, I myself don't know what the future will bring. 2012 will be a fateful year for the Wormworld Saga. It will show if I'm able to produce the amount of content I'm aiming for and it will show if I'll be able to support my family by doing that. As awesome as this year was, it was merely a prelude to a journey into the great unknown. I take comfort in the feedback of my beloved fans and also in the story of little Jonas. It lies in the nature of an adventure that you don't know the outcome of it. But that's what makes it worthwhile in the first place!

I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and an Adventurous and Happy New Year!

The Wormworld Saga App and a guy called Murphy...

I just received news that Robot Media has found a software bug inside the app that will prevent us from releasing Chapter 2 inside the app on time. We'll have to submit a software update in order to fix that problem and since we are just entering the Christmas Holidays - during which people apparently refuse to work! - it is highly unlikely that this update will get the needed approval by Apple before January. So, Murphy's Law comes into effect once again, which clearly sucks. And while we are on the topic: Murphy obviously has learned about our plans to release an Android version of the app. Now, guess what! Yeah, it gets delayed...

But on the bright side, all this won't have any effect on the release of Chapter 2 on the website. I'm sorry, that users of the app will have to wait for the special content to be released though. It wasn't planned that way and we'll learn from that for future chapter updates.

Well then, see you tomorrow night for the release post!

Chapter 2, less than a week to go!

We are close to the release of Chapter 2 now and I just wanted to give you a last update. Everything is working like expected. Chapter 2 is now translated into what I call the four core languages (the languages which will be published in the Wormworld Saga App - English, German, Spanish and French) and there's only some proofreading to be done on the French version. I received the proofread texts for the artbook content which I will polish during the next few days. Byers of the Collector's Edition of Chapter 2 inside the app can look forward to a lot of new author commentary and two new artbook items. I will announce these in more detail in my release blog post.

Alright, now that I'm confident that the release schedule will be met, I have implemented a little counter on the website (which will only work if you have enabled Java Scripts in your browser). I'm going to update the website on 24th December at 11:59pm of my local time. The counter should help fans all around the world to find out when exactly this is in their timezone.

I'm so excited!

Chapter 1 is now available in Bulgarian!

We now officially need a second row of flags for the translations of the Wormworld Saga! The latest translation comes from Ivan Berov who translated the first chapter into Bulgarian. What is even more exciting is the fact, that Ivan did the complete layout work for this translation on his own. And what is even more exciting than THAT is, that Ivan offered me his help with the layout of all the other translations that I don't find the time to process.

I have to tell you, that this was such a generous offer that I first hesitated to take it. I am overwhelmed enough by the fact that so many people offer translations of the Wormworld Saga for free. But that someone would actually offer me to do the tedious layout work on the translations was really more than I could take. However, Ivan convinced me to at least give it a try.

So, I have the pleasure to announce that with the help of Ivan Berov I will be able to provide at least two more translations of the first chapter in the coming weeks. It will be the Italian and the Dutch translation. And if anyone of you is interested in translating the Wormworld Saga, the chances right now are, that this translation will actually be published within a reasonable timeframe.

My heartfelt thanks go to Ivan who provides the fans of the Wormworld Saga a huge service with his contribution!

Confucius says: "Read the Wormworld Saga in Chinese!"

Today I have the pleasure to announce that the first chapter of the Wormworld Saga is available in a Simplified Chinese version. I'm especially happy about this because it bridges a huge language barrier and makes the Wormworld Saga accessible for the many people that live in China. Big thanks go to Chuan Liang who did not only translate the texts but who also did most of the layout work for me. New translations of the Wormworld Saga got scarce in the last few months and that despite the fact that I have several finished translated screenplays sitting on my harddrive. I just don't find the time to do the layout of the translations and therefore Chuang's layout work was a huge help and a wonderful contribution to the project. And there's more to come! I will be able to announce exciting news about new Wormworld Saga translations in the coming week. You can really look forward to it!

Concerning Chapter 2, I've finished the rework and layout of the panel illustrations and I have also finished the  layout of the word balloons for the English version. I'm waiting for the input of the translators and proofreaders right now and I'll fill the time with creating the special content for the app. Everything's on schedule right now.

Everyone have a nice Sunday!

Chapter 2, Final Artwork Completed!

It's done! This morning I did the last brush strokes on the final panel of Chapter 2 of the Wormworld Saga Graphic Novel. That's a very strange feeling. My normal impulse after finishing a panel is to immediately load the next panel and continue my work. Well, no next panel there! I guess, that's ok. :)

But this is not to say that there's no work left for me now. Before I can present Chapter 2 to you I'll have to:

• layout the final artwork onto the infinite canvas
• finish the text
• layout the word balloons and sound fx
• send out the scripts to the translators and layout the four core translations for the app
• prepare the special content for the Collector's Edition of Chapter 2 inside the app

That's right, because I'm going to launch new chapters on the website and inside the app at the same time, the web launch has to wait a bit for the app content to be finalized. I pondered quite some time on the question what a good release date would be and I figured out that - as we'd come close to that date anyway - we might just do it like last year and make Chapter 2 an additional Christmas present for all of us. So:

Chapter 2 will be released on 25th December 2011.

Alright, and now it's time for the preview panel of the last milestone. This preview might very well be considered to be the ultimate spoiler:

However, since almost every fan of the Wormworld Saga knows this painting and since the title of Chapter 2 is already revealed to be "The Journey Begins" it should be quite obvious that this scene will take place in the upcoming chapter.

I can't tell you how excited I was to reach this point. Being able to finally embed this key visual into the narration gave me an undescribable feeling of accomplishment. And painting the panels AFTER this point was a real thrill for me because I was finally able to set the character free from his static pose and let him actually start his adventure into the great unknown beyond the magic canvas. Finally I'm able to invite you into the Wormworld and I can't wait to open the doors for you!

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.