International Children's Book Day Sale!

International Children's Book Day was inaugurated in 1967 by the International Board on Books for Young People (iBbY). To celebrate it, I hereby announce our very first sales event inside the Wormworld Saga App. Today you can purchase the Collector's Editions of Chapter 1 and 2 for only 0,99€ each!

To purchase the Collector's Editions just download the free Wormworld Saga App for iPad and Android tablets and get the Collector's Editions via in-app purchase.

And in other news:

Robot Media finally updated the Android version of the Wormworld Saga App and it now runs properly on Ice Cream Sandwich devices. Also the app is now compatible to Android 3.1!

Chapter 3, Milestone 3 reached!

Alright, things ran a lot smoother with this third milestone of Chapter 3. It contained a lot more smaller panels than the average milestone and I had less work with the backgrounds. I was able to finish this one in 8,5 workdays, which is pretty much what I'm aiming at in general (my goal is to accomplish a milestone in less than two weeks = 10 workdays). However, this is not to say that this  milestone wasn't special for me. In fact I'm not able to show you very much from the third milestone because I introduced two new characters in it and there's a lot of action and dialog going on. So, for this milestone it's only one panel that I can share:

I really like this one because it communicates the movement pretty well, I think. It also makes for a nice color composition from an abstract standpoint.

Now, next week we enter April and the release of Chapter 3 is getting really close. I'm optimistic that 4 weeks will be enough for me to finish the last two milestones. I have already finished the texts and they will go out to the translators within the next few days. I'll throw in some extra hours in order to get the layout and the special content for the app ready in time and I think we can all look forward to a late April release of Chapter 3. It's going to be SO exciting to get this one out!

Now, back to work!

Chapter 3, Milestone 2 reached!

Man, I thought this moment would never come! Seriously, I've got totally tangled up in this second milestone like I've never experienced before. Note to myself: NEVER EVER let over 50% of a milestone be composed of full scale panorama images! It took me 80 hours to finish this milestone. Thats double the time of a regular milestone. I'm going to have to work very hard to keep my schedule for Chapter 3 but it's still doable. I'll have to change the way I'm handling the translations though. Normally I finish all the artwork and do the layout before I send the chapter to the translators. This time I expect to work on the artwork until the very last minute before the release of Chapter 3. So, I think I'm going to finish the dialog on the prelim version and send this out to the translators to give them enough time to do their work.

Well, the good news in all this is, that Chapter 3 is going to be spectacular! I can't show much of Milestone 2 because each single panel contains major spoilers but here's what I've got. The first two are only portions of much larger panels:

As you can see, I'm not the only one floored by the amount of work. I was really getting nervous when I realized that I had loaded too much work on my shoulders for this milestone. However, I'm happy about all the work I put into Chapter 3 so far. I want to make sure that it makes a lasting impression on the reader. I really wished I could present you the most spectacular panels right now because I'm really proud of them. But we all wil lhave to wait until Chapter 3 is released. Seing all the artwork in one huge composition will be quite an experience I guess. 

Well, still three milestones to go and the release date is looming. I better go back to work! 

The Wormworld Saga App for Android launched!

Man, we had to wait quite some time for this! But today I'm finally able to announce the launch of:

The Wormworld Saga App for Android Tablets

The app needs Android 3.2 or higher running on your device and a large screen. This is a list of devices, the app is designed to run on:

Acer

A200(picasso_e) 

Picasso(picasso) 

TPA60W(maya) 

Anydata

LePanII(LePanII_wifi)

Archos

ARCHOS 101G9(A101) 

ARCHOS 80G9(A80) 

ARCHOS 80G9(A80S) 

Archos 101 Internet Tablet(A101S)

Asus

ETBW11AA(ETBW11AA) 

EeePad Slider SL101(SL101) 

EeePad Transformer TF101(TF101) 

TF101-WiMAX(TF101-WiMAX) 

Transformer Prime TF201(TF201) 

Transformer TF101G(TF101G) 

Dell

Dell Streak 10 Pro(Streak10Pro)

Fujitsu

F-01D(blaze_tablet)

Hisense

M1101AT(TP9102)

Lenovo Mobile

IdeaTab S2010A-D(msm8660_surf) 

IdeaTabV2007A(sanpaolo) 

IdeaTabV2010A(santiago) 

Motorola

XOOM(stingray) 

XOOM(wifi_hubble)

XOOM(umts_everest)

XOOM(umts_hubble) 

XOOM(wingray) 

XOOM 2(pasteur) 

Panasonic Corporation

JT-H581VT(H581VT_A)

Pegatron

Android Tablet PC(TabletPC) 

Android Tablet PC(DukeWifi) 

Android Tablet PC(Duke3G) 

Chagall 10.1 WiFi(chagall) 

Philips Electronics

PI7000(Tablet_8) 

Quanta Corporation

IGS-1000(nk1) 

LIFETAB_P9514(LIFETAB_P9514) 

Nirvana_Tablet(Nirvana_Tablet)

OP110(OP110) 

Samsung

GT-P6800(GT-P6800) 

GT-P7501(GT-P7501) 

Galaxy Tab 10.1(GT-P7510)

Galaxy Tab 10.1(GT-P7500)

Galaxy Tab 10.1(SCH-I905)

Galaxy Tab 8.9(SGH-I957)

Sony

Sony Tablet P(nbx02) 

Tablet S(nbx03)

Toshiba

AT100(tostab03) 

AT200(tostab05)

ZTE

SmartTab10(V11A) 

SmartTab7(V71A) 

V68(V68)

So, looks like I can look forward to many new users for the Wormworld Saga App! Remember, it is a free app and you can read the complete standard version of the graphic novel inside the app for free. If you want to support the project, you can purchase a Collector's Edition of each chapter inside the app which will grant you access to several special features which are currently exclusive to the app. I hope you all enjoy the Wormworld Saga App for Android!

In other news, I'm still working on the second milestone. A good deal is finished but this will definitely be the most elaborate milestone I ever had. The amount of detail in the panels is pure madness. I'm going to be very busy the next two months in order to get this chapter out in time.

So, better back to work!

Chapter 3, Milestone 1 reached!

Wow, is it really nearly a month since my last update!? Time flies when you have fun! I honestly tried to post an update sooner but every time I thought a good occasion would come up, it got delayed again. Of course I'm refering to the Android version of the Wormworld Saga App which a lot of you are eagerly waiting for. I fear I begin to sound like a scratched record when I say that we are very close to the release. I have already seen a fully functional version of the Android App on the tablet of my brother-in-law and Robot Media is currently sending the app around to different places to get some final feedback for polishing. So, we're nearly done for real and I'm looking forward to provide you the Android version of the Wormworld Saga App soon.

But the real news of the day is that I just finished the first milestone of Chapter 3! You know what that means: artwork preview time! Fortunately we've already had a brief glimpse into the strange world Jonas entered in Chapter 2. Therefore I'm able to show you some panels from Chapter 3 without spoiling anything. Here we go:

As you can see there's plenty of stuff for Jonas to wonder about behind the magic canvas. What you see here is just a small glimpse, believe me. I have the best time painting this chapter which visually is very different from the two preceding ones. I even had to adjust my painting workflow a bit which became a little stiff and technical through all the right angles and flat surfaces I painted for the interiour scenes of Chapter 1 and 2. I'm now back to a more intuitive and loose approach. I use less layers which makes the painting process much more enjoyable and hopefully this carries through to the experience of the reader.

By the way, the flowers that grow out of my head in the milestone illustration above do not only refer to the floral explosions of Chapter 3 but also to new plans and prospects that sprouted from my head over the last few weeks. As you know, it will be a big challenge to sustain the Wormworld Saga project over the whole year and I started to think about new ways to find additional support for the project. Some of these ideas already have blossomed and I'm looking forward to presenting them to you when the time is ripe.

I'm back to my wacom then, bringing home that next milestone!

Chapter 3, Title Announcement

I've finally finished my work on the preliminary version of Chapter 3! Now I'm able to setup the milestones for the chapter and I'm also able to announce the title:

Chapter 3 - A Monstrous Forest

I took me longer than expected to create the prelim of Chapter 3. My mind refused to rush through the task and forced me to stop and think frequently. I felt horribly unproductive and slow during the last 2,5 weeks especially if I compare the prelim process to the production process during the milestone phase where I just burn through the panel illustrations. I guess I just have to admit to myself that writing a chapter is a very different task from illustrating it. If I'm able to make my peace with that I might even be able to enjoy it in the future.

My next step is something I haven't done at all up to this point. I'm going to create concept art for several characters, creatures and locations that are introduced in Chapter 3. For chapters 1 and 2 I hardly did any concept art. Jonas had already been designed when I started work on the graphic novel and the other characters were designed on the fly. The locations were improvised from my childhood memories and real life reference. Chapter 3 now contains a lot of elements that I only have a rough idea of in my head. I will have to put some extra work into their further development so that I become able to illustrate them. The good news about this is that you'll find a lot of 'Making Of' material when Chapter 3 is released. The bad news is that my schedule gets screwed up by this to some extend. I don't know how much time it will take me to finish the concept art but it is very likely that Chapter 3 won't be launched before April. However, I'll try to enjoy the concept art process and don't see it as a hindrance.

In other news: I have updated the Wormworld Saga Website to reflect the upcoming new chapter. I also changed the background image to bring us all into the right mood for Chapter 3:

Translation news: Chapter 1 is now available in a Czech and a Korean translation. Many thanks to the translators, Lukáš Balcárek and Yuna Lee, and to Ivan Berov, who again did a great job on the layout of the translations. Seriously, I don't know what I would do without this guy!

Ok, I hope I'll be able to announce the Android version of the Wormworld Saga App soon. I'm off designing stuff now.

The Wormworld Saga App Wins Publishing Innovation Award

The Wormworld Saga App for iPad

The Digital Book World Conference & Expo currently held at the Sheraton Hotel & Towers in New York is the largest conference on the future of publishing in the American publishing industry. Part of the opening ceremonies of the conference is the announcement of the winners of the Publishing Innovation Awards which are awarded in 14 categories (including five app categories). This year, the Wormworld Saga App won the PIA in the "comics and graphic novel apps" category.

The PIA is a very young award that was inaugurated in 2011. However, it can without doubt already be considered an important industry award because the dramatic changes of the publishing landscape are also very young. The Digital Book World Conference & Expo hosts a long list of talks and workshops on digital publishing and distribution. All major American publishers attend the show and nowhere else will you find more answers to the question how publishing will look in a few years.

The judges of the PIA seem to think that the Wormworld Saga App is among these answers. One of my goals with this whole project is to present new ways of interaction between the reader and my work. I'm also trying to explore new relationships between readers and authors. Digital comics currently are dominated by big corporations who seem to think that a "digital comic" merely means to scan in your print product and sell it for the same price digitally. The progress of digital comics is hindered by the big comic publisher's fear of damaging the traditional print market. This is completely understandable and for you as a comic reader it simply means that, for the time being, you don't need to turn to the big comic publishers to find innovation.

So, if you happen to ask yourself how publishing might look like in a few years from now, have a look at these facts about the Wormworld Saga App:

• it was NOT published by a major comic publisher
• all rights are completely creator-owned
• the main content is completely available for free
• purchases are encouraged through special paid content 
• the initial investment was completely crowdfunded by fans

These are award-winning facts, mind you! ;)

I'm very happy about this award but this doesn't mean that I'm going to sit back now. I have big plans for the future of the Wormworld Saga App. We are planning to introduce a very cool new feature with the release of Chapter 3 in a few months and I've already got a huge list of ideas how the app could be improved beyond that. Obviously we are trying to bring the app to more platforms. The Android version should be ready very soon and I'm thinking a lot about new ways to make the special features of the app accessible to as many people as possible. Many of my ideas need time and resources which both are very limited for me at the moment. But I'm dedicated to expand the project as much as is managable for me without compromising the quality of the story.

I want to close this blog post with a bow to the fans who have supported the creation of the Wormworld Saga App. This is your award, too! And my thanks also go to the great guys at Robot Media who developed a wonderful app that hopefully will be enjoyed by lot of people in the years to come.

Chapter 2 now available in the App!

The Wormworld Saga App for iPad on iTunes

Man it feels like an eternity since Chapter 2 has been launched on the website. As I posted just before Christmas, we had to perform an unforeseen update of the app in order to implement Chapter 2 flawlessly. It turned out that Apple (who has to approve all updates before launch) was extremely busy in the past few weeks and that delayed everything quite a lot. Well, today I can share the news that Chapter 2 is now available inside the app. I'm really sorry for this delay and for future chapters we'll make sure that everything gets launched simultaniously on the website and the app.

The Collector's Edition of Chapter 2 comes with the standard special features (artwork mode and sketch mode plus author commentary) and two new items inside the artbook portion of the app. Inside these items you will find exclusive photos from an inspirational photo safari around my brother's house and a very detailed Making Of article about the creation of my painting "The Journes Begins" with lots of material which never was published before.

Excerpt from "The Making of Chapter 2" - Click for original size!

Excerpt from "The Making of  'The Journey Begins'" - Click for original size!

There also will be news about the Android version of the app soon. I don't want to promise something that we are not 100% sure about just yet.

In other news:

Thanks to the relentless effort of Ivan Berov, we were able to launch several new translations of the Wormworld Saga during the past few weeks. Chapter 1 is now available in Dutch, Italian, Croatian and Bosnian and we also already finished the Chinese and Croatian translations of Chapter 2. Ivan did not just do a wonderful job on the layout of the translations but also was able to reorganize my working documents to streamline the whole process. He's a dream guy! :)

I'm quite close to finishing the Chapter 3 preliminary version, but more details on that in my next blog update.

Have a nice day everyone!

Chapter 3, Progress Update

So, the first week of 2012 is over and I was quite busy. One thing I really wanted to get rolling, before I start my work on Chapter 3, is our new translation workflow. After the release of Chapter 1, when the first people emailed me offering translations of the graphic Novel, I sent out a Word document with the script to every individual translator. This went fine with a few translations. But when there was a dozen of translations, and the scripts had to be sent back and forth for revisions, and when we then even started to split up the work between different translators, it was becoming a real pain.

For Chapter 2 I decided to work with an online spreadsheet in Google Documents. The document is located on the Google server and you can work on it in your browser window. You can share the document with as many people as you like and you can even work simultaniously on translations. As the document owner you get a history of all changes to the document and you can set it back to any point in this history in case anything goes wrong. I have to say, this system is a real lifesaver. Translators receive an invitation by mail and can start their work immediately. The spreadsheet format is perfect to copy & paste the texts into the layout. And I have to say that it is a very cool feeling opening up the document and finding several people typing their translations and watching the whole thing grow in realtime.

There are already 22 translators working on the document and we currently have a very nice mix of languages from all over the world including Arabic, Korean and Hindi. I'm really looking forward to provide you all these translations during the next weeks and months. 

Concerning Chapter 3, I'm ready now to start the prelim version that precedes every chapter. Last week I returned to the Story Wall and did a major revision on everything that was on it. 

Before the revision I simply used the yellow sticky notes to describe the major plot points of each chapter. A few days ago I realized that the plot actually isn't the aspect that I have to concentrate on in my visualization on the wall. I was totally neglecting the most important aspect: the stories. I remembered a line from a book about storytelling I've read a few years ago: "in order to make a good movie you don't need a story. You need a dozen stories!" That was a rather revealing thought for me. Up to that point I naively thought of "story" to be just the description of the things that happen. But that's plot. A "story" is a more abstract construct that describes a certain theme (e.g. "boy loves girl" or "revenge") that is developed through a "story arc" which spans over several "story beats". What I did in my revision is to identify the different stories in my plot and visualize their "beats" with the arrows you see next to the yellow plotline. A story normally has at least three beats in my visualization - introduction, build-up and resolution - but it can have as many beats as you want.

For example, the story with the most beats that I identified in the first two chapters is what I called "Egon Breaks Out". The story is introduced when Egon yells at a car during the carride in Chapter 1. From that point on we know that Egon can become very loud and angry. The story is build up over several beats (Egon wants Jonas to carry his suitcase, Egon asks Jonas to do the homework together, Egon calls for dinner and receives no answer) but it's always calmed down again and never brought over the point of break-out. However, after discovering that Jonas is lying to him, Egon finally breaks out and this is the climax/solution of this story. On my story wall I have marked all climaxes with a black triangle (and minor story resolutions with a black point). As you can see, there are a lot of stories that find their climaxes or resolutions at the end of Chapter 2 and that's exactly what you want when your protagonist starts onto an adventure. You want to leave things behind and create a clean slate for the story arcs of the adventure itself.

After revising the first two chapters I created the plotline and story beats for chapter 3 and 4. As you can see, things develop a lot slower and story beats are less dense. The reason for this is, that I now start story arcs that span over Jonas' whole adventure which is going to be much longer than 2 chapters so there's more time and space to develop the stories. I also have space for exposition, which is marked with green arrows on the wall. At these points I will just dive into the Wormworld and tell you how it works.

I'm quite happy with this system now as it will help me to develop the plot in a way that serves the different stories. Also, the visualization will directly show me when the plot gets too thin meaning that there are not enough story beats that keep the narration from becoming boring.

I'll continue to develop my process and keep you updated on it. I also hope to find some time to go into more detail someday. I consider the storytelling to be one of the most fascinating and challenging aspects of the project.

I'm going to create the prelim version of Chapter 3 now and you are going to hear from me when I'm ready to enter the milestone phase.

2012 Kick-Off

I wish a happy new year 2012 to everyone! I took a few days off between the years and now I'm ready to start into what's promising to become a VERY interesting year for the Wormworld Saga. There will be a lot more new content for you in 2012 and we all will find out if this whole thing is going to work out for me over the long term.

The year definitely started very encouraging for the Wormworld Saga. The launch of Chapter 2 was received very well in the online community. Between Christmas and New Year the website was visited over 100,000 times and the overall feedback from the readers was very positive. There are lots of new fans that joined the blog and the Facebook fan page and I want to welcome you all. I promise you that you are in for a ride!

I will start the year with some administrative and editorial tasks and then I will directly start my work on Chapter 3. As always I will keep you updated on my progress and tease you with preview images. Chapter 3 is scheduled for a March/April release. I have to keep the release date that loose because there will be new characters introduced to the story, I'll have to create a lot more concept artwork than for the preceding chapters, and I'm not totally sure how much time that will take.

The next days should also see some news on the Android version of the Wormworld Saga App and the Chapter 2 release inside the app. The time around Christmas really isn't the best time for having to cope with unforeseen problems and I'm really sorry that we weren't able to deliver Chapter 2 inside the app on time. As soon as things are moving forward there, you'll be the first to know.

Alright, there's a lot of work ahead - it's time to get my hands dirty!