Chapter 4, Milestone 2 reached!

Today I've finished the second milestone of the Chapter 4 final artwork production. It was a huge milestone with nearly 70 hours of work that went into it. I anticipated that because I've got some pretty big and detailed backgrounds in this one. That's fine, I'm only 4 days behind schedule which will most likely be compensated by the next three milestones which are all interiour scenes and threfore will be much more easy to illustrate.

I'm totally in adventurer mode now. There has been one specific panel in this milestone that perfectly illustrates my feelings:

Jonas having fun exploring the ruined city of Ankal Aasha

I simply love the setting Jonas explores in this chapter and in my mind I'm right behind him climbing the overgrown ruins of Ankal Aasha. I can literally feel the humidity in the air and the bright sun shining on my face (it's raining since weeks here in Germany by the way...) And just to share my joy with you I'm going to be extra generous with preview images today. Enjoy!

deeper into the jungle

what will our heroes find in the jungle city?

Excerpts from some larger panels

In milestone 3 I will now enter the realm of Janaka Jiiva inside the ruins which I can't wait to explore. And slowly we're coming closer to the release of the chapter which is still scheduled for the end of August. So, you just have to wait a little bit longer until you can follow Jonas on his adventure!

Finding Gossamyr Variant Cover

It has been a while since I've posted artwork that isn't Wormworld Saga related. Today I want to show you one of the very few freelance jobs that I've worked on in the last 12 months. When David Rodriguez contacted me to commission a variant cover for the first issue of "Finding Gossamyr" I was hestitant at first. A job like that was going to take several evenings for me to finish and take away from my Wormworld Saga time. However, when I had a look at the story I knew that I wouldn't be ableto turn down the job.

"Finding Gossamyr" tells the story of autistic boy genius Denny and his caretaking sister Jenna. In order to get a scholarship at a renowned institute, Denny is challenged to advance the solution of an ancient theorem which has never been solved. The theorem happens to be the key to a dimensional portal behind which an evil empire awaits to enslave any civilization that is foolish enough to open it. In order to prevend a catastrophy, Denny and Jenna have to travel to Gossamyr, a fantastic world in which math unleashes magic and where Denny hence becomes incredibly powerful.

David Rodriguez' writing is sensible and the story is well paced. The autistic little boy and his overstrained sister are great characters and the first issue leaves you wanting more. I'm a big fan of Sarah Ellerton's artwork which is very painterly and makes great use of the dramatic qualities of light. Sarah was among the first fellow web comic authors who sent readers over to the Wormworld Saga (from Phoenix Requiem) when the first chapter was published and I'm very happy to be able to contribute to this extraordinary comic project that is "Finding Gossamyr". If you like the Wormworld Saga you will definitely enjoy it.

And if you are into collecting comics and also happen to be attending San Diego Comic Con, go and visit Th3rd World Studios at table M-13 in the Small Press Section. They'll have about 20 issues of "Finding Gossamyr" with my variant cover over there and I was told that there exists a total of only 100 issues of it. So, get one as long as they are available!

To wrap things up, here are my initial color sketch and the preliminary drawing of the artwork:

Chapter 4, Milestone 1 reached!

Today I reached the first milestone of the Chapter 4 illustration process. I actually went a bit over 20% because I added an extra panel into this milestone to make up for the fact that the chapter title takes up the space of a big panel without causing any extra work.

I'm wearing a Fedora in the illustration above because one of the soundtracks I was constantly listening to on this first milestone was "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom". I love this film and especially the soundtrack. Chapter 4 will lead us into the sunken city of Ankal Aasha and I think that this film still has a big influence on the way I envision this place. Not exactly because the locations look similar but in the way the film itself looks and feels. When I think about it I see brown greens and a lot of warm light. Or maybe it's just what the film has tranformed into inside my brain over the decades. If I watch it again it's likely to look totally different.

Anyway, here are two artworks from the first milestone. The first one is a small portion of the large first panel which I won't spoil for you by showing it completely just yet:

In the second one you can see that we meet new characters in Chapter 4. Well, I figure that this isn't big news anyway...

On another note, a few days ago I hit the mark where I was working full-time on the Wormworld Saga for a full year. Last year around this time I had quit my job in the computer games industry and started to work at home. I already had a huge blog post prepared for this occasion but I decided to not post it. It felt forced to me. There surely has happened a lot of stuff in the last 12 months and some of these things might even be worth talking about. However, the most important thing can be said in a few words: I'm still working full-time on the Wormworld Saga and currently I'm planning to do this at least until the end of the year. The really interesting steps, which will have a huge influence on the future of the project, are still lying ahead and I'm looking forward to find out how things will turn out.

On to the next milestone!

Chapter 4, Concept Art

Two weeks after the title announcement I've finished most of the concept art for Chapter 4 and this is actually the first time that I'm going to share concept art of a chapter before its release. It won't contain any spoilers though.

What I've got for you today are some impressions from Ankal Aasha of which we aready got a brief glimpse at the end of Chapter 3. This is a sketch of the towncenter:

And here are two rough color concepts in which I tried to figure out the range of colors and the general look of some of the details of that place:

I'm looking forward to the production of the final artwork of Chapter 4 because I'll be able to go completely crazy on one of my favorite subjects: sunken cities in the jungle!

Production will start next week. Before that I have to finish some rework on the preliminary version. For the first time I managed to totally screw up the writing. As always I presented the first draft to my wife. Normally she would point out a bunch of language issues but would generally like the result as a whole. This time she took a serious look at me and said "we have to work on that!". That's never a good sign. Because normally she's right. We discussed the first draft and I had to realize that I totally overloaded it with information to a point where it was just confusing to anyone else than me. So, during the late hours of the past two weeks I got back working on the prelim version while I was creating the concept art during the day. I identified a lot of stuff in my first draft that was either superfluous or that could much better be communicated at a later point in future chapters. I think that my current version is much more streamlined and I will continue to finetune it during the course of production.

Because what I'm slowly finding out is that it generally isn't a good idea to try to power through the production in a strictly linear fashion - first prelim, then concept art, then final art. This approach puts a lot of pressure into the first few weeks of production because you want to make sure that your prelim is perfect before you go on to the next step. But writing takes time because you are thinking a lot about the things you've written and it's often the case that some writing your were especially proud of sounds totally silly to you a few days later. What I actually realized is that I don't have to arrive at a final version of the prelim in order to be able to do the concept artwork. A first draft is normally enough to line out the set pieces, characters and interiours of a chapter. Additionally, doing the concept art alongside the writing can give you a lot of creative impulses for the writing. I experienced that during the last two weeks when I realized that I could make much better use of certain set pieces to illustrate the narration. You only see these things when the actual visuals lie before you. So, for the next chapter I definitely plan to change my workflow from a linear to a more paralell approach and produce the concept art and the prelim simultaniously.

I'm even thinking about going a step further. It turns out that there are certain portions of the prelim that just work straight from the first draft on while others get overworked a lot. What I'm thinking about is not to work on the final artwork in a linear top to bottom fashion as I'm used to but starting the final illlustration process on the finished parts of the prelim and keeping the other parts work in progress as long as possible. That would mean that I could work on the prelim even if I have already started the final illustration process. I would just move over to illustrating the other parts of the prelim as soon as they get finished. 

These are all exciting thoughts for me as it is all in the spirit of giving as much time as possible to the writing process in a given timeframe without hurting the other parts of the process. I'm learning a ton of things by doing this project and I think there's way for improvement in all directions.

In other news:

My layout assistant Ivan Berov has recently reached the rank of official layout wizzard by finishing what was the most complicated translation up to this date. When we started to paste the first lines of Hindi text into our layout we had to realize that we were in deep trouble. To put it in a nutshell: you are not supposed to layout Hindi text in a western version of Photoshop. The process to accomplish it anyway is so mind bending that I'm not even trying to explain it to you. You have to be a wizzard to do it. That's what Ivan is now. A wizzard! Thanks also go to Binay Kumar Pandey for his translation work and for being very patient with us constantly screwing up the review layouts for him.

I'm really happy to announce the Hindi translation of Chapter 1 today!

You may already have found the clues in Chapter 3 that hint at the fact that Indian culture is a huge inspiration for the Wormworld. "Janaka", "Jiiva", "Ankal Aasha" - these are all Sanskrit words. In Chapter 4 we will see much more of these influences and overall you will find out that the Wormworld is not inspired by medieval Europe like so many fantasy worlds but by the myths and cultures of the Asian continent. Mixed with German folklore! :)

However, I'm really loving the fact that the Wormworld Saga is translated into so many languages. The Hindi translation introduces a third row to the flags on the website so we now have seven languages to go before I dont't know anymore where to put all these flags. Well, I've already announced that I will change the navigation of the translation in the last post so no worries. I better do because we have a lot more than 7 additional translations in the pipeline...

Chapter 4, Title Announcement

It's almost a tradition now that I announce the title of the upcoming chapter of the Worworld Saga as soon as I have finished the preliminary version. So, here we go! The next Chapter is going to be published in August 2012 and its title is:

Chapter 4 - The Shelter of Hope

As you can see, the upcoming chapter is a bit smaller in size compared to its predecessor. However, first test readings clearly indicate that this will be the longest chapter so far in regards to reading time. As you will already have guessed, Jonas and Raya are meeting Raya's master Janaka and together with Jonas we'll receive a lot of background information. This chapter really wasn't easy to write because of all the things that I want to transport in it. It's likely to feel quite different from the other three chapters because it's mainly centered on dialog and a good deal of the action takes place in one interior location. However, I've made sure to keep even those parts visually interesting. In the end, I think, this chapter will mark a nice point of rest before the adventures continue their journey into the Wormworld. By that time they will have a clear mission to fulfill, that much I can say.

Now going to create some concept artwork for Chapter 4 and after that I'm going to work on the milestones. As always I'm going to keep you updated on my progress.

I've also updated the Wormworld Saga website. The first thing I wan't to mention is that I encountered a nasty bug in the website code which actually prevented anyone from buying a print inside the print shop since. If you tried to click on the Paypal buttons you were redirected to the Google Play website. It's fixed.

There's a space for Chapter 4 now and I toyed around with the sidebar elements a bit. I don't know how long I can keep up with that layout though. The newest content is sitting on the bottom of the site and the language flags start to clutter the main content area. I think there's some major overhaul neccessary after Chapter 4 but we will see. By the way, since my last blog entry we have added some new translations. Chapter 1 is now available in Malaysian, Chapter 2 is translated to Bosnian and Turkish and I added the Dutch translation of Chapter 3 just a few minutes ago. Again I have to thank Ivan Berov for his wonderful help with the layout work. 

On a sitenote:

Did someone notice the change on my desktop in the illustration at the top? It's subtle but you will find that my PC tower vanished from under my table. I bought my PC at a food discounter back in 2006 and when I worked on the massive layouts of Chapter 3 I started to notice just how old it was. Saving files often took minutes(!) and several important operations weren't even possible to perform because of "out of  memory" errors. I decided to invest into a new machine and now I'm working on a Lenovo Thinkpad W520. It's unbelievable how fast things work now. Plus, since it's a handy 15'' notebook, I'm now able to take my workspace with me anywhere I go. We are living in the future!

Chapter 3 now available in the app!

Chapter 3 now is finally available inside the Wormworld Saga App for iPad and Android tablets.

I'm sorry that it again took a lot longer than expected. I was expecting at least some delay because I hadn't finished the special features in time. Then the French translation got delayed, there were some delays at the developer and the Apple submission took a little bit longer than expected, too. Well, of course we'll try to be faster the next time but the whole process is really complicated as hell so I won't make false promises to you.

Ok, but now Chapter 3 has landed on the app and of course I want to tease you a bit to purchase the Collector's Edition by showing some small peaks into the special content.

I added two new items to the artbook section of the app. In "The Making of Chapter 3" you'll find some work in progress "color blockings" of panel artwork and I show a lot of my character and creature development artwork (studies, drawings, digital sculptures).

"Sketchbook #2" has a bunch of recent and older (but never published) sketches associated to Chapter 3.

And the Colector's Edition of Chapter 3 of course comes with Artwork Mode (you can fade out the word balloons in order to examine the artwork) and Sketch mode (you can switch to a preliminary sketch version) which again contains a lot of behind the scenes author commentary.

I also want to announce that I'm very aware of the fact that there are many people who are interested in the special content but don't own a tablet device to run the app. I'm currently looking into possibilities to provide these special features in formats that don't require a tablet device. I'll keep you updated on that!

Chapter 3 - A Monstrous Forest

I proudly present Chapter 3 of the Wormworld Saga Digital Graphic Novel!

Go read it at wormworldsaga.com!

I was truelly looking forward to this day. I assume that since the release of Chapter 1 a lot of people were wondering what the Wormworld Saga is all about. Finally we will now follow Jonas on his first steps beyond the magic canvas and find out more about this mysterious place and its inhabitants.

Chapter 3 was a huge challenge for me as I wanted the first impression of the Wormworld to be a lasting one. This chapter is the longest chapter so far and it is full of elaborate full scale backgrounds. Including prelim, concept art and layout, I worked over 400 hours on Chapter 3. I think that it shows and I hope that everyone will enjoy the ride.

I was pressing hard to meet the scheduled release date at the end of April. While this worked out for the release on the website, users of the Wormworld Saga App will have to wait a few days until I have finished the production of the special content which will be available alongside the Collector's Edition of Chapter 3 inside the app. There's lots of concept artwork that I'm going to share and of course there will be author commentary   available again.

Ok, I'd say go and have a good time with Chapter 3! If you like it please help to spread the word and tell your friends about it.

Chapter 3, Final Artwork Completed!

It's done! Today I finished the last panel of Chapter 3. It was a big one with over 8 hours work that went into it. All in all I have worked over 300 hours on the artwork for Chapter 3. That's 100 hours more than I worked on Chapter 2 and nearly double the amount of time that I worked on Chapter 1. It was also 100 hours more than I originally expected. In the last 8 weeks I've worked many extra hours in the evenings in order to make up for it.

But I regret not a single minute of work that I put into Chapter 3. You will be able to see the effort that went into it and I'm really proud of the result. It will be very exciting for me to release the new chapter as it shows the first steps of Jonas inside the Wormworld. Together with him we'll explore fantastic places, face breakneck dangers and encounter new friends.

I have no preview images for you today as you will very soon be able to the read complete chapter. Release will be on Monday, 30th April. I'll put a countdown on the website so that you can easily find out the exact release time throughout the timezones.

Unfortunately, the release inside the Wormworld Saga App will be delayed again. This time it's not because of a software bug, though. I simply wasn't able to prepare the special content for the Collector's Edition yet. It shouldn't take me more than a week to provide it so you won't have to wait as long as the last time for the special content. What I already can say is, that the Collector's Edition will be worth the short wait. I have a lot of interesting Concept Art and work-in-progress snapshots that I will put into a huge 'Making of Chapter 3' artbook item.

Ok, still some work to do that will keep me busy over the next three days. And then you'll be welcome to the Wormworld!

Chapter 3, Milestone 4 reached!

Phew, I've cut down to 80% of the Chapter 3 artwork! I'm going to need a few days of rest after this chapter, I guess. My time-tracking indicates that in the end I'm going to spend over 300 hours on the final artwork of Chapter 3. Chapter 2 was only 200 hours although it wasn't much shorter. This figure reflects pretty nicely the fact that Chapter 3 is going to look spectacular when it's finished. I actually started to assemble the existing artwork into the layout and to see all these detailed illustrations in one big composition is a stunning experience. So, I'm confident that in the end the hard work will pay off.

In the upcoming two weeks I'm going to finish the last milestone and prepare the layout, the cover artwork and the special content for the Wormworld Saga App. I'm working extra hours every day to make sure that on April 30th everything will be ready for launch.

Alright, lots of work ahead and the clock is ticking! I'll leave you with a few preview images which again are all cropped from larger panels:

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!