I am working very hard on this right now! 🙂 I have laid-out / typeset 44 pages of the “Pre-Production Art Book & Writer’s Guide”, which includes an introduction addressing series format and production schedule, and all of the character model sheets. The model sheets and some of the plans will be printed in color, by the way, as I found a print-on-demand publisher who can print a book with just a few color pages (as opposed to charging the color rate for the whole book). To make up the cost difference from pure black and white, I’ll be printing the text parts of the book a bit smaller in two-column “journal” format (still nicely readable, I think).
In my last post, I had to announce a one-month slip. Fortunately, it looks like we are on track to make that goal. I can breathe a small sigh of relief now that the drawings for our eight main characters are done (the last three are below — the previous update includes the other five).
We’re breaking a lot of new territory on the project, at least for us, and this isn’t the first and probably not the last time I’ll misjudge the schedule. I had estimated model-sheet production based on Daniel’s time on the concept sheets, but he’s doing a much higher quality of work on the model sheets, and it takes some time (and unlike some of us, Daniel has a full-time day job to keep up with, too). I suspect I could’ve gotten my part done on time, but I have to admit, an extra month makes me feel a little less stressed, too.
I know we’ve been very quiet for awhile now — progress was a bit slow at first while we sorted out some workflow problems, but we are making pretty good progress now. I am currently drawing and revising the colony floorplan. It’s amazing how many inconsistencies had crept in before this revision, and a lot of my current work is just resolving conflicts. I’m also adding a lot more detail that had previously existed only inside my head, so this has been a very good exercise for getting things down on paper where we can refer to it. A lot of what we’re producing for this Kickstarter Pre-Production project is the “story bible” that we’ll use to keep stories, directing, and design consistent throughout the series.
Thanks to the support of some very generous backers, we are now able to commission Daniel Fu for the character design artwork. Work will start in January!
