This—the illo, the animation, and the final button—was done nearly 2 weeks ago, but the entire illo itself, not until a few days ago.

Before I start, hope you had a good weekend, everyone!  Went to the Huntington Gardens again, courtesy of Miz S. and saw many beautiful things as well as their new Chinese gardens.  Got lots of feedback from Mr. J, my editor.  Am reading books.  Wrote my 3 queries (the 1 sentence, 1 paragraph, 2 paragraph pitch).  Author’s Bio came out quite well thanks to close attention to the tutorials.  Sloooooowly, I’ll be able to cross off more things on my 3 different lists.

One MOre EM in Animation Coloring!!:

Why are her teeth yellow, you may ask?  You may not ask that.  Well, what happens when you do ‘color flats’—in my case I used a Photoshop plugin that creates the flats for me—is that random colors are selected to ‘Fill In’ all the sections of your drawing.  I fix this stuff later with the colors I want.  It’s a way of saving time; with the colors already ‘filled in’, I don’t have to continue to lasso (those ‘ant like’ broken lines around shapes) areas so that the Paint doesn’t leak out.  However, I tend to lasso stuff anyway because I like putting everything in layers.  I hope that made sense to the non-PS savvy, and if not, SNORE.

Mouth.  Yippeeee hooraaay ooooooo.  I am seriously going to paint the cover differently, I think I will try by hand first, watercolor, pencil, some gouache, ink.  I haven’t done that in AGES, I fear I’ll mess up, but won’t know until I try.  I want a painterly cover, for once.  Will make it look lots less Animation and Comic Book too.  Anything that looks the least bit ‘Cartoony’ will confuse REAL READERS, y’know.

This shows you what we had been working on; I was in constant dialog with my Mojo Designer (that’s Miss E-speak for my ‘Motion Designer’ ).  We were just doing a simple animated gif button, yes, but a nicely tricked out one.  Miz J. turned this around for me about 9 times I think, I am THAT picky EDIT: And by picky I mean I continued to add more to the art of the button, until I had added one too many Bling bits and then we moved one step back.  So that’s what I meant by the 9 different turnarounds.  So!

I did this full figure EM that you see here just to put a new face to the button.  And this is the button:

PLEASE don’t go to the Neverwasonline site yet, It’s entirely full of incompletes, links that go nowhere, and No Goodies.  It’s in progress and I’ll return my attention to it after quite a few other things get done.  I thought I should share the button because Miz J. was so kind as to finish it for me.  It *might* play a little jerky, unfortunate circumstance of being an itty bitty button gif, but when we do the Book Trailer everythin’s going to be Smoooth.

And now my First EM Full Figure.  I talk a lot more about what’s in her hand over at Deviantart.com.  It’s not Magic of the spells sort, it’s an Illusion, it’s Magician’s Flash.  However I did take liberties with the style because Magician’s Flash in our reality is Flash paper–actual paper that’s treated with stuff that makes it burn fast, really fast.  I have some.  Haven’t tried it yet though I’ve watched itty bitty boys play with the darn stuff on Youtube.  I just know I’m going to set the fire alarm off.

This illo took a bit of time trying to figure out the layering of her skirt–or more accurately, how to fool you viewers into thinking there are translucent layers to her skirt.  I think I pulled it off.

OK, now on to more stuff.  Thanks for reading, everyone!!  That countdown clock keeps ticking, GAHHHH!!

~~gaaaaaahhhh

…is that too much to ask?

But that’s what I get for self-publishing.  WHICH, I am not supposed to say at all, according to Stephen Silver (whose self-publishing workshop is Wonderful, btw!).  It is a stigma, a yucky thing, Very Much looked down upon by buyers of books (Real Readers), published Auteurs, the Book Sellers, and of course the publishing industry.

I never realized it to such an extent until now.  I mean I come from the culture of DIY; printing A-Girl all by meself, advertising it, finding Like Minded people who loved small press…I Loved indy comics and became a part of that myself…I can’t be such a snob, you know?  My work is not inferior.  I am not so clueless that I would not try to apply every professional trick I can muster to the process of making a very good and Worthwhile Product.  Not only that, I’m not here to play the standard game anymore, where I have to bide my time for approx. 3-5 years hoping to be signed, but then wait even more to see if a book is actually made.  I’m getting older, and I will make my Book Now, before a damn earthquake kills me.

To be validated that way is really Old to me, it really is.  I have IMdB credits and have worked for a corporation for enough years.  I really don’t need to work for another one right now.  I can finally Play and take a property in all the directions I can muster because that’s Awesome.  So the title of this post should *not* be a complaint, I’m getting what I asked for.

The one soon to be printed book, my wonderful WIT’S WORLD: NEVER WAS™ is one in a six book series.  The rest are ideas on one notepad that is rapidly falling apart (it already has), and about 2 nights prior I discovered the Opening Scene to Book 2 and began writing it.  Which is appropriate, because though I am going to try to cover Art Direction, Layout Design, Publisher duties, Site Design, create more Visual Content, Motion Direction, oh yes Marketing, Pimping, Legalise, and so forth, I’m also going to be writing Book 2.

And in another month’s time, looking for ACTUAL WORK to pay the bills.  So something has to be sacrificed, and I think it will have to be the Illustrations for the print book.  There’s just not enough time when the final edit finally pulls through for me to get the book to reviewers and to solicit blurbs *and* make a gorgeously illustrated book to give to people to review.  That’s like crazy talk.

The Illustrated version will have to come next year, or, in my dreams, by this coming holiday sales (I mean season ).  So the E-book, I’ve discovered while reading up on its proper formatting, must be by necessity bare bones Plain, and the first paperback of the novel will have one Perk I’ll do my best to put in, and the ornamentals, and that will be it.

The Story can easily stand alone, as any well written long fiction should; it’s just the Artist that is me who really, really wanted a beautiful looking book.  But now the Publisher me has to put my foot down and say, nope.  Just get it Right, and get it Done, and pretty stuff can come later.

So the visuals I’m making now?  They’re for the site, and they’re also for the book trailer.  I’m still going to learn my World visually.  For gosh sakes, despite all the hats I’m wearing I am still going to Play, and all my peeps involved with the Project and you the READERS are going to have that too.

And another thing:  I’m not going to write Properly on my own damn blog.  How I write as an Author differs radically from my own Voice full of typos and incorrect usage on my own digital journal.  When you buy WIT’S WORLD: NEVER WAS™ you are going to get a Story and Experience you can thump a quarter on.

And that’s my rant for the night!   Good night and have a great week, everybody.

Sleeping,

~~eeee!

Juggling!!

To preface:  …OK wait.

To Pitch:

THE DARING twins, who live in the eccentric tourist town known as Silver City,  find themselves at odds with the powerful fantasy park that resides there. When Pip Daring falls into a duplicate of WIT’S WORLD in another dimension, her sister Em follows to rescue her. Nothing is as it seems and long time, dangerous mysteries reveal themselves as both girls not only seek each other but the return to their own world.

This novel consists of 6 Acts with 40 Chapters.

***
Not the greatest pitch, but that’s something I have to practice.  According to NATHAN BRANSFORD, LITERARY AGENT, I have to nail the one sentence, one paragraph, and two paragraph pitch.  GROAN.

Now you know the premise of the story.  So here is the Creator of WIT’S WORLD:  He’s known as The CARNY MAN:

This was done last winter, 2009, a really loose job just to see if I could make a very early incarnation of the book logo work.  This version is of the Carny Man as he really looks, rather frightening and crazy.  A different design–his Public design as creator of a fantasy park that draws people and children from far and near, would be more Appealing.  I think.  Still trying to find that.

Hm, Still scary.  I’m trying to do a call back to the grinning weird faces of Carnies and places like Luna Park, Coney Island–large facade heads like that.  The ‘laughing clown’/crazy grinning fool look.  But at the same time I needed his mouth open.  And for a Comedy/Tragedy mask quality.  And I guess a Joker quality (from the deck of cards, not that crazy villain what shot Barbara Gordon. ).

And yet he still had to be this devilishly charismatic Genius, with crazy hair and what not.  Geez, why hasn’t he been easy, then?

He is nothing but a head, and no neck.  For those who’ve already beta-read my book (thanks peeps!), you are probably wondering what is up with the eye beams.  Such visuals are NOT in my book.  Why?  Because I kept things really simple.  There is LOTS going on in the book so I didn’t do any more descriptions of settings than were necessary.  The Carny Man’s crazy visage and eye beams are artistic license as the Illustrator.

When you think about it, there’s the written word, which is wonderful for fueling your imagination, and then there is the Illustrations.  Sometimes, illustrators bring even more to the story than you would have envisioned.  Often, you might disagree with an interpretation.  Think of the OZ books, or Alice in Wonderland, and you’ll see what I mean.  But since I’m the First Illustrator of my books, if I depict the Carny Man as rather frightening with eyebeams, I must be really enhancing the story.

Unfortunately, he looked even more evil when I tried to break the design down into a Fantasy Park Logo:

This is super duper RUFF, but you get an idea.  I’m relieved finally that I’m heading in the right direction.  Considering my failure with nailing my own Studio logo, hopefully I can make something decent for the book.

Seriously, this is why we used to have Separate disciplines.  My strength is in Illustration, I don’t care for logo work and so am not very good at it.  Some artists are very versatile in their understandings of different aesthetics.  Each kind of art for marketing requires a certain criteria.  Readability, Symbolism, Iconography, whatever.  Man, I just want to tell a story.  ALSO, the reason different people should handle art created for the same project is the fact that I am too *close* to my book.  Someone who’s not personally invested in a project but will bring all professional creativity to making something happen for it, will probably create the Right solution.  Myself, being the overall Creator, I chase my dream visions and forget what is important to Tell the audience.

So!  There’s that to work on, plus a new attempt at an imprint logo for the studio, and there’s this:

I put TEST on there because I don’t want this going around the interwebs as my definitive cover.  The graphics are just there for me to see if the latest Book Logo design works.  I think it does, wish it wasn’t a call back to certain things but in all, I am happy with it.  In looking at this temporary mock-up, I finally had a seriously Clear Vision of what the book cover should look like.  It had always been in my head in some variation of the below, but now I think I understand it.

You’re probably wondering, what the heck is that??? LOL  Hey, at least I know What That Is.   We are going into High Adventure.

I am glad for Emma!!

Have a great weekend, catch some vitamin D’s for me,

~~~eeee!