Monday, August 31, 2009

In the Works!!!

Even though we are still pushing the book we have out (Berona’s Hundred Year War) we want to keep the momentum going and have already began work on a second book as well, not to mention possibly trying to get out some designs for our “Army Men” type collectable characters.
First things first…The second book, if things go as planned, will be done in the same fashion as the first one except it will be more “story” based. We have been calling it a Tale of Two Runners but the odds are that it will end up being something different. However the content will be the same.
The book will consist of a bunch of short stories about the characters from Berona’s War. Since the first book is a bit of a tease (a beautiful tease, but a tease none the less) we thought we would go ahead and slap the readers with a bit story…actually put them with soldiers in the battle. The feel of the book will be the same as the first because we will be doing the stories with a bit of mixed medium. Some of the stories will be done in the comic style paneling while others will be a few pages of text followed by a picture or two, then we will have a few one page type story (this will be done in a Far Side manner). So the plan is to give a nice mix of story telling. Again, this is the plan and as we all know, plans do change!



Up coming interstitials. Well that’s what we’ve been calling them! However, that’s probably not the right term but you know what….I don’t care! I’ve wanted to do a fun little project in After Effects for a long time now. I ran an idea by Anthony and he said “Lets do it!” So I guess we’re gonna do it :) If we actually get them done, we will post them on our site and they will be short little scenes from the war. We are doing them for no other reason then just to do them and because we think they will be fun.



The Army Men! In the back of “Berona’s War” there is a page of our character in the classic army men poses. We also had this design on our t-shirts (which ended up coming close to selling out). So we figured why not? I admit we know very little about doing molds and such but we are learning and we both feel good about creating a bag of our little heroes! The plan is to have a bag of three Ele-Alta soldiers as well as a bag of three Cropone soldiers. If that works out, we might actually try creating a bag of “Slayer vs. Zombie Pack”
-Jesse
The proto type





Tuesday, August 25, 2009

On To Borders!!!




We left from there and headed over to Borders where we did more of the same. We were scheduled to be there from 5-7pm but ended up staying until 10pm. We stayed busy the whole time and were both VERY happy with the support we received from fans, friends, family and co-workers…not to mention all of the strangers who just walked up and liked what they saw.
We needed to sell 20-25 books to hit the “High End” list so we can get into the other Borders book stores. At the end of the night Catherine, the store employee, walked up to us and gave us the total. 104 books!!!
At the end of the night we all headed over to Chilies and filled up on sustenance! While eating, Anthony and I continued to talk to about the possibilities of book II, a Tale of Two Runners (working title…haha). We are excited about the possibilities.
-Jesse





Heroes and Dreams Book Signing!


The book signing weekend is over! Anthony and Our friend Brian traveled from Texas to stay the weekend. They arrived late Friday night and we immediately began sketching in some of the books to get a head start for Sat. We knew we pre-sold 40 books to Heroes and Dreams, so we had to get to work on putting sketches in them.
Saturday morning we woke up and continued sketching in the books before we headed out to the comic shop and book store.
We got to Heroes and immediately began to set up and pass out books. We stayed there around 3 hours and stayed busy the whole time. The time went by pretty quickly because they’re a pretty good group of guys there and we always enjoy hanging out with them.
-Jesse



Thursday, August 20, 2009

Book Signings


This weekend Anthony will be heading down to Mississippi to join me in a couple of book signing events. First from 1-4 on Sat.22nd we will both be attending a “Meet and Greet” at Heroes and Dreams (http://www.heroesanddreams.com/) where we will be handing out the pre-ordered books as well and signing any new books bought! PLUS we will be selling a limited number of shirts there as well.
After that we will head to Borders in Flowood to do a book signing there too. That signing will be from 5-7pm…also Sat. 22nd
After that we will (traditionally) go for a much needed bite at a local Applebees.
-Jesse

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Wizard World Chicago 2009




Anthony and myself just returned from the Wizard Convention in Chicago where we released our book to the public for the first time. We had a pretty damn good time! Not only did we have a good time hanging out with some of our favorite artists, we sold out of all the books we brought.Oddly enough we sold our first book in the plane terminal…who would of thunk it? We were over weight on our luggage so we had to start pulling out books so we could just add them to our carry-on. The lady doing the check in saw the books and wanted one. Not to mention the girl checking us in our hotel wanted one as well. Two books gone and the convention hadn’t even started! Sorry to say we only brought three boxes of books. 75 books in all!Personally the highlight of the con for me was getting the “Skottie Young Seal of Approval!” http://www.skottieyoung.com/Skottie is a hell of a guy, busy as can be…but one hell of a guy! Its one thing when a fan comes up and tells you that they love your work but when someone that you admire tells you they like what you do….its a whole new sense of triumph! Thanks Skottie!So after the rubber band war in the hotel, stupid amount of pizza consumption, selling out of books and shirts, laughing till our sides hurt…I would say we had a great weekend!!!
-Jesse