Archive for ‘Comic’
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Well, it’s finally available! From Death Til Now book 1 is available for purchase through Indy Planet. I got my final proof copy in and it looked great so I feel good about offering it up to you all.
Now you may be asking, “why buy a book I can read, or have read online?” To you I say: Great question! Here’s why! I’ve loaded the thing with special content. Not only do you get all 152 pages of the first book, but you also get:
2 Brand New Exclusive Government Documents!
6 Pinup Drawings By Some Of My Favorite Artists
A 5 Page Process Diary
A Completely Redrawn and Rendered Opening 4 Pages
An Inside Look At My Very First FDTN Drawings
And A Special Forward By Josh Ulrich
And all of this for only $10+Shipping And Handling! Huzzah I say! But the biggest reason I can think of is much like Grinch’s heart on Christmas, the warmth and love I’ll feel knowing you purchased this here book, will make my heart grow infinity sizes. And friends you can’t put money on making people’s hearts grow bigger 
I sincerely hope you’ll pick one up! And thank you for reading. I hope we get back to updates here really soon!
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Next week’s update may be a tad late. The next few pages are quite involved and will require a bit of love and care to get right so I will do my best to get it all done. Hope you like the new page! Fun stuff is about to start happening. At least I think so.
In case you guys didn’t read the blog post about the book, I did receive my first copies of the book in the mail and it printing looks GREAT! What doesn’t is some of the sizes of the pages. I thought I was going to be OK with some of the formatting on the pages and I was sorely wrong. The book is readable, but I’m not happy with it and won’t be putting it up for sale until I get the chance to redo that. So unfortunately that means I have to resend all of the files which means it’s going to be a month before I can get my artist editions copies out, at the earliest. I’m sorry to make everyone wait. But the book should be good to go real soon.
But on the positive you can still order an artist’s edition to go out with the first batch! GET YOUR ORDER IN!!!
Ta-Da! It’s a ship! But who or what is inside…. Well, that’s gonna take a few pages to answer yet. Buckle in my friends.
I have a question for you guys, I am considering splitting my page updates into two separate updates so that you all get two a week instead of the one. It’s the same amount of content, but the frequency is nice. I’ve been using this approach on Kevin and the Light of Destiny and the response has been strong. So I thought I might try it here. It makes the updates a little easier for me to manage and it gives you all maybe a it more continuity since you’re able to get the story a little more consistently. Let me know your thoughts in the comments please! Or send me an email.
Alright, alright, alright! let’s get this show on the road! In amazing technicolor! I went back and forth for some time on whether or not to go with color for the book, but I think I can do it and still produce pages at the speed I have in the past, so I’ll give it a go!
Two items of note, other than the beginning of book 2: 1) I still haven’t received my proof copies of book 1 yet. As soon as I do, I will be posting a few pictures and and even a video of the book. And then I will be ordering everyone’s artist’s editions who have ordered them and getting those out to you. I didn’t order the books with the first proof yet, because I want to make sure everything looks OK. So, thank you for your patience, but they’re coming. And you still have time to order one, so please do!
2) Moving forward I think Updates will be going back to once a week for now and I’m leaning for a Thursday update schedule. I wanted to go ahead and post the first page now, as I’m excited to show it to you guys. Hopefully we’ll get back up to two pages again, but for now I think this is what I have to do to make sure the quality stays high and my updates consistent.
Other than that I hope you all like the new page and I look forward to showing you the exciting beginning of book 2!
One of the things I did with the completion of book 1 of FDTN was ask some friends to provide some pinup art for the book edition. Everyone did some amazing work! This piece was done by Stephen McCranie and it just knocked me out when I saw it. He really took my concepts and made an intriguing image. There are five more pinup pieces in the book as well by more of my homies!
Well, my first copy of book 1 should be in my hands this week and if it looks good you guys can start buying your own! I’m waiting to make sure I did everything right. And next week we should have our first update to book 2! So sit tight, here we go!
Something I thought I would show you guys is what the custom drawings are looking like for the artist’s editions of the book. These two are for Erin O’Kane and my buddy and assistant on book 1 of FDTN and fellow helper on the Amulet series, Ryan Hoffman (who also makes a pretty cool webcomic called, MegaWest). Erin asked for me to do a drawing of George’s wife (or Virgil’s, but she hasn’t come into the book yet). So I knocked this little piece out of George’s jilted lady. I’ve been working on fine-tuning her design some as she plays a huge part of book 2. And Ryan asked that I show a scene of the monster chase.
You too can get a drawing of your choice by purchasing the Artist’s Editions of the book. It’s a great way to support the book and get a little something nice as well. So if you feel so inclined and are able, please consider picking one up. I would love to send you a custom drawing as well.
One more update of book 1 content, before we launch into book 2! Sit tight guys, things are getting ready to get crazy.
While you’re waiting for Book 2 to start, swing on over to my all ages comic, Kevin and The Light of Destiny! It’s just started and will be updated twice a week moving forward. I’ve been really feeling for some time that all ages books are what I most care about in telling (though two old guys saving the world is pretty close to my heart too!). I would love if you get a chance to go by and let me know what you think! Next week, I’ll have another behind the scenes page from the print edition of FTDN book 1!
So, we’re in kind of a dead zone between now and the beginning of book 2, which is less than a month away. So what I wanted to do was give you guys a preview of some of the things going into book 1 that make the print edition special.
Real early on I made a pretty conscious decision that the early early pages of FDTN were just not holding up with the newer art. I was finally getting a grasp on my characters by about page 50 and it was showing. If you look at the first four pages of the book, the characters are almost unrecognizable compared to how I draw them now. So with that in mind I decided that the first four pages needed a complete revamp. I penciled, inked and re-toned all four pages. Looking at the pages next to each other like this is kinda crazy. I’ve gotten so much better at drawing and using Photoshop as a tool.
This is also a reminder that Artist’s Editions of the book are available for pre-order at this time. Please consider taking part in that. And you get an original finished drawing by me. Here’s an example of one of the drawings I did for the comments contest that are similar to what I am doing for these artist’s editions:
(Yes, Dystop, that’s your drawing, which is in the mail my friend!)
Hopefully that wets the palette some! Early sales are lookin pretty good and I thank you all for signing up for this. Remember that unsigned standard versions of the book will be coming soon for $10 really soon, so stay tuned. Here’s how you can sign up for the artist’s editions:
From Death Til Now Book 1: The Map To Save Us – Artist’s Editions
Book Contents:
-Printed in portable digest size 5×7.5 in.
- All 152 pages of the first volume in the epic story
- Top Secret Government Documents
- 2 Exclusive Government Documents to take you deeper
- Special behind the scenes commentary and drawings
- Pin-up gallery by other comics creators
- *Signature from creator, Michael Regina
- *Original drawing by creator/artist, Michael Regina done on separate art board sized 5×7
*=only available in artist edition purchase
For drawings, just fill out the name of a character from FDTN you would like to have drawn for you in the text field above the “buy now” button. Please allow two months delivery at this time.
$20 + $5 Shipping&Handling
And that’s it folks! From Death Til Now book 1, The Map To Save Us is done! It’s so exciting and gratifying to be done and to be finally moving on to book 2. I wanted to take a minute to reflect on the last three years worth of work before laying out the timelines for what to expect moving forward.
I came up with this story during a very difficult time in my life. My grandfather had just died and I was closing in graduating from college in a few months, not mention marriage as well. Life was happening fast for me and things were both exciting and sad. I came up with this story as a result of that time and it’s grown into something much different than I first thought when I bought a notebook to start jotting down ideas.
Guys, this journey of creating this book, my first completed graphic novel, has been so challenging, so tiring, so rewarding. It has single-handedly turned me into a comic artist I can be proud of. It has pushed my storytelling abilities and my writing into new areas and really taught me how to plan out production on a graphic novel project. I can only hope that it has been as fun and rewarding for you all as well. It’s so rewarding and humbling to know that anyone comes to this site at all to read this story and I am more and more committed to making the story so much better moving forward.
With that said, the topic now needs to turn to book 2 and book 1 sales.
Book 2 will begin in one month, right after the July 4th weekend. I have done this specifically to focus my time and attention on finishing the packaging and formatting of book 1, to spend some time in the script for book 2 (which I am soooo happy with so far!), to work on my other project www.kevincomic.com. Juggling two projects moving forward will prove to be a challenge, but I’m excited about it. I think it will be refreshing to have two distinct projects out there.
In the meantime, I will be posting pictures up here and blog posts on the progress of the printing process for book 1. Pre-orders of the artist edition have begun. You can order it right here and the un-signed standard version of the book will be posted up in the next month. Per-orders for the artist’s edition have begun so that I can get started up on the art and order copies.
From Death Til Now Book 1: The Map To Save Us – Artist’s Editions
Book Contents:
-Printed in portable digest size 5×7.5 in.
- All 152 pages of the first volume in the epic story
- Top Secret Government Documents
- 2 Exclusive Government Documents to take you deeper
- Special behind the scenes commentary and drawings
- Pin-up gallery by other comics creators
- *Signature from creator, Michael Regina
- *Original drawing by creator/artist, Michael Regina done on separate art board sized 5×7
*=only available in artist edition purchase
For drawings, just fill out the name of a character from FDTN you would like to have drawn for you in the text field above the “buy now” button. Please allow two months delivery at this time.
$20 + $5 Shipping&Handling
