First real sight of Miranda! Complete with Scary Shiny Glasses.
She’s reading manga here. Don’t know why I didn’t commit to a specific series (or a recognizable parody of a specific series). Could’ve been way more ominous if she had a volume of Kill Book and was going “yeah, I always knew which of the sociopaths was about to off which other sociopath.”
This whole fence is hand-drawn, even the curlicues over the doors. Ah, the days before “free-to-use Creepy Goth Graveyard Fence template” was an easy-to-google thing.
All print volumes of But I’m A Cat Person are on sale for 20% off! So if you only got the first few copies and haven’t been able to round out the set…now would be a great time.
Just use the coupon code “ITSHERE” at checkout. And don’t put it off too long, because the sale ends May 8 at 11:59 PM. (Possibly earlier, depending on your time zone…)
In other news, the BICP Art Collection has done a great round of sales since it was launched — enough that I decided to send TLDEF the first $70 contribution this afternoon. (With a little add-on of my own to cover the transaction fee.)
If you didn’t get the artbook during the opening-weekend rush, don’t worry! It’s still available — and I’ll make more donations every so often as the proceeds add up, so whatever you pay will be bundled with the next one.
Good news first: I’m doing an omnibus release of But I’m A Cat Person — still pondering what to do with the covers, but I know it’ll be a three-volume set — and the interior files are almost done!
Basically, it’s all over but the bonus material. And yeah, that’s a significant “but”, considering that’s the part that needs the most new drawing. Still good progress.
I decided to lay out the book interiors from scratch in Scribus, a freeware alternative to Adobe InDesign. Wanted to see how well it handles all the functions I find myself needing in the course of a real, active project.
Long story short, it works great. Minor differences, but I’ve found everything I needed, and the program has not once crashed while exporting a PDF. (Which you might think should go without saying…unless you’ve used InDesign.)
First pass at a layout for the start of Master’s Edition 1. (The post header image shows the layout I revised this into.)
Less-good news: I’m not setting a firm date for the Kickstarter yet. Partly because of the global economic chaos, partly because the Post Office is so busy delivering everyone’s groceries and toilet paper that they don’t have a lot of time for books right now.
Better news: I’ve been working on a little digital somethin’ somethin’ in the meantime, and that will be ready to drop next week.
Digital artbook layout preview.
See, BICP has built up a huge catalog of ancillary material over the past decade. More than I’d realistically be able to print, even in the Master’s Edition.
But a PDF artbook? I can make that as loooong as I want, forget about conserving space and make everything full-page as often as I want, and still afford to give it a “pay as much as you want” release.
So I’m gonna. Proceeds will go to a good cause. Stay tuned.
If you run into any problems seeing new comments or loading new pages, let me know!
…I realize this is complicated with BICP, because the problem might be “the update is late.” Could’ve tried it on Leif & Thorn first, but that site has more visits and more updates, so the fallout from breaking it would be bigger
And I’m already using And Shine Heaven Now to test a competitor plugin, WP Super Cache. (Which will come out on top? Place your bets now!)
But I’m A Cat Person had overactive caching issues this past week, same as Leif & Thorn did — it just wasn’t as obvious, because this site doesn’t have daily updates for readers to notice when they’re missing.
Good news is, it’s fixed now! Any pages you loaded since Friday the 6th, you’ll have to refresh them one more time — but that’ll get you a non-sticky version from here on out.
Other good news: the proof copy of BICP Volume 7 arrived, and I got my cat to pose with it!
What a stunning model of grace and elegance.
(His name is Marshmallow Fluff. He’s still nervous about being petted or touched…but he’s come a long way from his “squeeze into the smallest corner possible and don’t move” stage, thanks to almost 6 months in a stable home, with regular meals and all the toys he can swat.)
Volume 7 is the one that opens with here’s what you missed on BICP, which means less space for bonus material in the back. But I added an extra 4 pages and managed to squeeze a few cool things in.
This is also the volume where I started putting full shading on the original pages — which made the art-updating process go a lot faster.
Chapter 23 (along with the recap that preceded it) was edited to the audiobook of Good Omens. Because I wanted to revisit it after seeing the Amazon miniseries…and yes, there’s a physical copy on my shelf, but I did not have time to sit and read it.
Chapter 24 was updated to the 4th season of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. That show started rough, but boy has it hit its stride by now.
Chapter 25 was touched-up to the 2nd season of Mindhunter. Which…was awfully short. Possibly I needed something else to ride through the last few pages, but it wasn’t long enough to remember.
Chapter 26 — the first one where I didn’t have to add a new credit line, move a single word balloon, or add padding for a 2-page spread — was finished off during half the audiobook of Hollow Kingdom. Just half! Then all the work was done!
(I listened to the rest of it while doing other print-prep stuff. And queuing the next round of single-issue PDFs to release on ComiXology and DriveThruComics.)
This…might actually be the last of the page-redrawing efforts. Chapters 27 onward might just be released as-is.
First real sight of Miranda! Complete with Scary Shiny Glasses.
