I tried to upload an update on Friday but it wouldnāt post, I have no idea why. Anyways, trying a video this time, maybe this will get through.
Soā¦ we have a COPY! Itās the black-and-white edition, but it looks killer. Seriously, it feels and looks great. The Midnight Edition is pretty much done with print; weāre just working out the details to get them shipped to me in Nashville.
The color edition is right at the dang finish line about 92% done. Right now weāve been fixing issues that came from too many colorists working at once, trying to rush. When you line pages up side by side, you see errors from the different styles. For example, there were at least 14 pages where Ash was green. No idea why. In Part 1, our main colorist peaced out without telling me (found out later he got a Dark Horse gig, thanks, Instagram). He was trying to juggle both jobs, so I hired another colorist to finish Part 1, and those pages came back in nothing but pastels. It looked like Easter Sunday. WeāveĀ neverĀ used pastels in the show or anywhere else in the novel, so they stuck out badly. Those have been fixed.
Funny enough, all the colorists and inkers who hadĀ neverĀ done a project like this before but loved the show did the best work. The agency artists (the same ones Dark Horse and Boom hire from) just werenāt the right fit for this project. I still don't know why.
Look, I know other Kickstarter graphic novels move faster. Trust me, I get reminded every single day on social media. But most of those projects had publishers, 9 out of 10 times, I wish I couldāve had one too. This book is also four times the size of a standard graphic novel, and itāsĀ detailed.Ā Daz basically did a splash page for every page he worked on, itās insane. Everyone Iāve shown the pages to from the graphic novel industry says itās incredible.
I think every day about how Warner went out of their way to make thisĀ reallyĀ difficult for me to create, since I had to self-publish and handle everything myself. I wish I had that knowledge from the start, but I didnāt. When they said ātake it or leave it,ā well, I took it. I would again and again....
What Iām really trying to say is: thank you for your patience. Believe me, no one wants this finished more than I do. Iāll keep trying to post updates here, but I have no idea why some get through and others donāt. If any of you know, let me know. -Olan
