Black-Flip

A lot has happened since my last journal posting.  Much of it did not get captured here so I will summarize.

The book was finished. We made some adjustments to the overall structure. While it was originally going to be three sections (Story, Manual, Teachers Guide) the story alone was nearly 500 pages! Thing is the story alone was so good that it could stand on its own so in wing chun practice, we did not fight the force. Everything directed us to complete the story first and get that out and make the other two sections available later. So that is what we did. Along the way we did have to make some tough decisions. The print book became the focus so the music production was re-prioritized. Like the manual and teacher's guide, it will be made available later. Additionally, each chapter was slated to have three to five images embedded. To make our targeted production date and to keep the book under 500 pages we pulled back all but the chapter images. Again, these will be made available later.

Part of finishing the book was getting it published. We didn't feel like trying to sell the product to some traditional publisher so we opted to go the self publishing route.  In February we signed a contract with Authorhouse. Over the next several months we pushed hard to get the book completed so we could hand it over for production. In March we decided to go public with everything on Facebook and Twitter. In April, had an exhibitor booth at Anime Central and launched our Kickstarter campaign to raise $12,000 for funding. Both ACEN and Kickstarter were a success! We promoted the book as much as we could with what we had and currently have over 30,000 Facebook Likes.

For me the struggle was finding enough time and energy to finish the artwork. I went through three different versions of the cover art. While there are only twelve images in the book there were over 100 drawings that never saw the light of day. I created an Art of Kirin Rise book to capture a small fraction of those. I was also struggling with learning a new medium. I had never done any digital artwork before. My primary experience was paper and pencils so learning inking, coloring and digital drawing simultaneously was pretty daunting. I still have so much to learn.

As I stated earlier, the book was finished. In late July we sent everything off to the publisher. By late August we received the first tangible proof copies. Just after Labor Day we received our first shipment of books. As part of the Kickstarter campaign I had promised The Art of Kirin Rise to the people who backed at the $100 level so my next focus was getting that done. Two days ago at 5 AM CT I finished that and it is with a local printer now to be ready by 3 PM CT tomorrow. The push was because we are having our official signing party tomorrow night.

Following tomorrow night's party we are going to New York Comic Con in two weeks!

So, yeah, a lot has happened in the last 8 months!

Ron
kirinrise.com
Kirin Rise Facebook Page

Well the book is off to the editor and we have a plan for publishing this summer!  Now we're at the point where we're promoting our labor of love.  So please feel free to check out my work and the links for Kirin Rise - The Cast of Shadows!  We're very social.

Just updated a folder with the work I'm doing for an original project.  It's a collaboration with a friend.  I've only posted less than half of the things I've done for the project but this is the latter half and the stuff that looks halfway decent.  The work started Around June or July of 2012.  So much more work to be done and I need to get better so feel free to check it out and comment where you see fit.

Thanks.

I just finished posting my work that I thought was worth posting.  It's 2:14 AM and I need to be up by 7 AM.  Zzzzzzzz