Book sketches and guest stars
over 1 year ago
– Tue, Mar 14, 2023 at 03:57:11 PM
Hi everyone. I have some specific stuff to cover today for some specific backers. If you pledged to be a guest star in an upcoming Modest Medusa strip or if you pledged for a custom book sketch this update is for you!
Guest Stars: About 20 of you pledged to be guest stars. That's so many! I've been super busy since the Kickstarter so I haven't had a chance to get any of you in the comic yet, but that will change starting next month. To be clear, it takes time and opportunity to find places for so many people, but my goal is to get everyone in the comic by the end of next season. So that will be this year and probably the first half of next year.
Several of you have already sent me information and reference photos. Thanks! If you haven't yet please go ahead and send me a little bit of info about yourself (name you'd like me to use and any kind of personal interests or quirks you'd like me to try to include) plus one or two good photos or other reference pics of yourself. Unless otherwise noted I will dress you as you appear in the images you send me! You can contact me here on Kickstarter or at [email protected]. Don't worry, if I don't hear from you I'll reach out to you again when I'm ready to fit you into the comic!
Custom Book Sketches: Even more of you pledged for custom book sketches! I'm going to be busy this Spring. What I need you to do is send me a message here or at [email protected] describing what you'd like me to draw for you. Here's the rules:
- The image will be 3 x 4 inches (or 4 x 3 inches).
- I will draw any character from one of my comics or games. They can be doing whatever you want. Taking a nap, flying, firing a laser. I will happily draw Modest as Superman or Bayonetta or whatever you want.
- Please don't ask me to draw more than two characters. The image area is pretty small and adding more than two characters is just a lot of work. I have to do a bunch of these!
I draw these on little sticker sheets and then past them into the books. Here's a few examples:
Thats it for now. I'll have another update for you later this month!
- Jake
March update! Check out this cover!
over 1 year ago
– Sat, Mar 11, 2023 at 12:35:09 AM
Hi everyone. I hope you're having a good March. After a REALLY, REALLY frustrating two months I'm back on track and crossing stuff off my work lists. Tonight I finished up the cover for Modest Medusa Season 5. Check it out!
Season 5's cover features Modest in her Winter outfit, with inset images showing Ekans, Jake and Ms. Booth on the front cover and Charles, Jenny (spoiler!) and Gina on the back. Warning, this book includes farts and snake bites!
More good news: I'm finishing up proofing on both the Season 4 and 5 books this week (with the help of MM readers Pheonix11, Glucifer and ChronoDragoon) and will be sending the files to the printer next week. I have a conference call scheduled with the printer on Monday to work out some details, but I expect the books to be in production this month. I've worked with these printers before on the first 3 Modest Medusa hardcover books and I know they'll do a good job.
With the books finished and at the printer I'll have time to focus on some other stuff (and maybe take a day or two off)! I won't be opening the Backerkit until I have an arrival date for teh books and can calculate shipping costs. I will be working on putting together the 48 Hour Modest Medusa book as well as starting on the Kickstarter Book Sketches (which are done on adhesive sheets which will be put into the books later).
So there's still plenty to do, but this is a huge milestone!
- Jake
Update
almost 2 years ago
– Fri, Feb 17, 2023 at 11:41:17 PM
Thank you all for you kind comments on the last two updates. I really appreciate it.
I'm taking a break from working on the book this weekend. I need a little space and I have other stuff I need to focus on for a few days. I was so distraught over losing these pages that I actually FORGOT to do my Friday Modest Medusa strip. I didn't even realized I missed it until someone pointed it out. So I need a little break.
I'm still not exactly sure what's going on but here's what I'm doing:
- Antivirus and malware scans (all clear so far).
- Transfer all book files to an unused external hard drive and a new Dropbox folder.
- Ordering a new hard drive (arriving Monday).
- Memory tests (all clear so far).
As many of you pointed out this is probably the result of a failing hard drive, so I'm hoping replacing it will solve the problem. In the meantime I'll be double saving everything to the new HD and external HD and setting up regular cloud backups instead of my current system of doing a manual backup every Saturday.
After this project is wrapped up I'll need to spend some time going through my files to see what's been lost. I'm pretty worried about this. In the end I've lost about 1/6th of my files for this book. If that ration stays true across all of my files it will be devastating. Thankfully I kno I at least haven't lost the master files for my previous books. So even if the original pages are lost I still have intact files for books 1-4.
Anyway, thank you all for your support. I'll be back to work on this book next week and expect to deliver it to the printer by the end of the month, even with having to re-draw a bunch more pages.
- Jake
Update: Disaster
almost 2 years ago
– Thu, Feb 16, 2023 at 07:27:53 PM
I am very sorry to say that just after posting my last update I discovered that my hard drive seems to have eaten several of the pages I drew for this book, including 7 of the 8 pages of the brand new story I created just for this book. I had thought the file corruption problem was caused by the age of the files, but apparently this isn't the case and brand new files are also being effected. Although I make regular backups, these files had all been created since my last backup. In total I've lost 13 pages.
I am devastated by this. Its been a huge amount of unexpected work to complete this book. Today I thought it was finally done, and its very upsetting to realize that I'll need to be recreating pages drawn just last week.
- Jake
Comparison pics! New lettering, coloring and re-drawn pages.
almost 2 years ago
– Thu, Feb 16, 2023 at 05:43:05 PM
Hi everyone. I hope you're having a nice February. Its been a frustrating one for me. Last time I told you that I'd discovered some of the Modest Medusa files had been corrupted (or lost to bad file management) and I've had to redraw several pages for the Season 5 book. I JUST finished redrawing the last of the 26 pages.
26 pages!!!
For reference, I only usually draw 8 Modest Medusa pages in a month. In addition to those 26 pages I also colored 18 pages and re-lettered 164 pages. That was a LOT of work! Once this book is off to the printer I'll be spending some time sorting my files and seeing what else I've lost. Hopefully not much!
I want you to see what the new stuff looks like. Here's an example of the new colored pages. Several of the Season 5 pages were originally posted in black and white, so I've taken this opportunity to color them for the first time. (Warning, spoilers ahead)
I've also re-lettered the whole season, replacing the old janky word balloons with the rounded balloons I started using in Season 8.
Here's an example of a re-drawn page. The original file was lost, but I was able to recreate the image by blowing up the low res version of the page posted on my site and tracing over it, then recoloring it. Its a time consuming process! I tried to recapture the original page as close as possible.
I don't know if anyone would even notice the difference unless I pointed it out.
Anyway, this step is all done, and it only took months longer than I thought it would. Next I'll be working on editing and adding commentary to each page. Most of the commentray is already written, so this will be primarily and copy/paste job. After that its proofing and drawing the cover, then Modest Medusa Seasons 4 and 5 will be off to the printer!
Whew.
- Jake
