Sneak Peek #23: Chapter 8 PENCILED

OH HAPPY DAY! The pencils for Chapter 8 are completely finished! Dance party commences in 3... 2... 1...

Hmm. That never seems to happen the way I imagine.

But anyways, we’ve passed a nice milestone on V3 production, and if you wade through all my yammering here, there are pretty pictures to prove it.

I imagine some may be wondering just how close we are to finishing not a chapter, but the damn book. After all, it’s not like you guys get to curl up with new material every time I slap myself on the back for hitting a milestone. Well, to give you a snapshot of our progress, I made… A GRAPH! …No, it’s not boring. This graph is extreme. Note the rad text and exclamation points, please.

So as you can see by the bro-tacularly intense graph, we’re not out of the woods yet.

…Though I will mention that the end of Chapter 8 is already 89 pages in to Volume 3 - and Chapter 9 has a good 43 pages in and of itself waiting for me to get rolling on. Volume 1 was 98 pages total - so a part of our production time is due to the fact that V3 is big. Just friggin big.

There’s still a stretch to go - but since the commercial was finished this spring, our production has been going at a great rate!

Speaking of the commercial… AAAAUUUUGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHBLOODCROWSHAMMERFINGERDOORSLAMFLOCKODUCKS!

…Mildly frustrated. Turns out the work of animating every frame was actually the easy part. Now that it’s done and ready to roll, hunting down a venue is proving bizarrely difficult. Sales reps and ad execs quail at my approach - e-mails go unanswered, phone calls vanish into an abyss, and… A 3rd item here would make for a nice rhythm to my complainy sentence, but I haven’t actually tried using a telegraph.

I never imagined it would be so hard to get people to take money and do their jobs. Perhaps those I previously contacted weren’t serious about hosting the commercial, and instead wound up losing an office bet when I actually came through with a finished piece to air. The world will never know.

Meanwhile, I feel like a kid with a loaded shotgun in front of a pinata - EXCITED - but then the thing keeps inexplicably firing blanks. I just want to take my damn shot.

…I do think I’ll track down a venue for this thing pretty soon, but experience has taught me not to announce anything that relies on other people until after they‘ve actually delivered.

There - now that you’ve been forced to taste the bitter sting of my disappointment, it’s time you were rewarded! Here are some teaser images from Chapter 8 so far.

Though the pencils for Chapter 8 are done, they were completed in an obsessive haze at the expense of a lot of other tasks. As a result, I’ve got a run of miscellaneous things to sweep up before ripping into Chapter 9:

Getting caught up on e-mails and the poor, poor, utterly neglected art account comments, 3rd quarter records and taxes for Vivid, the Prelude que is dry and needs refilling, need to get rolling on Commission slot #3 for November, of course get started making the Halloween beads for the winners this year, and if I’m going to at least attempt a new forum, now’s the time to get that rolling as well, before I fall into the sweet oblivion of endless Chapter 9 sketches. Also - I should possibly think about doing the dishes.

I’ll need courage for that - everyone please wish me fortitude.