Production on the Neil Jam book is moving along. It is pretty crazy how much longer these big pages take to finish than the lil’ daily sized strips. I’m hoping to have it all ready in August… And then it’s party time!
I’ve drawn this same strip in the past, but for the sake of all that is new school, here it is again!
It’s been about ten years since the comics landscape was forever altered by the emergence of graphic novels and book length compilations (i.e., comic books with spines), so I figure the time is right for Neil Jam to jump into the fray. That’s right, later on this summer I plan to release the first ever Neil Jam collection!
Titled simply Neil Jam or Neil Jam “Something” (as in Neil Jam Invasion, Neil Jam Romance, etc), this book will be a collection of Neil Jam shorts, with strips ranging anywhere from about one to ten pages. The material featured will be strips taken directly from recent Neil Jam minicomics, some redrawn and/or reformatted strips from recent and prior minicomics, as well as a selection of all new strips. It will be a modest and concise package, clocking in somewhere over 100 pages.
Though I’ve obviously self published a heap load of minicomics, I do not fancy myself a publisher. I do not feel equipped to embark on this project on an offical scale, so I have decided to go about it in an unofficial capacity. The plan is to use a print-on-demand service and then see where it goes from there. If it turns out well perhaps I would take it in a different direction with the printing, or perhaps someone else would offer to take it in a different direction with the publishing (yes please).
I’ll have my hands full over the next month or so finishing this puppy up. In the meantime, let me know if you have any suggestions. Word.
It is official. Every Wednesday from here on out you can expect to see a new Neil Jam comic strip. Up until now, the update schedule had been “whenever,” so I feel we’re making some actual progress around here! Once a week may not sound like much, but I plan to supplement these strips with various new comic book style pages which I am simultaneously working on. I’ll do my best to post those pages periodically. But yeah, Wednesday is now Neil Jam day. It is official. Please tell your friends!
Anime Central was a wild weekend immersed in the wild world of anime. Unlike a comics convention, an anime convention like this has a much broader scope. There were only a handful of us peddling comics within the artist alley. The rest of the tables had a variety of items: tshirts, jewelry, bookmarks, prints, toys, crafty goods, and a whole lot more.
This sign was my secret weapon of the weekend. It was inspired by a similar technique my table neighbor Brion Foulke was using. I crafted it on the spot with an old legal pad I had with me and held it over my table for nearly the entire three days. Believe it or not, it actually worked! A good number of people told me they stopped specifically because they saw or liked the sign. I’m not sure this exact technique would work at a comics convention, but it managed to do the job here. Who knew??
I want to thank everyone who stopped by to say hi or chat. It was a pretty fun weekend, and now that my feet have stopped hurting I feel ready to do it again. There are several more photos on my flickr page if you’d like to get a better feel of what the show was like. For now I think I’ll just leave you with a shot of my favorite costumed crazy of the weekend– a Jedi Bunny.
We seem to be back on track with the comic updates, which is certainly good news. And in other news, I’ll be at Anime Central (or ACen, for the cool people) this weekend (May 8-10). I don’t know a heck of a lot about anime, but I was on hand last year and it went pretty well. I’ll have the usual bulk load of books and artwork with me. Oh, and don’t forget to follow me on Twitter!
I went ahead and added a picture of the Neil Jam cast in the “About” page, so if anybody gets confused about who’s who around here, u can use that pic for reference. Still haven’t decided on when or how to make these comic strip updates official, but I’ll get back to posting some new ones next week. Look at me, going on and on about icky “business” stuff… Have I told you how beautiful you look today?
In order to get this site in top working order, there’s a few things I’ve been meaning to do. First, I intend to add some sort of “cast” page– just a basic rundown of names and such to give everyone a firmer grasp of the characters. Second, and most important, I need to make this whole thing official– establish a set updating schedule and then stick to it. This will be the point of no return. And third…? Hmmm, I don’t know what else. Let me know if there’s anything I’m leaving out.
