Well, clearly the the concept of a Three Volume Set has settled into reality. When I started to pursue that idea, I wasn't quite sure how that would pan out. Some months ago I decided I had to get down to it and finalize the book design. It is difficult to do all this without a very positive cash flow, so a product in the market bringing me in some decent working capital is critical. Hence the storybook. Of course that was always the plan, but you know, it's time to get the show on the road , as they say.
So as I advanced into the first volume I realized that there needed to be an introduction of sorts and as it turned out the entire Volume One became an Introduction to "The Gnomes of New Hope". So quite naturally, I reserved the following volume for "Zach & Zebby's Grand Adventure". Well fortuitously it just so happens that Zach & Zebby had their adventure in two acts, thus two volumes - Volumes Two & Three.
So this is the format for the three volume set of the Illustrated Storybook. Now there was a criteria which I was rather trepidatious about and that was - an illustration on every page. That is a lot of illustrations! Of course Jency had been working for about five years, on and off as the resources were available, so we have a good body of work from which to draw, but not really enough. I have to say I have been able to create a pretty diverse collection of illustrations by accessing the drawings in numerous ways. Using close-ups, clippings and a general rearrangement of drawings and components in various compositions has increased the usability of what we do have at least five-fold, if not ten. So I am very happy about that, but as I progress with the more extensive work of illustrating all three volumes, I worry about redundancy.
In that regard I have determined to move forward with the material we have anyway and if I find that any particular scene is redundant to an unacceptable degree, I will be marking that illustration for reworking, but be using the material to fill the required space.
At first I thought I would skip over illustrating pages in order to expedite the completion of the storybook, but when I attempted to do that I found that I was very uncomfortable about doing so and it felt like it would be a mistake. So even if a page has a simple small illustration (that will possibly be referenced in a greater detail elsewhere) at least the artwork is represented to some degree on every page. Since this storybook also represents a storyboard for the film, then using as many illustrations as I can muster is appropriate.
So that has been the approach thus far.
As it stand now Volume One has sixty pages finished and it looks like it will be ninety to one hundred pages. Volume Two is up to around forty-eight pages which represent two scenes of the nine scenes in Act One of the stage show. Now those two scenes are greatly expanded upon in the storybook because out of necessity the details were overlooked in the stage show. I certainly do not expect to treat the remaining scenes with as much detail, although I could if it was clearly appropriate to do so. But to do that would require much more illustration work on Jency's part and would expand the size of the book quite a bit.
So at this point I want to stay on track for a three volume set that is not too large. What I described here does not yet take into account Volume three which is the additional nine scenes of Act Two. But the entire Two Volume set of Zach & Zebby's Grand Adventure does include all the lyrics from the musical, because the musical tells the story in song. The total songs, including instrumental bridges and backdrops is seventy songs. I am not certain how many of them are lyrical but I am sure there are some where around forty. (You'd think I would have counted them... I did, I just don't know what it is.)
We've developed a point-of purchase display for this series which essentially looks like a bookshelf. Well, as I began preparing the Gnome-sized edition of this storybook, I thought it out as a package to the retailer - thirty-six units shipped in a point-of-purchase display. But then as I started to finalize the book layout and cross reference it to the stage musical, I realized that the thirty-six volumes are not thirty-six copies of the three volume set, rather the thirty-six volumes are individual volumes addressing different aspects of Gnomanity and the Citizens of Gnomeville as well as other aspects of the Gnomic Tales. So there is a huge amount of material which can be further developed as part of this franchise. All of these additional Illustrated Volumes are contingent upon us moving forward with the Animated film, because this is how we will derive the illustrations, killing two birds with one stone, so-to-speak.
Well, that's enough for today. I've got to get back to work on finishing this layout. If you're a money person and you want to jump in for a 300% gain let me know, I could use the coins. AG
