Status Report 3/26/26

  You will note that below I posted video conversations that took place three years ago. Overall that still applies. What has been happening since then you can see in other posts below. Let me just say that in all this time we have been both designing and redesigning (when necessary) the artwork. Just yesterday, I asked Jency to redo the illustration for a particular page, because in looking at the proceeding and following pages, I felt that we needed a greater diversity in the posture of the characters. In fact, there are a few illustrations that will need to be done over because the characters drawn do not have the kind of consistency and detail that I feel is needed. So in those instances, the artwork is just place holding, while the collection is completed.

.   Five Binders of finished artwork that has been inserted into the layout. There are more.

    I'm pretty well certain that there are around a dozen pages left to do. Some pages are half finished, the ones that use multiple paintings to create the illustration panel. Once the last page is illustrated with the characters, then we will be going back to review and assess the backgrounds. Along the way I decided to make sure the characters were placed, even without a background. In some instances no background is necessary. But for diversity's sake, and depending on the shift of environment in the story, a backdrop is appropriate or required. But in order to complete the layout, insertion of the characters has had to have taken precedence over the background. Indeed, we have an excellent collection of quite detailed paintings of the environments where the story taken place, but I discovered (after creating those paintings) that there really isn't enough room in the books to show those backdrops to the story. In some instances there is room, but by the time those environments are reduced to the slotted space on the page, the detail is lost. So this collection of art will really be shown in the context of the exhibition.

.  Work has been done on these exhibition panels, but the significant progress on assembling the Exhibition must wait for the book layout to be completed. I will discuss the exhibition at another time and, in fact, will assemble the exhibition as an online presentation, for those that cannot travel to where it is physically presented. That online exhibition will be generally (in part) available for publicity, but in whole will be available by subscription. Sort of an entrance fee, like a ticket to the show. I will discuss this as it proceeds.

That's all for now.  AG

Conversations about the Gnomes

    I did this three years ago! 

I took these from my YouTube page, which I am only now starting to use.

 The Seven books in the collection are actually 768 pages long, not 900.

Part Two;

Part Three;

Sorry for the colorful language at one point.

 Since these videos were done three years ago, we are very much further along by now.

I believe I am down to the last dozen pages or so that need to be finished.

The next stage is to prepare the layout for the printer.

Now, contrary to what I said in the last video, I am considering setting up IMS Publishing with a print shop. I went thru a lot of difficulty in trying to set a MSRP for the books. Numerous printers were interested in the project, but I need the price per page to be a fixed amount in order to set the project up with proper wholesale pricing that locks in a margin for each step along the production pathway. Well, I am no finding printers willing to give me the right price. So that mens we have two choices; web printing or setting up an on-demand print shop. Considering the amount of printing that is needed for other items, Libretto, music score, other publishing projects... setting up a print shop seems like the best option. We'll see what happens. I'm leaning toward licensing the machine bound books to a reputable organization, but the licensing fees will need to be paid up front, based on a minimum quantity. I'll get into the detail of that later and post that on the IMS Management Page, which is a private page for business parters as is IMS Producing Partners, where other details are posted.

That' all for now... folks !

AG

Publishing Update

  NOTE: a few keys on my laptop do not work, so letters are missing or tyyyping the wrong character. I will have to fix this on a different computer.

As I have so often said "It's almost finished" and what I also sayid is "Almost doesn't count". So I won't do that. But I am satisfied about the progress.

   All the illustrations in this collection of Seven Books are watercolors that have taken a great deal of effort to achieve. Taking a guess at it, I'd estimate that the total number of paintings exceeds two thousand, I think more when the backgrounds are added in. 

   I won't go into detail about the paintings here, since I have discussed the process before. But I will say that it's possible that we have, less that 20 to do. I have eight or ten sketches that need to be painted, but I know that there are some illustrations that I would like to do over, because I want, either a different design, or better detail.

   

    This is an old version of the page layout, showing one of the product lines "Gnome Gnog". There have been quite a few improvements in the layout since this was done, but this gives an idea of the look of the art. The page background is now different than this. You can see below that a twine edge has been added.

   So, what are we up to? Well, I have two three inch binders with finished watercolors and I have been slowly scanning, prepping and inserting that art into the layout. I'm happy that this stage of the process is going more quickly than creating the art. I also have a binder of unfinished pages that give a quick view of what needs to be finished. That binder contains little over a dozen pages in it. But I also am using the digital files, which are color coded, to comprehend what pages are unfinished. The entire collection amounts to about 768 pages (give or take). I pages in the books that are not part of the page numbers, which are basically inserts. (Such as below)

   Now, after all the artwork has been installed, I will need to review the entire layout to make sure the effects used in the latter (improved) pages is also used on all the other pages. To explain this statement; I have used a stroke and a drop shadow on certain paintings, in particular, the illustrations that are built out of numerous paintings. The effect this has is to make the characters "pop" out of the page. But when I started doing this I did not have these effects refined for the proper balance. So, I need to go back and inspect the pages so they all match. After that is achieved, I can then build the files for the printing press.

   

Now, I did publish a prototype run of books one thru four, but stalled on book five, because that book is bigger than all the others. The reason for that is that Book Five contains references to "The Gnomic Tales" and those tales comprise five other stories. 

   "The Gnomes of New Hope; Zach and Zebby's Grand Adventure" 

is one story that spans seven books. Each book consists of between 90 and 160 pages, depending on the segment. The chapters in the books match the scenes in the stage musical, upon which the Illustrated Storybooks are based. 

   Now these Illustrated Storybooks are designed to also serve as "storyboards" for a film version of the story. So the publishing layout is an adaptation of the storyboard concept used in filmmaking.

   The intention is to produce an animated film using the illustrations in the Storybooks. The beginning of this process is to produce the illustrations as GIFs, which will be used in the e-Storybook. These GIFs will be the foundation of larger scenes in the animated film.

  

  After the books are in distribution, producing income, the effort to advance animation and a theatrical production will advance. In the meanwhile, sample and prototype materials will be generated as best as possible, given resources available.

That's all for now.

AG

Ongoing progress

PARADE FLOAT, UPDATE:

  The templets for repair panels have been made and those panel are being quoted. 

STUDIO UPDATE;

   Facility issues are interfering with progress on numerous fronts. These are matters of legal manipulation, which can only be circumvented by succumbing to a payoff and accepting false accounting numbers, as offensive as that is, but it must be resolved. 

The best approach to resolving these issues is to buy out the parties causing the problems. To do so, I need to gather $1M of working capital. This may happen via Licensing or business loans.  I make this point to encourage participation in order to gain the freedom to advance. Contact me if this applies.

   If I cannot solve this problem (as mentioned) IMS will need to move to another facility and thus absorb the cost in time and money to setup again.

   Refere to the Virtual Studio for more discussion on this subject.

ARCHIVE:
   
   I was in Ohio recently and while there I bought a new front suspension for the parade float. The existing suspension is unusable due to rust, however, it will stay in place until the frame is strengthened in the critical areas, which likewise have severe corrosion that have cause the integrity of the chassis to fail. Even so, strengthening of the frame would be required in any event, because the chassis was part of the unibody, which depended upon other body panels for strength. The frame area need to be boxed and other support modification need to be made. Preparations to effect those changes are being made over the winter, with welding to taken place after the weather lets up and becomes warmer. 

   As it stands now, the priority is to complete the publishing layout, because clean hands are required to keep the original artwork from being damaged while it is being worked with. Truthfully I believe that there are less than twenty pages that require insertion of artwork. However, those illustrations need to be assembled from multiple paintings. Beyond that, there are numerous pages that were “completed” without backgrounds, which in many instances looks just fine and works well. But overall, the entirety of the collection needs to be reviewed in that regard and backgrounds created (or selected from existing paintings) so that there is an appropriate balance across the board. Our objective is to draw the viewer’s attention in with a diversity of imagery.

AG

As you may well know by now, if you've been following the progress, I've often felt the collection was "almost finished".  Some time ago, I decided that Jency should craft the artwork as individual components. That means that, in addition to the prep work I have been doing on the sketches and watercolors, I also need to assemble the illustration panels. This works out for the best, because I can control the size and position of the characters. Have it component paintings done individually puts us in a position to do the character animations, as you can see from the test below. 

   So now assembling the illustration panels adds a level of complexity to the publishing layout, but puts us in a good position for other uses of the artwork. 

   While this is going on, the gallery exhibition of the artwork is being completed. We have experimented with the lighting and now I have decided the approach to the aesthetics of the panels and finishing elements of the panels. Further, I have decided to add the model stages and, in all likelihood, animatronics to the exhibition.

   In regard to Animatronics, we have advanced with building the parade float.

   Here you see the chassis that is being used for the parade float. It will be strengthened and rebuilt. It is the chassis of a Corvair truck the section in the back contains the powerplant and the section in front (center) will contain a cockpit for the operator. The operator will be seated under the stage. We are working on designing an animatronic puppetry presentation for the parade float.

   We have a few new ideas regarding the puppetry, the main thing being that we will focus on sculpting the faces, the rest of the puppet components being (for the most part) generic. This will make it easier to advance in this arena. Jency has expressed interest in trying her hand at sculpting the characters, now that she is "mostly" finished with illustrations.

Well, that's all for now. AG

Happy Thanksgiving

An Animation Test

Here is an AMAZING test.

Created using Ai.

The test above was made from this artwork.

(which was not thoroughly detailed)

We will be moving forward with this animation project

once the publishing work is finished.

The Artwork used in the books is being far more detailed that the image used for this test.

If you expand the image, you will see that I did not fully detail the artwork,

which I am now doing for the publications.

I only wish I detailed this image further before doing this test

but even so, it is amazing.

AG

Approach to Publishing the Books

I have said this elsewhere, mostly in passing reference. 

The First Editions of the Storybook Collection will be hand-stitched, custom made to order.  I will be inventorying 100 copies of each book, so that I can meet  prepaid orders at the full MSRP for individual books in a timely manner.  Signed editions are an additional 25%. Contact us by email or use the contact form in the right column. 

Retail Wholesale Pricing (still under review) will require a minimum order of 12 copies of each book and a retailer will be required to stock the full collection of seven books.  A full Keystone will require an initial order of one gross of each book and a commitment of 100 copies of each book per month for one year.  Books to meet these orders will have a turn-around time that has yet to have been determined.  Orders will be prepaid for the first year, after which a deposit of 50% will be required with 30 days on the balance.  Larger orders are possible. No books will be provided if there is an outstanding invoice.

Further, we are seeking to exploit the numerous Ancillary Markets as a means of funding the Stage Production. Hence, I am open to dialogue in this regard. I do expect to job out numerous production aspects and welcome inquiry in this regard.  

We have begun working on the Parade Float (trying to have it ready for a separate Fourth of July presentation) and expect to craft Animatronics for our Gnome presentation and for use in the Gallery Exhibition Walk-thru. We are also evaluation our mission to implement Puppetry and what the extent of that will be, in part, because of the desire to implement a cyclorama walk-thru.  Portions of the Cyclorama will be present in the Gallery Exhibition.  These things are taking precedence over the Stage Presentation, because they require less cost, logistics and will result in hard assets for use in promotion.  However, set construction for the Stage is moving forward with models that will be part of the Gallery Exhibition.

An AD for a Playbill

    Last month I placed a full page Ad in the Playbill for an excellent production of "Man of LaMancha" at MPAC (The Mitchell Performing Arts Center) in Bryn Athyn.  That AD was a B&W, but here is the color AD that was prepared for that Playbill;

I'll add the B&W Advertisement in the near future;

The Impending Release of the Books

The Books are getting closer to Release

 I am finalizing the remaining Illustration Panels

there is still much to do, but relatively speaking,

we are almost done.

The Cover of the e-Storybook

UPDATE (10/8/25);

   I keep thinking the books will be done very soon, but it keeps taking longer that I expect. If I were able to dedicate full time to working on the layout, then in might be very close to being ready, but I cannot. I am building the studio and advancing assorted projects.

   The final Illustrations are being assembled with numerous parts, as we started to create the components of the illustration panels as individual paintings for the sake of having higher detail in the work. This causes more work for me to assemble, but it results in a better finished product.  Also, we are moving toward the 3D animation and the paintings of the characters needs to be more detailed for that. 

   I have concluded that it would be best if we sculpted the characters and then scanned the sculptures for the 3D. That way, we will have consistency and the Garden Gnomes/figurines will match the animated characters. So on that basis, I am looking for people who would like to sculpt our characters (in clay).

    Other work is being done on the Gallery Exhibition. I'm trying to finish the design of the panels, after deciding how to do so. I will be constructing frames for the panels from old fencing so it looks very rustic. I have just decided to add stage models to the exhibition. We will need them anyway for the set construction, so we might as well design the models to be used in the exhibition and integrate a few more panels that have a model stage as part of it's design. But further than that, I have been intending on producing a cyclorama walk-thru presentation.   In one way the exhibition can add to that concept, or we might integrate the puppetry into the exhibition as an enhancement by including a few stops that act as an animatronic cyclorama.  So these are design elements that are being addressed, but they do change the work that needs to be done and the time-frame.  There are numerous degrees of puppetry involved and this needs to be considered as well.

   Practically speaking, these elements and components need to be completed in such a way as to support one another. The Exhibition needs to take place in synchronization with the release of the books, just as the parade float needs to support the stage play and even those elements should be well along or even completed as well. I am now engaged in building the parade float, which will ultimately use animatronics to convey a promotional scene from the Gnomes.

   So, all said, it's not easy to synchronize and implement these components of the overall project.

AG

UPDATE (6/14/25) :

 

   I have the prototypes of books one through four printed and bound.   We have nearly completed all the watercolors for the entire series, with only a dozen of so needing to be painted.  There are Illustration Panels that still need to be assembled from numerous paintings and there are two three inch binders of art that is ready to be installed into the layout. When we do complete the painting for the Illustrations, we will shift over to painting drops for the "Little Theatre" stage show.

   Little Theatre; Definition - in this context, this refers to the size of the Green Screen/Sound Stage that is being set-up in the studio. That is 20" wide by 18" deep by 14' high. This will serve a number of theatres available for the try-out run.  The size is expandable (within IMS space) to 30" wide by 25' deep if necessary, but my opinion is the smaller version will be suitable for workshopping this show, since there must be smaller productions available, within the context of the entire scope of possible venues. Certainly a larger production could be produced, but that is outside of my immediate scope at this time.

   My mission has now become printing Book Five, which is the longest of the books, because that book contains "The Gnomic Tales". These are not the full version of the tales, but only summaries of the stories that are used to serve the storyline of "Zach and Zebby's Grand Adventure".   Publishing of the prototype books continues; Five, then Six and finally Seven, with only a small amount of work remaining to be completed.

   So now, I have enough of the book series finished that I can talk turkey with another publisher and or distributor. But since I am finishing up the final layout. I will not be soliciting that dialogue, but I will be open to discuss the project if I receive inquiries.

  Even after I finish the books, the only publication I will be doing is in-house, which amounts to limited quantities. My efforts will shift over to Theatre Production, Animation, Literary Representation and Cinema.  The larger Publication and Distribution activities will take place within the context of an organized production structure that is external from the development environment of Image of the Mind Studios. That means that the rights to all markets will need to be negotiated with my literary Representative, if and when I secure that agreement. Until the entire series is fully published in it's completed form that agreement will not be implemented.

   If you are an Industry Professional, I am certainly willing to discuss the possibility of licensing any market, and I will be able to accept an Option of First Refusal, contingent upon the proper contract structure being put in place for Union Operations if that Option is implemented into a Production Contract. I have to say that, contrary to the Writer's & Dramatist's Guild Contracts, I will not permit any other writers or any producer to modify what I have written.  I will remain open to enhancing what has already been written, in fact I created opportunities for that to happen within the material, but I retain sole authority over the Core Creative Material ad infimum, in all markets.

   "The Gnomic Tales", five at this point, can be constructed by a writing team, but I will supervise and direct that if it occurs.

   I will add more to this discussion as necessary, as time allows. AG

Notes regarding Distribution

    I have a number of versions of the books.  Above you see a cover for the e-Storybook. The e-Storybook, which will be a subscription, includes not only the Audio Book,  but the watercolor illustrations contained within it will (gradually) become animations, meaning most of the page illustration panels will be converted to GIFs.   Eventually, this will lead to an Animated feature film or television series.  The books were in fact, designed to serve as Storyboards for a film.

   There are the Gnome-sized books; a small version that is about 3.5" square. There are the Big People's books that are about 9"x10".  There is the "Hand-stitched" version and a "machine bound version".  Both of these editions will be presented in boxed set editions.

  I will be keeping the "Hand-Stitched" and Boxed set versions as in-house production, at least for the time being,  because they will become the signed and numbered editions and I have yet to have found a production house willing to make Hand-Stitched Editions who is willing to adhere to my design specifications and do so at a price that works. As it stands now, the MSRP is $34.95 per book. There are seven books in the collection.

   I may release the Hand-Stitched (as well as all other ancillary markets) at some point, to another publisher/producer if the design elements are maintained and the down payment is sufficient.  Contact me to discuss terms.  Basically my terms are; a deposit against a guarantee, plus 10% of the gross on all markets. That applies to every market. That's firm.

   For now,  I am looking to find partners for publishing and distributing these books.  I am publishing in-house but those quantities are very limited. This is because I need to focus on the details of producing the stage musical and not assembling and selling books.  After all, the whole point is the stage musical and I can't focus on that - if I have to be making books.

   I will be making Hand-Stitched books on a regular basis and they can be ordered directly by contacting me via email. I will be setting up a Shopping Cart and selling the books direct using PayPal. 

   I will not be concerned with mass production, unless I receive bulk orders exceeding for 25K books.  If that occurs,  it will be contingent upon available personnel and/or publishing partners.

   Just some recent thoughts. 

Contact me via email if this business opportunity interests you.

image.of.the.mind.studios@gmail.com

AG

Sculpting

   I've concluded that the best approach to creating 3D characters is to sculpt them. We started on the puppetry and the Garden Gnomes, only to get distracted back to publishing work. 

   Now that the paintings for the Illustrated Storybooks is mostly finished, we started painting some of the characters to create a 360° view. But this is easier said than done. I'm finding that getting an accurate perspective with separate drawings/paintings is not so easy to do. 

  This leads me to realize that the best way to create a 360° view is to sculpt the character and then scan that sculpture. I know that there is an Ai program that can convert a 2D image into a 3D image file, but from what I understand the character needs to be referenced from all four sides. It might be best to take at least eight slices. By the time we go through all that, we might as well sculpt it.

   I have a kiln, so we can fire the clay. After that we scan the sculpture for 3D. I'm thinking that might be the best approach, mainly because then the characters will be consistent.

   There are "details" to a computerized scan of artwork that seem to make a sculpture highly desirable. Of course, a sculpted Garden Gnomes, not only gives us a master, but also allows mold making. I considered 3D printing, and I hope to explore that, but I think sculptures advance our overall cause more effectively for now.

   That being said, I am looking for persons who may like to sculpt some Gnomes. Let me know if you are interested. If I can find the time, I may try my hand at it. I did some sculpting in the past and I really liked doing that and seeing the results of my efforts.

  I'll post photos if I do.

AG

Animation Studio

    Below is a skeleton laid out on top of an enlarged sketch of Zach. This gives us an idea of the ratio of the bones required. The bones are modified to match the limbs of our drawings. You can see that the upper arms are so modified and adjustable, depending on which character thy are used for. 

 This guides our work in building puppets, both manual and animatronic. 

Animatronics depends somewhat on whether or not IMS buys the machine shop; R.C. Kletzing Inc.

  This also leads me to the subject of Animation. The intention is to incorporate animations into the e-Storybook. For the storybook, the animations can start out to be 2D and transition into 3D, but one of the efforts underway is to convert our characters from 2D to 3D and to set up a work station for that effort, This leads me to believe that we need to establish the IMS Animation Studio. 

So that will be happening. 

   I invite participants interested in this arena to make their voices known.

AG

 

IMS Design Studio

Here's a link to a subject relative to the Gnomes;

IMS Design Studio