Book Covers

     I was moving along nicely to rebuild the e-Storybook when I realized that I had divided the files into the Seven Books of the series. So what's the point of assembling the Three Volume Set without the covers for the seven books? So I switched over to designing the remaining covers. That way I can publish three books as Gnome-sized & Big People Books. When I get to Book Four, I am missing a few Illustration Panels, but not many. Then when those few illustrations are finished, I will have four finished books. The idea here being that the first three books will fund the artwork for the next two books and so on. Although, Book Five consists of only Scene Ten, which is predominately "The Gnomic Tales" and none of that is illustrated yet. That scene is very extensive. When I get up to Book Six and Seven, most of the illustrations in those books are also done, but still, there are quite a few to create or finish. I have a vision of how that may pan out, but we'll see. So, anyway, the covers are mostly done, but I still need to make the Synopsis pages, which serves as the back page on all seven books and they are all different. I have three done.

    I'm not sure it's a good idea to sell the books until all the artwork is nearing completion, even though creating income will pay for the rest of the artwork. It rather depends on what the distributors have to say about it. Selling a good quantity to distributors will go a long way to funding operations. 

    That's all for now.  AG

e-Storybook

Well, as I said, I have had to make corrections, both text and layout errors. Yesterday, I assembled the e-Storybook and I'm very pleased that it all looks and works extremely well. Now I need to integrate the existing narration into the new layout and update the portions that were corrected. Of course, after I ran into certain errors, I stopped narrating, do that needs to be finished. The whole collection amounts to 766 pages, plus Preface and Appendixes, so it is rather large. That size is due to the space taken up by illustrations. I just hope it doesn't come off as too large for kids. I think it will be a challenge and feel like an accomplishment to be able to read it all. I think the story moves along nicely, I just hope others feel that way too.

I feel like a Ground Hog coming out of his hole after a long winter. AG

October Update

Here's a Link to

 The Promotional Video

The narrated video is 39 minutes long and provides samples of the e-Storybook.

Status Report

 I feel like all I do is update the writing process on this project. I never imagined that this would be so complex and take me half my life to complete. Oh Well. So here's where things stand:

First, I'd like to say that the sample video is narrated, possible too carefully, because it seems rather slow compared to fast paced videos so common today. But it is a good example of the e-Storybook and exemplifies the Read-Out Loud nature of the product. 

As you might see from past posts, I was moving forward with the narration for the e-Storybook and the Audio Book. In terms of the Audio Book, it is only a "stage one" narration. I am doing character voices and singing some of the easier lyrics. I say easier lyrics because, being a stage musical, there are numerous choral pieces and other  divisi songs, like ,duets, trios, quartets, quintets, sextets... and on up. It would be ridiculous for me to try to sing all those parts, so I deliver them in prose. I hope to do the Audio Book like an old time radio play with other people doing the voices and including the music where it's supposed to be in the show. It would be nice to use the performance from the stage play for that, but the contracts I know of disallow that. That might of changed since I was studying Entertainment Law, but even so, I think it best to produce that Audio Book separate from and before the stage play to avoid contract entanglements. I would be nice to avoid using union personnel so that we can keep it simple and if I am producing it as a sample project, to pitch it, then that's what I will do. I figure that if we need to do it over again with Union Contracts, then so be it. But I will leave that up to another Producer, because I'm not willing to mess with that. The thing that rubs me the most about that is the clause that gives them the right to audit the books,determine the expenditure legitimacy and dictate distribution. As far as I am concerned you add that in and... forget it, too much paperwork. I don't need that aggravation. So I'll hand it off to another Producer willing to contend with all that, either that or hire someone to monitor all that, but not before I get my due. It's all in the Business Plan and if we move into The Elder Gnomes Joint Venture, the Board of Directors will handle all that.

OK, well, here's where it stands: I was moving forward, up to scene 15, when I found a layout error. Now along the way (I think I mentioned it in the last post) I found numerous sentence structure mistakes. It's a good thing I was doing the narration, because otherwise I would not have found those errors. This entire series has been proof-read thousands of times and yet, still, I found errors! It might have been because I have continually been required to rebuild the files (out of older files), due to failing storage systems. Even when I though I had rectified that problem it kept occurring. Recently I bought a NEW hard disc, thinking that the failing discs were due to age. I did the same thing with an SSD and two new Seagates failed with the main copies on them. what a nightmare. I think I solved the problem, but even now, I only have one cope of the most recent Revision of the Primary Layout files.

I set the files up in the Mac Pro, because the G5 Quad I was using (which I like a lot) had the boot drive fail, of course, with my main files on it. Luckily, I made like five copies of the files and put them all on different discs. But that ends up making it very difficult to find the most recent files, even with the Revision numbers on them. Anyway, the new set of files, or should I say the new design of the layout, allows me to make changes without diving too deep into the primary layout components to do that. It took me a long time to devise a structure that allowed me to do that. Basically all the design elements are set in stone, after a long process of refining the graphics involved. So no I only have to contend with text, which at this point makes it very much easier. I have to say that: it was necessary to integrate the GFX design with the textural design in order to craft the overall design. I don't think I could have come up with the overall look of the project if I had done it any other way, but it was an extremely laborious process. Basically, that is over now, of course, unless I find other mistakes. I think I have purged out all the possible errors, but I said that before, countless times. 

So my most recent activity has been to convert all the page files over to a reduced JPEG format for use in the e-Storybook. I discovered that the files only really need to be 150 DPI and can be set to the proper aspect ratio, while being significantly smaller than my working files. So I scaled everything down through three levels, which also gives me more back-up capability in case something happens. Well, that puts me up to rebuilding the e-Storybook with the new revision. The entire project is broken into many files, which I ended up separating by Scenes. It became clear that serving the e-Storybook on a Subscription Page would be easier if I did it by scenes, so that also simplified my file structure. I had combined scenes when building the working files, because I needed to do that for hard copy publishing. Well, since I decided to structure the files for the needs of the e-Storybook, then I had to modify the gutters. When doing that I found divergences in the inner page sizes, which of course, I had to correct. 

All this means that I am now rebuilding the e-Storybook, replacing the previous pages with the new ones. At first I though that I only needed to replace some pages, but there are size variances, so it's easier to just do a new one. I'm hoping that the narrations I already did will work. Now that I think of it though, the page turns are all timed out in the previous files. I don't know, I guess we'll see.

After the e-Storybook is finished using PowerPoint, I then convert it to a movie file. I'm hoping to set it up so that the files automatically play from scene to scene. If I can do that, without a link, then the files will be able to remain separate, which is preferable for giving options on the subscription page and allowing me to integrate Animation and the music. So that's the direction everything is going in.

The e-Storybook is completely laid out, sans the artwork  for the remaining Illustrations. Relatively speaking the remaining illustrations are less than what has already been done, but even so, I am setting up a new Art Department to accommodate both the Illustrations and the foray into Animation. The way I see it, what has already been done is sufficient to generate the financing for the larger operation. Any way you look at it, I am extremely happy to be done with the complexities of the layout design. Everything is set up to easily integrate the new artwork in terms of the Illustrations, Animations, and Music. So we're "In Like Flynn", we only need more financing, mostly because I have a 20K sq ft building to take care of and a bunch of people I could hire if I had that.

AG