I'm adding some older pages from the second prototype preface to Book One, just to highlight this post. The actual print layout is greatly improved and sized differently than these pages, which are over five years old.
An "Industry Review Package" is available, published as a Three Volume Set of the Illustrated Storybook, plus the Two Volume Libretto.
I say this knowing that there are missing illustrations in Books Four through Seven, with Book Five needing the most. Book Five contains portions of The Gnomic Tales, which was not illustrated at all, because they were added after we stopped working on the artwork.
Now in that regard; the illustrations that have been done were originally intended for the Libretto, which gradually became an Illustrated Storybook. That Illustrated Storybook gradually became a collection of Seven Books, primarily because the number of pages in each Gnome-Sized book needed to be around 100, for the sake of binding. So the Storybook became a collection.
Now since the title of this post is Marketing & Distribution, let me address that issue. Even though I have a plan for implementing the next stage of operations, Manufacturing and Inventory, I'd like to make it known that I seek to "job out" Marketing & Distribution.
When I say that the materials are nearing completion, I mean that the publishing layouts are in the fourth prototype run. The essential objective is to be certain that, not only are there no mistakes, but that all the layouts are up to the printing specs, without error. In addition, the working layouts are now setup so that adding the remaining artwork and illustration panels is "drag and drop".
As is stands now, Books One through Three are finished. Book Four needs fifteen illustration panels. Book Five needs approximately 150 panels, basically having no panels, and Books Six and Seven are mostly illustrated, but all told the collection needs 345 illustration panels. If that sounds like a lot, it is a fraction of what has already been done.
I expect to move into animation and I believe that I will use that process to complete the remaining illustrations. I have been setting up a new workstation for illustrating, albeit in the context of finishing the publishing layouts. But now that the tech specs for the layouts is days away from being complete, I will be focusing more on getting the illustration work station(s) properly set up and working.
One aspect of that is tying my main workstation to a copy board that I can send digital images to, so that the artist can access my animated layout for use in conventional watercolor panels. The illustations in the Storybooks have all been watercolors and the remaining work needs to remain consistent with that. So, even though I will use Poser to create a scenario for an illustration panel (or animation) that digital sketch will only be used as a guide for the artists to follow in creating the watercolor illustrations. I believe that this method will expedite completion of the artwork required. You might find an older discussion on our method of creating the illustrations somewhere in this blog. Moving into the future though, animation needs to come into play, so that's going to create a new methodology.
All this being said, you can see why I want the Marketing and Distribution of the books to be jobbed out. I have a great deal of other work to do, especially if we are going to move forward with the theatrical aspect of this project. I still need to switch back to working on the music and completing the score. It would be best if these books could be making us the money we need to advance. So I say this in case there may be a future Producing Partner reading this blog. I'll address this subject at another time and on another blog.
That's all for now. AG
