Illustration, Animation and Music Update

  

Here's the crazy 

Master Gnome

 Well, as I said elsewhere, we started working on the artwork for the remaining illustrations. There is a lot to do. Years ago I determined that every page of the Storybook would have an illustration. That was before I knew that the Storybook would end up to be a collection of seven books, amounting to more than 850 pages.

   As you may have seen in other posts, I have been focusing on getting the technical layout finished, meaning; done, done. You know, I had major difficulties getting these books finished. Computer deficiencies have caused me untold troubles with the layout, in numerous cases causing me to have to rebuild my files multiple times to accommodate, repair and take into account computer and hard disc crashes, which caused me to loose my work. I mention this because that has been a great cause of delay. 

I'll be using the above image as an etching on the Boxed Set

Now, having upgraded again, I expect to be in a position to move into 3D CGI and animation. I wasn't going to do that until all the illustrations we're finished and the books were in distribution, however the plans need to change. The simple fact of the matter is that there are a lot of illustrations remaining to be done and we are all slowing down as life brings us twists and turns. In this instance, I must depend on other people, artists, to provide me with the raw artwork, which I then process to make it suitable for use in these books. 

     It seems that finishing this artwork will take some time. Some time indeed, probably years, at the rate we are going. I have been printing out canvas sheets, for use in creating the raw sketches that give a rough idea of what the finished art will be. The stack of pages is already an inch and a half thick, and that represents the bulk of Book Five. Book Four needs around fifteen panels and Books Six And Seven are, in fact, mostly done too. But none the less, we need 348 more illustration panels.

   That being said, I expect to move into 3D CGI while the other watercolor art is being generated. With luck, I can get the characters built using Poser. I know there are other programs, but this is what I have. My thinking is to build some animated scenes, possibly for publicity. Really, the other use of the Poser platform is to layout the scenes and send them to the illustration workstation, where the digital rendering can be brought up on a screen built into the drafting table, which serves as a lightbox and tracing guide. Part of my reasoning is that we need to keep the watercolor motif. As much as I would like that texture to remain in the animations, unfortunately, the reality is that the variations present in watercolor will likely not work when merged with motion. However, by using the CGI as a guide for building the illustrations, the animations will more closely represent the artwork in the books. I think that is a great advantage. It will help maintain the overall consistency.

   Being that completion of the illustrations will take a significant amount of time, and that the technical publishing work is finally done, it is most appropriate to move back to the music, while also building and exploring the animation. So that is what will be happening.

    I'm still open to Options for the Cinema and I will continue the work of securing Representation, with a focus on advancing both theatre and film production.

   On another front; I have acquired a Plasma Cutter for the purpose of cutting the body off the Corvair truck, which is being used for a parade float.

It gets down to the fact that I have two Corvair trucks (actually three) and I could conceivably build two or more parade floats. There is a market for renting parade floats, although I don't want to get distracted from the Gnomes, unless I have to, when the weather permits, I will advance into cutting this body off and fabricating the mobile stage (Parade Float).

This depicts the truck without the body. So you can imagine the Parade Float sitting atop this frame.

This Flyer was made when the stage was just begun. It shows eleven 4x8 platforms were used.

 I expect this mobile stage to also serve the festival market and one of the Ancillaries of The Gnomes of New Hope is producing Gnome Fest. But without the festival presentation ready to go, that is I'll advised. So, not only the mobile stage, but the puppet, and the festival version of the stage show needs to be up and running before Gnome Fest can occur. I could produce Gnome Fest at Tamanend Park in Southampton. It's a very good locale, albeit, a bit distant from New Hope. 

This was the stage I built in Tamanend Park where we performed as The Shakespeareans of Tamanend Park.

Here's Shawn, my partner in composing the music for The Gnomes of New Hope when we were doing The Shakespeareans.

   Having worked out of New Hope for many years, I moved my studio down to Southampton for practical reasons. Unfortunately, New Hope does not have a park facility as nice as Tamanend Park. But of course, Tamanend Park is two miles from my studio and Southampton has a pretty significant parade on the Fourth of July, as does Northampton as well. I'll discuss the area parades after I get the mobile stage built.

Here we are one year, when our theme was Robin Hood.

That's all for now, AG

Working on Music, with other notes.

Here's the cover from the Second Prototype of the Storybook. I'm up to the Forth and final prototype. We are working out a printing run of the entire collection, which consists of 847 pages in Seven Books or Three Volumes.

We are moving forward to finish the remaining Illustrations and I'm setting up another workstation to do 3D CGI Animation and 3D printing (for figurines and puppetry). I'm also getting ready to set-up the next updated music workstation, because once the publishing layouts are locked in to the production standards (as opposed to the limited edition prototype layout), then I will be moving over to the music again.

I was doing some research on Digital Performer 9, the next upgrade to our music workstation. It seems very clear that when I move over from publishing to music, I will not have the time or mental capacity to tend to manufacturing, marketing and distribution of the books. So, I'm posting this as a heads up. There is no doubt that both the continuing work on Illustrations and Music will be taking up the Lion's Share of the time available. Add to that; the work with building the Parade Float and synchronizing the set construction between the different variation of the show.

So this being said, I expect that handing-off the fulfillment for the books is the best approach. If you are engaged in that end of the industry, feel free to discuss that with me. The best approach is to use E-mail. Telephone only works after we reach an ongoing degree of dialogue. Cold calls via telephone don't work for me, because I get so many unsolicited calls, I often ignore answering unless your number is in my contact list.

A Promotional PowerPoint

I made this some time ago and posted it to my YouTube page, which sadly, I barely use. I suppose I should change that and start to post more often. Truthfully, I was testing it to see if it would upload, and it did. Well, this promo is designed as a sample of how the e-Storybook will look. Of course, it will be more refined than this sample and it will include other thing, like animations and GIFs, but for now this sample is posted for your review. (I may have posted this before, but since we are getting closer to releasing the books, here it is again;

 

The Gnomes of New Hope; 

Zach and Zebby's Grand Adventure"

 I should warn you that this entire video presentation is 39 minutes long. I have to admit that it moves along slowly, as I narrate it methodically, in an attempt to make sure it comes across clearly. Like I said, it was a test. But all-in-all, I think it's pretty nice in it's presentation and it is informative, as it was intended to be. I might be more excited by if I hadn't seen it a thousand times as I wrote, designed and narrated it.  I suggest that you might like to digest it in chunks and return to it from time to time, picking up where you left off. 

As I said before, I am seeking Representation for this project, thus the reason for posting this here, plus we're getting closer to publishing the books.

Enought of me. I hope you enjoy the video.

AG

Pricing the Books

I have tried an assortment of prices as the MSRP for the collection of Illustrated Storybooks.

 I started out trying to produce the Gnome-sized Books for a retail price of $4.95. Nice thought but no way. So I raised the price to $5.95. Again, no way. Ok I tried $6.95, $7.95, and then $8.95. Again, it couldn't be done. Not and provide enought profit to pay the expenses and profit margins required by the industry. So finally, I seem to have settled in at $9.95. I dare not go any higher than that. The budget balances out at that price, but there is one cavet. Quantity. In order to bring it in at that MSRP, the quantity has bto be high enough.

So, using one Gnome-sized book as the Standard (in terms of pricing) a minimum quantity, likely 25k, will be required. And that is only on one book. There are seven that make up the whole story of "Zach and Zebby's Grand Adventure". The other stories of "The Gnomic Tales" make up five more stories, which are ultimately connected to "Zach and Zebby..." and may or may not be published.

  The end price of $9.95 MSRP is of course at the discretion of the retailer and their determination to discount or not. At the Wholesale level, there is no room for price reduction unless the Distributor is committing to significantly higher quantities, but that won't change the MSRP. If anything, that will only increase the discount they choose to offer. But the increase in quantity needs to be substantial.

That leads us to the Big People Books. initially I had hoped for $14.94, quickly that went to $16.95. After a short time it went to $18.95, then $19.95, and then $21.95, followed by $24.95. Based on the Hand-stitched Binding it was clear that none of those MSRP numbers worked. Dare I increase the price to $29.95? I had no choice. Advisors told me the thought even $34.95 wasn't too high a price for books of this quality.

  I felt that going over $29.95 was just too much to ask of people for one book of, more-or-less 110 pages. But then the other books in the series, that were upwards of 150 pages had to be amortized into the cost as a whole. And so the MSRP of the Hand-stitched books settled in at $29.95 and completion of the publishing layout advanced under that assumption.

   Introduce into the mix two types of book-bindings; Hand-stitched and machine binding. Well, all the test marketing that has been done indicates very high approval of the hand-stitched books and a strong opinion that the books must be hand-stitched. That was a dilemma. The cost of binding the books by hand is half again as much as printing the books, even more.

   So that introduces new challenges. What if the price is too high for a significant portion of the potential buyers of the books? How do you solve that. Well, one way is to offer the Gnome-sized books as a less expensive alternative. But what if a person doesn't want the Gnome-sized book? What then? A less expensive version of the Big People books. Well that would be a book bound by a machine. But the machine cannot reproduce the aesthetics of the hand stitched version. 

So, the machine bound books become The Standard Edition, with a squared off spine that is glued as so many paperback books are these days. Doing that reduces the price of the book by a significant factor. Then the MSRP can become $24.95 . That number was derived after $19.95 did not quite make enough to cover all the costs.  Again, moving into Machine Bound books also increases the required quantity in order to setup and publish those books, not to mention a different aesthetic appearance.

   Well, in order to retain the preferred aesthetic appearance, the hand-stitched books now have become The Custom Edition with an MSRP of $34.95, which is sufficient to cover on-demand publishing. 

   An additional series of Signed and Numbered Limited Editions is also being published with  price of $49.95 per book.

   Further, the book series is being published in Three Volumes (with prices to be announced in the future) as well as Boxed Sets of both the Gnome-sized and Big People Books.

   All of this is being planned and will be offered via a Shopping Cart page, once the releas schedule is confirmed.

   I offer this analysis for your reference, whether you are an individual, a distributor, or a retailer. 

The budget numbers on don't lie, as they say. And so, these are the anticipated MSRP of the books (as it stands now). If that changes I'll certainly post that info here or... It will be reflected on the shopping cart/order form page 

That's all for now.

AG