Producing Partners

From the booth at
The Mitchell Performing Arts Centre
Bryn Athyn Orchestra Rehearsal
( I'm a Board Member and the Technical Director )

    The time is coming for more activity on the Producing Partners aspect of this project. With the Publishing Layout nearing completion and production of the Illustrated Storybooks moving forward, we have a viable product that needs managing. The whole point of the Storybooks has been to build an audience for the stage show and now that those tools are about to be used, it is appropriate to build the management team and to seriously address the Ancillary Markets.

As I have mentioned, the primary mechanism for managing this project is The Elder Gnomes Joint Venture, which consists of a Board of Directors, which has yet to be built. Without the completed books, it has not been either practical or possible to build a management team. Even now there is more to be done to lock in the Illustrated Storybooks, but the business structure for the larger project can start to be properly and legally established.

As you may know, Licensing plays a role in financing operations and establishing those markets can begin to take place, with the publishing and active production line of the Storybooks. 

The Libretto and Score For the Stage Musical

As it stands now, we are nearing the end of the Illustration process and I still need to install quite a few paintings into books five, six and seven. Sometimes ago, I concluded upon a different path of creating the artwork, that of sketch, line drawing, watercolor printout, and then painting. This, of course has been the process, but I focused on that, without inserting the finished work into the books, until all the paintings were finished and ready to be inserted. In this way the energy could be more pointedly focused on completion of the paintings, because that process was dragging on and this was my method of rectifying that problem. 

   So now the watercolor components are largely finished, with a few of the more complex illustration panels needing to be refined. Meaning that we decided to approach the panels by breaking them into components, which allows my to compose the panels as I see fit; sizing and placing the characters into a background that can be trimmed, enlarged or reduced as needed. I discovered early on that having complete control over the final illustration also gave me greater control over the composition of the page. This will be quite apparent to those who buy the books, which, by the way, will be made to order. Details of selling the books will be discussed elsewhere.

Suffice it to say that; the management mechanisms are being put into place for our Producing Partners using The Elder Gnomes Joint Venture, The Gnomes of New Hope Productions and The Gnomes of New Hope Limited Partnership.

An Early Design for the e-Storybook Packaging

   Once these business organizations are established, that is the direction this project must follow through on. If any other scenario may be lingering outside of Image of the Mind Studios, that needs to be revealed, before we lock in our modus operandi in this regard. AG

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Zachary the Great

    We are beginning to see the end of the Art Creation process (relatively speaking). I have a binder of many paintings, which need to be inserted in the book layout. But we also have many binders of Completed Artwork, drawings and watercolors.  All told, we have over two thousand finished paintings (that is my guess, it may be more).  As I said, the full collection consists of 786 Pages. Many of those pages have Illustrations that are composed of multiple paintings, hence increasing the number of paintings required to complete this work.

   My focus of attention now, is on printing the watercolor drawings out so that they can be painted.  After that, I need to process the scanned watercolors so they fit into the page layout. Some Illustration panels are composed of numerous watercolors like the one above. This is what takes so long to prepare. But thankfully, we are close enough to the end of the process, that I can begin building inventory of the books.

   I have determined to separate the drawing from the painting, so all the artwork is both B&W line drawings and full color watercolors. This will allow us to create coloring books for kids (big & small). After the Illustrated Storybooks are finished, we will consider doing a collection of Coloring Books.