Dividing the Collection

As I said in the last post (and on The Gnomes of New Hope Facebook page) laying out the book covers became the lastest stage in publishing. After having finished the page layout for the entire collection, I needed to define how the books were going to be divided up, so that the number of pages match as closely as possible between books. There are to types of books, The Gnome-sized and The Big People Books. The Gnome-sized books will be issued as Seven Books, while the Big People Books will be issued in Three Volumes. Both type books will also be available in boxed sets. Of course, there also is the e-Storybook.

It has been challenging matching up the IBSN numbers to the books and adapting the covers. The GFX on the covers is different between the two editions, so that makes ten covers in all, not to mention the boxes for the boxes set.

So that's were it stands right now. The books are getting closer. I know I keep saying that, but doing the IBSN numbers, bar-codes and covers has identified a total of fourteen published book products. There's more to come, including five stories contained in The Gnomic Tales.

That's all for now. AG

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

September 2020 Update

They seemed to have changed the program so that any changes (such as correcting typos) moves the post to the top. So it may seem out of place. 

Well, my browser no longer works to access the blog, that's what I get for trying to use XP.

No picture in this post, it doesn't want to load.

I've been struggling with failing hard discs, so I've been in a rush to recover and backup as much as possible. Something is going on here. I have a handful of failed flash drives, three hard drives that are either totally in accessable or do not function, including one of my primary startups, and two arrays that I cannot access, all with primary working files (of various revisions). So you can imagine how panicked I have been about that !

Fortunately, I have been able to transfer the latest working files over to a new 2tb HD. 

I'm getting ready to print the entire collection. I've created two sets of hard copy files. One has description panels for the missing artwork/illustrations, while the other has those panels removed, making it easy to drop the new artwork into a finished layout. Everything for both the hard copy and the e-Storybook has been done, in terms of the foundational layout. The e-Storybook is a completely different layout, but it uses the same pages. I may have posted samples, but at some point I will post more. In fact, the promotional video shows how the e-Storybook functions and looks. That's further down in this blog.

I was doing the narration for the e-Storybook/Audio Book and moving along nicely. EGADS ! You just cannot believe how many text errors I found! I have proof-read this, literally, thousands of times and I have made as many correction of various sorts. You can hardly believe that the written word is so different from the spoken word. Little mistakes in sentence structure, missing words, or spelling, are overlooked and subconsciously corrected by the mind when reading the written word. But when reading it out loud, as in a narration, those mistakes cannot be overlooked. I found at least sixty errors that need to be corrected. At this stage of the layout, doing so involves at least eight layers of operations, possibly more. So, more delays in that regard. This thing is killing me. 

I was reading the narration and I got up to Scene 18 of 20, when I discovered two whole sections of Scene 18 missing. That amounted to about fifty-some pages. So because of the failing hard discs, I had to rebuild those pages. But... Back in Scene 8, I was also missing sections and in Scene 10 as well. You see, I had to break up the scenes to create smaller file sizes, because that was one of the difficulties I had run into. Files that were jamming my computer up, because they were too big. I found out the hard way that; if a file is heavy with GFX, not only is it too large to work well, but it also does not always save correctly. A large file like that acquires anomolies.

Ok, so, with all those missing pages, discovered at different stages of operations, the page numbering had to be corrected a number of times. As I said, 8+ operations, on each page; there are 766 pages in the collection. 

I repeat - this is killing me ! Well, this stage of operations is almost done. When I get the books done, I'm taking a break and working on my vehicles. I've got a 1931 Model A Roadster sitting in pieces that I want up and running, plus a lot more, like two Corvairs, an RV and a 1944 Star Trailerized Home, not to mention my work trucks. So I have a lot that I pushed off to the side, in order to finish "The Gnomes of New Hope". But I also have to get back to working on the music too.

What I need more than anything right now is serious capital influx. I need to secure the working environment in a number of rather expensive ways. I pushed that off to the side too, in order to get this done, but all this stuff is catching up to me and it's starting to interfere significantly.

 Let me know if you can help with that and/or representation. AG

In-House Production

Here's an old business card that I used as an Ad
which I posted in a Playbill for
"The Pirates of Penzance"

(years ago, the email is no good)

I've been analyzing the current marketplace and have come to the conclusion that we are very well postured to support the full range of activities for this show in-house. That has been my objective, and although the studio setup is underway, the end result will be a very comprehensive and well equipped scenario. The biggest issue right now is capital influx. The product lines are not fully developed. The core product lines are developed, with only a few elements needing to be finished, but the external details and support mechanisms allowing for release into the marketplace are still being refined.

It is clear that the changing environment is bringing about new methodology and those alterations to the marketplace are aligning themselves exactly to the structure that I designed into the entire product line of "The Gnomes of New Hope". This is quite fortuitous, since I have kept everything under wraps and developed capabilities for fulfilling the imagined potential within the atmosphere of Image of the Mind Studios, while anticipating the potential for the traditional path that projects of this nature travel. So I have designed the project to be able to avail itself of existing methodology and to break new ground, by virtue of it's Core Creative design.

Often times a project advances in the marketplace when it seems that the creative materials are ready for presentation, simply based on that criteria In that regard, the Libretto has been finished for over ten years and a production could have been developed from that. The basic music has also been "finished" sufficiently to support moving forward, however, the music is not sufficiently refined nor satisfactory in my mind. That is, in fact the next are of attention.

As I suppose you can glean from the other posts here, the focus of attention has been the Storybook. I have just burned the final layout to DVD for security reasons. I have had major problems with failing hard discs and have lost a great deal of work because of that. Not only have I lost work, but I have lost time. Years worth of delays have happened because of work that has had to have been done over, multiple times. So burning the layout materials to disc represents a certain level of finality. This is really the first time that the whole collection has been consistent throughout and thoroughly inspected and cross referenced to assure that. The only thing missing is the finishing artwork and composite illustrations. But now we are in a position to focus on that artwork, without the distraction of other design and layout issues. It would have been too costly to engage in the work of illustration while creating the designs for the layout. By designs I mean not only the book designs for both hard copy and e-Storybook, but also the production designs that are connected to producing a final product. Production design extends into the full range of manufacturing, marketing, distribution and the capability to expand upon an array of Secondary and ancillary markets while focusing on the Primary markets. It's very extensive and establishing the foundational elements is key to success.

The materials that have been presented thus far represent samples of the greater whole. Those sample were developed to establish the initial foundation and cause the Core Creative Materials to be manifested. As the CCM was refined the scope expanded to a degree that required certain methodologies to be developed and put in place. A great deal of that has been formed and across the board the designs for both the project and the work environment are in place and well established.

Implementation is underway and the rapidity of progress is wholly contingent upon capital influx. The intention had been, and remains, to generate that capital influx from the product lines and their own viability. This is a good plan, but external circumstances are somewhat precarious and maintain a threat potential to derail the progress. As much as I wish I could ignore this threat that lingers outside of the studio goals, objectives, internal balance of workload, and progress of this and other projects, I cannot.

Therefore, I must  express the desire and need to generate sufficient capital influx to avert any external threat. What that means is that I will be focusing on posting information about "The Elder Gnomes Joint Venture" and the Front Money Agreements involved with "The Gnomes of New Hope". I will be posting that information on "IMS Producing Partners" but access to that page is by request only, because I do not want that information generally available to anyone who can read the blogs. Those are business documents which I will make available to our potential and real business partners. I will discuss other business matter on that private blog also, so if you are an Industry Professional considering involvement, that site is the one to discuss the project. I may or may not allow comments on that site. Currently I do not, but as a production tool, I think I will set up another page for production personnel.

That's all for now. AG

Scene Shop

I'm reorganizing the scene shop to include a delineated area for a 24' diameter turn table. This turntable will match The Bucks County Playhouse stage (BCP). So even though the blocking and set design sketches were designed for The Michelle Performing Arts Centre stage (MPAC) the show is being redesigned for smaller stages, use BCP as a guide. I'll go into details about that later and I'll be posting designs on a separate page that will only be accessible to our crew.

The sets are being built to use the downstage half for the current scene, while the next scene is being loaded upstage. Right and left will be stage props thematically tied into the Shakespeare doors. It's likely that those areas will be positioned from the turntable, but that's yet to be seen.

 A good portion of the scenery will be drops and flats, because the show needs to fit  into a 35' trailer. I'm opting for the smaller trailer for manuverabiliy in the cities. I'm not sure the larger show will fit in one trailer. But for now I'm only focusing on keeping the show sized so it will fit in one 35 footer.

I expect to make the sets flexible enough to cover a mid-sized non-union stage as well as the parade float and the festival environment. I'm leaving the first class operation  to either the Board of Directors or a licensed external producing group. But my focus will be on setting it up for presentation on my sound stage (20w x 16d) for the purpose of recording the scenes in the book using puppets. There will be some flexibility as to stage size.

That's all for now.

Pages from the Final Layout

Rather than add these pages to the last post, I'm posting them separately.

 The Credit page may or may not show up well here, 

since I cannot enlarge it to it's intended size.
It is intended to be seen as the e-Storybook on a large screen HDTV.

The first page describes the Signed & Numbered Limited Editions,

while the second page begins the Preface to Volume One.

I posted a link to a Promotional Video below that shows
how the e-Storybook functions, with narration.

If you compare these pages with that presentation,
you will see the difference.

It seems now that the e-Storybook will be delivered in Volumes,
broken into Scenes, rather than Books.

The reason is that the narration increases the file size, 

thus making delivery of the Volumes as Books more difficult electronically.

So, the Big Peoples Books will be delivered as Three Printed Volumes,

while the Gnome-sized Editions will be delivered as Seven Printed Books.

On the left, below, is the Complimentary Ticket Page.
 For those person who purchase
a Signed and Numbered Edition
or an Edition From any Special Event
This page is included in the book, on the back of the Signing Certificate.
The Page is self-explanatory.

There are terms for Two-Fers and Complimentary tickets
 which will be posted here
(on the side panel).

Briefly: Two-Fers and Comp Certificates
must be redeemed no later than one hour before curtain,
In the instance of the Comp Certificate (seen here) in the book
the entire published book must be shown at the Box Office,
they are for Comp Seating (which is an area set aside by the theatre),
there are a limited number Comp seats offered at each show,
it is contingent upon availability
and they are offered at the theatre's discretion.
They may also be used to receive a discount on General Seating.

As you can see, the Credit page is not as clear as I would like
when it is presented smaller like this,

even though I altered it from the the panel design to improve it.
Part of the reason is the amount of information I squeezed onto the page,
but I needed it to be on one page.
 Because of that, some of the text needed to be smaller
 and it lost clarity with use of different colors and sizes in each word.

But it does print well, which was the main purpose at the time.
 It is only digitally that it does not read as well,
because of the variations introduced
by different  viewing screens.

 It's the one page that I just decided to leave in,
even if it does not read as well I want it to.
Although, with the narration it doesn't matter.

I like it, so I'm leaving it ...
at least until I feel the need to change it, again.

Here's a link to
IMS Publishing

AG

Assembling the e-Storybook

I was making a few minor changes, after discovering that the Preface to Book One had a design variation from the rest of the collection. So rather than change the entire 800 pages, I removed that element from the Preface, since it wasn't that important, it was questionable anyway, and that only involved around 15 pages. But while I was at it, I realized that the layout had accommodations in it for a full bleed for the printing press, so I decided to crop the page for the e-Storybook. Well, by doing so I gained at least 15% in the image size. On the HDTV that is huge, not to mention on your hand-held devises. I have a few sections (actually only one page really) where the clarity of the text is uncertain, but I left it in anyway, because with narration, that doesn't really matter. I'll post that page here when I can. So I think the gain of so much more image area is a really big plus. I keep thinking I can't make it better and somehow I manage to do that. I can't wait until I can install animations (or even clips of the puppet show).

Here are two panels which make up that questionable page. They have been combined into one page and the design has been altered in numerous ways to improve the clarity . The images posted here are too small to enlarge well, because they were taken from The Gnome-sized Book. It is the only page where I use this design. It was an experiment which I decided to keep and it is used as the Inside Back Cover of the Hard Copy Books (it does print better than is shows digitally). You can see what I mean about the clarity. I'll replace these panels with the actual page, later. Hopefully the clarity will be better, we'll see. AG

Act One, Scene Four

A Sudden Awareness

Here's a photo from my thirties, just to make this post more interesting. Of course, now I'm 66 and don't quite look the same. You know how that goes!

After spending a week or so focused on replacing my HVAC and Hot Water Heater (doing it myself) I returned my workstation to continue working on the e-Storybook. It is very clear to me that I cannot move away from work on the Gnomes for very long, because the materials are complex enough that I will loose track of what I was doing. I post this as a means to convey the necessity of transferring the lion's share of momentum to a level of production activity that delegates critical activities into departmental objectives. This requires sufficient funding to implement. I only know that the burden of forward momentum needs to be transfered out of my sphere, because I am easily distracted with far too many "projects" that have nothing to do with producing the Gnomes. I have pushed these "projects" aside for the sake of developing the Gnomes and there are many of these that cry out to be attended to. Doing so risks loosing track of the Core Creative Materials. This is why my concentration has, for so long, been focused on finishing those materials down to only installing the artwork. The one critical thing that needs to be achieved is purging my workstation of all revisions of the work, except the final revision. But that can't be done until the publishing materials are done, done, done.

It's disturbing to discover that I can so easily loose track of the complex of materials in my own computer. This is another reason the materials cannot be released until they are considered finished.

Well, I thought it apporopriate to convey that, so that management relationships might develop to avert stalling the momentum by my inevitable distraction.

AG 🎭 🇺🇸

New Stage

 I hope you have taken the time to look at the while Promotional Video I posted last time I wrote here. That video exemplifies numerous aspects of the overall project. Now my efforts are turning to narrating the entire e-Storybook and printing the entire collection. That is as far as I dare go at present. Believe me, that is enough of a task. I can say that, with the introduction of that video, other production activities can take place if both funding and delegating responsibilities come into play.

On my end, setting up the production line for manufacturing books it underway, but I need to concern myself with generating capital influx to maintain facilities while getting the assorted work areas prepared for personnel. That includes, most especially the sound stage and a audience gallery. Implementing those elements are contingent upon an escrow for facilities overhead. So I guess that means licensing, because the book products, as a whole, cannot be distributed without finishing the illustration artwork.

So overall, it's a delicate balance.

AG🎭🇺🇸