As
my Kickstarters go, this group of backers is by far my smallest, and yet I feel
like you all gave graciously and with good heart when it came to a project I
know a good many people said wasn’t possible.
In
this update, I wanted to take you through a process so you can see how things
at Art of the Genre work where art is concerned. This is a tale, to be sure, but I highly
recommend you taking a look at all the art attached because it’s a very cool
process.
In
mid 2010 David asked what projects I was currently working on, and I told him I
was still working on a kind of Scooby Doo adventure where several modern teens
get trapped back in time on Mars. It was
a short discussion, and we let it drop.
Enter
2011, and David once again asked about the project. I told him more about it, and he said, ‘You
know, I’d like to do a graphic novel concerning that story’. At that point the project was languishing in
a dusty file so I agreed and sent him the first few pages of script.
He
promptly rewrote everything!
I
was both confused and a bit incensed, but we talked it out and he said he
wanted more adult characters. I thought
it over and rewrote another script, this one promoting two main characters, a
male human and female Martian, some canal concepts, and an imagined ‘strange-tech’
ship.
David
loved the idea and said he’d send me a rough, which he did. I took a look at what he’d done, thought
about how I wanted to progress, and then decided that if I was going to write a
kind of steampunk novel, I’d just assume set it in a time I called The Gun
Kingdoms inside my Nameless Realms.
I
don’t think David was overly keen, but I told him to trust me, and that we both
wanted to do a project together as well as one we both enjoyed so it had to be
give and take. He relented, and started
work on laying out a cover using his cut paper technique as well as drafting up
a cutaway of the ship he’d used in the initial sketch.
By
June 2011 he had a cut paper cover complete and I’d yet to write a word. Months passed and finally in November of 2011
I placed the cut-away of the ship as my desktop background, printed out a copy
of the cut paper cover, and went to work.
Twenty-seven days later the 50K word Gun Kingdoms first draft was done.
It
was at this point that I’d already started my Jeff Easley Kickstarter, and with
that success David and I both knew we had a possible venue for a book. However, the more we talked about the initial
cut paper cover, and what the Easley cover would look like, we decided that it
was in our best interests to go all out for an circa 1988 Deitrick RPG cover
instead of his newer cut paper sculpts.
The
Kickstarter went off well, and the backing was sufficient to fully illustrate
the book. By May, David had completed
all interior work and was ready to tackle the cover. To that end he sent me a first draft, this
one with the main female protagonist in a white bikini.
Again,
we hashed this out and finally decided that if we were going to do the obligatory
butt shot she should at least have pants on.
Thus, you see the secondary rough and how the cover detail was starting
to play out.
Finally,
when all was said and done, David got down to the detail work, cracked out the
old acrylics and created a piece that is stunning in every old school way as
well as a perfect example of how his character art has evolved over the years.
I
hope you all enjoy the final cover image as much as I do, and thanks again for
being a part of Art of the Genre. We are
only successful if we have people like you in our corner!
