I've got what I think will be the final cover finished, and right now I'm finishing up the tedious process of correcting the blacks in all the existing strips. Plus, I've got a few smaller things don't that don't really stand on their own (and so I won't bother posting them just yet).

I'm also hard at work writing the four(?) full-fledged bonus strips for this chapter — much of which will be fleshing out Devi and Gretchen.

I'll have some stuff to share later in the week, I promise!

I'm afraid it's looking like finishing the book may take a little longer than the initial two months I had slated for this, between the two remaining chapters and the "prequel" story, and any other production issues that come up — but on the bright side (sort of), I no longer have a day job to go back to due to a "restructuring" in the department at my former client — so, I'm able to keep plugging away at the book until it's finished, before I head back to the land of print production to pay some bills.

The Multiplex: Chapter 3 "high definition" eBook is finally available at the Multiplex Store. The 36-page PDF-format eBook collects strips 47–66 (from March 2006 through June 2006), well as two character bios (Neil and Whitey, specifically), two guest strips (my first two PvP guest strips), and six bonus comics not found in the Multiplex archives! There's also the X-Men 3 "extended scene," which is basically a single-panel comic, but whatever.

I will begin e-mailing qualifying Kickstarter backers (backers at the $5 level and up only!) a coupon code to download it from the store shortly.

And just as a reminder — if you didn't get them already, "KICK-MXHD1" will get you either (or both) Chapter 1 and 2 for free. Unfortunately, you'll need to do this in a separate "purchase" from the Chapter 3 eBook, because you can only apply one coupon code per order. (Be sure to sign up for a store account, or you'll need to enter your address and such twice. My store software is inflexible that way, sadly.)

The online edition will be up later today.

Blah. So one of the things that's going to be a bit of a concern with taking Multiplex to print is the fact that it's created in RGB, and print requires the art to be CMYK.

What I'm doing is maintaining an RGB workflow on the artwork, until the very end, where I'll be converting the art to RGB. The colors will shift a little; reds and blues will be a little different, but mostly it should look the same, and it will still look good. But blacks are going to be a bit of an issue.

The black in the RGB files is 0/0/0 (R/G/B), while black in a CMYK file is 0/0/0/100. But when you convert colors from RGB to black, you get a MIX of all four inks. This will result in some richer blacks, which should be fine for the artwork itself — but it's kind of dangerous for the lettering and panel borders. If there's the slightest misalignment, the lettering will look fuzzy. So, I have to go into all of the old strips and recolor the lettering and borders to a spot color, which will convert cleanly to 100% black only (by setting it up as an "ink alias" in the color conversion. That's what I'm doing right now. It's terribly tedious.

Anyway. I hope to get another bonus strip done later today (maybe, maybe not). Multiplex will be back to a twice a week update schedule for the near future, so I'll be able to put the time I've spent in the last two weeks on that third update towards the book instead. (The last two weeks have had a lot of new backgrounds and changes of clothing for the characters, too, so they've been more time-consuming than usual.)

With luck, the Chapter 3 eBook will be available by the end of next week, and I'll be on to Chapter 4!

As I've mentioned in the past, the real nose-to-the-grindstone work on Book 1 will happen in February and March, when I take a sabbatical of sorts from my day job at an educational publishing company.

Publishing schedules being what they are, my last day in the office unfortunately needed to be pushed forward to February 5th. (Hopefully I'll be completely done with the book by the end of March, so I can spend some time working on the sketches and custom comics for the higher-level backers.)

sigh

The Multiplex: Chapter 3 eBook will be up by the end of February, with Chapters 4 and 5 to follow every month or two. The content should be done for them by the end of March, of course; I just want to space them out a bit.

I believe I've finished the Breakfast Club parody poster, which will appear on the Kickstarter backers-exclusive T-shirts — and probably be sold as a mini-poster, as well, in the near future. You can see the image a wee bit larger over in the Guest Strips section of the Multiplex site.