This is probably easiest to read in my facebook collection.

Had fun this week drawing little sketches for the comic pack orders. I've been drawing on the computer for so long, I felt a little rusty with a pencil. MUST DO MORE SKETCHBOOK PRACTICE! And I read the Army of Darkness comics (well, the omnibus vol 1). I am now a huge fan of Nick Bradshaw, and not just because his Bruce Campbell/Ash cartoon character was totally perfect. :)

I've got a page or two ahead in the comic by working insanely hard over the past month, and although I appreciate the slightly reduced stress, I now have forgotten whatever I wanted to say about this page. I will have to start leaving myself notes. :/ I remember that I struggled with the Queen's coloring. That fine line between her standing out and her completely not matching the overall color scheme... hrmph. I hope it worked out in the end. I probably just gave up and decided I had better things to do, like when I was drawing Crane's close-up and he wasn't as dashingly attractive as I would have liked. Oh well. :P

Here is the promotional art I created for the premium pack of The Locked Maze 2. The first two are the bookmark and the other two are stickers/magnets. I am showing the RGB versions here, because that is how I drew it, but they do look a bit different printed in CMYK, especially Lucky (damn blues!). See the photo on the sales page below.

Lucky's phrase originated with dA's very funny and talented ElectricGecko. Gecko, note me your address, because you get a free comic pack for your troubles. :)

So, without further ado:

The Premium Pack Order Form

My printed comics are officially en route and barring any catastrophes (which I am, I know, prone), I should be mailing these out within the next two weeks. I only have 30 comics to start with, but in the unlikely circumstance they sell out, I will put a second set up for sale in a few weeks (although the extras may change - I could run out of postcards and copies of LM#1). Also, I will put the comic for sale on IndyPlanet in the next few weeks, so you can always buy it there.

Concerning custom choices in the premium pack:

• I have 20 Oak Leaf charms which I can include in the premium pack for another $5. I am initially restricting these to people who order the comic, just so I don't run out. But if there is interest, I can always make more.
• For those of you who already have a copy of Book I, just let me know in the notes field and I will substitute your choice of a charm or extra stickers/magnets.

This is probably easiest to read in my facebook collection.

I ended up getting rid of fairy Mallard because his color scheme was too far off from the other fairies. So I gave his basic costume to this new guy, Egret. Of course, in retrospect it would have made more sense to just give the costume to existing character Heron, whose status is never specifically noted as dead in Book II. But I didn't think of that until it was too late. The other guy is Crane, whom you've met before in other clothes.

I believe my printed copies of Book II will be on their way soon (after several weeks of nothing, they have just demanded that I finally pay them, anyway...). So I may set up the order form next week. And I have a couple dozen tiny charms (and little boxes, squee!) just waiting to be listed. :)

This is probably easiest to read in my facebook collection.

My average file size for book II was 50MB. Book III? 150MB. Urgh. My poor little thumb drive is not going to be able to hold all of these files. :/

And can I just say, I know my vacation between books was very short, but it is very strange drawing Holly and crew again. I had to pull out the character sheets. I feel a bit like I'm starting from scratch. Hrmmmph.

This is probably easiest to read in my facebook collection.

Okay, deep breath, here we go! I will try to keep up with the weekly update schedule, but these new pages are taking a very long time to create and I think it is very likely I will fall behind. I will post WIPs or sketches or filler art if that happens. Maybe a breakdown of my process - I've been meaning to do that one of these days. :)

This page is one of those rare artistic moments where I am completely happy with how it turned out. I am very, very proud of it. :) I've revealed more plot secrets than I wanted to, of course, but as they are all out of context, I don't think they will spoil anything until after the fact.

Edit 2010/07/23: FIXED. My problem with the previous image was that I had drawn it with dark trunks, and when I switched to light trunks, the tree areas looked odd and unbalanced to me. So I ended up redrawing the trees (yes, I am that obsessive) and I am happier with the page now. The page isn't done yet, though - this is just the background. *must work faster!*

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I was pretty excited by this page when I first started working on it, but I dunno, maybe I've been staring at it too long or something. Because right now I am hating it. :/ However, after spending an entire week just tweaking the colors back and forth in a vain attempt to make up my mind, I have decided I need to just let it go and move on to the rest of the rest of the page and all the other stuff I have to do before I can officially start Book III.

In better news, I have all my Locked Maze II "extras" printed now (bookmarks! yay!) and I am just waiting for proof #2 (proof #1 was just one of many depressing failures of the past two months... *sigh*). I am not sure if I will do Paypal or etsy, but I guess since Paypal doesn't charge me to list items, they are winning in my head. Either way, there will be an official order form up in the next week or so.

I've been too busy to work on charms, but I'd like to see if I can do a set of the mini size (about 3/4 inch) for an extra $5. But that is a big maybe, since my priority now is Book III. MUST GET IT GOING SOON!

These are made of glass with a hand-painted (slightly metallic) decal backing, silk/velvet/organza ribbons, and fake murano glass beads and bits of other stuff. I haven't made any jewelry since high school, so they were quite an adventure of mistakes and glued fingers. :P But they are really damn gorgeous to look at. Although they started out as a stained glass effect, I quickly realized that I liked the metal look more, so they are too opaque to be proper suncatchers at this point. I will keep experimenting on that, though, see if I can get a more translucent layer of paint. This is my first batch, and in subsequent attempts I've learned that printing a base layer of color really adds to the traditionally-colored glass look.

I started this project with the idea of making them an optional add-on for the comic orders at a nominal fee, but they have proven fairly spendy to construct - I'd have to price them at $25 or more. :/ I dunno, feel free to weigh in on your opinions. Maybe I could just make the glass charms without the beads and ribbons.

Photos by juliantheapostate.

More concept art for Locked Maze #3. Here is the Queen and the Hunter (with his dogs).

Just working on concept art for The Locked Maze: Book 3. Here are some fairies from the Queen's court. They started out as being much more, uh, *sedate* in their color schemes, but when I started putting them all together and giving them names... well, let's just hope their bright flower/feather colors don't drive me to distraction when I am trying to color pages in the actual comic book. :P

The left three girls and two boys are the fairies from SLC who aren't dead yet, so you may recognize them. The others are new. The two in white are the queen's personal handmaidens.