Spilled Milk Update #5

Sent:  Tue 8/10/99 12:33 AM

In This Issue:
Preparing for the Con
The Small Press Booth
San Diego Pin-Up
Promo Card

Hey Everybody,
(I’m going to have to change this salutation pretty soon. It sounds too much like Barney Gumble on The Simpsons.)

Well I’ve put in some definite overtime on the ole’ web-site as you can see by the release notes. I added the issue #4 section and added a few more pages to the issue #3 section. Jason’s pencils just keep getting better and better. I just wish he’d turn some more in.

I said I’d unveil the costume before the Comic Convention and I went through all the original scans and created new (unblemished) images for the site. And I think I added another color page to the issue #1 area.

Preparing for the Con
I’ve got my flight, and I’ve got my room, and I got a BOOTH. Apparently many people cancelled and I was able to snag a Small Press Booth. It’s just a table with two chairs, but at least it’s a place I can rest my feet and hand out those free promotional cards. Well the Con organizers screwed up again. Imagine that. When I called to make hotel reservations they said I was all set to go in the Hyatt right next to the convention center. When I get my confirmation FAXed to me, it says the Holiday Inn on the Bay. WOAH! Big mistake. I call the people who made these reservations and I ask them where I’m staying. They say the Holiday Inn and it’s a mile away. That’s just great.

Monte saves the day again, because a guy in his group dropped out and can’t go. So I guess that guy really saved the day. So he says I can stay with them at the Honey Comb Hide-Out. No really check it out. The Wyndham Emerald Plaza actually looks like a bunch of honey combs stuck together. So now I try to cancel, calling the comic people who set this up. Well I have to call the hotel myself. I call the Holiday Inn and they show no record that I’m even registered! I can’t believe it! But it seems to be about par with the convention people. So now I’ve got to call these people back and find out where my reservations really are. My guess is that they were at the Hyatt and they just entered it into their computer wrong (or something involving idiots). So sooner or later I’ll be taken off hold and I’ll be able to cancel my reservations and not be charged some sort of fee for their screw-up.

The Small Press Booth
Well it’s not really a BOOTH booth. Not one that DC or Marvel will have, but it will be a meager existence in the small press area. I must have spent all weekend at Kinko’s getting ready for this. I got the copies of the color proofs all bound up into a handy booklet. These are complete with the color change suggestions (no word from Digital Chameleon on the changes yet). I copied all the inks and left these copies in 11" x 17" format and bound them together. I made two of these books to lay out on the table so people will be able to flip through them laying flat on the table.

I used a machine that is for making copies of blueprints and blew up a bunch of pages 200%, damn near poster size (22" x 34"). I’m going to tape these to the front of the table. I think I copied page 6 & page 2 from issue #2, page 3 & page 14 from issue #1. The I copied CiCi from page 6 and enlarged her to 400%. She’s HUGE.

The kicker is a 4’ x 2’ poster I made by tiling the Spilled Milk logo (the cool 3D one at the bottom) together into one big poster. Once I tiled it together in Photoshop I sent it to the printer. It took 6 hours to print!!. Needless to say I didn’t stick around the entire time and they called me when it was done. All that time it was spooling to the printer. Unfortunately on their Macintosh, it couldn’t tell me how big the print file was going to be and the printer status was not all that helpful ("Printing Document"). At least on a Windows machine you’d be able to see how much had spooled and estimate when it would finish. Or if you were really nerdy you could find out how fast their network was and see how big the print file was. Nobody had a clue what I was talking about.

I had it laminated so I can tape it to the top of the table where the books will be laying. It actually looks like spilled milk on the table. Hopefully this "in your face" approach will make people remember the name and subsequently remember the web-site too so they can check it out. Granted, it’s old news to you folks, but to these people it’ll be brand new.

San Diego Pin-up
Monte drew a pin-up this weekend. I haven’t seen it, but I’m sure it looks awesome. This is something extra that Monte usually does for his fan base. He’s made a limited amount of copies and we’re going to sign them at the con. I think he usually charges $2.00 each. So this will be the first dollars of revenue for Spilled Milk! That’s worth framing! I don’t know if there will be any left over, but I’ll see what I can come up with. If there is interest from this mailing list then Monte may do a special pin-up just for the list. Wouldn’t that be cool.

Promo Card
I had hoped to get the color cover up on the web-site before the con. so you guys could look at it, but it’s going to have to go up afterwards. I thought as an added bonus I’d send out any extra cards to whomever wanted them. Now I can’t send them to everybody, but say the first 25 people who want them. But that means you will have to have read this far, and beat other people to the punch. So if you slept in today, then other people probably beat you. But you never know, I may stretch it to 50, so write back and say you want one. Also, if I don’t have your address you’ll get skipped and I’ll move on to the people whom I do have address for. If you’ve won one of my eBay items then I still have your address.

Now I just hope that our e-mail server doesn’t go down and I lose all my e-mail while I’m away at the con. Hopefully Tim is backing that sucker up!

Thanks for all your support and listening to my tirade

Parker

The standard removal policy if you should ever need it. Just reply to this message with the word remove in the subject and you'll be deleted from the mailing list. You might make it in ALL CAPS or else I might not take you seriously :-).