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YES!! It HAS
been a while. This is all in an effort to not
clog up YOUR inboxes and to keep my promise of not
bothering you too much with unnecessary news. Many of
you have e-mailed with your worries and it was great to hear from
you.
I assured people that things were still moving along quite
nicely and most of my time was spent just waiting for things and
lining up the alternate cover artists.
There is quite a bit to cover in this update so
I’ll get right to it. I’ll go over the highlights up
front and then go into detail further down in the text. Since
my mind works chronologically that’s how I’ll try to lay things
out.
I really tried to take good notes while in
San
Diego, but of course that happened the first
day when not a whole lot was going on. Things
got crazy and the notes got fewer and fewer, but the main thing that
I can take away from the San Diego Comic Convention were the
people.
I got to finally meet people that I had been e-mailing for
quite some time that are either working on the book or not. I also
saw a few familiar faces that I only see when I’m at the Con. I was
able to meet so many great artists and a few of them agreed to do
alternate covers for the project. A few of the artists that agreed
to do the work on the covers were Dave, Joe, Keu, Andy, Joe,
Dan, and Steve. To find out some last names and
see a few samples of the work in progress you will have to read
on…
November 6th I
received news that I was being laid off. That
was a total shocker, but you have to regroup and hit the ground
running.
What I’ve been finding out is that I’m grossly overqualified
for just about everything out there (at least in Denver). I’ve
been talking with people at Microsoft, Dreamworks, and trying to
make contact with Disney and PIXAR. I’ll go into more detail on that
later…
Possible rant? It would make a good one, but
I’ve been writing up notes to incorporate that into a story line and
new villan.
January 10th
Maia Danielle was born. Of course that changed a lot of
things, but my being home has really helped. We’re
just now trying to find more time for me to work on this AND
find a job…
March 7th I
believe will be the day ALL of the inks will be completed. Yep
through issue #4. Still trying to follow up with
Jay, so I don’t know if this is definite yet.
April 7th – The
Majesticon. DAVE DORMAN will be there. Holy
crap!!
Those are some major highlights in what has
been going on and I’ll try to touch on each of these events in
detail in the next sections.
I apologize in advance for anybody trying to
e-mail me right after San Diego. In an
effort to be able to read my e-mail while at the Con I set an option
on the SpilledMilk.com server to KEEP messages AND forward
them.
Well sooner or later I ran out of space on the server and the
messages were probably bouncing back. It’s all cleared up as of
9/7/01.
San Diego
Prelude
The night before was pretty hectic. I was
trying to get my third press release out, a VERY small update, and
push some colors from issue #2 out to the site. I ended
up going to bed around 2:00
am or
so. I created a makeshift poster carrier out of a
PVC fence post that I got from Home Depot. I used
the top caps to use as end caps with two very large bolted eyes to
thread a nylon rope. I put some stickers (the writing
denotes which way is up) and I put my name and number on THIS one,
JUST in case. This thing is practically
indestructible and looks like a HUGE pipe bomb. I don’t
know.
Do they make pipe bombs out of PVC? I’m
guessing today I’d have to check the sucker, but it does go through
the x-ray scanner.
Wednesday - July 18, 2001
See, I told you I was trying to take good
notes.
I’m on the plane just throwing in an update. I was
going to work on the site a little bit, but my battery is already at
7% and I just booted up!! Something is definitely wrong
here in “Gateway Country”. If that’s my only rant, then I
think this trip will be a good one. In pushing the colors to the site
I had to delete the inked image. Don’t worry, they’re still on the
site, but I wanted to create the link to the ink on each page while
I was in the air. I figured it would give me
something to do. I was able to crank the
brightness down a little and I’m holding steady at 14 minutes worth
of power.
I’m not exactly sure why the juice in my batteries is so
low.
This thing is constantly charging and I rarely
use batteries except for the very frequent power outages at
work.
If the power goes out at work, I just don’t care. Most of
us prefer to work in the dark anyway. Well it looks like lunch is being
served and so I think I’ll just shut things down for now. Not a
whole lot to report on right at the moment.
Although the flight WAS an hour late getting out the
door.
Plus they were trying to bribe people with $400 travel
vouchers to take the next flight.
Mike and Cheri picked me up from the airport
and we headed to their car. Carrying everything with you
certainly does have its advantages. The Cruiser was loaded down for
bear.
About 8 boxes of printed material and my new 21 inch
Viewsonic was in the back. I couldn’t believe how smoothly
everything went. We just drove right in and found
parking. The first trip up to the booth was
just with all the printed stuff (600 CiCi #1 Previews and 1,200 CiCi
Color Samplers with 3,000 of the flat covers). We made
our way up the elevators. NO LINE!! There
HAD to be some sort of catch!! Got right into the main area and
I picked up my 4 exhibitor sleeves which gets us in the Con before
and after hours. We headed to the booth dropped
the stuff off and Cheri and Mike went back down to the car to get
the monitor and my computer. This was all too easy.
I got the posters set up as the back drop. I’m
glad I only did 3 because one more would have been too many. This
was kind of a slow process because I was still in disbelief as to
who was my adjacent neighbor to my left (to the right of the booth,
if you’re looking at the booth). It was none other than Don
Bluth!!
Yeah, of “Dragons Lair” fame. I was practically drooling and I
wanted to talk to him sooo much, but I knew it would have to
wait.
Then Cheri and Mike were back up with the rest of my
crap.
We unloaded the monitor and plopped it on the table. I guess
there was a hitch. I only had one table and I had
ordered an extra one so I could set the laptop up behind the main
table in sort of an “L” shape. So I was off to GES (Generic
Exhibition Services??) to get my table. The
lady at the GES counter said somebody probably stole it and that
another one would be coming shortly. So far this spot (booth 1404) was
working out pretty well. GES was close. The
bathroom and water are close. Mile High Comics is close. And
it’s only a few rows away from D.C. The monitor worked and my slide
show came back up without incident.
Once I was all set up I wandered around and met
the neighbors. I talked with Chuck Rozanski
(Mile High Comics owner) and we joked about only seeing each other
when we come to San
Diego. He said
he should have an auction in
Denver
some time this
year just for old time’s sake.
The Wednesday night preview night was the first
of its kind. It was from 5:30 to
8:30
and was mostly for the press and advance ticket buyers. I
didn’t walk around much at all; I pretty much stayed at my
booth.
Towards the end of the night I started to work on a new
PowerPoint slide show since the one I had was designed for close
quarters.
The images were of entire pages and I could only get the damn
Gateway to drive my 21” Viewsonic at 1280 x 1024 resolution. So from
far away you couldn’t really see much on the screen except that it
was one really big monitor. So I started from scratch. I had
all of the 300 DPI files on the computer so I started to just cut
pieces of pages out and then just line them up with about 3 second
intervals. With about 30 slides laid out it
looked pretty good from the main isle and I felt that it would draw
people in. I was a little disappointed with
the Anime people on the end cap, because they had a huge backdrop
which blocked most of mine from the main isle. But my
monitor was visible so that wasn’t a big deal. Once
people headed down my isle they could see the awesome
backdrops.
The backdrops turned out great. I had
turned a few images that I had into full blown posters and had them
laminated. Page 6 of issue 2, Matt Haley’s
pinup for issue #2, and Matt Marsilia’s pinup were all turned into
posters and hanging behind me. I thought this was better than a
bunch of little things hanging up like last year.
I met up with Monte and the gang after the
preview show and we took the bus back to the hotel. This
year we were at the Holiday Inn which was pretty good, but I missed
the Wyndham (Honey Comb Hideout). It seemed like we were so far
removed from everything and the walk to the Convention was going to
be a hike. It looked like we’d be taking the
bus every morning.
We just ate in the hotel lobby that night and
met up with the rest of the gang who were either waiting for us or
were already there. The gang consisted of Monte
Moore, Steve Oatney, Matt Haley, Bob Rhett, Mike Owyang and Chachi
Hernandez. Now come to think of it I forget
if Chachi was there. If he wasn’t he surely was there
in spirit. His brother Gabe could not make
it this year which was a huge bummer, because I missed the Richard
Walkins impersonations just about every half hour at
least.
Thursday - July 19, 2001
Well you’d think I’d have better notes here,
but I didn’t take any for the rest of the trip.
Except for where we ate… Like on
Thursday…
Karl Strauss
Friday - July 20,
2001
Ate at
Philipes
Saturday – July 21, 2001
Ate somewhere
on the pier.
Sunday – July 22, 2001
The People I
Met
So anyway… My mind is a blank except for the
people I met and stay in touch with.
Beth Sotelo -- I finally got to meet
Beth in
person.
My first reaction was “she’s short”. I can
see where she get’s it from, because she brought her parents by one
day so I got to meet mom and dad too. I met Beth’s husband Joel. And I
also met Rafael when he stopped by who assisted her with many of the
flats in issue #2. They both are artists in their
own right. I still haven’t seen any samples
from Joel, but you’re probably familiar with Rafael’s work on many
of the Top Cow books. He’s done many of the layouts and
I think I remember him saying he worked on the Tomb Raider
magazine.
Beth hung out quite a bit at
the booth and we were able to wrangle a tablet from John
Nguyen.
She had a few hour long demos (maybe longer) of laying down
color.
We had a few crowds gather for a while, but nothing like a
Michael Turner signing ;-) I definitely enjoyed watching her
work.
Things were a little slow because I had Photoshop 5.5 and she
was used to the shortcuts in 3.0. I guess Top Cow is still using
3.0, but for what they’re doing I guess 3.0 works for them. And
then she uses 4.0 at home, so it was a little confusing. She
laid out her desktop “just so” and then went to town. She
started working on page 2 of issue 3. “Nothing like a mutant chic to
attract a crowd.” While she was working I was able
to wander around and see the con for a little while. Plus I
played errand boy and got her refreshments if she needed
something.
It was great to meet Beth and I continue to
enjoy working with her remotely via phone or e-mail.
Matt Marsilia -- Matt surprised me at my
booth.
He had stopped by last year, but I never got to meet
him.
He just dropped off some samples and talked with Jason a
bit.
But following last year’s con, I got in touch with him and he
did that awesome pinup. He was also the one who
introduced me to Beth, so I’m truly grateful for that. Matt
did some stuff for Marvel, but now he went back east and nobody has
heard from him. MAAaatt? Where
are you?
Jay Leisten – I never did get to meet Jay in person. I
checked the Top Cow booth about 2 or 3 times a day looking for him,
but nobody knew where he was or when he’d be back. Of
course the few times that I actually left my booth, Jay stopped by
but couldn’t hang out for a while until I got back. Oh
well.
Needless to say I was disappointed, but I got over it. He
continues to work on the inks and is almost finished with issue
#4.
Dave Finch – I’m a HUGE fan of Dave’s work. I
stopped by the Top Cow booth and low and behold there
Dave was with
his head down doing a sketch and signing stuff. I kind
of hung out in the wings and watched him work. I don’t
think he even laid down some rough outlines for this one. He just
had his Sharpie and was laying out the ink. Some
guy interrupted him and wanted to show him his samples. I think
he wanted a job with Top Cow and his style was close to
Dave’s. He
looked at that stuff for a while and then went back to work. I hung
out for a little bit and waited until he was done with the
sketch.
I introduced myself and asked what he would charge for an
alternate cover. I handed him the two previews and
he said come back a little later. I already knew that Mike Owyang
was going to talk to him so I wasn’t too worried. I just
wanted to make sure that I met Dave and then Mike could take
it from there. Dave was very soft spoken at
the con and he later told me that he just shuts down in front of the
crowds.
It’s great to talk with him on the phone and hopefully we’ll
get him out to Denver one of these
days.
You’ll see a sample of Dave’s cover a little later in
the update. At first I thought he’d paint
something, but his work with Marvel definitely takes precedence over
this piece. Eventually he finished and now
it’s off to Steve Firchow for some color. Of
course it made a pit-stop at Joe Weem’s studio for some killer
inks.
I enjoyed meeting
Dave at the con and I think I
talked with him a few times after our initial
introduction.
Steve Firchow -- I was surprised to see Steve drop
by my booth. Mike had talked with him and said
I was a huge fan and that I’d love for him to work on a few of the
alternate covers for me. It was kind of a short visit and
he dropped off his calling card which was a flyer for his
studio.
We chatted for a while and I said I would be in touch.
Definitely a very nice guy and one of the best, if not THE
best in the business.
Andy Park – Mike brought Andy by the booth and we were
able to talk about a cover. He was a little busy at the
moment, but as long as I didn’t need it right away then he could do
it.
Another pretty short visit, but the fact that he dropped by
was VERY cool. I love his work on Tomb Raider
and the cover he did for me was outstanding. Too bad
you’re going to have to wait until issue #4 for that one.
;-) I thought I might get something
painted from Andy after checking out his site:
http://www.andyparkart.com/
Ali
Tavakoly -- I met Ali online. I got
an e-mail from him saying that he met Rain (he did a pinup for me
and it’s in the preview issue) at an Anime expo. He
asked me if I was going to be at San Diego. We corresponded via e-mail for a
while and I finally was able to meet him. Some
days he needed a place to stash his stuff and I had room. He also
would watch the booth for a little while so I could make those
necessary nature breaks. You need to check out the project
he is working on with John Nguyen whom I talk about next.
http://www.perfect-limit.com
We small guys have to stick together so it was
a pleasure to meet Ali at the con.
John Nguyen – This guy went over and above the call of
duty.
He stayed at the booth FOREVER!! He was
drawing a pinup for me and it turned out awesome. Plus he
had to put up with my stopping production every couple of minutes
and taking a digital shot of it. I wanted to have a “pinup in the
making” sequence which I’ll put in John’s section. He took
it home and inked it. He had a ton of people asking him
questions I’m sure while I played errand boy again. And on
top of doing a pinup, he let Beth borrow his Wacom tablet
so she could do her color demos. That was HUGE!! Many
kudos go out to John and I was definitely glad to meet him in
San
Diego. You can check out most of his
artwork at: http://www.perfect-limit.com
Don Bluth – I’m a long time fan of Don’s from way back
in the days of Dragon’s Lair. It was great to finally meet
him.
I was able to talk to him every day since we were neighbors
and our booths were right next to each other. I’m
sure he gets tired of hearing about how many quarters it took to
finally beat Dragon’s Lair or Space Ace. I
remember those days well. The final defeat of Dragon’s Lair
was at Southglenn Mall and for Space Ace it was at the Fun Factory
in Hilo, Hawaii during a summer
internship at Kahua Ranch. On the last day of the con I
asked Don to do a sketch for my son who is a big fan of
dragons.
He did a large one of the Dragon’s Lair dragon and wrote on
it “Welcome to the Dragon’s Lair”… It’s an inside joke. I hope
to see Don at the next show in August and maybe we’ll be neighbors
again!!
Gary Goldman -- I didn’t really know who
Gary was at first, but I
soon found out that his name was associated with Titan AE. That’s
about all it took for me. More often than not, if I was
talking to Don I was also talking with Gary about the same
thing.
I told them that I was reluctant to see Titan AE because on
the one hand you’ve got traditional 2D animation and then on the
other you’ve got 3D computer animation. They
just don’t go together. That was my initial impression
after seeing the trailers. Also I didn’t see the movie when
it came out. I borrowed a friend’s DVD and
watched it; I didn’t even bother to RENT the thing at
Blockbuster. Once a few minutes rolled by, I
couldn’t take my eyes off the picture. The
whole thing was absolutely incredible. The
meld between 2D and 3D elements were awesome and the film turned out
great.
It was also one of the few movies that my son will sit ALL
THE WAY THROUGH. That is a feat in and of
itself.
Of course I own the DVD and I’ve got the soundtrack on my
Amazon wish list. I find myself humming Cosmic
Castaway more times than I can remember, which is a totally kick-ass
tune.
Both Don and Gary were great guys and I tried
to hook them up with Brenner Printing, but I don’t know if they ever
went through with that. I guess their magazine ToonTalk
wasn’t making enough and I got my money back for outstanding
issues.
That was kind of a bummer. Oh well, you can check out news
and other interesting developments at www.DonBluth.com
Jhonen Vasquez -- I never got to meet Jhonen
either.
I really wanted to and I went to the booth I don’t know how
many times. I’ve got all of the issues of
Squee and quite a few of Johnny The Homicidal Maniac, but what I
really wanted was a sketch of Invader Zim and Grr for my son. Well
for me too, but Keaton like Zim too.
Jonnie Allen – I got to meet Jonnie who stopped by the
booth many times just to chat about the business. He’s a
publisher too. His company is called “a.k.a.
Comics”.
I gave him a comic, but I never did get his e-mail address so
I didn’t hear from him for a while. But we got all caught up when he
did and he’ll probably beat me to the punch on the release
date.
We’ll just have to wait and see on that one. I’m
able to burn those free nightly cellular minutes and talk about
comics.
I'm sure I met a ton of other people, but it's
been a while so I'm hoping they'll stop by the booth this
year.
Alternate Covers
Why are you doing alternate covers? Well
for one, I like the artists. I’m a big fan. And for
two…
I’d rather pay these artists to do covers and make people
wonder why they’re involved in the project. Also I
think attaching some HUGE names in the business might generate the
much needed publicity for a new company startup. I
talked to Wizard a while back and their advertising rates are
phenomenal. I’d rather pay these artists to
do four alternate covers than pay for one full page ad in Wizard
that will only run for ONE month. I think the publicity from the
covers each month will generate the buzz and get people talking
about CiCi. I must thank Mike Owyang (again)
for putting me in touch with these artists. I at
least owe him dinner, if not several at the next San Diego
Con.
|
Alternate #1
Dave Finch – Pencils
Joe Weems – Inks
Steve Firchow – Colors |
Alternate #2
Joe Benitez – Pencils
Joe Weems – Inks
Dan Kemp – Colors |
|
Alternate #3
Keu Cha – Pencils
Joe Weems – Inks
Steve Firchow – Colors |
Alternate #4
Andy Park – Pencils
Joe Weems – Inks
Steve Firchow –
Colors |
I had hoped to have their credits pages up in
time, but it’s about all I can do just to get this update out the
door.
And possibly Press Release #4. It was great working with these
guys and they’re truly some of the best in the industry.
Working On The
Website
I’m currently working on a huge face lift of
SpilledMilk.com. So, YES, it is a little broken at
the moment. I switched from using FrontPage
to Visual InterDev and the navigation bots were lost. After a
few years I figure the site deserved it and with the pending release
of the comic book I probably need a better looking face to show the
world.
All the artwork is awesome so I’ve got great tools to work
with.
And now I’ve got a copy of Flash 5 and plan on doing a few
cool things. I guess this will also be a small
portfolio too. My menus and navigation will all
be XML based, unfortunately I won’t be able to use ASP because my
server does not support it. I’ll go ahead and switch over to
JavaScript and do most of the work on the client.
I love my new Dell (www.Dell.com ). It’s an
Inspiron 8100 (laptop) running at a 1.0 Ghz with 512 MB RAM and a 30
GB hard drive. The thing smokes with XP Pro and
I do all of my development on it now. Of course there were some driver
problems at first. After about a month or two of the
screen locking up on me I was able to get the new driver and BIOS
and I was good to go. Of course I’m working on the site
with this thing, but it makes lettering on a 300 DPI file a breeze
and with this new 21 inch Viewsonic I can drive the thing at 1600 x
1200 screen resolution and not miss anything. It’s
got a combo CD / RW burner so I can burn things to CD to take to
Kinkos and I can back up all of the comic pages so they don’t get
lost.
If you’re planning on getting a new computer, I would check
out Dell because I compared them against Gateway and you just get
more for your money and a better system. I sound
like an ad, but I’ve tried the Microns, IBMs, and Gateways. I just
love my Dell.
Official
Release?
To be honest I still don’t know. I will
know soon though and you will be the first to know. Jay
should be completing the inks any time now and I should be able to
submit a package to Diamond Distributors some time in April. If you
do the math then the first issue should be out just in time for the
next San
Diego con in
August.
So make room in your budget for BOTH covers, because they all
will be spectacular. Still on my to-do list is to
finish up the letters for issue #3. I probably only have a few more
hours on it so the submission should go in quickly after I get the
inks from Jay. I also need to letter #4. Beth is
working on the colors to #3 and I hope the orders for #1 are there
so I can afford to color #4. I’m pretty confident that I’ll
get good orders, but of course I’m hoping for AWESOME
orders.
Random Babbling
I spent most nights during
the con working on the slide show. It was funny because when I’d
work on it in the morning during the con a crowd would gather. I’m not
exactly sure why, because it’s not like I was really doing
anything.
Just resizing and cropping stuff. Then
loading it up into PowerPoint.
Something I’ve learned from all this networking
I’ve been doing since the lay off. If you want to stay in touch, get
the person’s e-mail or phone. People NEVER call you if you give
them your information. Well with the exception of
Jonnie.
So if I just give you a sticker (or business card) then
chances are I already know you won’t write.
The
Rant
It could have been a good one, but the subject
matter wouldn’t have been appropriate for this
newsletter.
Thanks for all your support,
_______________________________
Parker D. Smart
President - Spilled
Milk ®, Corp.
psmart@SpilledMilk.com
http://SpilledMilk.com
Copyright © 2001, Spilled
Milk ® Corp., All rights reserved.
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 J. | 
Catching Up / Overview
