Red Moon

     Hey everyone, Steve here with our Comic Con 2010 report!

     We had an great time at this year’s San Diego Comic Con. This was by far our most successful show to date and we want to thank everyone for stopping by, saying hello and picking up a copy of Red Moon!

     Where to start? The show is so big! Just setting up the table is quite a task! All the walking involved and add the fact that this year we’re selling a big 200 page book (and not a 28 page comic book like last year) and well…it’s a workout. But we set up our table and were excited to see what was in store for the weekend.

     Every morning we would post a phrase on our twitter and on our facebook and the first person to come up to our table and say the phrase won a Red Moon soda! Congratulations to J.J. and eyekilly0U for being quick on their feet and snatching up the prizes!

     And that’s not the only people who stopped by our table. Tate, the owner of Tate’s Comics stopped by. His store won best comic shop in the world at last year’s Eisner Awards! Check out their website. btw-You can purchase Red Moon at their store right now!

     Next up, Stan Lee stopped by our table!!! Look!

     Ok that’s not really Stan Lee but check out this guy’s website at FakeStanLee.com. The guy is really, really good and hysterical! You must see his videos of him in action at the con.

     We also had some friends stop by as well. Thanks to Cindy and Connie for sporting Red Moon shirts at the con! Shirts and books now on sale at our online store.

     This is just a small sampling of all the people that came by. We sold a ton of books and Dave did plenty of commissions as well! Here’s a few examples of the pieces he did at the con.

     Even though we were exhibiting all weekend, we HAD to go out and look at stuff out on the convention floor. It’s Comic Con! Here’s us goofing off around the convention.

     We had a great time, met lots of cool people and had a successful show. We couldn’t ask for a better time. Thanks again to everyone we met at there. We will be back for San Diego Comic Con 2011!

     Hey everyone, just a quick heads up on where you can find us at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con July 21st-26th, 2010.

     We’ll be exhibiting in the Small Press Pavilion, Table L05 under the company name “Cossack Comics” which is the publisher of Red Moon. Here’s a layout of half of the convention floor with the Small Press area highlighted…

     And here’s a closer view of the Small Press area with our table highlighted…

     Please stop by and say hello! We’ll be selling the graphic novel, the prequel, t-shirts and Dave will be happy to do an original commission piece for you as well!

Hope to see some of you at the con!

     Hello everyone! Steve here with our Heroescon 2010 report!

     Dave and I were really excited for Heroescon this year because we were debuting the book at the show. It was going to be the first time anyone was able to purchase the book! All the hard work of the past 3 years has lead up to this weekend and we were just so happy and thrilled to have the book for sale and be able to have it finally available for people.

     So first things first. When we get to the con, we have to put up the Lost Dog flyers the day before.

     Next, it’s off to pick up our badges. This year’s badges were done by Skottie Young and featured baby X-Men! Exhibitors in the Artists Alley got Wolverine ones! How cool!

     Then it’s off to go set up inside. Heroescon the day before they open to the public is as deserted as the begining of that movie “I Am Legend” except Will Smith isn’t there…or the dog…or the creepy monster/mutated things. Yeah. Just like that movie.

     So we set up and then went back to the hotel room. But we barely slept cause we were both too excited for the premier of the book! We finally got a couple hours of sleep and woke up ready to go on the big day!

     Those that were following us on our twitter and on our facebook page got the opportunity to win some prizes by saying a “secret phrase” to us. Congratulations to Shannon and Sam for winning the Red Moon sodas. And remember to join us on twitter and facebook in the future for more contests from the shows!

     We had a really great response to the book as well as plenty of sales. We sold more graphic novels at this year’s Heroescon then we did with just prequels at last year’s show! And people kept coming up to us saying they read it the night before and well, here’s a taste…

     Snow Wildsmith, who has a quote on the back of the book, stopped by as well! Make sure you check out her interview with Dave on Good Comics for Kids that she conducted at the show!

     And speaking of interviews, Heather from Dollar Bin stopped by and did and interview with us! You can listen to that at The Dollar Bin’s website. Here’s some pics of Heather conducting the interview…

     Dave did PLENTY of commissions at the show too. Here’s just a small sampling of some of the pieces he did for fans over the weekend…

     Dave also did a piece for the Heroescon Art Auction…

     The piece seemed to really capture people’s attention as the piece went for WAY MORE than Dave and I expected. Seriously, there was a bidding war going on. Let’s just say that Dave and I had a guess as to what we thought the final price was going to be…and then the piece wound up selling for four and a half times that amount! Here’s a shot of the all the amazing comic book art fans at the auction Saturday night…

     We had a really great time at Heroescon this year. If you’ve never been, make sure to check it out next summer. And if you’re ever in Charlotte, check out the store that puts on the show, Heroes Aren’t Hard To Find. We stopped by there after the last day of the show and it’s an amazing store. They even bought a couple of our books and put it on their shelves! Thanks guys!

     And lastly, we would like to thank Sam for giving us the coolest piece of fan art in the world. It’s on a paper plate! That rules. Thanks Sam!

Hope to see everyone at a future con!

steve

Hey everyone, just a quick heads up. You can now buy Red Moon online at our etsy store! Click the link below to visit the store and please make sure to tell your friends. Thanks everybody!

Visit Red Moon’s etsy store.

     Steve here with a special announcement and a quick heads up on where you can find us at Heroescon in Charlotte, NC June 4-6. We’ll be premiering Red Moon at this convention! That means this this will be the first place ANYWHERE that you can pick up the graphic novel!

     Here’s the layout of the floor. Look to the left of the grey area labled “Indie Island” for the red circle. That’s us.

     And here’s a closer view of Indie Island and the surrounding area. We’ll be at Small Press Table #31.

     And since we’re premiering the book at this show, we have a special discount for everyone that picks up the book at Heroescon. When the book goes on sale June 9th through our website, RedMoonGraphicNovel.com, and at the rest of the conventions, the book will be $20. But for those that purchase it at Heroescon, you’ll only be paying $15. We just ask that if you like it, please tell someone about it.

Hope to see some of you at the show!

Steve

     Dave here with the final character blog befor the release of the book and it’s a doozy! This is the last character blog but there’s much more still in the book.

     This character file is the ancient animal sage, The Colotal.

     In Red Moon, Mox and Daeden must seek this mystical sage to find answers to Mox’s visions of destruction. As you can see this is not your garden variety animal sage.

     The Sages are known in the animal world as Masters of Regions. They oversee the happenings throughout their region and help guide the lives that live within, settling disputes and advising group decisions that would otherwise disrupt the balance of nature.

     The Colotal was once a normal millipede — thousands of our years ago — until she was chosen in a very special way to be the Master of the Yurru Region, the land between the East and West Oceans, south of the frozen Regions of Barrah to the north and north of the tropical Regions of Tihree on what we know as the North American continent.

     Being chosen as Master of a Region brings special benefits. Colotal is not as affected by age as most living things are, it is slowed and nearly imperceptible. Growth however, is not. As a Sage she continues to grow until her reign as Master is over. She continually adds segments and now has an uncountable amount of legs. Her most notable asset though is a honing plate that has grown from the back of her head. It heightens her senses and abilities beyond that of a natural being.

     All Masters have special abilities unique to each individual; Colotal’s is healing. She can mend bones, remove wounds, strengthen flesh and, in rare cases, revive a lost soul… if soon enough after passing.

     But her abilities are only a back-up when her immense knowledge is not enough to help the situation. She was an intelligent millipede to begin with, but the thousands of years experience has made her almost infinitely wise.

     Find out what Mox and Daeden discover when they encounter the mystic Sage Colotal on their journey in RED MOON.

Dave

     Hey everyone, Steve here with some announcements concerning the release of Red Moon. If you absolutely want to get the book the first day it’s available, you’re gonna have to head on over to Heroescon in Charlotte, NC June 4-6 because that’s where we’ll be debuting the book! Online sales of Red Moon will start after the convention on June 9th.

     Can’t make it out to Charlotte? Not to worry, we’ll be on the road this year hitting 5 conventions. Here’s our 2010 tour schedule. We hope to see some of you at the shows!

     And if we’re not coming to a city near you this year, keep your eye out for our 2011 tour. We’ll be hitting many more conventions that year.

     And as a final bonus, here’s the back of our newest flyer. There’s a couple of new pics from the book as well as some new quotes.

Steve

     Can you feel it? Dave here and it’s getting crazy close to the release of Red Moon so today I’m going to tell you a bit about the development of the cover design.

     Now, it goes without saying that the story, page design and art is all very important to any graphic novel but the story won’t be read and those pages won’t be seen at all if the cover doesn’t catch the eye and make the potential customer want to read it. So it could be argued that the cover is almost more important than the book itself.

     Throughout the development of Red Moon I would sketch cover ideas whenever I thought of them so some of these that I’ll be showing you are years old.

     One of the earlier designs I sketched specifically for the cover was this one:

     It’s majestic and I would’ve made the moon in full but I ultimately didn’t like that Daeden was covered up so much.

     Another sketch I did but much later in the process was this one:

     I thought maybe an action shot and massive herd of animals behind them, but I didn’t like that you couldn’t see Mox or Daeden’s bodies.

     Those were two of the earlier ones that I never finalized. And many of the following were actually sketched long before the pages were finished but I had a little bit of time before Red Moon was actually printed so I used it to finalize some of the better ideas so Steve and I could make a better decision on which one was best.

     My thoughts for the cover was “less is more”, meaning a simpler image is often more powerful. I thought the cover was going to be the easy part.

     Here’s the first stab at the cover:

     Nice, simple silhouette’s with a big red moon. Or how about:

     Wow. Even simpler. This is easy. What about some color?

     Not bad. But Steve says “People were interested in the prequel because they loved the detail of the cover.”

     Ooh. There goes my “less is more” theory. But ultimately he’s right. “Less is more” really only applies if the artist, title or, to a lesser extent, the writer, is well known. If you’re unknown you better impress the hell out people with the art.

     Steve suggested a few ideas:

     This is really based on a movie poster idea that I had for Red Moon before I made it a graphic novel and I was going to animate it as a feature length film. I like it but it doesn’t grab you.

     This was a cool idea Steve had since I did a couple variations of it in several panels in the book. Pretty cool but I didn’t really think the title name and characters should be so distorted on the cover.

     Steve had a pretty specific idea for this one and it did come out pretty cool but I think it’s just too red and full color would lessen the effect.

     So finally what ended up happening, as it so often does, is that we went back to the beginning.

     The final cover design is literally one of, if not THE first sketch I did for the cover. I drew it at the same time I drew the first sketch at the top of the blog. It was actually used as the first flyer we put out, although I redrew it and changed it ever so slightly.

     Here’s the final cover of RED MOON. Hope you dig it.

     Red Moon will be out soon and will be available at redmoongraphicnovel.com

Dave

The very first official review of Red Moon has just been posted and we couldn’t be happier! Head on over to Broken Frontier at the link below to find out what they had to say.

Broken Frontier reviews Red Moon

     Hello everyone! Steve here with some exciting news. The book is done! All 200 pages are now complete and we are in the process of printing the graphic novel. Before we print the final book, we wanted to get some quotes for the front and back of the book. So, we printed up some review copies…

Not a very exciting cover, I know. We’ll be debuting the final cover soon. But for the review copies, it works. I sent copies to websites that review comics and to people in the industry that I’ve met over the past couple of years. So there are people reading Red Moon right now! Dave and I are now anxiously waiting to hear the first reactions come in. When we hear back from people, we’ll let you all know.

So while we wait, here’s another pic from the book. Enjoy!

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and we just added a Facebook page which you can become a fan of here. Thanks everyone! Lots of exciting news and posts to come in 2010!

steve