Red Moon

     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

     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

     Happy Holidays everyone! Steve here with a Christmas gift for everyone as well as an update and some insight into the production of Red Moon.

     Since it’s Christmas time, I thought I would give you all a present. Here’s a scene from page 155 of the graphic novel…

CLICK HERE to see the full size image

     Yes, page 155! It’s gonna be a monster of a book (200 pages total). Dave is just about finished and will start working on the cover soon! That means we’ll printing the book soon and trying to get it into your hands. How is that going to happen?

     The plan is to focus on getting the graphic novel into comic book stores first. In order to do that, we’ll have to go through Diamond Distribution. They are the main distribution company when it comes to dealing with comic book stores. If we can get Diamond to distribute the book, then it’s just a matter of you walking into your favorite comic book store and asking for Red Moon. Your store will be able to order it. We honestly don’t know how hard it is to get approved by Diamond but we think we have a pretty good shot.

     We will also be selling the book at our online store as well as at convention appearances. Eventually we will attempt to get Red Moon into Book stores as well. Future blogs will touch upon that topic. For right now, we’re concetrating on comic book stores only.

     So the book is coming soon! Lots of excitement for 2010 everyone! Expect the blogs to pick up in the coming new year as we show you the printing process, how we’re going about getting quotes for the back of the book and finally it’s eventual release!

steve

     Hey everyone. Dave here again with a blog about how the animals in the world of Red Moon communicate with one another.

     Red Moon is a talking animal story. But it’s not the usual talking animal story because these animals can be seen by humans as they converse. How’s this? Well, first of all, their mouths don’t move when they speak like in the cartoons and movies. They communicate through telepathy. They project thoughts to convey a message.

     Even as a child it bothered me that animals’ mouths moved when they spoke EXCEPT when humans were around. Like it’s some sort of secret that the animal world has been keeping really really well from us. I didn’t really hate these movies but I was definitely irritated.

     So when I came up with the inkling of Red Moon I knew I had to make telepathy a major part of the story. It had to be at the heart of the story.

     I was inspired to write Red Moon by great books like Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien, Watership Down by Richard Adams, and The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. Aside from the intelligent mice and rats in the Rats of NIMH, the animals in these books were just like any animal you would see and in my mind when I read them they were speaking telepathically to each other. And even Bagheera and Baloo were speaking telepathically to Mowgli and Mowgli to them.

     I started writing Red Moon as a film script to be animated and I figured that once the audience heard a few characters speaking they would pick up on the telepathic premise, like the live action animal movies like Homeward Bound or even one of my all-time favorites The Cat from Outer Space. But then it became a graphic novel and I was faced with the dilemma of making sure the audiences new that these animals’ word balloons were not them speaking with their mouths. I thought for a long time and finally decided to make the directional arrows from the word balloons kind of whispy when the animals spoke and the traditional style for when humans spoke out loud.

     You may say, “What’s the difference? Who cares if they talk with their mouths? It’s just a comic.” And to that, all I can say is…

buy the book and read it all the way to the last page. There’s a reason. Trust me.

Dave

     Hi everyone. Steve here. Welcome back to our regular blogs. We were off for the month of April but if you haven’t seen, we posted a new picture everyday last month in our “artwork from the book” section. Check out the blogs below or click on that “artwork from the book” link on the right to see them all!

     Not enough? Well here’s the back of our newest flyer that features 3 more new pics from the book as well!

      And stay tuned to the blog in the coming weeks because we have some REALLY BIG announcements/news to tell you all about.

steve

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