Red Moon

     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!

     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 a heads up on Red Moon’s next comic convention appearance as well as how you can get your hands on a prequel comic if you can’t make it out to a convention.

     First up, we’re really excited to be attending the 1st ever Long Beach Comic Con on Oct 2nd-4th!

Here’s the layout of the convention floor…

We’re tucked away in the back of the room at table 90.

     So please make your way to the back of the convention floor and say hello. Try not to buy everything you see and save 5 bucks to pick up a prequel comic! And don’t forget, first person to buy a comic at the show gets a free Red Moon soda!

     Can’t make it out to the Long Beach Comic Con but want a prequel comic? No problem! We now have an online store up at etsty!

CLICK HERE TO VISIT OUR ETSY STORE WHERE YOU CAN PURCHASE A PREQEUL COMIC!

     It’s quick and easy to purchase a Red Moon prequel on Etsy. And when you do, I’ll put it in the mail the next day along with a free Red Moon sticker!

Thanks everyone!

Steve

     Dave here with a pretty special blog. I know that for me growing up, the best way for me to improve on my art technique was to watch someone else. It didn’t happen very often when I really needed it (thanks for nothing University Art classes!) but I did love to watch street artists or the character artists at the fair or in the mall. Usually not super impressive but every once in a while I could glean a smidge of useful knowledge. The point is, if I could’ve just sat and watched really good artists, whether that be my college art teacher or a professional commercial artist, from start to finish on paintings and drawings (sculpture, ANYTHING!) I really think I would’ve been a much better artist. And I think that would be true with a lot of people.

     So, needless to say, when I found a little thing on youtube a few years ago called “speed painting” I went absolutely nuts. Speed painting is basically like a time-lapse recording of the creation of a piece of art. I do love to watch people do their art but I rarely have the hours to spend just watching somebody. Speed painting helps with this immensely. It’s a really, really great way to learn how another artist thinks and sees the piece as it’s being created.

     Well, now I’ve done this with a page of Red Moon. I’m not painting Red Moon so I like to call my session Quick Draw instead of Speed Painting. Just trying to be original, I guess. Anyway, it’s page 66 of the book and it took about 4 hours to do in real time. I’ve squished that down to about 9 minutes. It goes by quick at times but I think you can see where I am on the page pretty good. In the page, Mox and Daeden are in a massive cave where a great Animal Sage lives. They are startled by a few guests that have been called to the cave for a meeting about Mox’s visions of the Red Moon. This is all done in Photoshop CS2 with the pencil tool at 300 dpi resolution at 100% page size. On an iMac, of course, using a Wacom pad. If you don’t know what a Wacom pad is, I’ll have a blog about it soon.

So here is the Quick Draw of page 66 of Red Moon. The video is a bit long, like I said - 9 minutes - but maybe someone can also get a little inspiration from it. Below the video is the actual finished page. Hope you guys like it!

Dave

Dave here with a bit of a different kind of blog.

     Some of you have asked me where I got the idea for Red Moon. Well, it’s not a cut and dried answer, as nothing is in life. It came from many places and over many years. But what I can tell you is that, no matter how fanciful you think this story of talking, intelligent animals is, I have actually taken it directly from the real world around us.

     Most of us know of or have seen a talking parrot. Simple mimicry, some would say. Or an elephant that can paint. A dog obeying his master is just it’s Pavlovian reaction to a predetermined sequence of sounds or actions. But what if it was actually more than that?

     Koko the signing gorilla is probably the most famous experiment to show us that there is more to animal intelligence than we have ever imagined. Maybe Lassie really did know Jimmy was trapped in the barn when it caught on fire? Not so far fetched, huh? (Ha, “fetched”! Ha!)

     This is a different kind of blog because I don’t really have any specific info or pictures from Red Moon but I wanted to share with you an article I read sometime in the last few months from National Geographic that encompasses the heart of what Red Moon is about.

     I stumbled across it at a friends house that subscribes to the magazine and felt that it really helps explain a lot of the ideas I have about the entire animal kingdom. Not just chimps and dolphins, but the whole of the animal world is beginning to be seen in a different light.

This is a fantastic article about animal intelligence and what we’re just now learning about it:

Here’s another amazing video that shows the level of sophistication that rivals that of the animals in Red Moon.

     The basis for the story of Red Moon? Animals are smarter than most people think. If you have a personal story that further proves this belief, I’d love to hear it! Or just let me know what you thought of the articles and videos.

Thanks, Dave.

     Hey everyone, Steve here again. Dave has been really busy working on some Red Moon promotions for the largest Comic Book/Pop Culture/Nerd Fest of all time, The San Diego Comicon! Comicon is roughly 1 week away, but we wanted to give you all the EXCLUSIVE FIRST LOOK at one of the promotions. Take a look at the front of our new flyer that will be put out at the convention. And look closely because there are some new characters in the pic that we haven’t even revealed…yet.

     What do you think? We might make this the cover of the book, but in full color. We’d love to hear your feedback on it in the comments below And you read that correctly…promotions. Plural. We can’t reveal what that second promotion is quite yet.

HOWEVER…

     You can find out at the San Diego Comicon! And if you’re going to Comicon, you have the opportunity to help us out! We’re going to need some bodies to participate with Dave in a fun, interactive, viral marketing campaign for Red Moon. Anyone attending Comicon on Friday, July 25th can participate. You’ll get to meet Dave, help him spread the word on Red Moon and have some fun all at the same time. So if you have a half hour of free time at Comicon on Friday the 25th and want to help us out, please contact us at:

redmoon.novel@yahoo.com

Thanks!

Steve

     Hi everyone, David here with another character profile for Red Moon. All good stories have to have a good bad guy.  The badder the better. In Red Moon our protagonist is a shy, sheltered, suburbanite schnauzer with only a small idea about the shortcomings of Man’s World.  The antagonist in Red Moon is, in every sense, the opposite of Mox.

     Krigg is a weathered and worn, fight-scarred raven with all-too-much knowledge of the worlds of both Man and Nature.  He’s a nomadic and solitary bird, preferring the casual, controlling relationship with others of his ilk, or none at all.

     He learned early in his life that he wasn’t like the other ravens and crows. He was smarter.  He could easily understand things that others couldn’t at all.  He knew Man’s  languages; he could grasp the reasons (or lack thereof) for their actions and their subtle mannerisms.

And he grew to despise them.

But hatred doesn’t come from knowledge, it comes from pain.

     Krigg was shunned by his parents and brutally tormented by his siblings and the flock for his malformed beak.  They never imagined he could survive past fledging.

     But he did and his banishment from the flock only made him stronger… and smarter.  His brother, Jadd, once tried to trick him into being food for a rather nasty barn owl with a taste for Corvids, but Krigg figured it out at the last second and switched positions, sending his brother into the talons of the owl instead.  The owl didn’t care… and neither did Krigg.

     He became more and more bitter and despondent in time until one morning when he found a wooden-framed cage full of crows and ravens.  Inside was most of his former flock… including his parents and sister.

     His intelligence had grown higher than most animals.  He knew it was a crow trap from the humans and he knew almost immediately how to free them… but he didn’t.  In a bitter, selfish anger he left them there, laughing at the thought that his ‘deformed’ beak is the perfect tool to free them.

     It was only later that he understood.  After the two farmers came with their shiny metal sticks.  It was only after the booms louder and longer than any thunderstorm that Krigg understood his feelings towards Humans.

     It hits him that his parents, sister and all those crows and ravens are dead.  And although he hated them all for what they did to him, he couldn’t have killed them all.  He wouldn’t have killed them all.  Not all of them.

     Krigg was less than one season old when that happened.  When he appears in Red Moon he’s 17.  Most crows and ravens don’t  see 25 seasons.  (This is Animal Knowledge not Human Knowledge.)

     Hey everyone, Dave here. This week I’d like to expand a bit on the animal world I’ve created for Red Moon.

     At it’s core, Red Moon is a story of communication.  Social communication, inner communication, but also communication with the living Earth that surrounds us. And yes, it’s a talking animal story, but it’s not the typical talking animal story.

     I really wanted to have a good balance of realism and narrative with the animals, so they had to talk to each other to tell the story but be percieved as natural creatures.  Even as a kid, it bothered me when animals in cartoon movies would talk with their mouths around humans and we were just supposed to believe the humans didn’t see them talking.  Some early live action talking animal movies were better about it, just having voices over the action but most of them still animated cartoon mouths on the animals. One of the driving forces behind creating Red Moon was the idea of telling a story from the animal’s perspective, the way an animal would communicate — telepathically.

     I know, I know, you can’t see mouths moving in a graphic novel, but the fact that the animals communicate telepathically is still an integral part of the story of Red Moon.

     For the purists and realists, what you will see in this graphic novel will be the english translations of communicative thoughts that the animal world uses between each other. I also tried to represent the word balloons differently by having whispy trails from the words to the character instead of the typical “v” of a talking balloon or the cloud-like bubbles of a thought balloon.

     What I’m hoping that telepathic dialogue conveys is the sense that these characters have a very complex social life. These animals live in the real world. They have to find food and defend themselves against others that would make them food. They have relationships, good and bad, and they have to deal not only with the joys of life but also with the sorrows of death.  I wanted to show that the animals have feelings and emotions and reasons behind their actions, social rules and even a belief system.

     Ultimately though, Red Moon is not as much about our seeking communication with animals as it is about the animals seeking communication with us.

David

     Hey everyone, Steve here with the winner of the first contest and the announcement of our second contest!

     We had a great response for the first contest. Hundreds of people entered to win the first ever printed copy of Red Moon. We threw all of the names into a hat and the winner of that book (to be personalized by artist/author David McAdoo) is…Kim Maher! Congratulations to Kim! She will get the first copy of Red Moon off of the printing press…ever!

     So how do we top our first contest? How can we beat giving away our book for free? How about FOUR books? Our next contest is for a bundle of books all done by Red Moon’s artist/author, David McAdoo! If you win this next contest, you’ll not only get a free signed copy of Red Moon when it is released, but
you’ll also get a copy of…

     The Dragon of Ord is a hard bound, short childrens book with two-tone pencil drawing illustrations that David wrote and drew when he was just 10 years old! At the age of 15, the book was published and David toured around the country speaking to kids in schools and libraries about his passion for art and writing. The book has everything! Dragons, spaceships, wizards, kings, barbarians, lasers and stolen treasure!

     You’ll also get these two comic books…

     The Last Soldier of 10-Sky is a 12 page, black and white mini comic that David recently wrote and illustrated. It’s the story of a soldier on a mission through the city of 10-Sky. On his journey he encounters unknown foes barring him from finishing his mission as well as allies that will help him discover the real truth behind his orders. Issues 1 and 2 are action packed featuring robots, giant creatures, a ravaged landscape and a unique armadillo-like lead character.

     So how do you win all four books? Simple, if you want to win a free signed copy of Red Moon, along with David’s early work, The Dragon of Ord and the hard to find issues 1 and 2 of The Last Soldier of 10-Sky, all you have to do is send us an email at redmoon.novel@yahoo.com with the subject heading, SECOND CONTEST. That’s it! In one month (June 22nd) we’ll randomly pick a winner. And as always, you won’t be placed onto any mailing list and we won’t give your email out to anyone.

Good luck!

steve

     David here with another character profile.  This one’s for Daeden, Mox’s rugged companion hero in Red Moon.

 To see a bigger version of the drawing above, CLICK HERE

     Daeden is a mid- to larger size dog with short, bristolly fur and a sturdy gate. He is, as commonly called by humans, an Australian Cattle dog or Blue Heeler.  But he’s actually a mutt with a little shepherd and perhaps a bit of retriever mixed with the Heeler. However, what he’s MOST proud to be is independent.

     Personality-wise Daeden is bitter sweet. He can be as honest and caring as anyone could wish for in a friend but also a bit opinionated and cocky from his time living on the streets of Midwest Suburbia as a “stray”.  He is however, a mystery to Mox when Red Moon begins.  Daeden talks of the world outside Mox’s backyard pen and weaves great stories of fun and adventure. He’s got a way of making eating out of a garbage can sound both enlightening and humorous. But Daeden’s more than a story teller, he’s a dog of action, and when he sees a bit of himself in Mox and his situation with his family, he decides to do something about it…

     The character of Daeden isn’t based on any pet I ever had like Mox is, but it’s not for not wishing.  I’m an absolute believer that the smartest dogs on the planet are complete and utter mutts! The more mish-mash the breed is the higher the IQ if you ask me.  Now I know there are smart purebreds, I’ve known a few, but probably one of the smartest purebreds I’ve ever met was a Blue Heeler. There was a friend of the family that had a Blue Heeler. When I met this dog I was blown away by it’s intelligence first and then by how absolutely happy he was.  When I got home I immediately looked up everything I could on the breed and was a fan from that moment on.