Greetings everyone,
We’ve finally broken our silence to announce the release of Torchbearer 3! As you all know, it’s been a long and winding road in trying to complete this issue, but I for one think that this issue shows our love for the project. And just as important, the lessons we’ve learned on what we did right and wrong in this issue are priceless, and worth sharing.
Before this, you’ll notice that we’re still missing some marketplaces like Comixology, Kindle, Nook and the like. By the time this post goes online, we should have the Kindle version up and running. Nook? I need to sit down and actually make the corresponding version. Hopefully, early this weekend we’ll have that version up. Comixology? That was the first one submitted and we’re still pending when it’ll go online. Could be as early as next week, or as late as a month from now. (I know, it sucks).
Now, for Torchbearer 4. First off: previews!! Enjoy.
For Torchbearer 4, we’re trying a new artist team, as mentioned previously (although, I did forget to introduce our amazing colorist Ron Riley), and this parallel team production has really saved our schedule. We’re right now finalizing colors to Torchbearer 4 and will probably release it late July/early August. However, it’s really come to my attention that my love for incorporating details into the storyline requires 2-3 months to do, rather than the 2 month deadline we had originally forecasted. Which begs the question: How do we stick to a 2-month release schedule with a 3-month production time?
I think the answer lies in creating a pipeline of sorts.
In computing (and other industries), pipelining is a common technique used for scheduling multiple operations in a processor, so that multiple operations (especially those that depend on values from a previous operation) can run at the same time. Comic book production is usually divided into 4 stages: pencils, inks, colors and lettering. This will mean that it will become essential to have at least inks for an issue set before starting production on another issue. In theory, we could have different teams working at the different stages, and actually come out ahead for once with our issues.
Our schedule will be as follows:
Issue 5 will be Michael Montenat and Ron Riley.
Issue 6 will be either Dennis Calero OR a new team.
Issue 7 will be either a new team OR Dennis Calero.
Issue 8 will be Michael and Ron again
And so on.
Issue 6 is important for a number of reasons, so I’m going to be very careful in who I assign that issue.
Let’s see.. what other news do we have?
The trade is nearly finalized, and we’ll either the entire batch of 2000+ trades ready by BaltimoreCon, or by NYCC. If they’re not ready for Baltimore, we’ll do a special edition print on the trade, with a limited release (200). Needless to say, we’ll have some form of the trade available once we start our comic-con season in September.
Hmm… what else? Other writing has been put at a standstill, due to the day job (rest assured, I’ve taken steps to prevent this from happening frequently).
That’s pretty much it.
Next week, I’ll detail how we got our comic books into the different marketplaces, so you can do so as well.
Until then.
Best,
-Nick D.