Greetings everyone,
blows dust off blog site Well, it’s been awhile hasn’t it. Apologies for failing to update what we’ve been up to, but to say that we’ve been busy is… a bit of an understatement. Thankfully, the other business I’m involved with has been continuously busy. While that’s fortuitous, it’s also meant that any spare time I’ve had I’ve had to be judicious with it.
However, Odd Truth itself has been very busy as of late. Let’s go over a brief status report and mention some of the things we’ve been doing while dust was gathering on this blog.
- Over Christmas and into the early months of 2015, we developed two short series based on Nikola Tesla and Emma as an educational project for a company. That was a lot of work, and a lot of fun where we were able to collaborate with our old pal Dennis Calero. It had a turnaround of a couple of weeks from design to delivery, with continuous iterations after the initial colored pages were delivered. It was a bit unusual, and it’s a shame that it’ll be a while before the series are seen by the public, but I can safely say we’re still excited about the overall project (and it sucks that we really have to be hush-hush about it).
- While the other company had a project with a carbonated beverage company, we were gearing up for C2E2 and Phoenix ComicCon, eager to apply the lessons we learned from last year. We got volume 0.75 ready for C2E2, and prepared for an expanded version of the Oculus demo setup we had in NYCC 2014. Given our dedication to VR, we had a booth for the first time at C2E2, and it was successful in many ways, and very encouraging for the most part.
- We also met fans at Phoenix ComicCon, which was a great boost to us at that convention, and visited old friends of ours at HeroesCon. And, I also went to GenCon for the first time as an attendee, which was an interesting and enlightening experience on its own.
- Our friends at Transparent Frog Films will debut their short film “A Bad Luck Guy in a Bad Luck Town” on September 19th at Arts at the Armory in Somerville, MA. Details at https://www.facebook.com/events/2103855209753393/ . This is a fantastic short that we were fortunate to help produce and we’re very excited to see Transparent Frog Films kick ass at the film’s debut. We wish we could attend, however we are unable to because…
- Yeah, so we’ve been working on our own VR game based on Torchbearer called “Torchbearer: Ground Support”. It’s a on-rails shooter akin to House of the Dead or Star Wars Trilogy Arcade . In fact, Star Wars Trilogy Arcade has served as the inspiration and blueprint of the game. In the game, the player is part of the ground support troops that provide cover fire, shooting drones and other forms of assistance to Cayoti and the main Torchbearer troops across different mission. For NYCC, we are working hard to get a demo of one of the level, the Nova Ilios campaign (issue 8), and our goal would be to have 4 levels, each with three stages, and some extra stages that would be unlocked through gameplay (very, very similar to Star Wars Trilogy Arcade). So, given that the only developer that we have in-house happens to be, by some strange coincidence, the author of our current flagship series, and overall lead sales guy and overall gofer, he is going to be very busy until NYCC and until then, probably won’t see daylight unless he’s on loan to that other company.
So, yes, a little busy. The majority of our efforts right now are geared towards Torchbearer 13 and 14, making sure publication of Torchbearer Vol 0.99 (issues 10 – 12) is ready for NYCC, setting up our VR demo at NYCC and other things pertinent to NYCC. Unfortunately, this means that posts will be seldom until then (a post and a page update to our NYCC page will happen in a few weeks). Given all we have to finish, we want ensure that we’re ready for our fans at NYCC this year.Even so, I still want to share where we are and what we’re planning for Odd Truth. Well, share as much as I can, as there’s a lot of things still under NDA that can’t be shared.First off, we are working hard to get Torchbearer into your local comic book store. We feel that with all 12 issues combined into one book, along with some revisions, it’ll be accepted by Diamond and available at your local comic book store, along with all future issues. However, this really won’t be happening until mid-2016, given the time we need to make some revisions, Diamond’s vetting process, having to advertise the comic in Diamond Previews, preparing and fulfilling the orders of the same. And even so, it’s not a guarantee for a number of reasons that others have explained better. It also means that, as planned, all current printed copies of Torchbearer are limited edition, and won’t exist in their current format ever again.Second, we are expanding our comic book series. While we are not ready right now to have an open submission policy (as we want to ensure we have a good distribution system in place beforehand), we are right now working through a number of proposals for upcoming series, including a few not written by me. Which, to us, is very exciting as it gets us one step closer to transforming Odd Truth into a true comic book publisher.Third, we have other projects that we’ve started production. We know that Torchbearer will have it’s own VR game, but did you know that it will also have its own podcast? We’re right now fleshing out the details on this podcast, but it’ll most likely be centered around the KGC Broadcast group that have appeared since Issue 7, bringing news and other stories from a long, long time from now in a galaxy far, far away. Own very own production manager, Victoria, will spearhead this project and it’ll likely resume production in November-December after NYCC.
Speaking of other projects, did we mention that we’re also starting our animation endeavors? You may have seen the script we wrote called Dr. Feeny and Jade, but we’re actually in pre-production now, working towards realizing that script. Should be fun!
Fifth, we realize our site sucks. Yes, it does. It’s too slow and it’s outdated. While we can’t do much about it now (see wall of text above), we are actually going to completely revamp our site. Not only will we be focusing on speed, but we will also work towards supporting all of these different projects, especially as we are building our own mobile app.
Oh, yeah, we’ve already built it. As part of our arrangement in January, we acquired the basics of a mobile platform project, so we’ll be expanding on it and making it our own. At this time, we really are not looking to compete with Comixology or any other comic book digital marketplace. Instead, the Odd Truth app will serve mainly as a gateway for all of our different projects. We’re working towards making sure that, if you bought our books, you can see the comics for free through our comics (because that’s really how things should be, no?). We’ll focus on rolling that out first before enabling digital purchases of any of our books. Also, the app most likely will include a store where you can buy merch that you can customize from pages of Torchbearer, or our other projects.
In short, we’ll be expanding our efforts here at Odd Truth. Our primary focus is and will be comics, and those stories that are told well through the comic book medium. In another sense, comics will become a testing ground of sorts, testing to see if there are other related stories we can tell through other mediums, with particular emphasis on Virtual Reality and Animation in general. Once we solve our distribution problem (one I’m convinced will be tackled, mastered and subjugated by early 2016), we can then expand further and start bringing other professionals and new talent on board.
But, that’s all days, weeks and months ahead. And nothing can get done without doing the work necessary in the here and now. So, with that, dear reader, I leave you. I can hear the subconscious whips now, beckoning me to stop writing this blog post and get back to writing code.
Until next time.
Best,
-Nick D.