Gordon McAlpin's Blog: Updates from Multiplex: Deleted Scenes, page 13

Trailer Watch: The third Dark Knight Rises trailer

Up until the apparently obligatory (these days) tag at the end, this is a pretty moody, ominous trailer. I feel like studios force trailer cutters to add those things at the end. For lighter action flicks, sometimes it can be a fun little “hey also” to put in at the end, but here, it’s just tacked on, and considering we’ve already seen the flying whatever-it-is (I guess they just call it “the Bat”) earlier in the trailer, it’s kind of pointless.

But whatever. The movie itself looks as promising as it always has — I’m guessing everybody reading this is already on-board or not, and nothing Warner Brothers can show to us now is really gonna sway that. The Dark Knight Rises hits theaters on July 20th, 2012.

Nordeast Comics Summit #14 — Illustrator Boot Camp

Twin Cities cartoonists! I’ll be running up a half-hour long “Illustrator Boot Camp” for the 14th Nordeast Comics Summit next Thursday at the Big Time Attic studio!

It’s a crash course in what you need to know to use Illustrator to make comics — and not just vector comics, either. I’ll be covering:

• Intro to Illustrator: A very quick explanation of what vectors are for the complete novice.
• Vector drawing basics: How to construct complex shapes out of multiple simple shapes.
• Lettering in Illustrator: Tricks for how to use this basic knowledge to letter your comics.

DATE: Thursday, May 3, 2012

TIME: 6 – 6:30 pm (right before the Cartoonist Conspiracy Jam)

LOCATION: 1618 Central Ave NE, Ste. 216, Nordeast MPLS

Click through to Nordeast Comics Summit page for the full details!

Now taking PayPal contributions toward the Book 2 Project

Help fund the production, printing, and distribution of the second Multiplex print collection by donating to the Multiplex: There and Back Again Project at the Multiplex Store! Donated funds will be used in the same manner as the funds raised by the Book 2 Kickstarter Project which has now ended, only now PayPal users (and other people who can’t or don’t care to use Kickstarter or Amazon Payments) can get involved. These are characterized as donations, because PayPal has a policy that all purchases must be shipped within 30 days. Obviously, the book will not be ready then.

The “prices” (donation amounts) are slightly different from the Kickstarter rewards in that the Kickstarter rewards had some amount of shipping built into their required minimum pledge, and extra shipping was required for international backers. Here, the shipping will be based on an estimate (which is usually pretty accurate), so international backers will be paying an estimated shipping amount that may be higher (or lower) than Kickstarter backers were required to pay. US contributors will find them identical in “cost” to the Kickstarter rewards, once shipping is added on at checkout.

The estimated publication date for Multiplex: There and Back Again is currently February 2013. This is subject to change.

At this point, I’ve only made the most popular Kickstarter rewards available for purchase, and some of them are unnecessary by the fact that you can just order Multiplex: Enjoy Your Show or the Chapters 1–5 eBooks separately from your donation (and also have Book 1 shipped immediately, rather than wait for Book 2 to be published, as Kickstarter Backers do). If there were any other Kickstarter rewards you would have liked to see, simply leave a comment here or e-mail Gordon, and I’ll set it up for you.

12 hours to go in the Book 2 Kickstarter project!

Multiplex: There and Back Again Lightning Round has met (and surpassed) its secondary funding goal of $17,500! Thank you to everybody who has pledged so far and made the Book 2 Kickstarter even more successful — both in terms of number of backers and money raised — than the Book 1 Kickstarter! Many readers (and a few reviews) commented on the production quality and design of Multiplex: Enjoy Your Show, and the extra time and money I can spend on Book 2 will help me ensure that this one turns out even better.

The next (tertiary?) funding goal is the following — with about 12 hours left in the funding period, it's a bit of a long shot at this point, but I thought I'd dangle that carrot here anyway…

$20,000 — eBooks will be produced in both PDF and ePub format. All backers [with eBooks included in their reward packs] will be get both formats (or just one, if you want). Also, backers at the $100 Reward Level and up will get their Chapter 1–10 eBooks delivered on a USB key along with their other pledge rewards.

While I will be opening up for PayPal donations soon, the USB key is only for Kickstarter backers, since I'll need to start costing the custom production ASAP (the keys will have the Multiplex logo printed on them). It is off the table after the Kickstarter funding period ends tonight at midnight.

48 hours to go! (And an original art giveaway for Kickstarter backers!)

Pencils for Multiplex #647 

There 48 hours to go in the Multiplex: There and Back Again Lightning Round Kickstarter drive.

In celebration of this, and to promote one final push upwards, I will be giving TWO page of original sheets* of pencils or inks (signed by me) from the current zombie storyline away to a random Kickstarter backers. If you've already pledged, you are already entered! You can pledge $1 (although I'll only get like 65¢ from that, you know that right?), or you can pledge $3,333. You have the same chance of winning. Only Kickstarter backers — of any amount — are eligible. Sorry, people waiting for the PayPal option to open up.

But wait! There's more! If we get to the secondary funding goal of $17,500 — less than $700 away — by the end of the Kickstarter project at MIDNIGHT, Thursday, April 12th, I will increase that to FOUR sheets.

This is in addition to the super awesome bookmark that will be added to the Basic Sponsor Pack (and Super Sponsor Pack) rewards.

AND THAT'S NOT ALL. If we get to the next funding goal of $20,000 — less than $700 away — by the end of the Kickstarter project, I will increase that to SIX sheets.

* I say "sheets" because I draw them on 11×14 sheets of Bristol paper. Some strips/pages of the finished comic are broken up across two sheets. And some sheets only have one panel on them. Which page you get is random. But they're all awesome, man. All of them.

To Infinity… and Beyond! (New Funding Goals!)

Multiplex: There and Back Again Lightning Round has met (and surpassed) its funding goal! Thank you to everybody who has pledged so far! Every one of your pledges has been vital to the project's success, and I am incredibly grateful for your support. Multiplex has never been a runaway success in terms of readership, so your enthusiasm of my little cult comic is tremendously humbling.

The fact that we've passed the funding goal means, of course, what next?

I've said before anything over $15,000 will go toward paying off my lingering debts from Book 1, the promotion of Book 2, and, of course, supporting the continued production of the regular comic strip. As with the Book 1 Kickstarter project, I will share how I spend the funds with you in backer-only updates.

But allow me to sweeten the deal slightly with new Funding Goals:

$17,500 — Bookmarks will be added to the Basic Sponsor Pack (a.k.a. the $40 Reward Level, the $75 Reward Level, and up — but not the $50 "Just the Book" Reward Level, because it's just the books).

$20,000 — eBooks will be produced in both PDF and ePub format. All backers [with eBooks included in their reward packs] will be get both formats (or just one, if you want). Also, backers at the $100 Reward Level and up will get their Chapter 1–10 eBooks delivered on a USB key along with their other pledge rewards.

$22,500 — ALL backers at the $8 level and up will get the Chapter 11 eBook free when it is completed.

$25,000 — ALL backers at the $8 level and up will get the Chapter 12 eBook free when it is completed.

$27,500 — ALL backers at the $8 level and up will get the Chapter 13 eBook free when it is completed.

$30,000 — ALL backers at the $8 level and up will get the Chapter 14 eBook free when it is completed.

$32,500 — ALL backers at the $8 level and up will get the Chapter 15 eBook free when it is completed.

Beyond that? Let's worry about that later. :)

ECCC 2012 for realsies (featuring Mega Man vs. Cthulhu)

Okay, so I made my "reasonable guesses" as to how Emerald City Comicon went in the Notes from the Manager for today's strip, and surprisingly enough I wasn't all that far off. No Summer Glau or George Takei. Spike didn't attend, so I didn't get to see her, and I missed out on any Joel Watson karaoke, if there was any. I had awakened on Thursday with a sore throat, though, which had progressed to a full-blown cold by Friday morning. Sadly, I can't even blame it on airports or the usual confluenza, since I had it before I even left for the airport.

I got into Seattle on Thursday and was quickly whisked off to a gala affair at Phil Foglio's house with David Willis, which involved a handful of webcomickers sitting and standing around talking shop (as these things do) and some friends of Phil's and Bill Barnes's.

Alas, because of my progressively worse cold, I didn't get to play that much with my fellow webcomickers, but on Saturday night, I did get to have a deliciously hilarious (and inevitably foul) dinner with Tom Brazelton, Danielle Corsetto, Randy Milholland, Lar De Souza and Ryan Sohmer, Joel Watson, and David again before I crapped out. (I shared a hotel room with Dave and Joel, too — after I split Sunday night, this situation ended exactly as you would expect it would.)

Illness notwithstanding, it was great meeting a lot of familiar faces from last year's ECCC as well as From The Internet, including several backers from the Book 1 Kickstarter project and a few from the new one for Book 2, which even ended up passing $10,000 on Sunday afternoon, before my prediction posted with Monday's.

Sorry if I got any of you sick by shaking your hand. (As if you'd know it was me specifically.) For what it's worth, I was Purelling the shit out of my hands every day. Usually I do it to keep from getting sick, but this time, it was to keep anyone else from getting sick.

I had a great time doing a ton of sketches at the show. The Mega Man vs. Cthulhu one above was one of my favorites. If anybody else wants to share sketches I did for them, either in books or on a sheet of Bristol, tweet a photo of it at me! I forgot to take photos of some really fun ones, unfortunately.

The Multiplex iOS app now has bookmarks!

Hot on the heels of version 1.1, Lawrence (my brother) and I have updated the Multiplex iPhone app to version 1.2.

Still ad-free (and 99¢ because of it), version 1.2 sports a new icon and some higher res UI images. Sorry, the strip images are still the same size… for now. Remember, this is decidedly an iPhone/iPod Touch app, not really an iPad app (although it will run on one)!

The big new feature, though, is the most requested one since the app launched — BOOKMARKS. You can now bookmark a strip and easily jump back to where you left off the next time you open the app. And you can now tweet or e-mail your favorite strips straight from the app, as well.

As always, if you like the app, please leave a review at the iOS App Store! The better the app sells, the more incentive my brother has to continue developing it and other stuff for me. :)

Multiplex: There and Back Again — The Kickstarter Project

People have asked me about Multiplex: Book 2 for a while now, and I've never had a very good answer about when I was going to have it done. I hadn't planned on using Kickstarter again, but considering I'm about to head into grad school, and I don't have any steady freelance work to speak of, now just seemed like as good a time as any to get Book 2 finished — if, once again, I can pay my bills while I work on it… and, of course, the print run.

And so… Multiplex: There and Back Again Lightning Round, the Kickstarter Project for Book 2. And, if we make more than the goal, maybe even Book 3 as well.

I don't want to rehash everything I say on the Kickstarter Project page, so please just go there and read it.

Finished, already?

Alright.

As I said there, the fundraising period for Book 1 was way too long. This time, I'm doing three weeks and out. (Well, 23 days, so it ends at midnight on April 12th.) This way, I won't get sick of it, and hopefully you won't get sick of me, either. If we don't make our goal in that time, so be it. No Book 2 for… who knows how long? But I'd like to do it sooner rather than later, and I hope that enough of you do, too.

You already know that I will live up to my end of the project — I did with Book 1, didn't I? You already know what the book will look like — it'll look like Book 1, or maybe a little better. You already know what Kickstarter is, because it's like this huge freaking THING now, whereas when I did Book 1, I was the first webcartoonist to use it, ever. So all the biggest question marks with the first project don't apply anymore.

The last remaining question is: Do you want Book 2?

Multiplex iPhone app v1.1 is in the iOS App Store

The Multiplex iPhone app has returned to the iOS App Store.

It has been updated to version 1.1, for iOS 5.1 compatibility (the 5.1 update caused the app to crash on launch) and, as a bonus, it is now ad-free. It's a free update for existing users, of course, but because of the whole no-ads thing 99¢ to newbs. Truth be told, my brother (the programmer) and I have been taking a bath on the "free" app because of the annual dev program fee and the cost of keeping his coding software up to date. The 99¢ cost will hopefully balance that out more than the miniscule $40 per year we earned from iAds revenue.