Gordon McAlpin's Blog: Updates from Multiplex: Deleted Scenes, page 3

Electrogor, Bobbie Draper, and more

A little heads up for people here on the site — the Kickstarter project for the Multiplex 10 animated short has reached a $9,389 thanks to 263 backers in three days. It’s slowing down fast, so I don’t know whether we have the momentum to get past the goal — or to exceed it, so we can do it with higher quality animation and animation — but I hope we do.

I spent a little time today trying out some new techniques that I couldn’t really do with the comic. The two drawings below use the Texturino plugin for Illustrator by Astute Graphics (whose Phantasm plugin I use constantly in Multiplex stuff) to “paint” in the shadows. I think it works pretty good, though I’m still getting the hang of it.

I couldn’t use these effects in the comic, because they need to be printed at some point, and at high res, Texturino creates giant files that make my computer cry. BUT… I might use them — sparingly — in the animated short, most likely for backgrounds.

Electrogor from Zander Cannon’s Kaijumax

Bobbie Draper from The Expanse

If you don’t read Kaijumax or watch The Expanse, do it! I love them so.

The collected Multiplex Movie Reviews eBook is now available

 

A brand spanking new eBook collecting all twenty-nine Multiplex Movie Reviews to date is now available via Gumroad. It’s priced at $1.99 and includes a bunch of strips never posted to the Multiplex site and previously only available to Kickstarter backers and Patreon patrons. Some of them are even funny!

(Please note that if you are a Book Three Kickstarter backer or current Patreon patron, you already have access to this eBook! I included a link in the latest updates on each site.)

Mae Volume One is now available… and I have a comic in it!

Heads up, completists. I have a three page story in the new Mae Volume One TPB from Dark Horse Comics. This is the same one I co-wrote (with Mae creator Gene Ha) and as a thank-you for backers of its original Kickstarter edition — and Dark Horse’s editors decided to include the story in the back matter of this new collection, along with a bunch of other short stories by other great creators.

BUT… I have a story in a Dark Horse-published book! That’s cool!

If you’re not familiar with Mae, it’s an all-ages adventure comic by Gene Ha (Top Ten and a billion other comics). Here’s the official Dark Horse synopsis:

When she was just a girl, Abbie discovered a portal to a fantasy world and has since had great adventures there: defeating horrible monsters, power-mad scientists, and evil nobles. But when she turned twenty-one it all came apart and she decided to return home. Her sister, Mae, had no idea what happened to Abbie all this time, and Abbie’s tales are too hard to believe—that is, until the monsters and other terrible creatures start to cross over to our world . . . Collects issues #1–#6.

I highly recommend it. It is a lot of fun. You can learn more about Mae Volume One on Amazon.

Multiplex: The Revenge final cover

(Unless I change something at the last minute.) If you see a typo, let me know. :)

Anyway, Book Three is on track to go to the printer TODAY. The next step is proofreading the electronic proof, and then the next step after that is proofreading the physical proof (in a few weeks). So, you know, don’t hold your breath yet. It’s a process.

Also! In case you missed the very quiet announcement, I’ll repeat it here: since Multiplex is ending in the next couple of months, I have started a tinyletter so you people can stalk me more easily. I’ll use it to send uh tinyletters about my upcoming (Multiplex and non-Multiplex) projects and junk like that. It’s basically a very simple e-mail newsletter. I won’t use it often; just to give you the heads up on Kickstarter projects launching and whatnot, since not everyone can afford to support my creative endeavours via Patreon.

Multiplex: Chapter 15 — and the full Book Three eBook set — are now available!

Kickstarter and Patreon supporters have already got their copies, but for the rest of youse: The Multiplex: Chapter 15 PDF eBook is now available!

Chapter 15 collects strips #311–338 from the Multiplex archives, plus three bonus comics not found in the archives — including “The Abyss Gazes Also,” an all-new twelve-page mini-epic. Chapter 15 costs $2.99.

Since Chapter 15 is done, you can also get all five Chapter eBooks for Book Three — Chapters 11–15 for $7.95. If you get the five eBook set, you’ll also get a PDF of the six-page “The Story So Far” sequence from the beginning of the upcoming print book (about one page of which is new art).

And remember — Chapter 11 is free!

Production on Book Three is winding down

I thought I’d share this one publicly, rather than just to the Kickstarter and Patreon folks. It’ll be used as the “chapter illustration” for the back matter — which means that it will be directly opposite the last page of the comics in Book Three.

Anyway. I just have a couple of illustrations (the cover and the cover/chapter illustration for Chapter 15) before production is officially wrapped — which means I’ll be moving on to proofreading, pre-press, and  other boring stuff next! BUT there will be movie review comics and things like that going up at Kickstarter and Patreon during that time.

Multiplex: Chapter 14 is now available!

Multiplex: Chapter 14 is now available! If you’re a Kickstarter or Patreon backer, you have already been notified about this, but for those of you who aren’t, you can get it from Gumroad superfast, or you can get it from the Multiplex Store. Either way supports the continued creation of Multiplex.

In Multiplex: Chapter 14, Jason reads a book while the Flickhead and Multiplex crews play more video games. This is some heavy shit here, broh! This volume collects strips #287–310 from the Multiplex archives, plus five bonus comics not found online!

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I hope to continue making new Multiplex comics for these collections at about the same pace as the regular comic (two a week) over at Patreon, and then releasing the eBook collections with this material every 4–6 weeks or so. (And then funding a print collection through Kickstarter after all of the bonus material is finished — rather than funding the creation of that new material with the Kickstarter as I’ve done for the first three books.)

So just because the strip will be finished doesn’t mean Multiplex is going to disappear entirely!

“Autobiography” (excerpt)

So I finished my Master of Fine Arts degree—technically as of March 31, although I’m still working on a couple of assistantships. But I got my diploma in the mail today.

This is one of the weirder things I did in grad school. It was a project I did for a Graphic Design Studio class, and the only stipulation was that you had to make a collection of… something. I chose to do a “collection” of twelve books that shaped who I am as a person. Not necessarily books that I still hold dear, but that really connected with me when I read them.

So, I call it an autobiography, although obviously it’s not. I decided to make a story scroll using clippings from these books, cut and pasted to build a NEW story (a creation story). I made scroll handles for it from wooden dowels (painted bronze) and bronze drawer handles on all four ends.

It was roughly 6¾ feet long if you completely unrolled the scroll, so I’ll only show the first bit here. You can click through to the Patreon page I posted it on a couple of years ago if you want to read the whole thing. I made it public so anyone can see it.

The books are (in no particular order): The Book of Job, translated by Stephen Mitchell; The Illustrated Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking; Cages by Dave McKean; Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood; Epileptic by David B; Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman; Hamlet’s Mill by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechen; Justice League: A New Beginning by Keith Giffen, J. M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire; Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson; The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan W. Watts; and The Complete Winnie-the-Pooh & The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne. (The Pooh books are technically two separate volumes, so it’s really thirteen, but I now own a single-volume collection of them. I also read Justice League in the issues first, not TPB, so whatever.)

Enjoy! Or just kind of squint your eyes and wonder why this is something that graduate students spend their time doing. But hopefully you’ll enjoy it.

Multiplex will be back on Monday

It’s only been a couple of months since I said goodbye to Punk and today my fiancée Karyn and I had to say goodbye to her cat Sydney. Like Punk, she was eighteen years old and had multiple long-term health issues.

I only knew her for the last eight of her years, and although we had a contentious start, and she never get along with Punk, we grew to have a special bond. In the last few months, she would sit on me as I slept and be the first thing I saw almost every morning. She was a very sweet, ridiculously affectionate cat, and we will both miss her.

Multiplex is taking a very short break. I’ll see you here Monday.

Multiplex: Chapter 13 is now available!

The Multiplex: Chapter 13 eBook is now available. This PDF strips #264–286 from the Multiplex archives, plus about four pages of new material.

You can buy them instantly through Gumroad by clicking on the image above OR through the Multiplex Store if you want it to take longer.

Bonus comics for Chapter 14 have already been posted for Patreon and Kickstarter backers, but the ebook won’t arrive until next month. I did make one bonus comic from Chapter 14 public, though, so I could use it as an example of my hand-drawn comics work, so if you’re not already a backer, it’s new (and free) to you!