Gordon McAlpin's Blog: Updates from Multiplex: Deleted Scenes, page 6

Multiplex: The Chosen One

This is the final version of the Multiplex animated short I made for my Animation class this semester. No promises, but hopefully this will be the first of many! Thanks (again) to Matt Matonich for providing the voice of Kurt!

Some of you will recognize Jason’s final line as a title of Multiplex #285, so I’m sort of recycling something here, but not really. In any case, Jason and Kurt being in red vests is an indication that these shorts take place outside of current Multiplex continuity.

If you enjoyed this short, support the Multiplex Patreon and I’ll do more over the summer!

Tell me a story. (Looking for a prose writer for an eBook single.) — UPDATED

I want to take a foray into electronic publishing.

I am looking for a (prose) writer to provide a short story, novella or non-fiction story that I will turn into an iBooks-formatted eBook for sale (in the iBookstore), released under my Chase Sequence publishing imprint. Chase Sequence published Multiplex: There and Back Again, which won the 2014 IPBA Gold Medal for Best Graphic Novel/Drawn Book–Humor/Cartoon, so technically it is an award-winning publisher.

There is no limitation with regard to genre, but I will say that my taste in prose leans strongly toward literary fiction and non-fiction, and toward characters, psychology, and well-written prose over plot. (Margaret Atwood is my favorite writer.)

What to Submit: A pitch for a 30+ page, prose short story/novella/non-fiction piece. No comics — no picture books. If you have already written the short story, great, but it must be previously unpublished. Please include links or URLs to a resumé and examples of previous published work would be helpful, to give me a feel for your voice.

Send questions (or submissions) to gordon at multiplexcomic.com.

The Terms: No money up front, but 50% of the cover price in exchange for one year of exclusivity (from the date of publication). The writer retains all other rights to their story. These will be sold via iBooks only (at least at first), which means that Apple will get 30% and I will get 20% for my contributions: I will edit the story; I will design and produce the eBook; I will illustrate a cover for it (or hire someone else to, if I’m not the best fit for the story); I will help promote it.

Please submit your pitch before April 30, 2015. I will notify the selected writer(s) I am interested in working with as soon as possible after that.

Thanks for your interest, everyone! I’ll review the submissions and get back to the one or two people whose work I’d like to move forward with shortly. (I’ll try to respond either way, actually, but you get the idea.)

Tell me a story. (Looking for a prose writer for an eBook single.)

I want to take a foray into electronic publishing.

I am looking for a (prose) writer to provide a short story, novella or non-fiction story that I will turn into an iBooks-formatted eBook for sale (in the iBookstore), released under my Chase Sequence publishing imprint. Chase Sequence published Multiplex: There and Back Again, which won the 2014 IBPA Gold Medal for Best Graphic Novel/Drawn Book–Humor/Cartoon, so technically it is an award-winning publisher.

There is no limitation with regard to genre, but I will say that my taste in prose leans strongly toward literary fiction and non-fiction, and toward characters, psychology, and well-written prose over plot. (Margaret Atwood is my favorite writer.)

What to Submit: A pitch for a 30+ page, prose short story/novella/non-fiction piece. No comics — no picture books. If you have already written the short story, great, but it must be previously unpublished. Please include links or URLs to a resumé and examples of previous published work would be helpful, to give me a feel for your voice.

Send questions (or submissions) to gordon at multiplexcomic.com.

The Terms: No money up front, but 50% of the cover price in exchange for one year of exclusivity (from the date of publication). The writer retains all other rights to their story. These will be sold via iBooks only (at least at first), which means that Apple will get 30% and I will get 20% for my contributions: I will edit the story; I will design and produce the eBook; I will illustrate a cover for it (or hire someone else to, if I’m not the best fit for the story); I will help promote it.

Please submit your pitch before April 30, 2015. I will notify the selected writer(s) I am interested in working with as soon as possible after that.

Cyber Monday is stupid, but the books are on sale, anyway!

In addition to the Multiplex Book set being 25% off, the individual Multiplex books are now 20% off each — and for you digital comics readers, the PDF eBooks are on sale, as well. Check out the EXTREME SAVINGS at the Multiplex Store today!

I feel like a prostitute every time I write copy like this. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Come see me at ComfyCon 2014!

ComfyCon 2014 — the first and only all-online webcomics mini-convention — starts later today, and this year, I’ll be part of it! I’m joining Monica Gallagher (Bonnie N. Collide, Part-Time Princesses) and Jeff Zugale on the “Making Comic Around a Dayjob” panel Sunday at 2pm Eastern/1pm Central. I might sit in on another panel or two before that one, too — who the f knows?

Check out the full schedule, chock full of your favorite webcartoonists and also me!

The Multiplex Store is now powered by Stripe!

Before yesterday, the only way to use credit cards in the Multiplex Store was to use PayPal’s “Pay by credit or debit card” option, which I just learned can be a little… persnickety with some customers’ cards and/or e-mail addresses, so I’ve added direct credit card payment processing (powered by Stripe) to the Multiplex Store!

You can still use PayPal (or PayPal’s credit card processing) if you like, of course, but if you’ve had trouble using your card in the past or didn’t realize you could already use a credit card without having a PayPal account, there shouldn’t be any problems now. No need to sign up for a Stripe account; a simple, secure Stripe pop-up will complete your transaction!

Don’t forget that throughout the 2014 holiday season, if you buy BOTH Multiplex books from the store, you’ll get $10 off! And for Patreon backers at the $3 level or higher, that’s in addition to your Patreon discount!

Shut Up Already T-shirt now available! Also, the books are on sale!

Jason’s T-shirt from Multiplex #967 is now available in the Multiplex Store:

Also! I know it’s rather early for this, but people have already started putting Christmas stuff up (bah humbug), so what the hell. For the 2014 holiday season, if you buy BOTH Multiplex books from the store, you’ll get them for $10 off!

Multiplex Store shipping rates have been reduced!

I just purchased a new shipping module for The Multiplex Store that gives me more flexibility in setting shipping and handling costs, so US customers will see much better rates on all (physical) items in the Multiplex Store. If any of you guys in the US balked at the shipping costs before, be sure to check them out now.

Books are $5 for the first one then $1.50 per additional book (rather than $5 per book), saving you $3.50 if you order two books. T-shirts are now $4 for the first shirt (any size) and $1.50 per additional shirt. And sketches and other artwork are also $4 for the first item, then $1 per additional item.

Rates for international customers are unchanged; I still use USPS First Class International’s rates as they are quoted by the USPS without any additional markup.

Now is as good as any to pick up that copy of Multiplex: There and Back Again!

Multiplex is now in Comic Chameleon!

So… big news today: you can now read Multiplex in the super popular Comic Chameleon webcomic reader for iOS. If you already use the app, check it out! If you don’t, well, you probably don’t care, because with just about every single great webcomic in existence included in their app, how could you possibly need another reason to check it out? Girls with Slingshots, Dumbing of Age, Questionable Content, HijiNKS ENSUE, Wasted Talent and many, many more are all right there at your fingertips. (Even Oglaf, for you perverts with dirty dirty fingertips!)

What does this mean for Multiplex for iPhone and iPod touch? Nothing. Jelly and I hope to add some new features to it soon (likely after iOS 8 is released). I enjoy Comic Chameleon, and I use it to read loads of my favorite webcomics, myself. It’s not an either/or thing. There are several differences between the two apps:

Comic Chameleon has a cool panel viewing mode that makes reading really nice on smaller screens and loads of other great webcomics right in the same app. But — the Multiplex app is ad-free, has the Notes from the Manager posts, Related Strips, or the Cast pages. (There’s no way to include them. in Comic Chameleon.)

Also, only Book Seven (strips #771 and forward) are available in Comic Chameleon right now, but if people seem to like reading it in their app, I’ll find time to put more of the strips into their system. Marking all the panels up for their panel viewing mode gets time consuming when you have hundreds of comics in your archive.

Frankly, my hope for including Multiplex in Comic Chameleon is that new readers will discover the strip through their app and continue to read the comic whichever way they like most: in Comic Chameleon, on the website, in the Multiplex app… I don’t really care how people read Multiplex so long as they enjoy it. (And if I get any significant amount of ad revenue from Comic Chameleon, sweet!)

For Android users, this doesn’t change anything — for now. Sorry. Comic Chameleon has plans for an Android version in the works, but nothing firm yet.

“Duet” by Glen Keane

Many of you will recognize Glen Keane as a longtime Disney animator, probably best known for being the designer and animator of Ariel in The Little Mermaid. After 37 or so years with Disney, Keane left in early 2012, eventually joining Motorola’s (later Google’s) Advanced Technology and Projects Group to work on interactive hand-drawn animation.

Keane’s animated short “Duet,” a part of ATAP’s Spotlight Stories, debuted at Google I/O Conference yesterday and is a lovely showcase of everything hand-drawn animation excels at doing. Enjoy! (Sadly, this is only SD, but I’ll see if I can replace it with a higher quality version eventually.)

For more on the Spotlight Stores series, check out their official site.