[First Look] Dinoking Back Cover + More (Patreon)

It’s Family-fun Friday and that means, you, you guessed it, more work. But a lot is getting done and that always feels really rewarding and while I’ve been having a lot of stress related headaches and neck pain for the last couple of days following some recent misunderstandings, projection, and drama, I am not going to let it slow me down!

Over, around, or through! That’s the company motto. Perseverance in every aspect of your life! Never let anyone break you down!

So, let’s get into it!

What’s been going on:

Today, among other things, I drafted the back cover for DK1, which you can see above. I’ve still got work to do on it and while the title and book is on record with the Australian National Registry, I have not yet filled out all the credits on the online form, so I’ve avoided printing the barcode here. At least for now. It’s a small, but tedious job, so I’ll have it done tomorrow.

I also oversaw the traditional illustration that Yuka Cross has been performing and made sure that the Conquest Colors Team were directing our newest member correctly. I’m attempting to remove myself more now that Yuka knows the ropes and I’m allowing her to practice delegation and mission assignment. She’s doing well, though she tends to be even more of a tyrant than I am at times.

Still, its good knowing that the last few years of work have created a functioning studio that should be able to continue on even in my absence. It will be interesting watching how quickly the new recruit develops under the tutelage of my existing art team and if they can handle the heat.

The first and biggest hurdle for new colorists always seems to be the file weight. A lot of people doing art on twitter, deviantart or Instagram are producing relatively low-resolution files that are designed for a monitor. Comic book pages and physical print media is a whole other animal, our lead colorist Jon Jay (the Spartan Scotsman) taught us that the colors you see on the screen are not the same as the one’s in print, and that information is always shocking to a lot of new colorists. 

Scotsman’s lessons have always been invaluable, they really are. So if colors are something you’re interested in, you can take a look at them here: Coloring Comics - The Setup - E1 - YouTube

And of course, then there is the resolution. In black and white, we work at 600 DPI, while in colored work we’re typically working at 350 DPI to accommodate the printers I work with here. This means that most of the pages, especially of something like Wonder Island, tend to be quite large.

I’m sad to say we’ve already had to let go of a couple of colourists purely because their machines could not handle the weight of these files. If the situation was better, I’d love to buy everyone their own tablet and give them a chance to chase their dreams, but I’ve already made that mistake once and we all remember how poorly that turned out. No finished work, no repayment, no gratitude, and then boasting about the theft on social media.

It was a lesson hard learned, but I learned it. I’ll help people, train them, and give them a shot, but they’ve got to come to the table prepared. No more free rides. It’ll be interesting to see if this new recruit can survive the trial by fire and receive elevation from Flats to coloring full pages, we’ll have to wait and see…

I would also like to take this moment to officially announce that I have secured a cover artist for DK. Payment has been sent and production will begin shortly. I will announce who it is in the coming week(s), but it is someone I am sure you’ll all recognize and you’re going to love it!

No, it’s notVinnie Tartamella!

But he mightcollab with them on the colors. We’ll have to see if Scotsman, Vinnie or a secret third contender emerges from the Thunderdome as the DK Cover Colorist. So, stay tuned there more news soon. Nothing is set in stone, but the contestants have their pens in hand and when this happens, its going to happen FAST!

In other DK news, I continued correspondence with my Kaiju Contact, who will not be working on DK1, but will likely be the cover artist on DK2. I was sad to make this decision but with their scheduling it would have just held up and delayed the book too much. They’re still putting me in contact with other more notable mainstream Kaiju artists sometime within the next couple of days, so I’ll definitely have some AMAZING pinups and posters – or at least, that’s the hope.

It's unlikely I’ll have the budget to overdeliver on DK like I did with KMD, but I'll do my best and at the very least, I would like to include a couple of stickers, a pin up, and a poster for those of you building your collection.

Speaking of stickers, I put in an order for a lot today. If all progresses as normal, they will be arriving in about 2 weeks, but I will show them off here first in a future update.

And that is all for now!

As I think you all know, I’m very excited to announce the artist I am working with. It's going to look spectacular!

Until next time, keep fighting strong, keep believing in the dream, keep being awesome, and remember... if you're not dead, it isn't over!

Your Pal
Liam Gray