You've seen how the cover came about, now let's take a look at the guts of the book—some of 'em anyway...
Here's how the Athena Voltaire story kicks off.
The book is available for preorder now! Cover price of $2 and available with your choice of cover:
Black Coat cover: DEC083747
Athena Voltaire cover: DEC083748
Showing posts with label comic books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comic books. Show all posts
Friday, December 12, 2008
Black Coat/Athena Voltaire One-Shot Preview Pages!
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Evolution of a Cover, part 3
The next step in the project—Jason Millet adds his brilliant colors to the piece!
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Evolution of a Cover, part 2
Updating the pencils that I posted the yesterday, here are the inks from the Athena Voltaire/Black Coat Special.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Evolution of a Cover, part 1
It all started with the idea of doing a flip book.
Last Summer, I had been pestering Head Apes Brent Erwin and David Hedgecock about the Athena Voltaire relaunch and wanted to do an entry-level book; something inexpensive to remind longtime readers that AV wasn't gone, and to introduce the book to new readers.
It turns out that Black Coat mastermind Ben Lichius was thinking similar thoughts for everyone's favorite Revolutionary War super-spy.
While tearing down the Ape display at Comic-Con, David offhandedly remarked "You and Ben should do some kind of flip book crossover." And that was pretty much it.
In researching the concept further, we learned that Diamond would only include one cover in the catalog. So much for the idea of a flipbook, right? Since the book is an introduction to both universes, and since we're producing it at a loss, we opted to rethink our cover strategy. After all, how well does it serve both series if only one of them gets a picture in the Previews catalog?
The solution we went with was the multiple covers making up one larger image. Shown here are a concept sketch by Ben and a penciled version of that sketch by me.
More tomorrow...
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Let Your Voice Be Heard!
For the past year or so, as we've steadily worked towards publication, I've been pretty well set on the layout/logo above left. I felt that it was less intrusive to the great art I was getting for the covers and looked kind of, well... classy.
But recently, various people – including my publishers! – have been pointing out that the original Femme Noir logo by Nate Piekos (above right) has a certain amount of brand value, as series artist Joe Staton and I have been using it in association with the property since it began as a webcomic back in March of 2001. That's nearly seven years! Their argument is that we have spent a lot of time building brand equity into that logo and that it would be foolish to not use it on the comic book. It's a good point.
Now, I still personally prefer the "deco" look I came up with, but I'm open-minded, and the original logo certainly "works." I guess I'd just like to get a few more opinions before I make up my mind....
So what do you think? Post your choice in the comments and help me out, okay?
Thanks!
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Ook!
Welcome to the Ape Entertainment blog!
Different members of the Ape Entertainment Comic Crew will be dropping in to post tidbits, show off art from new projects and do some general kibitzing.
Enjoy and feel free to chime in!
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