Daniel Lieske Blog

Chapter 3, Title Announcement

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Lieske) — 2012-01-26T06:53:17-08:00

I've finally finished my work on the preliminary version of Chapter 3! Now I'm able to setup the milestones for the chapter and I'm also able to announce the title:

Chapter 3 - A Monstrous Forest

I took me longer than expected to create the prelim of Chapter 3. My mind refused to rush through the task and forced me to stop and think frequently. I felt horribly unproductive and slow during the last 2,5 weeks especially if I compare the prelim process to the production process during the milestone phase where I just burn through the panel illustrations. I guess I just have to admit to myself that writing a chapter is a very different task from illustrating it. If I'm able to make my peace with that I might even be able to enjoy it in the future.

My next step is something I haven't done at all up to this point. I'm going to create concept art for several characters, creatures and locations that are introduced in Chapter 3. For chapters 1 and 2 I hardly did any concept art. Jonas had already been designed when I started work on the graphic novel and the other characters were designed on the fly. The locations were improvised from my childhood memories and real life reference. Chapter 3 now contains a lot of elements that I only have a rough idea of in my head. I will have to put some extra work into their further development so that I become able to illustrate them. The good news about this is that you'll find a lot of 'Making Of' material when Chapter 3 is released. The bad news is that my schedule gets screwed up by this to some extend. I don't know how much time it will take me to finish the concept art but it is very likely that Chapter 3 won't be launched before April. However, I'll try to enjoy the concept art process and don't see it as a hindrance.

In other news: I have updated the Wormworld Saga Website to reflect the upcoming new chapter. I also changed the background image to bring us all into the right mood for Chapter 3:

Translation news: Chapter 1 is now available in a Czech and a Korean translation. Many thanks to the translators, Lukáš Balcárek and Yuna Lee, and to Ivan Berov, who again did a great job on the layout of the translations. Seriously, I don't know what I would do without this guy!

Ok, I hope I'll be able to announce the Android version of the Wormworld Saga App soon. I'm off designing stuff now.

The Wormworld Saga App Wins Publishing Innovation Award

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Lieske) — 2012-01-24T04:41:35-08:00

The Wormworld Saga App for iPad

The Digital Book World Conference & Expo currently held at the Sheraton Hotel & Towers in New York is the largest conference on the future of publishing in the American publishing industry. Part of the opening ceremonies of the conference is the announcement of the winners of the Publishing Innovation Awards which are awarded in 14 categories (including five app categories). This year, the Wormworld Saga App won the PIA in the "comics and graphic novel apps" category.

The PIA is a very young award that was inaugurated in 2011. However, it can without doubt already be considered an important industry award because the dramatic changes of the publishing landscape are also very young. The Digital Book World Conference & Expo hosts a long list of talks and workshops on digital publishing and distribution. All major American publishers attend the show and nowhere else will you find more answers to the question how publishing will look in a few years.

The judges of the PIA seem to think that the Wormworld Saga App is among these answers. One of my goals with this whole project is to present new ways of interaction between the reader and my work. I'm also trying to explore new relationships between readers and authors. Digital comics currently are dominated by big corporations who seem to think that a "digital comic" merely means to scan in your print product and sell it for the same price digitally. The progress of digital comics is hindered by the big comic publisher's fear of damaging the traditional print market. This is completely understandable and for you as a comic reader it simply means that, for the time being, you don't need to turn to the big comic publishers to find innovation.

So, if you happen to ask yourself how publishing might look like in a few years from now, have a look at these facts about the Wormworld Saga App:

it was NOT published by a major comic publisher
all rights are completely creator-owned
the main content is completely available for free
purchases are encouraged through special paid content
the initial investment was completely crowdfunded by fans

These are award-winning facts, mind you! ;)

I'm very happy about this award but this doesn't mean that I'm going to sit back now. I have big plans for the future of the Wormworld Saga App. We are planning to introduce a very cool new feature with the release of Chapter 3 in a few months and I've already got a huge list of ideas how the app could be improved beyond that. Obviously we are trying to bring the app to more platforms. The Android version should be ready very soon and I'm thinking a lot about new ways to make the special features of the app accessible to as many people as possible. Many of my ideas need time and resources which both are very limited for me at the moment. But I'm dedicated to expand the project as much as is managable for me without compromising the quality of the story.

I want to close this blog post with a bow to the fans who have supported the creation of the Wormworld Saga App. This is your award, too! And my thanks also go to the great guys at Robot Media who developed a wonderful app that hopefully will be enjoyed by lot of people in the years to come.

Chapter 2 now available in the App!

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Lieske) — 2012-01-18T05:09:59-08:00

The Wormworld Saga App for iPad on iTunes

Man it feels like an eternity since Chapter 2 has been launched on the website. As I posted just before Christmas, we had to perform an unforeseen update of the app in order to implement Chapter 2 flawlessly. It turned out that Apple (who has to approve all updates before launch) was extremely busy in the past few weeks and that delayed everything quite a lot. Well, today I can share the news that Chapter 2 is now available inside the app. I'm really sorry for this delay and for future chapters we'll make sure that everything gets launched simultaniously on the website and the app.

The Collector's Edition of Chapter 2 comes with the standard special features (artwork mode and sketch mode plus author commentary) and two new items inside the artbook portion of the app. Inside these items you will find exclusive photos from an inspirational photo safari around my brother's house and a very detailed Making Of article about the creation of my painting "The Journes Begins" with lots of material which never was published before.

Excerpt from "The Making of Chapter 2" - Click for original size!

Excerpt from "The Making of 'The Journey Begins'" - Click for original size!

There also will be news about the Android version of the app soon. I don't want to promise something that we are not 100% sure about just yet.

In other news:

Thanks to the relentless effort of Ivan Berov, we were able to launch several new translations of the Wormworld Saga during the past few weeks. Chapter 1 is now available in Dutch, Italian, Croatian and Bosnian and we also already finished the Chinese and Croatian translations of Chapter 2. Ivan did not just do a wonderful job on the layout of the translations but also was able to reorganize my working documents to streamline the whole process. He's a dream guy! :)

I'm quite close to finishing the Chapter 3 preliminary version, but more details on that in my next blog update.

Have a nice day everyone!

Chapter 3, Progress Update

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Lieske) — 2012-01-09T03:35:28-08:00

So, the first week of 2012 is over and I was quite busy. One thing I really wanted to get rolling, before I start my work on Chapter 3, is our new translation workflow. After the release of Chapter 1, when the first people emailed me offering translations of the graphic Novel, I sent out a Word document with the script to every individual translator. This went fine with a few translations. But when there was a dozen of translations, and the scripts had to be sent back and forth for revisions, and when we then even started to split up the work between different translators, it was becoming a real pain.

For Chapter 2 I decided to work with an online spreadsheet in Google Documents. The document is located on the Google server and you can work on it in your browser window. You can share the document with as many people as you like and you can even work simultaniously on translations. As the document owner you get a history of all changes to the document and you can set it back to any point in this history in case anything goes wrong. I have to say, this system is a real lifesaver. Translators receive an invitation by mail and can start their work immediately. The spreadsheet format is perfect to copy & paste the texts into the layout. And I have to say that it is a very cool feeling opening up the document and finding several people typing their translations and watching the whole thing grow in realtime.

There are already 22 translators working on the document and we currently have a very nice mix of languages from all over the world including Arabic, Korean and Hindi. I'm really looking forward to provide you all these translations during the next weeks and months.

Concerning Chapter 3, I'm ready now to start the prelim version that precedes every chapter. Last week I returned to the Story Wall and did a major revision on everything that was on it.

Before the revision I simply used the yellow sticky notes to describe the major plot points of each chapter. A few days ago I realized that the plot actually isn't the aspect that I have to concentrate on in my visualization on the wall. I was totally neglecting the most important aspect: the stories. I remembered a line from a book about storytelling I've read a few years ago: "in order to make a good movie you don't need a story. You need a dozen stories!" That was a rather revealing thought for me. Up to that point I naively thought of "story" to be just the description of the things that happen. But that's plot. A "story" is a more abstract construct that describes a certain theme (e.g. "boy loves girl" or "revenge") that is developed through a "story arc" which spans over several "story beats". What I did in my revision is to identify the different stories in my plot and visualize their "beats" with the arrows you see next to the yellow plotline. A story normally has at least three beats in my visualization - introduction, build-up and resolution - but it can have as many beats as you want.

For example, the story with the most beats that I identified in the first two chapters is what I called "Egon Breaks Out". The story is introduced when Egon yells at a car during the carride in Chapter 1. From that point on we know that Egon can become very loud and angry. The story is build up over several beats (Egon wants Jonas to carry his suitcase, Egon asks Jonas to do the homework together, Egon calls for dinner and receives no answer) but it's always calmed down again and never brought over the point of break-out. However, after discovering that Jonas is lying to him, Egon finally breaks out and this is the climax/solution of this story. On my story wall I have marked all climaxes with a black triangle (and minor story resolutions with a black point). As you can see, there are a lot of stories that find their climaxes or resolutions at the end of Chapter 2 and that's exactly what you want when your protagonist starts onto an adventure. You want to leave things behind and create a clean slate for the story arcs of the adventure itself.

After revising the first two chapters I created the plotline and story beats for chapter 3 and 4. As you can see, things develop a lot slower and story beats are less dense. The reason for this is, that I now start story arcs that span over Jonas' whole adventure which is going to be much longer than 2 chapters so there's more time and space to develop the stories. I also have space for exposition, which is marked with green arrows on the wall. At these points I will just dive into the Wormworld and tell you how it works.

I'm quite happy with this system now as it will help me to develop the plot in a way that serves the different stories. Also, the visualization will directly show me when the plot gets too thin meaning that there are not enough story beats that keep the narration from becoming boring.

I'll continue to develop my process and keep you updated on it. I also hope to find some time to go into more detail someday. I consider the storytelling to be one of the most fascinating and challenging aspects of the project.

I'm going to create the prelim version of Chapter 3 now and you are going to hear from me when I'm ready to enter the milestone phase.

2012 Kick-Off

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Lieske) — 2012-01-02T03:15:42-08:00

I wish a happy new year 2012 to everyone! I took a few days off between the years and now I'm ready to start into what's promising to become a VERY interesting year for the Wormworld Saga. There will be a lot more new content for you in 2012 and we all will find out if this whole thing is going to work out for me over the long term.

The year definitely started very encouraging for the Wormworld Saga. The launch of Chapter 2 was received very well in the online community. Between Christmas and New Year the website was visited over 100,000 times and the overall feedback from the readers was very positive. There are lots of new fans that joined the blog and the Facebook fan page and I want to welcome you all. I promise you that you are in for a ride!

I will start the year with some administrative and editorial tasks and then I will directly start my work on Chapter 3. As always I will keep you updated on my progress and tease you with preview images. Chapter 3 is scheduled for a March/April release. I have to keep the release date that loose because there will be new characters introduced to the story, I'll have to create a lot more concept artwork than for the preceding chapters, and I'm not totally sure how much time that will take.

The next days should also see some news on the Android version of the Wormworld Saga App and the Chapter 2 release inside the app. The time around Christmas really isn't the best time for having to cope with unforeseen problems and I'm really sorry that we weren't able to deliver Chapter 2 inside the app on time. As soon as things are moving forward there, you'll be the first to know.

Alright, there's a lot of work ahead - it's time to get my hands dirty!

Chapter 2 - The Journey Begins

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Lieske) — 2011-12-24T15:00:20-08:00

I proudly present Chapter 2 of the Wormworld Saga Digital Graphic Novel!

Go read it at wormworldsaga.com!

It's been an unbelievable year for me. The Wormworld Saga Digital Graphic Novel startet exactly a year ago and from that moment on it was a constant ride of surprises, disbelief, excitement, and a lot of hard work. This year saw hundreds of thousands (822.000 to be more precise) of people from all around the world visiting the Wormworld Saga website and reading the first chapter which - as of today - is already translated into 11 languages (I just added the Italian and the Dutch translation). This year saw a more than successful kickstarter campaign which provided the budget for the creation of the Wormworld Saga App that is available since October, bears a five star rating in the Apple App Store, and has been downloaded nearly 2000 times up to this day. This year also saw a deal with a comic book publisher who is going to release a book adaption of the Wormworld Saga Digital Graphic Novel from summer/fall of next year on. And this year saw me quitting my job and producing Chapter 2 on a fulltime schedule in a bit less than 3 months. Above all these awesome things hovers the one event in January that constantly puts everything into perspective for me: the birth of our first son Lucas. I'm so looking forward to read the Wormworld Saga with him when he's old enough and tell him that he just came to the world when all of this started.

'The Journey Begins' is an appropriate title for the second chapter of the Wormworld Saga. Jonas leaves his troubled life behind and starts into his adventure. What will he find inside the Wormworld? At the same time, I myself don't know what the future will bring. 2012 will be a fateful year for the Wormworld Saga. It will show if I'm able to produce the amount of content I'm aiming for and it will show if I'll be able to support my family by doing that. As awesome as this year was, it was merely a prelude to a journey into the great unknown. I take comfort in the feedback of my beloved fans and also in the story of little Jonas. It lies in the nature of an adventure that you don't know the outcome of it. But that's what makes it worthwhile in the first place!

I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and an Adventurous and Happy New Year!

The Wormworld Saga App and a guy called Murphy...

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Lieske) — 2011-12-23T07:29:58-08:00

I just received news that Robot Media has found a software bug inside the app that will prevent us from releasing Chapter 2 inside the app on time. We'll have to submit a software update in order to fix that problem and since we are just entering the Christmas Holidays - during which people apparently refuse to work! - it is highly unlikely that this update will get the needed approval by Apple before January. So, Murphy's Law comes into effect once again, which clearly sucks. And while we are on the topic: Murphy obviously has learned about our plans to release an Android version of the app. Now, guess what! Yeah, it gets delayed...

But on the bright side, all this won't have any effect on the release of Chapter 2 on the website. I'm sorry, that users of the app will have to wait for the special content to be released though. It wasn't planned that way and we'll learn from that for future chapter updates.

Well then, see you tomorrow night for the release post!

Chapter 2, less than a week to go!

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Lieske) — 2011-12-19T02:35:30-08:00

We are close to the release of Chapter 2 now and I just wanted to give you a last update. Everything is working like expected. Chapter 2 is now translated into what I call the four core languages (the languages which will be published in the Wormworld Saga App - English, German, Spanish and French) and there's only some proofreading to be done on the French version. I received the proofread texts for the artbook content which I will polish during the next few days. Byers of the Collector's Edition of Chapter 2 inside the app can look forward to a lot of new author commentary and two new artbook items. I will announce these in more detail in my release blog post.

Alright, now that I'm confident that the release schedule will be met, I have implemented a little counter on the website (which will only work if you have enabled Java Scripts in your browser). I'm going to update the website on 24th December at 11:59pm of my local time. The counter should help fans all around the world to find out when exactly this is in their timezone.

I'm so excited!

Chapter 1 is now available in Bulgarian!

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Lieske) — 2011-12-12T11:56:27-08:00

We now officially need a second row of flags for the translations of the Wormworld Saga! The latest translation comes from Ivan Berov who translated the first chapter into Bulgarian. What is even more exciting is the fact, that Ivan did the complete layout work for this translation on his own. And what is even more exciting than THAT is, that Ivan offered me his help with the layout of all the other translations that I don't find the time to process.

I have to tell you, that this was such a generous offer that I first hesitated to take it. I am overwhelmed enough by the fact that so many people offer translations of the Wormworld Saga for free. But that someone would actually offer me to do the tedious layout work on the translations was really more than I could take. However, Ivan convinced me to at least give it a try.

So, I have the pleasure to announce that with the help of Ivan Berov I will be able to provide at least two more translations of the first chapter in the coming weeks. It will be the Italian and the Dutch translation. And if anyone of you is interested in translating the Wormworld Saga, the chances right now are, that this translation will actually be published within a reasonable timeframe.

My heartfelt thanks go to Ivan who provides the fans of the Wormworld Saga a huge service with his contribution!

Confucius says: "Read the Wormworld Saga in Chinese!"

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Lieske) — 2011-12-11T08:00:12-08:00

Today I have the pleasure to announce that the first chapter of the Wormworld Saga is available in a Simplified Chinese version. I'm especially happy about this because it bridges a huge language barrier and makes the Wormworld Saga accessible for the many people that live in China. Big thanks go to Chuan Liang who did not only translate the texts but who also did most of the layout work for me. New translations of the Wormworld Saga got scarce in the last few months and that despite the fact that I have several finished translated screenplays sitting on my harddrive. I just don't find the time to do the layout of the translations and therefore Chuang's layout work was a huge help and a wonderful contribution to the project. And there's more to come! I will be able to announce exciting news about new Wormworld Saga translations in the coming week. You can really look forward to it!

Concerning Chapter 2, I've finished the rework and layout of the panel illustrations and I have also finished the layout of the word balloons for the English version. I'm waiting for the input of the translators and proofreaders right now and I'll fill the time with creating the special content for the app. Everything's on schedule right now.

Everyone have a nice Sunday!

Chapter 2, Final Artwork Completed!

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Lieske) — 2011-12-05T05:37:42-08:00

It's done! This morning I did the last brush strokes on the final panel of Chapter 2 of the Wormworld Saga Graphic Novel. That's a very strange feeling. My normal impulse after finishing a panel is to immediately load the next panel and continue my work. Well, no next panel there! I guess, that's ok. :)

But this is not to say that there's no work left for me now. Before I can present Chapter 2 to you I'll have to:

layout the final artwork onto the infinite canvas
finish the text
layout the word balloons and sound fx
send out the scripts to the translators and layout the four core translations for the app
prepare the special content for the Collector's Edition of Chapter 2 inside the app

That's right, because I'm going to launch new chapters on the website and inside the app at the same time, the web launch has to wait a bit for the app content to be finalized. I pondered quite some time on the question what a good release date would be and I figured out that - as we'd come close to that date anyway - we might just do it like last year and make Chapter 2 an additional Christmas present for all of us. So:

Chapter 2 will be released on 25th December 2011.

Alright, and now it's time for the preview panel of the last milestone. This preview might very well be considered to be the ultimate spoiler:

However, since almost every fan of the Wormworld Saga knows this painting and since the title of Chapter 2 is already revealed to be "The Journey Begins" it should be quite obvious that this scene will take place in the upcoming chapter.

I can't tell you how excited I was to reach this point. Being able to finally embed this key visual into the narration gave me an undescribable feeling of accomplishment. And painting the panels AFTER this point was a real thrill for me because I was finally able to set the character free from his static pose and let him actually start his adventure into the great unknown beyond the magic canvas. Finally I'm able to invite you into the Wormworld and I can't wait to open the doors for you!

Chapter 2, Milestone 4 reached!

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Lieske) — 2011-11-23T05:00:22-08:00

(little Lucas is busy learning to stand on his feet these days)

We are getting close! I can almost see the finish line and we are not even close to December yet! It's pretty save to assume that the artwork of Chapter 2 will be finished in early December.

It's interesting how, at least up to now, all the individual milestones took nearly exactly 40 hours to accomplish. The space I'm covering in each milestone is the same but the amount of panels differs vastly. Milestone 1 and 2 both had 14 panels. Milestone 3 had 23 panels and Milestone 4 even had 29 panels. I really thought that the more dialog heavy milestones (with more and smaller panels) would take much more time but that doesn't seem to be true. I think that is due to the fact that I'm able to reuse backgrounds in dialogs where the camera switches back and forth between the characters.

Well, and another thing is amazing: when I add another 40 hours (for the last milestone) to the total sum of hours that I've already worked on Chapter 2, I land at 200 hours. This is 10 hours less than I needed to paint Chapter 1! So, although Chapter 2 will be 25% longer than Chapter 1, I will probably spend less time on painting it, which really is amazing. And I can assure you that I'm not rushing things here. I would definitely say that the quality of artwork even has improved.

Alright, I'll stop boring you with numbers now. Instead, here's the preview panel from Milestone 4:

And this is in fact the only panel of this milestone that I can share without giving away too much of the story.

On a sidenote:

Video2Brain has finally published the last of the video workshops that I have recorded in July. It's the German version of the "Focus on Digital Painting" workshop:

On the product page you'll again find 25 minutes of preview videos! Enjoy!

All workshops I have recorded this year are now available in German and English language.

Kickstarter Rewards Finally Finished!

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Lieske) — 2011-11-21T12:59:38-08:00

Yesterday I finally was able to finish my work on the rewards for the kickstarter campaign that funded the Wormworld Saga App back in April. From local artist Dirk Gross, who also does picture framing, I received these nicely framed watercolor paintings for the three top tier backers of the kickstarter campaign:

Dirk did a wonderful job and I have no doubt that the three backers will enjoy these extremely exclusive items. To make them extra special, I signed them on 11th November 2011.

I also want to share with you a photo of the complete package that will now go out to each of the three backers within the next few days. It's a collector's dream come true and I have a bit of a hard time to give them away to be honest :)

And of course I'm trying to wet your appetite here. Christmas is coming and maybe some of you are interested in purchasing Wormworld Saga artwork form the print store. Except for the Wormworld Saga map, the watercolor painting and the kickstarter exclusive print of "Treehouses & Skycastles" you can purchase the items above in the 'Ultimate Fan Collection' (which comes with an original pencil drawing) or seperately or in smaller collections. All prices in the store already include shipping to any location in the world!

I didn't promote it up to this point but since I still have a lot of the Wormseal pins left from the kickstarter campaign (I ordered more than I needed on intention) for the time being all orders from the store come with one of these:

the pins are printed with a metallic effect

Ok, I hope some of you take my bait. I'll be happy to send out some nice packages for you!

You'll hear from me within the next few days. Only a few panels left until I finish the next milestone!

Chapter 2, Milestone 3 reached!

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Lieske) — 2011-11-09T05:27:50-08:00

And there it is - Milestone3! As you can see, my Wacom stylus is glowing red hot as I managed to reach the 60% mark in 1,5 weeks. That's the way it's supposed to work! It's pretty save to say that milestone 4 will be reached way before the end of November and that I'll finish my work on the final artwork of Chapter 2 early in December. That would give me enough time to prepare the special content for the App and handle the essential translations.

It really wasn't easy to choose the preview panels for this update because nearly every panel of this milestone contains major spoilers. Out of the over 20 panels I really only had the choice between 4 or 5 panels that I can show you. I chose a big panel that isn't a spoiler right away but which shows Jonas exploring unfamiliar ground:

And here's another panel that doesn't spoil anything but gives a hint on the plot. Is someone getting suspicious here?

And I'm right off to work on the next milestone!

Second English Video2Brain Workshop Available

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Lieske) — 2011-11-07T00:54:31-08:00

There's another english video workshop from Video2Brain available now and in this workshop I concentrate on digital drawing. It runs for 2 hours and is a nice companion to my 'Focus on Digital Painting' workshop that was released a month ago. You can find all the detail about the new workshop and over 25 minutes (!) of sample clips on the product page.

And look, there even is a trailer on YouTube:

I hope some of you find this workshop helpful. It was recorded in July and represents my current digital drawing workflow. I use all of the described techniques everyday to create the Wormworld Saga graphic novel.

Chapter 2, Milestone 2 reached!

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Lieske) — 2011-10-31T03:07:53-07:00

Today I have the pleasure to report that I reached my second milestone with Chapter 2 of the Wormworld Saga. I'm completely on schedule and I hope to be able to finish the next two milestones and actually a good portion of the last milestone in November so that I'll have enough time for editing, layout and special app content in December.

It feels great to work consistently and without much disturbance on the graphic novel. Finally I'm able to make the progress that you and I were so eagerly waiting for. To reward your patience I've got three preview panels from the second milestone to share with you:

So, I'm directly starting with my work on Milestone 3 which I hope to finish before the end of next week.

Until then you might enjoy the first episode of the 'Making Comics Podcast' that just went online on makingcomics.com. Jason and I had a good time recording this. We speak about our own projects and try to explain what this podcast is going to be about and what guests you can expect on future episodes of the show.

I also want to announce that there is an update of the Wormworld Saga App available that fixes some issues that you may have experienced if you have updated your iPad to iOS 5.

Alright, back to work then!

Making Comics Podcast!

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Lieske) — 2011-10-21T01:28:38-07:00

Now, this is really exciting news! Jason Brubaker of formidable graphic novel reMIND has started a new website at makingcomics.com. This is going to be an invaluable ressource for everyone who wants to create his own comic or graphic novel. To kick off the website he's starting a podcast and I'm very happy to announce that I will be co-hosting it together with Jason.

When I started to create the Wormworld Saga graphic novel in late 2009, the first thing I did was searching the internet for other people that were trying the same thing. I was very lucky to find Jason's blog where he had just started to post the first pages of reMIND. But it wasn't only his graphic novel that inspired me. He wrote a huge bunch of articles about creating graphic novels and later he even started an online forum in which I eagerly participated. He really is passionate about graphic novels and after finishing his first book, receiving a Xeric Foundation grant, and successfully financing the first print run of reMIND via kickstarter.com, he definitely is someone you want to listen to, if you share this passion.

So, from now on I will take a few hours at the evening every now and then and have a conversation with Jason Brubaker and a not yet to be disclosed list of amazingly talented guests. Our first test recording already ended up to be an interesting conversation which Jason has fashioned into a 9 minute teaser for the podcast. You can listen to it on the makingcomics.com website or in iTunes.

I'm really looking forward to this and I hope that you all will enjoy the podcast!

Back Home And Finally Back to Art!

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Lieske) — 2011-10-18T13:05:14-07:00

I'm back from Frankfurt Bookfair and I'm not only returning home but I'm also returning to producing artwork on a regular schedule. "Finally!" I hear some of you say and I agree.

I know that some of you started to get the impression that I might have spent too much time on the wrong stuff and that I should simply have concentrated on the graphic novel. I myself am a bit shocked by the fact that 9 months have passed and that I'm only 20% into Chapter 2. On the other hand, if we compare the different options I had this year, it turns out that nothing was lost and a lot was gained.

Had I decided not to act on the success of Chapter 1 and just continue on Chapter 2 besides my day job, I would have been at about 80% of the final artwork by now and a release in December would have been a save bet. Chapter 3 would have been coming at the end of 2012 and Chapter 4 in 2013 and so on.

What I did instead was giving interviews for blogs, newspapers, radio and tv stations in January. I prepared a kickstarter fundraising campaign in February and fueled it with videos and PR in March. I worked on the app, created, packed and shipped the kickstarter rewards and negotiated with publishers in April, Mai and June. I quit my job in July, attended startup workshops and prepared a business plan in order to apply for state money to support my new business. In August, I finished my work on the app, produced the first 20% of artwork for Chapter 2 and took a summer vacation with my wife and son. I launched the Wormworld Saga App and prepared the bookfair when I came home late September.

Now, Chapter 2 is still scheduled for December but, thanks to my work on the business and infrastructure, I'm working fulltime on the graphic novel now and I'm fully financed until at least July 2012. By that time I plan to have already released Chapter 3 and 4. How it will go on from that point will heavily depend on the success of the app and the number of countries my publisher can place the Wormworld Saga Book Edition.

So, there's still a lot to do in the future. I'm at the very beginning of this adventure. I've just built my ship and set my course towards the unknown. But out on the sea I'll have plenty of time for painting!

My return from the bookfair marks an important milestone for me. I have now finished the business stuff and I'm happy with the result so far. I'm now going to concentrate on art again. That means that from now on you'll see milestone updates and artwork posts here on the blog. Of course I'll keep you updated about app updates (especially the upcoming Android version) but this blog is going to see a lot more art than in the last few months. I promise that.

To kick that off, I want to share an artwork with you that I created at Frankfurt Bookfair. When I wasn't talking to people I painted on this insanely detailed abstract composition. Click on it for a HUGE version!

See you soon with the next Chapter 2 milestone!

First English Video2Brain Workshop Available

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Lieske) — 2011-10-07T02:20:44-07:00

My first Video2Brain workshop in English is available now! In this workshop I'm painting a nature scene with a well-known little adventurer inside. I'm painting this artwork without a preliminary drawing. Instead I'm using abstract shapes and overlay techniques to "find" the scene that I want to paint. The workshop runs for 2 hrs 15 min.You'll find further information about the workshop on the product page.

There's a second English workshop titled "Focus on Digital Drawing" in preparation.

iPad App Available Worldwide and Website Update

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Lieske) — 2011-10-05T08:27:19-07:00

I'm happy to inform you that our update of the Wormworld Saga App for iPad got approved by Apple and that the app is now available worldwide! You should find it in your local iTunes App Store now by simply searching for "Wormworld".

I'm really sorry for the delay that this caused for a lot of you. But we reasoned that it would be better to wait a few days instead of presenting you a potentially flawed experience of the Wormworld Saga App. I hope that you will enjoy the app now.

By the way, you all would help to promote the app tremendously by giving it a rating or by even writing a review in the App Store. These things are very important to get the app to places where it receives better recognition.

And there's other news, too! I updated the Wormworld Saga Website to reflect the launch of the app and to prepare for the fact that there will be two chapters soon. This is the first update of the website since December 2010. It really was about time!

I got a lot of stuff out of my way now and I'm finally able to concentrate on Chapter 2 again. Next week Frankfurt Bookfair will occupy me for some days though. By the way: there will be an official Wormworld Saga Event at the Tokyopop booth (hall 3.0, booth K834) on Saturday 15th October at 1:30pm (13:30) and I will do some signing afterwards. I'm really looking forward to that! Maybe I'll see some of you there?

The Wormworld Saga App for iPad launched!

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Lieske) — 2011-10-19T02:48:11-07:00

When I prepared the fundraising campaign for the Wormworld Saga App on kickstarter.com in March, I really couldn't imagine that it would be possible to raise $12.000 from people that I actually didn't know at all. The overwhelming feedback my work received from the online community fortunately made me give it a try anyway. Although the donations and print orders of the preceding months had surprised the hell out of me, it was the unsuspected outcome of the kickstarter campaign that, for the first time, gave me the impression that I possibly was creating something that could become my actual job in the future.

I've learned a lot in the past six months. I've learned that creating a successful graphic novel doesn't only mean to write and paint. It also means to make plans for the future, communicate with a lot of people and do a lot of work that pops up just everywhere. The development of the app took much longer than I had imagined. There is just so much to take into account when you want to release a running app and there's so much work in the detail. I've REALLY learned a lot.

Now that it's finally done, I have a strong feeling of achievement. The Wormworld Saga App is the kind of thing that I imagined to create. A digital graphic novel that overcomes the limits of traditional book publishing. A hub to connect to just everything around the Wormworld Saga. The app humbly starts with the first chapter in four languages and the first three items inside the artbook and the production notes in English. I hope to be able to provide more languages and completely translated content in the future. It's a matter of budget only. The second chapter will follow at the end of the year and by the end of next year I hope to see the first 6 chapters and a host of artbook items inside the app. Just imagine that!

The Wormworld Saga App is a living thing. Now that it exists I already have the first ideas to extend and improve it. You can expect me to constantly think about stuff that will make the app and the Wormworld Saga in general more and more enjoyable for you. We will frequently update and your feedback is highly appreciated in order to evolve the Wormworld Saga App towards something that hopefully will set standards for graphic novel apps in general.

But for now I want to invite you to explore what's already there. A lot of work and love went into the Wormworld Saga App and I hope that you will enjoy it!

Here's a link to the U.S. App Store but you can easily find the app by searching for "Wormworld" in your local App Store in iTunes:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-wormworld-saga/id453680677?ls=1&mt=8

Back at work and Wormworld Saga App coming up!

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Lieske) — 2011-09-28T12:46:52-07:00

I'm back! Back from a summer vation in Spain and back from the convention of the digitalartforum which took place this weekend in Berlin. It was a great event and I'm happy that we had an absolute record in participants this year because that way a lot of people were able to enjoy what I think was the best convention we've ever experienced. We've never been at a cooler location and we've never had better talks than this year which, by the way, was the 10th anniversary of the community.

The traditional convention group shot

And I had a nice surprise in my mailbox: finally the trademark registration process is completed and "Wormworld" is now a registered trademark in the United States of America!

that's what a U.S. trademark certificate looks like

I'm happy that this issue is off my mind now. I just checked and I can't believe that it took almost 22 months to register the Wormworld Saga trademark in the European Union and the United States.

However, I will continue my work on Chapter 2 in a few days. Before I can fully concentrate on the graphic novel again I have to prepare some promotional work for the launch of the Wormworld Saga App which is going to happen very soon. In fact, we have a definite launch date which is going to be October 1st. I'm excited!

So, you'll hear from me again in a few days!

Chapter 2, Milestone 1 reached!

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Lieske) — 2011-08-22T09:50:58-07:00

Today I reached my first milestone and finished 20% of the Chapter 2 final artwork. I spent 40 hours working on it. Normally that would have taken me over a month but with my new fulltime schedule I accomplished the first milestone in 1.5 weeks. And that's in fact longer than it should normally take. The finishing touches on the app and the upcoming digitalartconvention in Berlin (which I'm organizing) took away some time from my schedule. However, it feels great to make such fast progress on Chapter 2. I really can't wait to present it to you.

However, the next 4 weeks will hardly see any progress on Chapter 2. It's summer vacation time and my wife and I are looking forward to present little Lucas to his great-grandparents in Spain for the first time. The little rascal is starting to crawl and I'm curious to see his face when he sees a beach for the first time. Then, directly after our vacation there's the digitalartconvention, and in October the Frankfurt Book Fair will take away some days from my schedule, too. I will post details on Frankfurt as soon as I can say when exactly I will be available on the Tokyopop booth.

Well, that all combined leads to the fact that Chapter 2 will presumably not be released so much earlier than originally planned. I really didn't anticipate all the stuff that got in my way and with the app release and the book publishing ahead there's plenty of distraction still waiting for me. I'm planning to continue with Chapter 2 late September and hopefully I'll wrap up the artwork in early November. I don't quite know yet how much time editing and layout will take. For Chapter 1 that process was very tesselated and it's hard to say how long it'll take when I'm working on that part fulltime and in one stretch. There's still a lot to learn for me. I guess, Chapter 3 will be the first Chapter that I will create in a truly proven workflow.

Okay, of course I'm not leaving you without at least a small sneak peek into Chapter 2. Here's a panel from the first milestone that I really enjoyed painting. I was longing to paint forest scenes since the very beginning of my work on the Wormworld Saga and Chapter 2 fortunately has plenty of them:

First Video2Brain Video-Training (German) Released

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Lieske) — 2011-08-17T00:59:28-07:00

Some of you might remember that I mentioned a journey to Graz, Austria at the beginning of July. I went there for a week and recorded a bunch of video-trainings for video2brain which is a company that offers online and DVD video-workshops. The first one (in German language) was just released. It runs for about two hours and covers all details of my digital drawing workflow. The video is not timelapsed. The full drawing process is filmed and commented in realtime. As you can see, I chose an image from the Wormworld Saga for the course:

Click to go to the product page

And there's a trailer, too:

A second video in German on digital painting will be released soon. I also recorded two video-trainings in English language which hopefully we will not have to wait for too long.

Alright, I hope that I can catch the interest of some of you with this. I will keep you informed about the following releases.

Kickstarter Drawings

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Lieske) — 2011-08-15T01:40:12-07:00

Last week I finished a task that was sitting on my to-do-list for some time now. All backers of the Wormworld Saga App kickstarer campaign who pledged $500 or $1000 receive a custom pencil drawing. The outcome of this is a nice and diverse collection of drawings that will go out into the world today (click thumbnails for a larger resolution):

These are really unique items because not only are these originals but these are the only 10 drawings with the blue Wormseal stamp that will ever exist. So, collectors: watch out for these!

If you happen to be interested in an original pencil drawing from me, you might want to consider to buy an Ultimate Fan Collection from the wormworldsaga.com print shop. A pencil drawing is part of this package.