Rainy Road Warrior Newsletter
March 6, 2023
Epic of Darkness #2 Preview
I put together a preview of issue 2 with a few pages from each story, which you can view HERE or by clicking the image below now. Not later! Nnn-Yow!!!!
And, if for some reason you missed issue 1, there’s a preview of that one there, too!
Is There A Draft In Here?
Speaking of previews, here’s a draft version of the Kickstarter campaign. Nothing is finalized but at least this will give you an idea of what I plan to offer and you can send feedback if you have any comments/critiques/suggestions. Go HERE to take a peek or click the image below.
The Winds Of Change
There have been a couple of changes that I’ve needed to make to the upcoming Kickstarter campaign because some things still just aren’t ready. Specifically, I don’t have all the pages yet from Gilliard for his story, Brian still hasn’t been able to send me the original art pages from “Fallen Angel” and I’m still trying to get the painting of the mini-bust perfected. (More details on that in the next section.) And I don’t want to launch the campaign until everything is ready to go.
So, here’s the updated details on the campaign:
The campaign will now probably launch on Tuesday, April 11th.
Ricardo Alves has drawn 2 more pages for “GRaV: Part Two” because, when I was lettering the original pages, it became obvious to me that we needed to reveal the other players in this melodrama.
The book will still be 36 pages because I had originally intended on having extra stuff (like the “Background Noise” section) that will be removed to allow for the additional 2 “GRaV” pages. Or it might be bumped up to 40 pages.
As of right now, I plan on offering reward bundles to international backers but I’m not sure if they will remain when the campaign goes live. If they do stay, they won’t be eligible for add-ons because I can’t have people adding on a bunch of stuff that kills me on the ridiculous international shipping. So, I may just remove those rewards. I’ll probably waffle on this until the last second.
The “cover progression” that I talked about last time has been altered because the cover of issue 3 has been changed to the “Doom homage” cover you see below by Anem Nofect. I’ve had that image in my head for a while and I thought it would be very appropriate for that particular issue. But I’m considering having someone else color it. To my red-green color-blind eyes, it looks like a big blob of one color. I’ll probably leave it as-is for the back cover of issue 2 but, if we get to make issue 3, I’ll see if someone else wants to take a shot at coloring it.
You’re Painting Me Crazy!
So, I’ve been working pretty much every day for the past 2 months on painting the mini-bust. I’ve spent so much money on paints and brushes and miscellaneous tools that it’s embarrassing. This is way more complicated than I thought it would be.
When I was researching painting last year to prepare for this, I thought that the Speedpaint line by Army Painter would be the perfect solution. They were cheaper than other brands and supposedly allowed a one-coat-and-you’re-done solution. What I eventually discovered was that they are really meant for painting tabletop miniatures — pieces that are about 1 inch tall. Or pieces that are full of textures — like dragons and whatnot. That doesn’t really apply to a larger piece like the “Lady X” mini-bust with all of its large, smooth surfaces.
So, while I thought I was headed in a positive direction, I was actually racing straight for a cliff. But I finally got to what I thought was a reasonable level of quality in my painting and showed the result (the rough version you see below) on some Facebook groups to get feedback. Everybody was kind in their responses but it was clear that I had far to go and a lot more to learn.
Throwing it out there for critiques was very beneficial in that I got a ton of good tips, tricks and techniques that I’ll be trying out moving forward.
One of the suggestions that I got was to try using fluorescent paint for the tattoo to give it a glow effect. I had thought about this (and about printing the piece with translucent resin then installing an LED inside) but dismissed it because I wanted to keep this first piece fairly simple. But, after the suggestion was made, I happened to come across a fluorescent paint at Hobby Town and decided to give it a try. I made a very rough attempt at it (below) just to see if it might work and it looks like it will. So, I’m currently stripping all the prototypes and will try this paint scheme.
The sculpt was also updated so the production version will have a few minor tweaks. But I’ll be using these prototypes to, hopefully, finalize the paint scheme and use that to show backers what they’ll be getting.
This Week In Randomness
At a con a few weeks ago, I picked up an old issue of The Lone Ranger just because it was $1 and I remember those old Whitmans as some of my first experiences with comics. According to mycomicshop.com, this is issue #18 which was published in 1974 with stories reprinted from 1948.
Now, completely unrelated to that is the fact that, as I’ve mentioned in this newsletter before, A Christmas Story is one of my favorite films of all time.
And in that movie, there's a scene where the “Old Man” is doing a crossword puzzle and asks “Mother” for the name of the Lone Ranger's nephew's horse, which she immediately gives him, to his surprise. (Even being a fan of The Lone Ranger, I had no memory of him having a nephew, much less what his horse’s name was!) Well, guess what was in this obscure comic that I just randomly came across and decided to purchase?
When I saw the comic, I seriously debated spending the $1 on it. I left it and came back to it a couple of times. It was like there was something tugging at my shirt, saying, “You should get it. You’ll get a kick out of it.” And that I did.
Until next time!
~Michael T Gonzalez
