After the Comiccon Stuttgart

The Comiccon in Stuttgart was amazing. I was very excited about it – I had to prepare a presentation as well as a reading of “The Pepper-Chronicles” to be presented on stage. I was also very anxious about the printed version of our comic – would the colors look good? That is usually my biggest concern. (Pssst: You can order copies HERE at Kwimbi!)

After a very turbulent flight, I saw it for the first time: Stefan Dinter from Zwerchfell publishing expected me at the airport and gave me the very first copy of the German edition of “Die Pfeffer-Chroniken". In my hotel room, I had the time to slowly go trough it. It looked like the the colors came out great – as well as the beautiful cover with gold-foil for the title font. 

The rest of the con was a beautiful mix of meeting great people – a lot of other talented cartoonists and fans. All of them were so nice and encouraging. It is very draining to sign all day at a very bus con like this, so nice people help a great deal! :D 

A lot of people came over and bought “Die Pfeffer-Chroniken”. The amazing Eve from the organization “Comic Solidarity” organized a number of presentations for artists on stage, which enabled me to talk about the graphic novel and go a bit deeper into the making-of. The reading went very well: Members of Zwerchfell publishing (Christopher Tauber and Jan Dinter) helped me to read all the different characters, and it went smooth as a clockwork.I also want to point out the the whole con was well-organized, especially the "Comiczone", which was full of artists, publishers and events. 

(Below: Author Haiko Hörnig picks up his copy of Pfeffer-Chroniken)

I want to thank everybody who helped out. The organizers, my editor Christopher, the translator Jan, layouter Stefan, all the Indiegogo backers, anybody who came over and bought it – or even just looked at it and had some nice things to say, and last but not least: My amazing project collaborators Rebekie Bennington and Daniel Scribner who did AMAZING work. 

Next: Getting this thing published in English!!!! Stay tuned via Pepperchronicles on Facebook.

Comiccon Stuttgart

I'll be at the Comiccon Stuttgart this week. Starting July 1rst - July 2nd, I'll be signing at my table M22, alongside Zwerchfell publishing.   I'll be selling prints, a few of my Star Trek books - but most importantly, the German edition of "Pepper-Chronicles", aka "Die Pfeffer-Chroniken".

 

In addition, there will be a presentation & reading of the comic in the Comiczone on Saturday. 

I also feel obliged to let you know that Friday is the last day you can order the comic forten Euros less, plus you'll get a signed print. Just follow the instructions of the indiegogo campaign.

Making of Pepper-Chronicles: Coordinating overseas

To celebrate the German publication of Pepper-Chronicles, I am planing on a series of making-of posts about this comic here on my blog in the upcoming weeks. Get more info about it here: pepperchronicles.com - considering the English edition, we are still working on that. Oh, and if you speak German, you order it for cheap moneys (10 Euros cheaper) at our indiegogo until end of June.

How do you handle an international project like this with two project partners in a different time zone over the course of five years?

The answer for me was Facebook. We used a private group to get a lot of the coordinating work done. This, plus a couple of skype-meetings every month. And let’s not forget the stubborn persistence I tortured my project partners with over the course of five years.

The Facebook Group was an amazing tool in coordinating between script, storyboards, layouts, inks and color. On each stage, we used the comment section to suggest changes, thoughts, ideas and spot mistakes. 

Each stage of a page usually had an album-folder (“Storyboards”, “Layouts”, etc.) and if I wanted Rabekie or Dan to review them, I would tag them or e-mail them about the new additions in our group. 

The FB-group was very useful, but it also became quite challenging to keep track of all the folders, and the vast number of image-files. Over the years, keeping track of everything sort of became my major job, so after some time Rebekie just called me “art-director”. It truly challenged me to stay in control of everything sometimes, but honestly: Without the FB-group it would have been a near-to-impossible task.

The skype meetings started when I left for Austria in 2012. The most useful aspect of them was to stay in touch, keep the project running and fresh, but also to talk trough bulks of the script and spot inconsistencies, suggest changes or just pat Dan on the shoulder for doing a great job.

Rebekie and I sometimes used those meeting to just work on the comic on the same time. Sometimes I would use the screen-share-function in Skype to show her things in Photoshop, and vice-versa.

All in all: It took a lot of work to keep it together over the past five + years. Honestly: I had to revive the project a couple of times. I had to plea and to beg sometimes. But in the end, Rebekie and Dan always delivered fantastic work.