In case you missed it… in order to — fingers crossed — hit the Multiplex 10: the animated short’s base goal sooner rather than later, if we can reach $15,000 on or before Wednesday, April 26 (according to Eastern Daylight Time), I’ll write and draw Multiplex Movie Review comics for all eight of the Harry Potter movies. And if we do it on or before Monday, April 24, I’ll throw in Fantastic Beasts, as well.
These strips will be different than previous review comics, though: Jason will review them at the age he was when each movie was released. So the first ones will be set before the comic strip began, and we’ll get a glimpse of his life before the Multiplex 10, then see him get older with each new movie along with the characters in the movies, etc.
First, a little round-up of things from the past week:
The Kickstarter project for Multiplex 10: the animated short started really strong. As always, things have slowed down a lot since the first day, but… fingers crossed. At the time of this writing, it was just a few hundred dollars away from the 2/3 mark — fantastic for the first week.
“Multiplex” is an immersive and satisfying marvel of long-form storytelling.… It’s a reminder of not only why we watch movies but the importance of friendship and passion in everyday life.
On Wednesday, some of the Multiplex 10 cast and crew did a livestream on Kickstarter Live about the (fingers crossed) Multiplex 10 short. You can watch the replay of that now to “meet” producer/co-writer Dana Shaw, co-producer Joe Dunn, composer Tangelene Bolton and myself (and see how long my hair is these days) and learn a little more about that project.
I’ve had a few people ask me about the future of the books and the website, so I wanted to say what the current plans are:
Multiplex: The Revenge (Book Three) should still be out in June — slightly earlier for Kickstarter backers, I’m hoping. I don’t have an estimate on when those will arrive yet.
Starting… soon… I’ll be posting bonus comics for Book Four on my Patreon page. For the next few weeks, I’ll post some things here, like an occasional Multiplex Movie Review or something else, in the Deleted Scenes blog, so… you know, don’t unsubscribe to this feed just yet. (At some point, I should redesign the homepage for the Multiplex site to reflect that the strip has ended, but I’m working on other things right now.)
After all of the bonus comics for Book Four are done — and after the Multiplex 10 short is completed (assuming it gets funded) — I’ll do a Kickstarter to fund the printing of the fourth book. By doing the Kickstarter after all the content is finished, I should be able to have a much lower goal than Book Three’s. (At some point in there, I have to reprint Book One, too, because I’ve been sold out of that for over a year now.)
After that, I’m hoping to do a slipcase for Books One through Four (“Act One”) and then hardcovers for Act Two (Books Five and Six on the site) and Act Three (Books Seven through Nine)… but there’s a lot that needs to happen first.
So, like I’ve said many times: I’m not through with these characters yet.
A little heads up for people here on the site — the Kickstarter project for the Multiplex 10 animated short has reached a $9,389 thanks to 263 backers in three days. It’s slowing down fast, so I don’t know whether we have the momentum to get past the goal — or to exceed it, so we can do it with higher quality animation and animation — but I hope we do.
I spent a little time today trying out some new techniques that I couldn’t really do with the comic. The two drawings below use the Texturino plugin for Illustrator by Astute Graphics (whose Phantasm plugin I use constantly in Multiplex stuff) to “paint” in the shadows. I think it works pretty good, though I’m still getting the hang of it.
I couldn’t use these effects in the comic, because they need to be printed at some point, and at high res, Texturino creates giant files that make my computer cry. BUT… I might use them — sparingly — in the animated short, most likely for backgrounds.
Electrogor from Zander Cannon’s Kaijumax
Bobbie Draper from The Expanse
If you don’t read Kaijumax or watch The Expanse, do it! I love them so.
Posted in Drawings, Multiplex News | Comments Off on Electrogor, Bobbie Draper, and more
A brand spanking new eBook collecting all twenty-nine Multiplex Movie Reviews to date is now available via Gumroad. It’s priced at $1.99 and includes a bunch of strips never posted to the Multiplex site and previously only available to Kickstarter backers and Patreon patrons. Some of them are even funny!
