The Stuff of Legend Blogging Begins

For those of your note familiar we have been working on a new book called "The Stuff of Legend" for the better part of 8 months. Our plan is to start using this blog to record our production on what exactly goes into the creative decisions and day to day stuff for an independent book. Feel free to ask any questions you have. We will be as transparent about everything as humanly possible.

2009 also marks our first inclusion into Free Comic Book Day. We will be offering the first 20+ page of "The Stuff of Legend" for retailer and fans to check out. We're going to need all the help we can get so please be sure to let your local retailers to know about this book, or if you're a retailer please ORDER THIS BOOK.

We will be trying a number of different strategies to get the word out. We will be offering not only a weekly blog, but bi-weekly art updates, sketches, forum posts, online web comic formatted reading, and hopefully conducting interviews with various news organizations. In the past advertising and marketing for our books has been a mixed bag. We have tried many different strategies and on the whole we have been only what I would classify as mildly successful in converting those numbers. We are hoping or a strong entry for "The Stuff of Legend" (which I will often time refer to as SoL, yes I'm aware of the connotation)

Below I have listed the solicit for the free comic book day entry, let the blogging BEGIN!

SOLICIT:
"The year is 1944. An allied force advances along a war-torn beach in a strange land, outnumbered and far from home. Together, they fight the greatest evil they have ever known. Never ending waves of exotic enemies come crashing down on them, but they will not rest. Thousands of miles away, the world is on the brink of destruction. But here in a child's bedroom in Brooklyn, our heroes, a small group of toys loyal to their human master, fight an unseen war to save him from every child's worst nightmare.

Led by the toy soldier known as the Colonel and the boy's faithful teddy-bear named Max, the toys enter the realm known as The Dark. There they will face off against the Boogeyman and his army-- a legion of the boy's forgotten, bitter toys. Fighting to survive insurmountable odds, the toys will discover this is a battle not only for the soul of a child, but for their own as well..."

Th3rd World at Baltimore Comicon this weekend

It's that time of the year again and we will be making the annual trek up to Baltimore for the comic con. This yea we will be graduating up from our artist alley table to a full sized 10x10 booth.

We have a lot of great stuff this weekend including an exclusive print for a new series in production called "The Stuff of Legend." Be the first to get copies of "Creature Feature" issue 1 as well as Th3rd World's first trade paperback "Space Doubles."

On hand with us doing signing and sketches will be writers:

CB Cebulski
Mike Raicht
Brian Smith

As well as artists and creators on some of Th3rd World's comics and web comics:

Mike Witmer (Pinkerton)
Tony DeVito (Eskimo Dave)
Tim Collins (Creature Feature)

It should be a great time, so please come out and see us this Saturday and Sunday.

Space Doubles TPB review at Comixtreme

"Consider someone mashing the best bits of the Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits together, and putting it in a readable form. This is that book. Smart, funny, eerie, violent, strange, and funny, this is one that every science fiction or horror reader should have in their collection. Pick it up, or I will find you and kick you. (I’m not saying where; some things have to be a surprise.)"

http://ping.fm/h3Pc6

Sha3biyat Season 3 is almost done

We're wrapping episode 29, and episode 30 should be coming later today finishing off season 3. We have a month off before we go right into production on season 4. Apparently, the episodes that have aired, have been a pretty big hit in Dubai. As newspaper over there was quoted as saying, "sha3biyat alcartoon rules on the crown of animation series this year." Everyone did a really nice job on it from art to animation to 3d.

Here is the intro to the show. Tony and I are the only English credits in the intro, the rest of the coloring crew is in the outro.

Here is a link to the intro
http://ping.fm/v2nud

Here is a link to an episode that is already online
http://ping.fm/La5nb

Comics and Imaginary Tales reviews Space Doubles TPB

"Space Doubles is a high quality graphic science fiction anthology that is really worth your hard earned money. Tell your comic shop to order it today."

http://ping.fm/8x5FY

Sneak Peek at Print we are doing for Baltimore

This is a link to a rough that Charles is working on to be printed (in limited quantity) for the Baltimore Comicon. I have seem the final pencils and I think people will be pretty excited about this. BUY ONE!

http://ping.fm/1NCId

2008 Drunk Duck Awards Finalists

2 of Th3rd World Studio's web comics were selected as finalists in this years Drunk Duck awards.

DRUNK DUCK AWARDS FINALISTS

Best Antagonist - Dr. Rocket from The Super Fogeys

Best humor scenes - Pinkerton

Best Parody or Tribute Comic - The Superfogeys

Best Superhero comic - The Superfogeys

Rack Raids raids Creature Feature

"...undeniably well-done and worth a look."

http://ping.fm/d4xVa

Coloring sample for new project

I guess new is sorta a relative term. We have had this project in development for a while now, but I finally got the nerve to drop some color on it. To be honest I was scared to touch it, because the artist Charles did such a phenomenal job with the pencils rendering, that I needed to figure out a way to compliment the artwork with the colors.

I wanted a more natural look to the colors, which I hope i have somewhat achieved here. I went to the talented colorist John Rauch to get his input, which was extremely helpful in developing this style for it.

I'm not sure if this is where it will ultimately end up, but the day after it doesn't look offensive to me, which is always a good thing.

Newsarama covers Creature Feature

A special thanks goes out to Vaneta Rogers for this wonderful write-up on Creature Feature.

http://ping.fm/QHRD5

Space Doubles Collection 1: Set the Controls TPB

The collection has been available via our store and Amazon all of last month, but it is finally in the Diamond previews catalog order number AUG084292.

As many of you know the series was originally 5 issues long, but after top 300 selling numbers for issue 1, issues 2 and 3 sales numbers dwindled. We stopped the series at issue 3 opting to collect the remaining issues in trade format. The trade collects the first 3 issues of the mini series as well as the stories from the previously unreleased issues 4 and 5. On top of that creator Brian Smith hammered out two extra episodes of "Pickles from Pluto" for us.

The book is currently in previews, but you can still pre-order copies on Amazon or our own online store.

Comixtreme reviews Creature Feature

"Another good one for Th3rd World Studios, which has put out some impressive, high quality comics."

http://ping.fm/8tMrF

Comics and other Imaginary Tales reviews Creature Feature

"Creature Features delivers on its promise, a fun filled fright fest with monsters and laughter. A pure and unadulterated joy. "



http://ping.fm/XJ08y

Project Fanboy review of Creature Feature

Check out this link to see the latest review that we got from Project Fanboy.



http://ping.fm/XGGa5



"A collaboration of great minds in the comic industry bring to us an anthology of pure horror enjoyment. Similar to the styles of Tales from The Crypt, and the Twilight Zone. The team at Thr3dworld bring to light some of the strangest, imaginative, interesting pieces of horror told in a comic in quite some time. From the science fiction, to bestial monsters from beyond, this comic definitely packs a punch."

Creature Feature Reviewed at Jazma Online

Special thanks goes out to Jazma Online's Richard Vasseur for taking the time to review Creature Feature.

"You will not want to miss one of his horror fest issues of fright."


http://forums.jazmaonline.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=687

Creature Feature Review Copy is Complete

It seems like it took forever, but finally the book is all put together. Jon will be taking it from here, , barring someone doesn't catch something I missed, and drop it into Quark/InDesign to prepare for print. It's a huge load off, but unfortunately a very small part of the process.



Next step is to push the book in as many places as possible. Blogs, myspace, facebook, twitter, new sites, forums, the list goes on and on. For me this is always the hard part. I know we can make a book, its selling the book that is tough. Convincing someone to buy something you made is never easy, especially in a market as saturated as this one. I have a lot of respect for guys who somehow manage to be everywhere at once, the consummate salesmen that can convince you how great their product is and why you need it. Lukcily for this project we have people who do a fantastic job of getting the word out. I find myself spending more time worrying about how to advertise than just going out there and advertising. Only way to get it done is to get it done, not just talk about it.



With that I'm off to, hopefully, "get it done."

Progress is good

For the first time we have multiple titles all coming out back to back. it's pretty exciting, though obviously also nerve wracking, because I can't help but think we must have missed something. First to hit previews is Creature Feature, which is in there now. We have been getting some good interest for interviews etc so far, but unfortunately we need to get one of the big sites to lend us a hand if we expect to get our sales numbers up. Right on the tail of that is the Space Doubles TPB, which I cannot wait to hold in my hands. It will be ready for the Baltimore Con this year, which should be great. Next on the list will be what we have dubbed " the first documentary graphic novel", at least to you knowledge, called "DAD!" exciting stuff no doubt.



Today should mark the end of production on issue 1 of Creature Feature, and then I need to focus on the website for a while. It mainly out of my hands right now, but I should be able to get some additional graphics done for when my programmer is done working on the back end.

Lettering complete on Creature Feature

Or, very close to. I got a round of edits back from CB and Mike the other day and finally wrapped them last night. I am waiting on the FINAL FINAL notes, but they should be minor if anything at all. It's good to finally be done with that part. While I don't mind lettering, it's definitely not my favorite thing in the world to do. Above it I would rate weeding the garden and eyebrow waxing.

First Book on Amazon

Amazon finally approved our first trade paperback today to go up on their store. It was really cool the first time I went to a random comic shop that we didn't even know the owners of carrying one of our books, this was much the same for me. Felt good to see everyone hard work up online for sale, now hopefully people pre-order, pre-order, pre-order.



While the book is available for pre-order now from Amazon, we still urge people to go to your local comic shops and have them pre-order it for you via Diamond as well this August, which is when it hits previews. We can use all the help we can get and appreciate your support in any way possible, but we would also love for everyone to do as much as they can to support local direct market retailers.



PRE-ORDER HERE

Kind Words

It's always nice when I check my Google alerts and I actually find information not posted by me or one of the Th3rd World creators about the company pop up. More often than not it ends up being something unrelated to the company, for example I have an alert setup for "Space Doubles", one of our first books, and I am constantly receiving alerts where someone types something like this, "...the space doubles as a bonus bedroom." You get the idea. I'm sure we are going to get a lot of similar types of alerts for "Creature Feature"

Anyway tonight was not one of those nights. We got a really nice write up about the company and in particular our web comics at a comics blog called Omnicomic. You can check it out there right here http://ping.fm/YwhEh

Crazy Week of Preparing PR

It's only Wednesday and it easily feels like it's next Wednesday already. I've been trying to make contact with the various, blogs, forums and news organizations to run our press release for Creature Feature. I have fallen a little behind the 8-ball on it unfortunately. I had intended to get started a couple weeks ago, but a family emergency caused a bit of a setback with work piling up in front of the book.

So far I have gotten a few responses with interest to do reviews on the book. Hopefully it is well received. With the talent roster that Mike (Raicht) has put together I think it will be.

Back to work for now, but I will toss some preview images up later tonight/tomorrow.