Heavy Weapon: My 80's action movie graphic novel - (a Kickstarter project)

[enix2093]

A 15-page preview can be seen here: http://www.heavy-weapon.com/


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If you'd like to preorder, just hang on a bit longer...I will be accepting preorders via Paypal soon.


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ABOUT THE BOOK:

I've been keeping details low outside of the artist and a short preview so as not to spoil anything, but I do have plans to fill out the book as much as possible. I'm trying to get some extra concept art from various artists, and such.

Here are my goals:

- Professional quality hardcover / softcover editions
- Full color cover / dust jacket in high gloss laminate on the HC versions
- Gloss enamel paper pages, if possible
- The book will be B&W (I wanted a full color rendition done, but that's really expensive).
- Art gallery and concept pages, possibly a 'behind the scenes documentary' of the comic/story process.
- Page format will be 8x10 for the hardcover/LE, and the mass run will be 8.5x11 probably.
- Estimating about 200 pages, possibly more depending on what I can cram in there. The story itself is 153 pages.
- Bonus Extras will be included with the Munition Edition, which will be limited to no more than 250 copies.

The reason I decided against full color is because each book will end up costing more than triple the price of B&W each to print (due to full color printing costs). If future/other prints happen, it'll likely be perfect-bound softcover only. I might have additional different covers for the first two runs, but alternate covers are more expensive and I hate passing my costs off onto buyers, so we'll see.


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Here's a sample of one of the nearly finished pages:




...and for comparison, this is the untouched "inked" page:




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Here's a prototype of the Munition Edition (subject to change, and probably will for the better):



- Ammo Box Packaging
- Character Trading Cards
- Challenge Coins
- Dog Tags
- USB Bullet w/ Digital Copy of Heavy Weapon
- Survival Knife & Chinese Dagge Bookmarks
- Hardcover Book

Items that may also be included, but not pictured:
- Poster
- Mini Book containing "Making of...", and more.

[Bastardcat]

Hey! Another comic artist!
This looks familiar! Was this up on Smackjeeves?
Let me tell ya, trying to sell a comic is a pain in the ASS! I've gone through two different publishers.
You can have a massive reader base, but unless you do the "con" circuit, its like your comic ain't worth buying to people!

[old man]

This is awesome. I'm glad to see your still pushing this thing. I remember when you posted last time looking for artists. Have you thought about a print-on-demand service like KaBlam?

[Bastardcat]

Ka-Blam is a good service. Just stay the fuck away from Lulu.

[Gogogadget]

Lmao, John Magnum is possibly the most 80s sounding name ever, i'm interested.

[Nunzio]

Hey, something I actually know about. I did graphic design for my friend's short film and crowd funding campaign and we raised over $15,000 in like a month.

About half way through your campaign you should do a completely new video for it, and add new perks for your pledges. Most of the big ($1,000+) pledges we got actually came from the same people pledging at different times in the campaign after seeing the new stuff. Also, lots of people will pledge at different levels for the different perk packages, and if you introduce extra perks halfway, or three quarters through you will get some of the same people to pledge again just to get the other exclusive stuff.

I'd remove the $10,000+ pledge completely and add more $1,000+ perks. We got two people to pledge over $1,000 twice just for the exclusive stuff. In your case it should be giclees and then probably prints for the lower levels. I see you only had one $1,000 perk available and it's taken! You should get on fixing that!

Also, do a mock up covers as soon as possible. If people can see the book, they will want it. Mock up the cover, take it to Kinkos, get them to laser print it, cut it and wrap it on a book that will be a similar size and take pictures for your campaign. People will pledge if they can see what they will get, even if they know it's just a prototype. We put up a mock up DVD cover and shit went bananas on our campaign.

As a pledger I would want to see some pencils, then the inked version, then the color and lettered version of the same page somewhere. People love that shit.

And finally, set up Facebook and Twitter accounts for it. That is massively important. Show sketches in progress, leak out possible cover art and stuff... ask indie comic blogs to cover you... phone in to a podcast... just network your ass off and it will make it to $12k easy.

[enix2093]

Never heard of Ka-Blam...will have to check it out.
Yes, Lulu is a collossal rip-off. Their pricing is retarded expensive. Right now I'm looking at Createspace, and some local printers. Createspace will probably do well for the ongoing sales, but no so much for the Deluxe and LE's.

As for publishing; I'm really not even thinking about that...maybe I'll get into that stuff sometime down the road. This is more of a labor of love than something I expect to profit from or become rich and famous (like that ever happens in comics anyways)

Nunzio - some great great stuff to know there. Really. Yeah, I do have a picture I made of a mock-up cover wrapped around a book. I considered posting it but I thought that would seem super ghetto. I'll think about it though. There aren't any pencilled versions; it's all done digitally. The only pencilling is my hand-drawn layouts but they are a godawful mess...I'm not much of a comic artist myself. The lettering isn't even started yet; that's part of what I'm funding.

I do have a FB and just started a Twitter about 2 hours ago. I'm working on nailing down a few interviews with some comic news sites. Nothing big, but better than nothing.

[Nunzio]

You can do a digital mock up of the cover, it would be at such a low resolution for the site anyways that it doesn't have to be super realistic. You can get away with a lot at screen res.

[enix2093]

These were the pics I did of the mockup I did for testing purposes sometime last month. I still need to photoshop out that DC and Comicon logo:

[Bastardcat]

If you use Ka-blam, make sure everything is 300 dpi, and conforms to their page template standard.

[Lastcallhall]

This whole project reeks of awesomeness... consider me interested.

[Nunzio]

Definitely worth redoing that cover with a bleed so you can trim the edges. Just shoot on a white background, turn up the levels in Photoshop so it looks solid white, add a very slight reflection and you should be in business.

[QuickSciFi]

Great stuff. This looks awesome. 300 million thumbs up.

[Genesis Knight]

Holy shit, you've got some art skills.

[enix2093]

I wish I could say I was the artist, but it's actually two very good friends I know from some art forums who are doing the art for my book (at a VERY generoud price, I might say).

Anyways, I shopped the picture a bit to make the cover look more natural: