Hiya, backers! I just wanted to pop in and share where we're at with The Bloody Unicorn! I know a lot of other Booktopia projects have already fulfilled, but of course this one was always going to be later, since the campaign was specifically to fund more art.

Summer Faught is hard at work creating said art, and I thought you might like to see the process, in action, of creating commissioned art for a book. 

There's generally a lot of back-and-forth in the beginning. I'll give the artist a general idea of what I'm looking for, and they'll very tactfully ask for clarification of pretty much everything, because I am in no way a visual person and have no idea what I'm talking about.

Some artists have a formal questionnaire that they send all of their clients, and others just ask questions specific to this particular commission. 

Once they have all the info they need, they'll send me a concept sketch, often accompanied by some ideas for alternative set-ups, poses, backgrounds, etc. 

For example, this video Summer sent of the concept for A Crapload of Skulls, in which she walks me through what I'm looking at, why she wants to put the dog in this particular spot, and so on. BackerKit won't let me add a video here, so I put it up unlisted on YouTube just for you: https://youtu.be/o-WPKcJfCeo

Usually the concept sketch is nothing like what I actually pictured, but so much better than anything I could imagine, which is why I pay artists to do this for me! I'm good at words, not at pictures.

Then I give feedback, which is usually, "OMG, I love everything about this!" or sometimes I'll ask for tiny tweaks here and there. If the artist gave me a couple of options, I'll specify which appeals to me most.

And then they'll come back with a more polished, but usually still not entirely finished, piece for my approval. Here, you can see this looks almost finished, but we're doing little pops of color in every piece in this book, and she hasn't included it yet. Her suggestion was to make the dog's pee bright yellow, which I approved, so that's what the finished piece will have.

We are still on track to fulfill this project early next year, as promised during the campaign!