Hi all,

With Devil's Due off to the layout artist, I've been able to dig back into my own layout work and art for Fear of a Daily Planet.

Since most spreads are styled as several layers of paper, I'm finding that only having black and white to work with while trying to both vary the paper backgrounds and keep the text easily legible is certainly a challenge. I also have the privilege of seeing the work in progress of the Straight Arrows module, by Ryan at RAC Computing, which deploys a similar material-driven, layered collage approach with, honestly, a lot more finesse and control. It's a bit intimidating! But Ryan is using actual collages he makes himself and then photographs to become the page backgrounds, whereas my setup requires me to work solely digitally with licensable and public domain files.

But I'll manage! I've been able to finish all of the art, which feels like a big milestone, although there are a couple pieces I might redo to see if I can improve on them.

Around 70% of the spreads have their layouts finished, and when it's done, I'll have to review the print proofs very closely to judge the readability of each section and make adjustments. Making the hyperlinks for the digital PDF will also take some time.

But here are a few samples to hold you over: art of a Ward cultist, a redacted version of the d100 I Read the Print spread, and slightly updated cover art.

I appreciate the support my backers and others in the community showed with my weather-related setback. Hoping there won't be any more bumps like that lying in wait for this project, but given the general state of things right now, I can only look so far ahead.

Thanks,
Jordan

Well, unfortunately, after getting a bit of layout work done, I have another quick update about a setback. We were juuust clipped by the tornado that moved through St. Louis a bit over a week ago. An already troubled city is going to have ​a rough, costly road ahead. We are very lucky to be in a neighborhood that only took a little damage, but a significant amount of that damage was a few large trees coming down from our neighbor's yard, knocking down a utility pole, transformer, and lines in our lot, and smashing the back of our car.

It took days to get our car out, thanks to the help of a generous co-tenant and his chainsaw, and it took a week to get power back, thanks to the dedicated work of the numerous power company contractors. We're still without internet service. I was able to keep from falling too far behind on client editing work with the help of slow library internet on days we could get out, but I didn't have my desktop computer to do any more layout work with. And of course, this hit right before the weekend I was gonna use to wrap up Devil's Due editing.

However, the power was recently restored, and we've been loaned some wi-fi by a neighbor. So, I'm slowly starting to get up and running again while we wait on the insurance assessor to tell us if our car is totaled or not. I'm hopeful things will be back on track soon!

I appreciate your understanding,
Jordan

Hello everyone,

Not a whole lot to update you on for this month as, expectedly, I've been working heavily on the beast of a book that is Devil's Due, and unexpectedly, I've been dealing with the uncertainty of whether the industry I work in is going to collapse due to government tariffs and the stress of whether friends and loved ones will have their visas and green cards revoked without cause. I'm sure most of you understand.

My partner and I have also both been sick for this past week, which slowed things to a halt for a bit. But I'm on the mend and making good progress through the Devil's Due editing. So, I'll be able to get back to the layout work on Fear of a Daily Planet soon.

The next month will probably be full of fixing lots of little issues like this: When you're adding 40+ distressed paper textures to a book as backgrounds, you get plenty of small things to fix, like blemish marks randomly obscuring the text in front of it.

A simple fix, but a tedious one to do over and over and over...

In response to my last update and my polling of other Mothership wardens, there's definitely a strong preference for the "inked" version of the location maps. As a result, I'll be moving forward with that style to ensure as much clarity as possible.

Thanks again,
Jordan

Hi everyone,

I'll try to maintain monthly project updates so you can keep tabs on Fear of a Daily Planet until you receive your copy.

I've finally got some art for the map of the colony and the maps of the 10 locations, which of course required some reordering and adjusting. All maps use a fairly simple typography-based layout to look a bit in-universe. Here's a bit of the colony map as a teaser:

The location map art uses dashes and bars for walls, slashes for doors, dots for windows, and a couple other stamp-like icons.

I am, however, considering further inking the walls of the location maps a bit to help them stand out more clearly, and I'm curious which version you all would find easier to use. I'll be checking with other wardens to get more input, but feel free to comment below on which you'd prefer, not inked or inked:

I'm continuing to fill in other missing art and implement the layout design. I'm trying to make the background of each spread into a unique collection of paper textures, and layout and graphic design are probably my least developed indie publishing skills. So that takes some time to implement, as this is the first I've attempted this kind of approach. With the layout as tight as it is, the project's at that stage where even small adjustments often require a lot of rejiggering or trimming to make sure everything still fits.

I've got a bit of involved client work currently (editing the upcoming board game World Order), and the editing for Devil's Due is really gonna ramp up soon. So progress before the next update will probably be slow, but after that, I'll have more time to dig into this and try to get it ready for test-print proofs.

Thank you all for your support,
Jordan

With the close of the campaign, I just wanted to send another heartfelt thank you to everyone for supporting Fear of a Daily Planet. Reaching 500% of my funding goal was far beyond my expectations for my second Zine Month project, and it will ensure I can order a sizable first print run when the time comes.

I'll try to get the pre-order store open as soon as possible, in case anyone missed out. If you're interested in wholesale orders of 5 copies or more intended for resale, please email me.

There's still a good bit of art and layout work to do, which I'll continue as I copyedit Devil's Due and playtest. Subscribers to my mailing list can now get an early, text-only playtest version of Fear of a Daily Planet. As stated in the campaign, the expected release window is Q3 this year.

With appreciation,

Jordan
ATypicalFaux.com