UPDATE:

There seemed to be an issue with the compressed version of the PDF I linked earlier, so this new link to the book is uncompressed and seems to be working now. Sorry for any issues.


Hi folks. Since we last chatted about the book, I've been hard at work adding and rewriting and drawing and all the other things that go with making a really good graphic novel. We're up to over 100 pages now that I'm comfortable calling basically done, and I have the last third of the book plotted out and thumbed. 

In all honesty, this has been the hardest thing I've ever done artistically, and I definitely underestimated how much time it was going to take me to realistically get it made and out the door. And now, roughly a year later, the world is so different economically and who knows how the tariffs and whatnot are going to impact all of the printing and shipping of the physical books. So I've been thinking about it a lot.

The last thing I want to do is make any of the folks who have supported me annoyed with me, but I also think we might need to encourage some more support in case more economically turbulent things happen. So what I'd like to do is start releasing a page a week of this book as a webcomic to get some more eyeballs on it. Before that happens, I'm releasing everything I've done so far to you folks (Patreon supporters and Backerkit supporters) so you'll be more than a year ahead of the general public.

Folks who backed the project for physical rewards will still be getting those things, and even backers who only backed for digital rewards will still be getting higher quality files and access to the completed story way before webcomic readers. Hopefully this will help us bring in some new readers and we can do even more with this project than I initially intended, but for now my focus is still on finishing the book and getting it to my supporters. I am also attaching the current 100+ pages draft of the book to this post so you can see where we're at if you'd like. (Or not, I know some of you want to wait to be able to read the whole thing in it's entirety.)

I hope that all makes sense and doesn't rankle anyone. Of course, I welcome all feedback, questions and opinions here. Please reach out, either here or on socials or whatever's easiest for you if you have concerns.

Download the Draft

Sorry for the follow up email, but some folks were having issues with uncompressing the zipped version I sent out in the last update so here is a non-compressed copy of the PDF for you. Apologies again, please let me know if you have any issues with this one.

Link to Current Draft of The Unfamiliars

Hi folks. Been hard at work on The Unfamiliars, but I recently finished up a section I wanted to share. It's one of the most detailed pages I've done to date, and the finished piece is the image at the top of the page here. It's a prison for familiars and other criminals in the book and this full page image establishes the scale of the place.

My first crack at designing the interior of The Rook was this thumbnail, which worked as a placeholder while I was working out layouts but I knew I would need to come up with something showing a grander sort of scale when I came back to it.

There's no real perspective here, but you can see I had the idea of a bee-hive like, organic shaped thing. When I went back and sketched it again I really tried to force perspective more and made the cells smaller.

Ok, getting there. This definitely felt bigger. I kinda cheated a bit and made the thing like an x-ray vision into the building, or maybe peering in through an opening, looking down. The ropes help bringing your eyes to the right spots and with establishing some more perspective. I started to ink to get a feel for how I wanted the line weights.

Without getting too fiddly with the inks, I just wanted to lay down where the thickness needed to be. Those foreground outcrops are right, some of the other stuff is off still.

Next I started sketching out the inmates, and I ended up putting a few little easter eggs in there.

All told this thing took me several weeks to work out, which is crazy for me, since I tend to average a page every day or two, but I think it came out pretty cool and should make for a really nice full pager in the book!

While this was all going on, I also commissioned my friend Sid Moncrief to do a cover for the book and I have to say she absolutely nailed it. I am still fiddling with the graphic design but look at how cool this is!