Ugh. It’s been a while since I’ve posted. Sorry, all. It’s been a very long second half of 2011, between buying and selling a house, moving, and then moving in with my parents for the past 3 months to help with medical issues. Anyway, in between the freelance work and all that other stuff, I’m still working on getting the new graphic novel printed.

Along those lines, I have a random question for anyone planning to buy the RUNNERS: “The Big Snow Job” graphic novel: do you generally buy softcover trade paperbacks or hardcover editions? Just trying to figure out if I want to offer hardcover options, maybe in a much more limited quantity. And for any self-publishers out there, if you have worked with any graphic novel printers that you’d like to recommend, I’d love to hear about it.

Thanks everyone, and I’ll have more book updates soon…

And the last sketchbook page for now…

Here are a few more concept sketches for the interior of the Khoruysa Brimia, most notably the lounge sitting area of the main commons room, as well as the opposite side of the room, the door and window into the galley next to the dining table.

I also redesigned the cockpit chairs for this story arc, since the chairs in Bad Goods were a bit clunky and had too much detail to draw over and over again. As it turns out, these new cockpit chairs are also a bit too complicated, so I may end up doing another simplifying pass to make them more “drawing friendly.”

Look for them in Arc 3!

Howdy all and thanks for tuning in to Runners: The Big Snow Job! As you all know, arc 2 is now over. Sadly, my plans have not proceeded as I expected many months ago, and I have not been able to get ahead on the next arc, so unfortunately, there will be a bit of a hiatus here at runnersuniverse.com.

Life has been very busy recently with increasing amounts of freelance work, which I am extremely thankful for as it helps pay the bills and is also very fun work in its own right. But obviously, it limits the amount of time I can spend on Runners, which is the unfortunate but inevitable trade-off. Hopefully I can continue to find a way to make both work in the future without too much loss of sleep!

For the above reasons, the graphic novel collection is also being delayed a bit. My hope was to have an Artist Alley table for New York Comic-Con this October and unveil the book there, but alas, I did not make the table cut this year. Combined with the freelance work and a good chunk of time spent this summer and fall moving to a new house, unfortunately the time has not been there for me to put together the book. My new goal is to have it ready for sometime early next year, which is certainly not ideal, but probably the most realistic option given my current schedule. I apologize profusely for making you all wait, but I guess that’s the bane of a one-man operation: limited time to get everything done.

I hope you all will bear with me and I really appreciate your patience while I get the graphic novel together and figure out the next arc for Runners. Hopefully next year I can hit the convention circuit in a major way with the new book!

In the meantime, while there will not be any new story content here at runnersuniverse.com immediately, I do plan to add updates every now and then on new story progress and miscellaneous universe database material, so please keep checking back.

To stay in the loop on bigger announcements, please sign up for my email newsletter to the right as that will be the best way to find out about the graphic novel aside from reading updates here. And also, if you’d like to order the first graphic novel while you wait, any support of the series would be greatly appreciated. Along those lines, I’ve been toying with the idea of trying to fund part of the new book’s printing costs through Kickstarter. If any readers have thoughts on that, I’d love to hear them!

So that’s it for now. Thanks again, everybody, for your continued support of the series, and I look forward to bringing you the Snow Job graphic novel soon!

Two more Bonus sketchbook pages to go!

Here we have a few concept sketches for the interior of the Khoruysa Brimia. I did a few Bonus pages a while back about the Art Tweaks I did to the ship interior. Basically, the original designs were a bit too plain and visually uninteresting. They also didn’t have much of a sci-fi feel to them. So I went back and did a second pass on the interiors, trying to come up with something better, while still being mindful of not making it overly complicated and detailed, since I knew I’d be drawing it repeatedly going forward.

One thing you’ll notice is the recurring theme of the elongated oval shape, which is basically a rectangle with rounded ends. I wanted that shape throughout the interior of the Brimia as a visual callback to the ship’s exterior, where the main part of the ship, the cargo hold, has the same shape.

Here I went back and did another pass on the Bocce farm house to figure out something that fit with the environment a bit more. Sticking with the same general design aesthetic, I based the new version on a clay structure instead of sheets of corrugated metal at its base. I also decided on terra cotta style roof tiling since that seemed like something more earthen that could potentially be created on site. The other significant change was that I made the central room of the house square in shape, since I found the previous circular shape to be too similar to the Ulon Dosi village huts. Here’s the revised panel…