CKS News January 20, 2014

First off, I hope everyone had a happy New Years and a productive start to 2014.


If you've been following the CKS facebook, you know already that the last part of 2013 was rough to say the least for the studio. I'd like to leave all of that in 2013 so I'm not going to go on about it here. What I'd like to do is fill everyone in on my plans for 2014. Lack of resources, financial stress, and my new schedule are forcing some major changes.


The Original Mission of CKS
From it's inception, Charisma Kills Studios was created to be a multimedia studio and a vehicle for the collective works of creative individuals. At the time webcomics were all I knew, and attempts to work with other artist and writers resulted in marginal to no success.


2014: The Year We Get Back on Track
I've made it my goal for 2014 to be the year that I realize my initial vision for the studio, and focus efforts on making it viable. I have established relationships with a few artist and writers that have expressed interest and production has already started on several projects. First, Janette Mapp. Janette is bringing her talents as artist on a graphic novel trilogy. It's based on plots I developed many years ago that we have merged into a single, self contained, story. I'm very excited about this project and happy with the progress that we've made on it. I'll give more info on it once enough material for a proper copyright has been created and the paper work filed.


Multimedia Initiative
I start taking classes in New Media and Animation next week. This will help me develop the skill sets I need to realize my goal. I've also entered CKS into a partnership with Fire Storm Studios. Fire Storm is operated by a long time friend of mine, Rusty Gregoire. His skill and studio's multimedia resources exceed mine. We've already started with some voice work on audio dramas.


In addition to this, I've been speaking with an associate in Norway, Marius Hjelseth, to produce transmedia projects based on his webcomic “October 20^th”. I'm super excited about this and we've already made some initial progress on it as well.


There have also be some preliminary talks with and friend of mine, Jaimie Callender, who operates Broke Dick Media. Jaimie is extraordinarily talented in a diverse range of artistic mediums. While no concrete plans have been made, a mutual interest on partnering on multimedia projects has been established.


CKS Webcomics
I simply cannot continue producing 3 webcomics. There's just not enough time and resources. Juggling the webcomics prior to my new schedule was hard enough. Now, it's going to be practically impossible. CKS will still produce the C.O.G. webcomic; however, Sweet Dreams are Made of Worms and Apocalypse Pizza will continue as multimedia projects as well as digital and print comics that will be scheduled as time permits.

The Future of Charisma Kills Studios?

The Future of Charisma Kills Studios?


As I mention in a CKS facebook post, I have been struggling to keep all of the various projects under control. Unfortunately, I seem to have stretched myself beyond what I can produce. I've taken some time to think of a way to rein everything in. I think I have it. This will change the work flow of the studio and current projects. So, here is what I have come up with.


Webcomics
C.O.G. Comics:( www.cogcomics.thecomicseries.com ) Hopefully this new workflow will allow me to get back on schedule with it. Ideally, the C.O.G. Webcomic is scheduled to be updated once a week, every Friday. Because of everything else that has been going on, this became a challenge. I expect that the new system will allow for it to return to its normal schedule; however, this may take a week or two. One thing that will likely change is the art style. I'll try and make these changes gradual. My personal art style has been developing. Kind of like playing guitar, style and “voice” evolves. I've been trying to keep the C.O.G. Art style the same, but doing so is starting to become a hinderance.


Sweet Dreams are Made of Worms and CKS Chronicles:
SDMW www.sweetdreamsaremadeofworms.thecomicseries.com
CKS Chronicles www.ckscronicles.thecomicseries.com
Since CKS Chronicles is basically telling stories that foreshadow events in SDMW Book 2, I'm canceling CKS Chronicles and moving the Mind Shock story to the SDMW webcomic. This helps in two ways. First, it gives me one less comic to worry with. Second, it provides new material for SDMW which gets over 10 times the amount of traffic that CKS Chronicles gets. The next change here will be color. I swore that SDMW would always be black and white. It has always been a story that dealt with psychology, sociology, and the human condition. Well, color can be a major factor in these subjects. The fact that Ego has two different color eyes and Psychocide is green with purple polka dots are totally lost on the readers. I have 7 pages of Mind Shock already penciled. They just need to be inked and colored. Once I have at least 4 pages of it totally complete, I'll load them into the buffer. That will give me time to work on more. These pages were drawn about a year ago. And done on paper that does not take kindly to ink. I'm not going to mess with them other than add color. After those seven pages, there will be a distinct change in art style and ink.


Apocalypse Pizza: ( www.apocalypsepizza.thecomicseries.com )I'm at a loss with this one. Statistically, it remains the most popular of the webcomics. Even though it has only been updated 5 times in over two years, it gets almost the same amount of hits and more return visitor traffic as SDMW. I can't ignore those numbers, but I don't have time to do regular updates for it. I have two more updates that need to be colored. I'll post them as time allows. Hopefully I'll have a plan for it by the time I run out of material.


Printed Comics
All plans to produce print comics have been put on hold. There are several reasons for this, but for the sake of my own sanity, I'm not going to go into them. I will say, take an hour or two of your time and research the future of comics and Diamond Comics Distributors. Successful self publishing is a shot in the dark. In addition to this, I spoke with a publisher at Contraflow 3 that showed interest in printing one of my comics. If this goes through, I will not have time to dedicate to self publishing. I'll know more about this towards the end of November.


Charisma Kills Radio
I have already invested too much time and money into this project to cast it aside. It only takes an hour or two a week. Plus I have over 20 guest lined up and have started recording episodes. I'm just waiting for approval from media syndication.


In other news, I'm pulling a Rodney Dangerfield. I'm going back to school! I already have an associates in applied sciences, but I need more. So, starting January, I will be enrolled at Southeastern going for my bachelors degree in Art with the concentration of New Media and Animation.
http://www.southeastern.edu/acad_research/depts/vis_art/areas/new_media/


SELU has the best program of this kind in the state. http://www.southeastern.edu/news_media/news_releases/2013/july/new_media.html
I plan to pursue this full time. So, this will be a game changer for the studio. Come January, I'll have to evaluated and prioritize again. I don't know how much time I'll have to dedicate to studio projects.


And that's the News! I'm open to any comments, suggestions, and advice on anything I've mentioned. If you have anything to add, I'd love to hear it.
-Jessie W Craig

24 Hour Comic Day: The Aftermath

If you've been following me on any of the CKS social outlets, you know we participated in 24 Hour Comic Day at Wyatt's Comics and Cards in Hammond La. Here's how it went!

We stopped in at Wyatt's earlier on the 4th to bring in supplies and such. As usually, the shop was busy and Wyatt was on the move juggling the shop phone, his phone, the register, customer service, and I'm sure forgetting his lunch...again lol. Brain, Wyatt's version of Commander Riker, took the day off so he could man the shop overnight.

After dropping off drinks, snacks, and a case of coffee, I headed back to the studio. Sherri crashed out for a bit while Alex and I packed everything up. I then grabbed a few hours of sleep myself. We got up around 10PM and headed out for some food followed by a quick stop at the cafe, then off to Wyatt's

We arrived about 45mins before midnight. The Friday night Magic tournament was still going on. As I started in on my Super Sonic with cheese, my former sous chef, Rudy, from Worlds End Cafe made a cameo appearance. Not to join the team, but drop off his key to the cafe and run off to do some midnight fishing. Thanks Rudy! He would stop in much later on Saturday after sleeping to make sure I knew how behind I was on the comic... Thanks again, man!

At midnight, we hopped to it. We decided on a horror comic. The idea come from an old test play session of the CK Game Studios "wyrd RPG" that took place at Mobicon in Alabama years ago. Between me, Sherri, Derrick, and a little help from Alex, we started in on the characters and translating a 7 hour game session into a 24 page comic (mistake). I took the time to record a brief episode of CK Radio on location. We posted it on the CKS tumblr page. You can listen to it here.

                                                             "CK Radio Podcast  Logo"

Sherri, Derrick, and Alex. And yep. There's Mark Rhodes in the foreground grinding away at his comic.

Once our story was plotted out, I began on the pencils. I was still grossly underestimating the challenge of 24 Hour Comic Day.
                                                     "I had no idea what I was in for!"

After sketching out a few pages, I decided to stretch my legs and visit (Spy *cough*) on Mark and Brian.

                               "Fellow comic creator and Webcomic Underdog ,Mark Rhodes."

       "Brain, when asked how he was holding up and if he was enjoying working all night long."

"Brain, when asked how he REALLY felt... nah, Brain and Wyatt are great guys. I don't think you could ask for a more friendly and knowledgeable staff for a comic and game shop." 

With play time over, it was time to get serious. 

Hours went by and the scope of this project started to come to realization. I've never actually sat down and drew for 24 hours straight. I was quite shocked when it came time to start inking and I looked out of the window and saw sunlight creeping in. I was also starting to feel the physical effects: dry eyes, sore back, cramping legs, fuzzy perception, etc. 

Page one inked. It's a bit hard to make out at the angle, but I'll post it again on the Charisma Kills Studios face book later. For those that have read my web comic "Sweet Dreams are Made of Worms", you may recognize Ms. Tamyra Christmas, Dr. Klein's assistant.

Here's a look at some of Mark's stuff. He was a machine! Unfortunately, the stress of working his day job and coming to participate got to him and he had to bail out early. But Bravo to you Mark for coming and giving your all! Good stuff. I think he will be posting it on his webcomic site.

As for me... I lasted until around 8:30PM with about 12 pages to go. I had nothing left. My vision was blurry, slurred speech, fire in my lower back, and my hand went numb. I literally could not hold the pens anymore. But! I gave it all I had. While I didn't finish, I regret nothing and will be the first in line for next year! I looked back on the event and see several things I could have done and many things I should not have done. I'll discuss this and more on the next episode of Charisma Kills Radio.

I want to thank Wyatt and Brian for hosting the event and I hope we can do it again at the shop next year!

It's currently 4:11AM and I need to get to bed. I leave you with this image of the studio, sans me, and the video below. Goodnight!

Video: Me partially delusional and Mark so tired that the words come out of his mouth before his lips move! Or maybe it's just a bad recording on my part lol.

Whats the deal with Apocalypse Pizza?

Since AP's inception, around 2005, I've had an very specific idea for the way I wanted the world and themes Mad Dog encounters to be. As I've said before, it was initially going to be a "beer and pretzel" style table top role playing game. A lot of the material was written, but assumed to be lost in the fire. It wasn't until just recently, that a friend of mine (Say hello, Billy.), and test player for the game, emailed me an electronic copy of the first draft of the book. I had totally forgotten he had this!

Once I had gotten into making comics, I decided to bring Mad Dog and his world to life in a web comic. In the years between the fire and the rediscovery of the game book, I had added a few more ideas to the concept and developed an idea for making AP more than just a web comic. About the time I was writing up page 5 is when that fantastic email came in.

After reading over the game book for the first time in almost a decade, I had to take a step back and examining the project. Armed with the old, the new, and a vision, I decided to just put it on hold...yet again. It was a very difficult decision. But, I couldn't justify the time and resources to continue with it as is since it was going to get a reboot anyway. 

Now that I have access to everything i need. And  a wealth of information from the world building process of both the game and comic, The development of the new Apocalypse Pizza project has started! I'll keep you posted.
-Jessie

SDMW, Apocalypse Pizza, and web Comics Update News.

As I mentioned in the last news update, the closure of the cafe will be eating up a lot of my time this month. I want to keep the comics updating on Fridays, but I may have to make a temporary change to Sunday or Monday until the cafe affairs have been dealt with.

SWMW: I have plans to get the Companion updated with two pages by the end of next week. Also, some of you may have notice some minor changes in Year of the Rabbit. We are cleaning it up, correcting errors, and image quality. 

Apocalypse Pizza: It kills me to put in on full hiatus after just getting started, but the changes to it will require some time. So, to keep it active, I'm pulling the "Mad Dog's Armory" story from CKS Chronicles and putting it in as updates to the current Apocalypse Pizza comic. I hope to have at least One page of that posted by the end of next week. 

Thank you for your time,

-Jessie

New CKS Partnership

We have some very exciting news to announce. Charisma Kills Studios has partnered with the extremely talented Mrs. Mattie Rojas Kupper to add costuming to the studios product line's. Once all of the details have been worked out, costuming and cosplay fans will be able to purchase high quality, hand made, costumes, accessories, and props. Again, we are still working out the specifics, but here are some images of her designs that will be used for the "Steam Punk Genre" line.

Hopefully, everyone has seen the new web home for Charisma Kills Studios. Sherri was able to create my vision for the page almost exactly as I had designed. It was a major project and learning experience, especially with everything going on at the time. I'm very proud of it and her.  I feel that having everything under one roof (a hub so to speak.) makes the studio projects more accessible. We also have the CKS store function. At this time we are only selling prints, but stay tuned. Within the next few weeks we will be adding original art, ACEO original art cards and mini print editions, t-shirts and other items. Thats right, no zazzle, cafe press, or middle men. customers will be dealing directly with CKS which will allow for much better prices.  And now for the news!

Worlds End Cafe: We have closed the cafe. Economic pressure, rising fuel and food cost, and insane taxation in our area made the cafe no longer viable. We do thank all of he customers and those that followed us on the cafe's facebook (which is still up). It will be missed. This has a few effects on CKS,

First: This next month I will be busy with the processes involved with closing all all of the cafe's affairs. I will still try and update all of the comics on Fridays, even if it's just pin ups of guest strips fans or other web comic artist. The exceptions are:

          C.O.G. Comics and CKS Chronicles. These two comics will be updated no later than midnight on Fridays. 

          Apocalypse Pizza. I know I've been a bit tight lipped on this one. Mainly because I'm attempting something fairly ambitious with it. I'm not sure when it will be back up, but, I will post guest strips, pin-ups, and new concept materials for it to keep in alive. I'am am toying with the Idea of doing an e-comics atlas for it that will help set the stage when it returns. 

Second: Selling off the cafe's fixtures and equipment will give me the funds I need to update the studios primary equipment. The nightmare of dealing with the outdated systems has been causing major delays in multimedia and transmedia projects. Most importantly, the CK Radio project. 

Third: If you were and artist that had your work displayed in the cafe, and want it back, arrangements need to be made. But, I must say it's going to hurt returning Tedd Walley's. I'm quite fond of it, lol. 

Event News: I will be an artist guest at Contraflow three which is held in the New Orleans area. I will be giving panels, entering mixed media into the art show, running demos of CKS Game Studio projects, and donating the original Apocalypse Pizza page one to the charity Auction. I will be set up in the dealers area next to the C.O.G. (Yes the Consortium of Genius will be playing!) fan table and The Wyatt's Comics and cards booth. He's picked up a few cool items that Dr. Who fans will enjoy. If you are in the area, come in and say hello. 

-Jessie