I've decided to produce the "CD"s in two popular formats: both 3.5" and 5.25" floppy disks! These will be using a specially designed image format. An example would be "Skunkworks_1_Cover.jmh". The floppies themselves will only cost a dollar, but the software for interpreting the special formats will cost $599.99. This software will work on the popular Amiga, Commodore-64, Vic-20 and all Atari home computer systems. If you don't happen to have such a system, don't worry! For only $1,000 more, I can send you a 133 MHz desktop system with outdated hardware, and include the special software you'll need to view the images. Please note: these systems do not come with floppy drives. Those must be purchased separately.
Just kidding. ;P Now onto the real message...
I figured it'd be easier to just answer them all at one time, instead of having 20 message replies.
Q) "Will the CDs be a limited run?"
A) No. I will continue to produce the CDs as long as the supplies, and format, are available.
Q) "What kind of background info will there be?"
A) I'm listing real-life background information for each CD. This is similar to what I'm doing with the alternate Skunkworks site (same site, but one is fantasy-based, while the other is real-life based). Information would likely include inspirations for pictures, or why certain folios even got drawn in the first place!
Q) "Why don't you put them all on one DVD instead of 3 different CDs?"
A) There are two answers to this. Firstly, I broke the collection into 3 distinct groups so people could buy what they want. Not everyone would want all the prints; they may only be interested in the Skunkworks folios. No sense in buying 500+ images if you're only interested in 150 of them! So this format will allow folks to buy the group that catches their fancy. This is why one CD has all the Skunkworks folios, another has all the other folios, and the third one has all the prints.
Secondly, I'm putting them all on CDs because I do not have a DVD burner. In fact, I had to go out and buy a lot of stuff in order to make these things, so that's just the format we'll have to go with, I reckon. Which leads us to the next question...
Q) "How much are these going to cost?"
A) I discussed this with a few other folks, as well as Ed Zolna, and the consensus seems to be that thirty bucks would be a good price. Let's face it, for 25 dollars, you get one hardcopy folio. For 5 dollars more, you can get 10 more folios, plus a shitload of extra pictures. And you won't even have to scan them into your computer!
Bear in mind, that is the retail price. Since I wholesale them to Ed, I get about half that amount. Factor in the cost of production and supplies, and it doesn't come out to a whole lot.
Q) "Thirty bucks is a lot. I was only willing to pay ten, maybe fifteen dollars. Why so much?"
A) Mostly because I had to buy a bunch of stuff in order to make them. These items include: CDs, cases, labels, label-making software, a new printer for making those labels, a new CD burner, and another scanner.
Normally, I would purchase things for use in the furry genre with funds made from the furry genre. But since I haven't had any new works come out lately, and piracy continues to run unhampered, there wasn't much money available to buy these things with. Luckily, I have my mainstream artwork income to fall back on, and that is precisely what paid for all this stuff. However, I now need to start putting that money back into the mainstream artwork cash drawer. It's kinda like borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. Or maybe that was Ringo. I can't remember.
I am not factoring in the time it takes to scan all this stuff in, or the time it takes to assemble the CD itself. In fact, I don't think I've EVER factored in my time on any of my anthro work. Which is kinda funny, if you think about it. I usually charge (and get) 25-30 dollars an hour for custom mainstream stuff. But then again, I don't enjoy drawing mainstream stuff as much as anthropomorphic stuff.
Q) "Are there going to be multiple formats or sizes? What about wallpapers?"
A) I'm scanning all the images in at 150 dpi. That should be ;arge enough to fill up most monitor screens, and still require a scroll bar. Since monitor resolution is only 72 dpi, and you only need an image to be 144 dpi to print (I used to work in graphics, so I KNOW you don't always need 1200 dpi to have a good picture), I figured 150 would be a good size. Heck, the cover of Skunkworks 1 is almost 1 MB in size!
I am saving the images as .jpg files, and at the maximum quality level. I'm sure if they get passed around 50 times on imageboards and get saved and re-saved each time, there's going to be some deterioration. But the images on the CD look really good and clean. I've adjusted colors and levels as best I could to mimic the hard copy, but sometimes even those efforts won't get the colors spot-on. And let's face it, even the hard copy prints pale when compared to the originals. Subtle shadows, teztures or blends often get lost in the printing or scanning process, no matter how many times you try to tweak it. But so far, everything's looking really nice.
There may be some wallpaper-type images on the Skunkworks collection, but only because those pictures were designed for use as wallpapers (they were actually some images Des drew of the skunks, individually, several years ago. They were originally used on each of my four towers). I'm sure creative types could probably turn some of the images into wallpapers, though. Since there are different screen saizes and such, I decided not to do something like wallpapers. Too gimmicky.
Hope this answers your questions! If not, well, ask your question, man!
--JMH
Received on Sun Oct 18 2009 - 20:05:19 CDT