You know, if I had known what I know now, there are several things I would have done differently on Swordmaster Odyssey. They say hindsight is 20/20, though, so I guess I shouldn’t beat myself up too bad about it. I figured I ought to write them down, though, so that I could remember them for next time. 🙂

#1 – Page Size
Instead of using the standard 6 5/8″ x 10 1/4″ American comic book paper size as a guide, I would have used a format more web-friendly. Since Vision Rider’s focus is internet distribution, I should have made each “page” wider than it is tall, to better fit a computer moniter. For the published version, we can make the book whatever size and ratio we want, so we could have stacked them, or just made the book wider to fit them.

#2 – Color
Doing the comic in black and white cuts out as much as 3 hours of work per page. That was the foremost thing on my mind when I made the call to go in that direction. Unfortunantly, while black and white looks just fine in print, it tends to be pretty boring on the screen, more so when you have a fairly colorful web site around it. 😉 Although it would mean less pages per week, looking back I think the trade-off would have been well worth it.

#3 – More Artwork
When it comes down to it, outside of the comic itself, there’s not a whole lot of artwork for Swordmaster Odyssey. That’s a real problem when trying to make ads, icons, and a pretty website. Thankfully, this one is an easier problem to fix, and I’ve been trying to devote some time to doing some nice promotional art.

A quick apology, the RSS feed for Swordmaster Odyssey had a minor error, so the same entry may have popped up multiple time for those of you who subscribe. The issue has been corrected.

Some time back I came to the conclusion that I really needed to do more color artwork (especially for Swordmaster Odyssey) that could be used for promotional purposes. I’ve been trying my best to do so, in part because everytime I ink or color something I get better at it, but also just because the company could really use it. XD

Now, I’ve noticed that almost everyone who sent a SMOdyssey survey in noted that they thought the comic needed color. So, out of curiosity and the need to generate more artwork, I took the time today to pick out a page and play “what if”. Here’s what came out:

You can click on it for a larger view.

It actually turned out pretty well for a test, I think. The drawback? It took about three hours to paint. Considering the pages already take two to four hours (or more) a pop, that’s pretty hefty. 🙁

No, I’m not making any of *those* kind of changes (although I never really cared whether Han shot first or not). However, after much work and a headache or two, all the pages that were tweaked for the digital download pack have been added to the Swordmaster Odyssey site, including the additional page that was added, and the new title page.

Of course, you can get the high-res versions of these pages, along with my rant commentary, in the download pack at the Vision Riders Store.

It occurs to me that I don’t really put any artwork up here… I really ought to do that, I suppose, so expect some sketchbook posts here and there from here on out.

Anyhow, we’re officially announcing the details for the Swordmaster Odyssey download pack:

Each chapter will come in a .zip file and will cost $1.49 to download from the Vision Riders Store, and will include high-resolution jpegs of each page, commentary, plus a ready-to-print pdf that you can run off at home, punch, and store in a three-ring binder.

Chapter 1 will be released September 18 (this Tuesday).
Chapter 2 will be released September 28.
Chapter 3 will be released in October.
Chapter 4 will be released in November.