Currently throwing stuff together for our booth at MoCCA, so no time for a detailed post, but I do have two big news items to share:
Please go check out the Kickstarter page and help out if you can. Backers can choose from a bunch of cool rewards, including the option to get their hands on Issue #2 months before everyone else!
Got a surprise knock on my door from the mailman this morning, with a package for me. I wasn’t expecting anything, but got very excited when I saw “Jamie Noguchi” (the name of our amazing Issue #1 cover artist) on the return address. Could this be… yes! Cuuuute!
Puppy Cow! It’s a cute little puppy, with somewhat-unsettling cow udders. Puppy Cow definitely is, in Jamie’s own words, “really adorable, and kind of horrifying, all at the same time.”
I mean, look at this. Doesn’t this just make you go “awwwww,” and then “euuugghhh,” but probably then “awwwww” again?
Right now they’ve only gone out to Jamie’s Kickstarter backers (and, I believe, people who saw Jamie at Katsucon). Anyone else who wants to give one of these cute/creepy little guys a home should keep their eyes on the Puppy Cow Facebook page to find out when they’ll be available for sale online.
Puppy Cow is a superb example of what I love about Kickstarter. Last fall Jamie’s Kickstarter campaign raised over $4,800, which allowed him to take his wonderfully original–yet incredibly quirky and offbeat–idea, and turn it into an actual, high-quality, physical product.
And as guilty as I feel about the delay in getting our own Kickstarter rewards out the door, I’m reminded of how much fun it is to get something really cool in the mail, long after you’ve forgotten that you paid for it, which is another thing I love about Kickstarter.
Honestly, though, I’m also a bit embarrassed that, while Jamie’s funding campaign ended a few weeks after ours, he’s managed to get all his rewards out before us, despite having to get his product prototyped and manufactured halfway across the world! Ours are on their way, we swear! (Latest news on that front: Daniel has signed and shipped the comics to Oliver, who should be receiving them early this week. Hopefully we’ll have them out the door again to our backers by the end of the week.) In any case, Issue #2 should be mostly done by the time our next Kickstarter campaign closes, so we’ll definitely have faster turn-around on the rewards next time!
Oliver came up to New York last weekend and we shot a bunch of footage for the next Kickstarter video. We’ll be launching the campaign to help pay for Issue #2 as soon as the video is edited and all of the Issue #1 rewards get sent out. We’ve got some really fun new rewards planned, so stay tuned to find out how you can help.
We also worked up a short 6-page story that we’ll probably be submitting to comics anthologies once we get it illustrated. It’s an entertaining little story, unrelated to First Law, and should be a fun side-project while Issue #2 production rolls along. More details to come.
Also, as much as I worry about this blog ending up filled with YouTube videos from scary video-games, this one is hilarious; I think I made Oliver watch it four or five times while he was here.
The game being played is Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and yes it really is that scary. I played through it last week and it might have made me pee myself, just a little.
In case any of our Kickstarter backers are following the blog, but aren’t (for whatever reason) getting the updates from Kickstarter, here’s what’s going on with the rewards for Issue 1, and some plans for the upcoming Issue 2 campaign:
Hey folks. Just wanted to let you all know that all of the non-autographed copies of Issue #1 got sent out last week. If you are in the “WERNER HEISENBERG” tier of backers, and haven’t gotten your copy in the mail by the end of the week, it’s probably either because:
A) You live in Belgium, and it’ll take a little longer for your copy to get there
-or-
B) You never gave us your address!
If you haven’t filled out the info-request with your address, GO DO IT, so we can send you your reward! And if you don’t fit into either A or B, but your copy still hasn’t shown up by the end of the week, let us know and we’ll try to figure out what went wrong.
Backers in tiers above “WERNER HEISENBERG” still have a little longer to wait, unfortunately. Your comics have been signed by Mike in NYC, and are now en route to Daniel in Montana. After he signs them they’ll make the journey back east to DC to get signed by Oliver, who’ll be mailing out the rest of the rewards. Your comic will not only be signed by all three creators, it will also be extremely well traveled!
In all seriousness, we’re very sorry that this is all taking as long as it has, and we really appreciate everyone’s patience.
In other news, we’ve sent both script and contract for Issue #2 to Daniel, so production on the second issue should be starting up very soon! On top of that, Oliver’s already knocked out a rough draft of the issue #3 script, so there should be a lot less downtime between #2 and #3.
Comic production can get pretty expensive, so stay tuned to Kickstarter, where we’ll likely be starting a campaign to fund Issue #2 very soon. (We probably would have done so already, but it feels like bad form to start a second campaign before all the rewards go out for the first.) The Kickstarter community has been just awesome; we really hope you’ve enjoyed First Law so far, and will be back to support more of the story. We also hope you haven’t been too put off by our delays in getting the rewards out. This has been a learning experience for us, and we can definitely do better next time!
We’ve also got some cool new ideas for rewards for Issue #2, such as swanky “Noreon Labs” branded mad-science lab coats like the ones we were sporting at New York Comic Con (which you can see here).
As always, we’d love your feedback. If you have any neat ideas for Issue #2 rewards, want to tell us your thoughts on the comic, or just want to trade chili recipes, you can reach us via Kickstarter message, email, comment on our blog, or Facebook.
Hey folks. Sorry for the long silence. Got so busy over the holidays and then with the new semester of grad school that I forgot I had a blog to update! Anyways, we may have been quiet but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been hard at work. Here’s what’s new at the First Law of Mad Science laboratories:
A few quick updates:
I just sent an update to Kickstarter backers with a link to download the Issue #1 PDF. Also emailed everyone who paid the extra fifty cents at New York Comic Con for a PDF of the finished comic. That email list was hand-scrawled, and nobody has great handwriting at a convention with their hands full of comics, so I’m sure some of the addresses were entered incorrectly. If you were expecting an email and didn’t get one, let us know. If your email address is even remotely similar to one on our list, we’ll send you the PDF.
I also sent the print order to ComiXpress this morning. We’re getting a handful of copies rushed so that we can send them out to publishers ASAP. The rest of the copies, which we’ll be sending out to Kickstarter backers, will be here in about four weeks. Since we rushed the first order, though, the book should be available for sale on the ComiXpress site very soon; probably by the end of the week. We will keep you posted!
Oh, and on top of everything that’s going on with Issue #1, Oliver and I are currently working on the script for Issue #2. At the moment we’ve got a very rough first draft that needs quite a bit of polish. It’s slow going, though; we’re both students and are in the middle of the end-of-semester crunch. Hopefully we’ll get Daniel and Jeff working on the book soon!
New York Comic Con was pretty amazing. To all the new folks visiting this site after discovering us at the convention: welcome! If you picked up the comic, drop us a line (by leaving a comment below, or via email) and let us know what you thought! Or—if you didn’t get a copy of the NYCC edition this weekend—check out the preview pages and stay tuned to this blog: we’ll update with info on ordering issue #1 as soon as it’s finished.
We’ll also be posting our thoughts, photos, and videos from our experience at the convention, as soon as we’ve had a chance to decompress and sort through everything. In the meantime, check out this awesome bit of technology I found via Kickstarter. Old-school L.A. graffiti artist TEMPT1 suffers from Lou Gehrig’s Disease, which has left him paralyzed. Now with the help of the EyeWriter system, he can paint by simply moving his eyes. (Video and thoughts under the jump.)
We shot a lot of footage for our Kickstarter pitch video (see video here) and of course, most of it was us messing around and not directly talking about First Law. That’s not to say there wasn’t comedic gold in there. Gold I tells ya!
Hey, what do you know? We’ve got a website!
I’m learning to use WordPress as I go, so please forgive a bit of roughness as we get things sorted out. In the next few days, expect to see this place start looking a little snazzier and a bit less haphazardly-thrown-together. We’ll also be posting a seven-page teaser from Issue #1, as soon as I figure out the best way to post it, so stay tuned!
In the meantime, here’s a short list of the other places you can find us on the web:
Thanks for dropping by! Stay tuned; we’ve got more just around the corner!