New Mecha Art Book Coming 2010!

Hi everyone! I am excited to announce that I will be publishing a new art book this year. The book will feature dozens of mecha designs that I have created over the last 3 years as well as new designs and some awesome tutorials about conceiving and drawing giant robots.

Here are some basic specs...
- the book will be full color!
- size will be either 8 x 10 or 8.5 x 11
- 96 pages
- probably hard cover, but I'm waiting for a few printing quotes before I decide
- price will probably be $24.95

There are many hurdles to publishing a book, no matter how small the print run or insignificant the book. I have been doing my research and gathering price quotes so I will know exactly how big the book will be (size and pages) and exactly how much money is needed. My wife is my partner in all things so before I could 100% commit to doing this book I had to make sure she was on board. This weekend I got her blessing to proceed! The main issue was the money... as a freelancer I never know for sure when I will get paid next so My wife and I have to be very careful with our finances and this book is going to cost us thousands of dollars.

I will have the book printed in China and shipped over to the USA. The pricing was about 40% less on average from Chinese printers compared to American printers. I really wanted to keep the printing in the USA to help with the recession but that equates to thousands of dollars more for the printing and I simply couldn't afford to do the project if I had to use a domestic printer. I am both happy and sad about this.

So, I have about 6 weeks to finish the book and get it to the printer if I want to have the final product in hand for the New York Anime Con this October. I have started the layout using Adobe InDesign. I have never used InDesign before so I pot a subscription to Lynda.com and have watched about 8 hours of tutorial videos and they have been essential to my progress. Thanks to those tutorials I am really making a quality book layout and I am confident that this book is going to be AWESOME!

I have the extremely good fortune of working with kind and generous people who are willing to let me fill the book with designs I created for them. I am still awaiting permission from two of my clients , but 3 clients have already said yes. I have a bunch of mechs to use... so many that they won't all fit in the book along with the tutorials. I'll also be drawing several new mechs to keep it fresh! Since I only have 6 weeks I really need to get my butt in gear!

I will set up a pre-order system once the book is ready for the printers. I don't want to jump the gun in case anything goes wrong. Pre-orders will help with the initial financial burden and your support is appreciated.

If you are interested in distributing the book in your area (comic stores, gaming stores, etc...) then please contact me. Discounts are available for bulk purchases. All countries welcome.

Things are about to get crazy as I rush to meet the printing deadline. Please wish me luck!