Agent Maya in 2016

Okay, so I suppose I should've remembered to update the blog before New Year's Eve, but it will dovetail with a few things I want to mention. But first, some renders!

First, Issue Five is nearly complete! As usual for me, doing dialogue balloons is tedious work and I'm fighting the urge to procrastinate. I will persevere, though! Of course I'll update as soon as Issue Five is on sale.

Second, I'm working on a Season One collected graphic novel that I will release in print sometime in the first quarter of 2016. I've been looking forward to this for quite a while, as I decided not to go the expensive floppy route, as much as I wanted to. Details to come.

Third, I'm re-releasing Neptune's Deadliest Ring and Moons of Ice and Fire as a single trade sometime in the first half of the year, most likely to coincide with the Season One GN. Since the two stories are interstitial with the Season One issues, I felt it was finally time to dust them off and give them a shiny new cover, one that ties in with the comics completely. Not sure if I'll do any re-edits, but putting them together makes more sense, plus I can place a reading chronology inside.

Once these books are finally out of the gate, I'll be putting Agent Maya on hiatus for the year as I focus on a few other non-Maya projects I've been eager to tackle, which I'll post more about in the future. I have been writing scripts for Season Two in the past year, so when I do ramp up production I'll be ready to go.

Have a great 2016!

More To Come

Issue 5.5 Production Post Two

Issue 5.5 has taken a bit longer to put into production, but I have two pages rendered and several sets waiting. The big hurdle has been the framing scenes, involving many characters that can bog down the whole works just by sheer file size and rendering requirements. A month from now I plan on completing production and getting into post.

Then the big one awaits…Issue 5. If you've bought Issue 4, Maya and the Don of Venus (and if you haven't, head over there now!) then you have an inkling of the dread our characters face: the Mercury Tower. This last issue in the first season of Agent Maya will pit our heroine against her greatest threat yet—Yukyo Kopek and the tortured souls entombed inside that ghostly building….

Issue Four Production Post Seven

Here's the completed cover for Issue Four, "Maya and the Don of Venus".

The five-page special I mentioned last time is in prep right now—I have a few sets to throw around and some crowd people to place. Producing content while reusing (and altering) selected props, sets and characters is quite appealing, for not only do I save time but money, as well. And those two are the most important commodities of this whole deal.

All right, off to work.

Issue Four Production Post Four

Well I'm sneaking this in under the New Year's wire—two new teaser images for you! I've got about two-thirds of Issue Four in the can; now the big set piece needs to be setup and then rendered. It's taken me a bit longer to do this issue, as the holidays slowed me down due to the day job and a bit of software fatigue set in on me. I'm a bit disappointed in the looks of some renders I'm getting out of Daz Studio right now—hopefully the new iteration will please me a bit more.

Issue Three Production Post Two

Well, midway through 2014, and Issue Three is complete! I'm excited by how well it all came together; improving my handling of Daz Studio enabled me to utilize Photoshop less for postwork and more for compositing. That being said, I basically had two to three renders for each panel—and sometimes four or five—owing to the complexity I am putting into each issue now. When I began Issue One as a novice, I had no idea I would be producing such involved artwork by Issue Three!

Okay, enough blabbing, here's the goods—two full-page teasers:

ComiXology update: Five+ months and still no email...well I'll keep the production line chugging along.

Issue Three Production Post One

All right I'm back to post more production news—as the title says, I'm well into work on Issue Three. Currently I am working on better lighting and camera rendering, utilizing f-stops and focal distances to achieve the cinematic panels I have aspired to since this project began. Below are two teasers.

Still some ways to go but every render I do pleases me more...I'm finally achieving the look for Agent Maya I've had in my mind's eye for nearly a decade now! Obstacles are being overcome and each issue now is many times improved over the last. The story for Issue Three scratches the surface of the overarching mythology for Agent Maya, and just maybe a few questions will pop up to make you think what exactly is going on in the Solar System. I promised more thrills and exciting new vistas for each successive issue, and I'm ready to start delivering. Now I just have to bide my time until ComiXology approves Issue One—hopefully just another six weeks or so to go....

Issue Two Production Post—Ready For Liftoff

While I was away I finished Issue Two! I seem to be making a bad habit of forgetting to post every month as I had been, so forgive me for that. But work has been steady on the latest Maya adventure, leaving me just the cover to design and the interior credits, etc. to edit. Having put myself through the gauntlet of Issue One, much of the post-production and individual page editing for Issue Two has been quite easier, as I didn't have to recreate the wheel this time around.

And speaking of Issue One, Maya and the Outer Reaches, six weeks ago I uploaded to ComiXology the digital files for their submission process. The waiting period is lengthy, often a few months (and five months for one creator I came across online) so it will still be some time before I can announce it's on sale. I'm crossing my fingers that I receive that email soon!

And returning to Issue Two, I'm very pleased with the beta version; my reader over at Crow Greetings will be sure to give her very best critique. I'm happy to be well on the way to its release so soon before Issue One makes into the world.

I'll leave you with a few teasers and news that preproduction work on Issue Three has begun....

Update (Yet Another) and Issue One Production Post 8

Waiting for the resolution of yet-another kit failure on my Mac, this time one of my RAM modules, so I have no renders of Issue Two to show off this time. I was working on lighting new scenes when my Mac kept giving me kernel panics, which it had never done. Checking it out, I had only half the RAM I used to, annoying me quite thoroughly, since this is the second unexpected shutdown in production I've had to do. Meanwhile I've been writing Issue Six to keep me busy, which will be in a prospective "Second Season" in three or so years, depending on finances and interest in the First Season when it's complete. Or my attention span; it has a tendency to wander!

I have readied a nice, first-draft cut PDF of Issue One for beta reading. I'm pretty confident that it's as close to final as it'll be, but I'm still tinkering a bit with the dress (outside and inside covers). If I'm able to shake out a few pennies to do a print run, I'll need to up the page count to 24 (story count is 22 pages), so I'm deciding on what I want to fill the gap. I've thought about a two-page poster or perhaps some of the sketches from 2004-2005 I drew for the 1.0 comic I abandoned. Choices!

And since I don't want to post empty handed, here's a teaser for the (for now) cover of Issue One, Maya and the Outer Reaches! 

Issue One Production Post 4

After a second round of extensive renders to edit the originals I was unhappy with and finally finishing all (save one panel, arrg) the Photoshop post work, I can finally say that the interior artwork for the first issue of Agent Maya is in the can. This took me longer than I anticipated, but the outcome is much, much better for the extra labor involved—leaving me quiet on the blog since my last post a while ago. My next hurdle is completing the panel layouts of each page, some of which are locked down but several others need to be scaled and cropped. After this step the dialogue balloons and narrative text I mentioned on a previous post will be added in; this will be a time-consuming task unto itself. And finally I have some rendered ideas for the cover, but I still haven't captured a definitive image yet that best represents the story inside to my satisfaction. I never said anything about this project would ever be easy!

As promised, I have a few images to show for my hard work—sorry it took so long to post again. Hopefully I won't go more than a few weeks next time!

Issue One Production Post 2

Barring any "reshoot" renders, primary production on Issue One is now complete, three months' worth of work. Overall I'm satisfied with the renders, but somewhat disappointed in my skill level with UV mapping and texturing with the app software at my disposal. I hope to improve in this area with my succeeding set of issues this year and into 2014.

Next I will begin Photoshop post-production editing—compositing, masking, filter application and a "rough edit" to see how the story flows before the pages are locked down.

Until next time, here are more teaser images:

Uh-oh, a little B&E.

Knocking on the front door.

Dropping off.

A Neptune rendezvous.

Issue One Production Post 1

Production on Issue One is in full swing, and I have some new teasers for 2013, as promised! 

Here is the cockpit of Skeeto, our heroine's speedy craft and the third character in our main trio.

Mars, home planet of Maya and the location of the orbital headquarters of Precinct-4.

Agent Maya surveying across a vast expanse, to be added in post. 

Our final teaser. Maya on another cheat arrest. But where...?

Teasers

Told you I'd be back. And so is she....