It’s my birthday today, and a right pleasant one it was. Went shopping with mum on Thursday, had dinner with one brother last night,
introduced him to Korean Food and the entire round of 11 draft beers at ABC (those wee sampler beers are the
best thing ever, aren’t they?). Today, got a phone call from a special someone to wake me up, which made my day all over, then
had Sunday dinner and blueberry pah with the family.

Now, I’m being a good little comic artist and working my keister off, trying to get the book
out as soon as I can. Status report: The art is remastered and re-scanned for issues 1,2 and 3. Why am I
taking the time to remaster the art? Well, let’s face it, I did most of that art FIVE YEARS AGO, and I’m quite
unhappy with some of the faces. So I fixed them. Hey, wouldn’t you? There’s a fine line
between letting your art stand to show your progress, and publishing total crap. Now, it’s
not as major a change as you think: it’s a facial expression here, a properly sized head there.
But it makes a difference to *me*, and if I’m going to spend five thousand of my or anyone else’s dollars,
I’m going to put out the best product I possibly can. Another reason for re-scanning the art
is that when I originally scanned and Photoshopped the first three issues, I had ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE
what I was doing. Say this sentence to any graphic designer and watch them cringe: “Jane set the
levels on the art for those issues by using the Brightness/Contrast sliders, and didn’t save the original scans.”
That’s usually enough to give any GDer worth her salt a facial tic. So I’m rescanning and resetting the levels, too.

The end result of this is that you’ll get a much nicer quality of art in the new book than
you did in the individual issues, even though it’ll be slightly smaller.

Other updates: None. Haven’t had time to work on finding a new silversmith. Decided I wanted a
full workday instead of doing a Free Comic Book Day appearance. Will be making a big stink
about a certain distributor (not Diamond) who totally hosed me over recently, robbing me of
several hours of precious worktime. The workshop in Chelsea got cancelled for low attendance;
special apologies for the few of you who wanted to attend. THe Chelsea Community Ed director and I
will be rescheduling for this fall, so don’t despair. Work continues for Motor City; I’m working up
the signage right now. Well, that’s about all. Back to the grindstone!