I am pleased to announce that I just put the final pencil stroke on page 20 of Vinny Issue #1! I am very excited to be finished with this project, and can hardly wait for its release! The book still needs to go through post-processing, but will be completed and ready by HeroesCon in June. My editors will be taking the fully printed book with them to start getting the word out at the convention. If you’re attending, keep an eye out for those two scoundrels wandering the halls.

This was a major milestone for me: it’s the very first comic book that I have ever penciled, and the first one to ever be completed! I am very excited to see where it goes. I should have some inked, lettered, and processed pages to show in a week or so as a teaser. More information to come. Please stay tuned! Thanks to everyone for the support you’ve given me for this project over the past several months.

I’m posting tonight with some fantastic news! For a very long time, I’ve wanted the domain name JoieArt.com, and it’s finally mine! When I was coming up with a website domain name years ago, JoieArt.com was unavailable, so I ended up with (as some of you very longtime readers will remember) FracturedFantasy.com. That was my website for over three years, until it occurred to me to see if JoieArt.net was open.

Of course I wanted to satisfy my curiosity, and found out that JoieArt.com was registered to someone through an Australian domain registrar. In all the years that it had been registered, I never did see any content on it. I finally got some guts and put a domain backorder watch on it fifteen days before the registration expired. I was really saddened when it got renewed, and forgot all about it.

Then, about a week ago, I got an email from my own registrar telling me that the domain I’ve been watching had its renewal reversed, and was going into a redemption period. SCORE! I got even luckier when just three days ago the domain was released and my backorder watch nabbed it for me. It was like being a little kid and being given a GIANT lollipop. Oh yes.

So now I’ve got both JoieArt.com AND JoieArt.net. Good times. I just have to decide which I want to be my main domain name, and which one I want to just be a forwarding domain. I kinda like .Net, personally. Anyone have an opinion?

And for anyone keeping tabs, FracturedFantasy.com is still registered to me, and yes it does point to this website now. I’m such a domain hog.

I know I’ve been really quiet as of late, but that’s because my life has gone into overdrive. I haven’t had anything new to show because I’ve pretty much been exclusively working on Vinny to try to get it done before my deadline.

Vinny Page One © 2009 Joie Brown, Josh Copland, and Matt Garth

I finally got some pencil scans back from my editor (because I sadly don’t have an 11″ x 17″ scanner yet), so I thought I’d share them with you. These are the final pencils for Vinny pages one through three. The pages are straight up graphite with the blue line guides still visible. I did not take them out in Photoshop thinking that they might be interesting to look at. See if you can follow the story without any dialogue!

Vinny Page Two © 2009 Joie Brown, Josh Copland, and Matt Garth

The completely polished and ready-to-send-to-the-printers pages will look very different. They will have lots more black and grey to them (plus lettering), and I’m really excited with how they’re turning out. I’m currently on page 12 of 21, which means I’ve finally passed the halfway mark! And none too soon, either. Working on this comic has been a great trial-by-fire for me in regards to learning more about comic books, time management, and deadlines. Sure it may have helped me into a quarter life crisis, but maybe it will help me out of it as well. I hope.

Vinny Page Three © 2009 Joie Brown, Josh Copland, and Matt Garth

In regards to my Snippets projects and Etsy.com storefront: I’m still trying to work out the kinks and get things set up. I hope to have more information about both of these very soon. Stay tuned, and sorry for the long delay in between posts.