Signature Drawing Edition Limit Increasing
6 months ago
– Wed, Apr 17, 2024 at 01:25:37 PM
Hello there,
We're increasing the number of available limited edition Signature Drawing Edition rewards by twenty. The new batch will be available a few minutes after I make this post. That will make the new limit 140, so if you see it at 140 backers then you've missed them, apologies! (UPDATE: It is displaying 139 for some reason, but they are now sold out!) There will be another chance next week.
We understand the demand for these unique items is huge, but since Ian will be drawing all of these images personally and signing them there has to be a limit to the number we can make available.
Thanks for your support.
-jim
Fireside Chat: McQue & Rossignol Talk Mileships and Influences
6 months ago
– Tue, Apr 16, 2024 at 07:56:48 AM
Hello! Just a small update to mention that McQue and myself have posted the first part of a conversation about the creation of the MILESHIPS book over on his Patreon. You can join that for free, but the post is public anyway.
Here's an extract:
JIM ROSSIGNOL: Right! So anyway, the thing we want to start off with is just talking about how the initial MILESHIPS drawings came to be. I mean, I can hardly remember a time where I wasn't finding McQue drawings on the internet and saying “look at this!” But you must remember the first one, right? You remember the first time?
IAN McQUE: Do you remember the first time? Yes, I mean, I've always doodled! I've always been, you know, drawing silly spaceships and all of that kind of gear, but where this specifically started was during either the end of GTA 4 [McQue was an art director on the GTA series at Rockstar North] or some time during early GTA 5 when I was off work. My wife and I went away for a week on the east coast of Scotland, just north of Edinburgh, a place called Pittenweem. And we stayed in a lovely cottage on the harbour right on the Firth of Forth and it was glorious weather! Springtime in Scotland is one of the nicest times of year. And I would just wander down to the harbour with my sketchbook and just sit and watch the comings and goings. It's not as busy a harbour as it used to be, but there's still fish to be caught, catches to be landed and so on. So there's a little fish market there. Anyway, I sat right on the harbour front and there was a really old fishing boat being dragged up out of the water to have some work done: you know, barnacles scraped off and all that kind of stuff. And I just started drawing it. The little boat was called The Betty. And we now have a cat called Betty so it's all kind of linked up! Anyway, I became really intrigued and obsessed by the ships. When you see them out of the water like that because they're beautiful and you never really see the detail or the structure of them until that happens. So that was the first inkling I had that there was something there, around 2009 or 2010.
Also, around that time I had just started to post on (concept art website) CGHUB which was the first time I had posted stuff online. My wife suggested I try that and Twitter, which she had been using, and before that I hadn’t really been someone to post stuff online at all. Anyway, I posted some work and got feedback, comments and so forth, and we artists, well, you know we like a bit of validation! So I kept at it. The first Mileships drawing was in that batch, based on what I had seen in that little harbour.
You can read the rest of Part One here.
And just for you, our beloved Kickstarter backers, here's that original sketch of The Betty:
More soon!
-jim
A Fine First Week, More Signature Drawings
6 months ago
– Mon, Apr 08, 2024 at 03:30:26 AM
Good morning, everyone!
We have a couple of bits of news for you this week. The first is that the book has made it on to Kickstarter's "Project We Love" tag, which we obviously couldn't have done without you. Thank you. This should produce a fair bit more attention for the book through Kickstarter's own systems. It's been an amazing first week and we're humbled by the excitement this has generated.
The second announcement is that we are going to release a few more rounds of sketches at the Signature Drawing Tier, because we know it was tough to get one when we went live. There will be several more rounds of these, so we will let you know each time that happens. We'll spread them across time zones to make it fairer. There are twenty more up right now. Note that you can change your pledge to those from the lower tier if you previous backed just the book.
Also on the Signature Drawing Edition, a number of people have suggested that they would like to see the drawing on an insert so that it can easily be removed and framed. We think this is actually optimal, logistically, as well as allowing Ian to use his usual pens by providing a different paper type, which book paper will not. So we're looking at adding this drawings to the book as a high-quality paper insert. If you would rather the drawing was actually in the book itself then you will be able to let us know that in the Pledge Management survey before shipping.
We have a few other updates coming over the next couple of weeks, so keep an eye on your inbox!
Thanks again!
Ian & Jim
