As we approach the end of March I look at it and see mostly a greenish blur.  Not just the result of a lifetime of green birthday cakes but the nature of living in California makes for glorious green hikes in the normally golden hills that make up San Francisco’s east bay area. You wouldn’t be surprised to know that this has been greatly welcomed by my four-legged master who rather resented the time and energy I spent in February on the kickstart.aTigersTale.com kickstarter campaign.

Now, I’ll freely admit that I took a longer than I’d intended to recover from those efforts. I even ended up ignoring my annual #MalazanMarch fan art activities which are normally great fun and have resulted in some great pieces; I wrote a bit about that here if you’re curious. Even worse, I was forced to cancel participating in the 2022 Latinx Pop Lab “POWER OF BIPOC POP” Symposium hosted by The University of Texas at Austin. In retrospect I should have been a little more circumspect with regards to initially accepting the invite to an event so soon after the kickstarter campaign. A great example of the difference between ideals and reality, and definitely an opportunity to do better next time. I could go on a whole other segue about opportunities and “next-times” and maybe I’ll come back to that but let me share some good news about March.

Just over this weekend I finalized the colors for all but single set of panels in A Tiger’s Tale.  There's still a cover to finalize, a thank-you section & a couple of stray panels (where backers will appear). Then a final pass on the lettering which has already begun. On the one hand I am behind schedule, in that I’d sought to complete coloring the book over the course of February, but with April approaching I am on track for delivering the project to press, and will be reaching out to them about one of my other sudden inspirations - this one’s about paper, so I’ll spare you the details - for now.

Instead let me share a spoiler free glimpse of our comic’s pagination. About the term; it’s one I used frequently in my work for Kung Fu Tai Chi magazine, but also goes back to my days as a paste-up artist - with the hot wax and everything, it’s a single view which shows every page in a publication and what goes on it. Sometimes a sort of syllabus or guide lists the advertisements and their location or the article and column-length or pages allocated for it.

In this case it reveals the pages which have color and those that remain black and white. Were it not pixelated you would see a lot more of the story and more details in the back matter. But if you look closely you’ll see (bottom right corner) the page which awaits the list of people (including some of you) to thank.

Look closely and you can see the preview pages which can be read at the above mentioned Kickstart.aTigersTale.com campaign page. And, if you'd like to read more - simply click on the above image to access additional never-publicly-revealed pages.

It’s been suggested to me that I continue my #tigertuesday endeavors beyond the initial 40+ week countdown-plus-campaign. So here we are at week four and I have this episode of Tiger Talk. Recorded during my marathon live stream on the final Tiger Tuesday of our campaign, I added some visual aids to this conversation on illustration techniques, comic art and public domain superheroes.

Alas, I didn’t do nearly as much live-streaming as I’d hoped to for the month of March either, but I did complete one illustration I'm pleased to have finished and hope to see in the wild in the very hear future. It would be unfair to say more just yet, but I'll include this image to hint at its theme.

Let me know your thoughts on those newly colored pages if you're not waiting to read A Tiger's Tale as a complete work. Otherwise, let me know how March has treated you?

Very well I'm hoping.

-BEST!
PLUGO