Who's Ready?

It's time to kick this thing in the ass again.

Ok People

Sending out sketchbooks this week. For all you guys who signed up for the Mail In for CBLDF, let's see some artwork already. In almost three months I've received one piece of artwork. We're not going to get it done that way.

Also of note, is anyone still out there?

What to do?

Hey folks. Real quick, I know I've been lax on my end and haven't been pushing the project. I'm still here, I still plan on doing this so I'm just waiting for all those dozens of people who signed up to come through. The more work that comes in the more I can talk about it. I can update Flickr with images and start doing interviews with participants.

I'm also going to send a few sketchbooks out, keep those rolling. And since I've received a few stories, would you guys like to see snippets from those? Little bit of a preview or means to inspire?

That's all for now, not a lot going on but wanted to post anyway.

Cheers.

Tell People!

I know I ask this a lot, and I'm making another push to find ways to promote the project, but in the end word of mouth is what's going to get it done. At some point that word will leave someone's mouth and hit someone's ear. And that ear will sit on the head of someone with a lot of clout. That clout will create a buzz and before you know it, the 100AP will have more people involved than can be handled and I'll have to hire a team of highly trained lemurs just to answer all the emails.

But until that happens, and before my permit to carry a lemur arrives in the mail, you should feel free to do anything in your power to let other artists know what's going on here. There's a store with shirts you can wear to parties, there are banners and buttons on the site you can use on your blogs, there's a pdf you can print and take to your local shops or art galleries or art meetups. AND if you have more ideas, please please PLEASE drop me a line. I appreciate any and all work you folks do, and to all those who have don their share of shameless promotion I offer my sincere gratitude.

Just want to keep the project going. Cheers.

Forums

Check out the forums!

http://100artists.proboards.com

Stop by, sign up, network, ask questions, post artwork, have fun.

Cheers!

Testing Ping.fm

Traffic for 100 Artists Project has been low so I thought I'd take some time to play a bit a find a way to update all the networks the 100AP is a part of. If this works it should update most of them. For the rest I'll be hiring lemurs.

Sign Up Update

Hey folks, just a quick update to let you all know where the sign up tally stands for all the projects.

100 Mail in for CBLDF - 14/100

Sketchbook for HERO - 10/100

Digital art for CAPE - 8/50

Short stories for The OLL - 10/20

Moleskine for CCCSF - 3/200? (depending on the Moleskine I get.)

Youth art for CAF - 2/25

So, as you can see, there are plenty of spots left open.  Surprisingly, the writing project filled up the fastest.  I'd love to see some of this art start coming in.  I've already received three stories so I know we're on the right path.

Thanks to everyone who has offered help with promotion and organization so far.  Let's keep it rolling.

100 (Artists) Writers

I know it's confusing, but someone mentioned I should post something for the wordsmiths.

The 100AP, hopefully you know by now, is running again and with a few new projects. One of those is the writing project. As of now I've set it up to be 20 writers and up to 10 pages maximum - all prose, no scripts. Time to get your sci-fi, horror, western, drama hats on and do some short stories.

Same as with the others, the book will be printed and sold through a POD, (likely Lulu or Blurb, I may do both.) The charity this time is the Office of Letters and Light. It's a small charity encouraging creative writing in children. I like that they're small because whatever we can do to help will mean a lot to them. They support larger groups as well.

Sign up page is ready to handle the new project, so feel free to get going and if you have any questions let me know. And yes you can submit something you've already written.
Also, if you know other writers either not here or on most comic boards, please let them know. May not take long to get 20 writers, but you never know.

www.100artistsproject.com

Cheers!

100 Writers?

Hey guys, I had an idea about adding writing to the projects. Something like 100 total pages, 10 writers doing 10 page short stories (or there abouts.) It seems small, but if I did 100 writers and they did 5 pages, that's a very thick 500 pages. But I'm open to suggestion.

Also, I wasn't quickly able to find a good literary charity besides something to do with Walden.

Ideas?

Round Two Underway!

After many months of promises and false starts, the second round of the 100AP is underway. Please visit the main site for all the details.

What's New?

I've broken up the original projects and have added a few more. The mail in 100 now ties in to the CBLDF and the sketchbook goes to Hero. The new ones are the 25 piece youth project supporting the International Child Art Foundation, the 50 piece digital art supporting the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education and the Moleskine book supporting the Center for Cartoon Studies.

The sign up page is active and I'll be sending out emails to the charities as well as some studios to drum up interest. If you're part of this community already, you've probably submitted work for volume one and all I ask is that you help talk up the relaunch anywhere you can.

Thanks for your continued support.

Relaunch

So I saw this over on CBR and it made me simultaneously want to give up and keep going on the 100AP. In all honesty, I've got nothing else taking up my time, and this is at least worth while.

Here are some things needing to be done for the project to keep moving.

* Parental Waiver - In order for me to technically accept artwork from artists under 18, I need to create and publish a form that said artists will have to get their parents to look over, possibly sign and either mail, fax or email to me. There's no profit in what I'm doing and I don't plan on using anyone's artwork for anything but the project, but I also want to cover my butt in case something happens.

* TOS - I have a basic Terms of Service that I need to put on the web site.

* Form rework - The sign up form needs to have a new option to select which project you want to join. The site also needs the new projects' descriptions.

* Open up the projects - I need to make a list of places to announce that the second part of the project is now open for people to sign up.

* Vol. 1 reprint - Ka-Blam kinda dropped the ball for me. They took way too long, they messed up a percentage of orders that given a larger actual number would have been a death knell for the project. I need to put another print out through Lulu and let people know about it at the same time as the project "reignition."

* Sketchbook - I need to find out where the sketchbook is and keep it moving.

I think that's it.

Someone recommended going through Image comics for one of the projects, see if we could get a few artists who've done Image books to contribute and if Image got behind it, we could do Image characters. I think maybe volume 3 I'll do that. I want to see if this model is sustainable. I constantly feel I've maxed out my contacts and fewer and fewer artists will contribute. If we can do another couple smaller books the idea will be more marketable.

Also, if you've got this blog on your feed reader, please head over to the Ning site. I'm going to try and organize the project better and to that end I'll be eliminating a lot of the cross posting.

Carry on.

Hey, remember this?

Greetings contributors, participants, onlookers.

I bet you're wondering what happened to this place? Where's the verve, the happy-haps, the je ne said qoui that used to permeate the very cables you use to connect to the internets when you'd read this page?

Is the project done? Did you give it up?

To be honest, almost. It's been about 15 months since it started, that's a long time for anything. I think I'm a bit burned out, truth be told. But that doesn't mean I've given up on it. It's just going to take more energy than I current am willing to give to get it moving again. I just got an email from a long time online acquaintance who said he didn't even know the book was in print. I was a little saddened by that thinking that not only were normal people, art lovers, charity seekers not involved, but it sounds as though even the original contributors may no longer be involved.

The book has capped at 26 units sold, and that's $108 after printing costs, so $54 for each charity. When it went up for sale I updated every message board, friend list, bulletin, social network site I could think of. I emailed both charities, industry professionals, even a few comic-friendly Hollywood types, just trying to get the word out. If a hundred bucks is the best I can do, I'm not sure I want to waste another year doing even that.

So, that's why I haven't started the thing back up. The big sketchbook is in Jeremy Dale's capable hands and hopefully he'll be taking it to at least one convention. If he's got a copy of the print book, it might spark some interest. Maybe by then I'll have the single mailers opened back up and more people can participate. I think all I need to do is switch my thinking from a huge project that is bound to bring it tons of cash for these charities to another obscure illustration project that are nice for people to join and be a part.

I'm going to again ask for input as the project is spread very thin across many different interfaces, yet I still don't know what's best. I'm leaning toward having the main site redirect to the Ning page, but I don't know how that will impact people signing up.

If you've got ideas about the project, please let me know.

Carry on.

DC Cancels Charity Auction

For those that wondered why I wasn't allowing copyrighted characters to be drawn for the 100AP, this is why.

http://sayitbackwards.blogspot.com/2008/05/important-charity-auction-update.html

IMPORTANT - Orphan Works Act of 2008

I felt this was important since we're all practicing artists on many levels and this impacts all of us.

http://drawn.ca/2008/05/13/oppose-the-orphan-works-act-of-2008

Currently, copyright is granted the moment a work is created. This new Orphan Works legislation proposes a change in U.S. copyright that would (indirectly) require artists, illustrators, photographers, and any creative individual to actively maintain and defend their copyright by registering each and every work with privatized registrars. Failure to do so would leave everything you’ve ever created as an artist up for grabs by anyone who wanted to copy, reproduce, create derivative works of, or flat out steal your work since the act defines an “orphan work” as any work where the author is unidentifiable or unlocatable, and applies to both published and unpublished works, U.S. and foreign, regardless of age.

More information in the post including ways to contact your reps, an interview with Brad Holland about the issue as well as some other links. Please visit the site and act now.

Big Sketchbook

I haven't updated the map in a while. I've been hung up a bit on the first volume getting done. Rest assured the sketchbook is still moving along pretty well. I just got word today it's ready to move on to it's 30th recipient. I figured it take this long and so far we're pretty much on track.

The biggest issue I'm running into is people who go involved early are no longer responding to emails and I really have no good way to get in touch with them to see if they still want to participate. What this means is at the end of the run (in likely two years) there will probably be somewhere around 15-20 open spots that'll have to be filled.

Regardless, I think it's great - fucking fantastic if you'll allow me - that it's made it to 30 different places. I really hope when this run is done it'll be unique enough to get some publicity. The international shipping scares me still, but we've got a while till we have to do that.

I'm waiting to get some addresses from some buddies of an artist in Omaha and the map will be updated after that.

Carry on.

Gordon Lee Case Dismissed

If you aren't already aware, one of the organizations the 100AP supports (CBLDF.org) has been in involved in a protracted legal battle with the state of Georgia vs. Mr. Gordon Lee for distributing adult content to a minor.

After several years, the case was dismissed.

You can see the posting about it on Newsarama.

With a price tag of $100,000 dollars, this is the biggest case the CBLDF has fought. It'd be a great time now to help replenish those funds by doing your part and purchasing volume one of the 100AP.

Congrats to Mr. Lee and the CBLDF.

Sales Help

Ok guys. I'm stumped. After a year's worth of work and pimping the project on as many places as I could and a few that other people did, we've sold exactly 6 copies in two weeks.

6.

On Penciljack alone I had twice that many people say, "Yeah I can't wait to get a copy of this."

Well, what's keeping you? What's keeping anyone? I thought surely after a couple of pay periods a few more sales would come in. Not so much.

I'm discouraged right now, if you can't tell. I was going to spend the week setting up the next projects so people could sign up for them, but not if it's going to make me spend another year to earn $20.

I'm open to ideas.

Hoorah!

Hoorah!
Originally uploaded by xadrian

Ok suckers, got my proof copy today. It's wonderful. You should go get one, and then tell your friends to go get one. It's 106 pages for $19 and $5.13 of every sale goes to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and The Hero Initiative.

Seriously, you're still here?

Volume one now for sale!

Just got the email tonight. You can now support the charities by purchasing volume one of the 100AP. Since most of you supported by donating art, feel free to spread the link around to as many people as you can.

Thanks again for your support and input and look for more projects soon.

http://www.indyplanet.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=901

Sidetracked: A Podcast

100AP member Rian Miller has a twice-a-week podcast called Sidetracked. I just found out about it today so I'll be a new listener along with the rest of you. Give it a listen.