COLLECTOR'S GLASS ARTWORK

Here's a look at the artwork I've been working on for the collector's glass. Trying to maintain that retro/vintage look. The image should wrap most of the way around the glass.

WHY THE GUILD COMIC IS IMPORTANT

For those of you that don't know, The Guild released their first comic issue today (written by Felicia Day, art by Jim Rugg). It should be available at your local comic shop. For those of you who are fans of The Guild or web series in general, then you understand how utterly cool this is. But for the rest of you, here's why I think this is a big deal:

This is a nationally distributed comic book from one of the major publishers based on a WEB SERIES!

A fan funded, indie to it's core, web series. To my knowledge it's only been done once before and that was for another Felicia Day series, Dr. Horrible.

This is important for a few reasons. First, as Felicia and The Guild continue to break new ground, new opportunities will become available for us other creators. Should this comic perform well, comic companies may begin to take a peek at other properties, hopefully including ones with black-and-white, ray gun toting heroes.

Second, isn't it just thrilling to watch somebody make so much starting out with such meager resources? This isn't like some video game comic tie-in where EA throws some money at Dark Horse. What began as a YouTube series funded through PayPal donations, became a Microsoft sponsored show, a smash at Comic Con, a number one selling artist on iTunes/Amazon, and now a legit comic series. While reading the comic today I wasn't just taking in the story I was internally cheering Felicia and her team on the entire time. Their hard work and humility has broken them through into some pretty cool realms. Hats off! Or since this is a pulp sci-fi site, perhaps I should be saying "aviator caps off!"

THE FINAL TWO WEEKS

Friday, April 2nd. That's the day I hand over the full picture locked season of The Mercury Men. Right now we're finishing up music, along with the first pass sound design, for episode 10. (I do the first round of sound design myself before passing it off to the much more talented guys at Market Street Sound.)

Tomorrow will be final adjustments to the score/sound of episode 10. Thursday I'll be previewing the entire series on DVD, since you tend to miss stuff while looking at it on a computer monitor the entire time. And then this weekend will be preparing and packaging the episodes for delivery for final sound mix and contrast correction. That much closer to being able to finally show you the series.

I've had the opportunity to watch the entire series through a few times and I've noticed a few things. The best word I can describe the series is FUN. It's like a live action comic book. Cliffhangers, sense of humor, ray guns, and all sorts of great science fiction. Other times the series feels like a science fiction fairy tale. A crazy, over-the-top 12 hours in the life of Edward Borman.

I've already got an outline together for season 2, which is turning out to be a bit darker and more intense, but before we get there I'm really excited for you to share in the FUN of season 1.

JACK YAEGER SKETCH

I've been doing some Mercury Men sketches during large video rendering sessions. These include characters, props, scenes, etc. My plan is to give several of these away in an upcoming contest so I figured I'd give you a preview of our ray-gun-slinging hero Jack Yaeger.

CALM BEFORE THE STORM

Today, while previewing episodes one through nine, before shipping them off for final sound mix and contrast correction, I had the opportunity to watch the entire completed story arc of The Mercury Men Vol. 1. What most of you don't know is that while we originally shot ten episodes, the climax was unwisely split over the final two, which KILLED momentum, leading us to combine the final episodes into one. That left us with nine episodes, an unusual number to try and sell. Therefore, we shot a tenth "epilogue" episode this past January, which is a great lead-in to our hopeful second volume/season of episodes. So that's a long way of saying that the nine episodes I was able to watch are the original "full" story arc.

While there was some mild frustration about the few nagging things I wish I could change, but unfortunately can't, I was immensely proud to see our vision beginning it's final transformation into it's finished form. Over the next weeks, before the rest of the world is invited into the story to both enjoy and critique, I get to watch these characters take on the obstacles I've been laying before them for nearly two years. And before we get bombarded with YouTube comments both great and terrible, I get to appreciate the incredible craftsmanship of our cast and crew

One of my great motivations for enduring what it takes to produce a story is just that I want to be able to see it myself. Today, after countless days and endless hours, I was able to do just that.

My other motivation? The community and discussion that's building around The Mercury Men world, so thanks to all of you for your incredibly kind comments and encouragement here, on Facebook, and Twitter. I can't wait to kick open the door and let you all see what I've been seeing.

Now to finish up episode ten!

COLLECTOR GLASS

UPDATE: We're making it happen! From the moment we posted we've been getting lots of comments and emails of people who'd love to purchase a collector glass. We did some research and found a site that'll print them up for us at a reasonable rate (around $5 plus shipping). While it won't be the specific glass pictured below (need to include more characters), it'll definitely be vintage styled. We'll share the design and details with you soon!

We haven't had a digital prop in quite a bit due to the fact that we're using every spare minute to complete the series itself. But I thought I'd give you a look at something I was trying to put together. Collector glasses!

Nearly every blockbuster film of the 70's and 80's was celebrated by limited edition collector glasses usually for sale at a fast food joint. While dreaming up digital props to offer, our own Jack Yaeger (Curt Wootton) suggested collector glasses. Genius! The plan was to get a couple made and make them available on ebay for a few lucky fans. Unfortunately the cost to produce these is incredibly prohibitive (just one alone would cost nearly $100!) so this won't likely happen until we've got greater resources to draw from. In the meantime here's a peek at a mock-up I put together for it. (Click the image for larger version)

ANOTHER CONTEST

We love giving stuff away, so we're running another quick contest to do just that. All you have to do is tell us how you first discovered The Mercury Men, either in the comments section below, on Facebook, or Twitter. A few of you will be selected at random to win an autographed poster! It's that easy.

THE FINAL LAP

Nearly a year and a half after we wrapped on production, we've finally hit the home stretch! And while many of you are VERY excited to see the series, it can't measure up to mine to show it.

I try to use this blog to give you an inside and accurate picture of what it's like to build this world/story. I stumbled upon a great visual of what it feels to finish up our series. While watching the Winter Olympics this year, I couldn't help but notice the great similarity between working on this project and cross-country skiing, which is the great level of endurance it requires to reach the end. If you've been following me on Twitter you've probably seen quite a few tweets of 18 hour work days ending at 4:00 AM. In fact I haven't gone to bed before 2:00 AM in the past month. But please don't interpret that as complaining (it's a privilege to be able to work on something I love), just an acknowledgement of the enurance often needed. Now that we're coming in to the final few weeks of post-production it's lit quite a fire in me to finish strong. I continue to visualize the day when The Mercury Men finally makes that transformation from "project in production" to a story we can all watch and discuss. Thank you to everyone who's been sharing incredibly kind words of encouragement here on the blog, Twitter, and Facebook. Those messages truly do inspire us.

So all that being said, where are we? We've finished editing and VFX for episodes 1 - 9 (woo hoo!) and are currently tackling episode 10, which I anticipate being completed by the end of next week. The completed episodes are already in the hands of the great guys at Market Street Sound who are handling the sound mix.

So are we saying the series will be released in the next few weeks? Unfortunately...no. We're still working out where The Mercury Men is going to land as far as distribution goes. All I can tell you about that is there are a lot of great places in consideration and we will share the news as soon as we have it.

And lastly, as an aside, congratulations to all of this years Streamy Award nominees! Some really great projects featured, and best of luck to you all.

Now back to work for me!

A TOAST

I can't think of a better poster that sums up why we're making The Mercury Men, than this piece done by a favorite artist of mine, Alex Toth, who is best known as the creator of Space Ghost.

SCI-FI MAGAZINE

We're in print! Sci-fi Magazine to be exact. Make sure to pick up this month's issue (labeled April, which I'll never understand) which features a small article on our black-and-white adventure. It even has a few pics and reveals a bit of plot which hasn't previously been released.

You can find Sci-fi Magazine at Borders and Barnes and Noble. And a special thanks to writer Jeff Berkwits for helping to draw attention to our series.