I'm Making a book out of Obstinate Melon's FF7 comic

ForceStealer

ForceStealer

Double Growth
Odysseus said:
turns out Lic was actually the one who commissioned that to begin with!
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Odysseus

Odysseus

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Ody
Okay thank you, you're my Hero Lic! I'll ask Melon if he's still cool with using it once you get back to me. If everybody is on board, then its no problem. That stupid picture is too amazing to leave out if I have approval.
 
Odysseus

Odysseus

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Ody
So book one has a special thanks page I threw together of people who helped me gather some images for the book:
Edit: leaving a sheet of usernames lying around is not a good idea is it?
I was trying to make it look like an old magazine action figure ad. Since its your commission, do you want a special thanks in the book 2 version @LicoriceAllsorts ? I'm obviously gonna credit Crim for actually drawing it.
 
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Odysseus

Odysseus

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Welp I'm a fucking moron and never saw that. Oh man this is embarrassing. I should have PM'd, not used the dang ask blog... oh well. Thanks a ton! If Melon is okay with it, I shall include it and all the appropriate credit. I think I'll also vaguely credit "thelifestream.net tseng fan club" for commissioning it if that's cool with you Lic. Yeah TheStrifeIsRife is me, that's what I go by everywhere but here.
 
Odysseus

Odysseus

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Ody
Not specifically, no. Melon is busy plugging away at the next page of the comic, so things have come to a stand still for now. I already ordered a test copy of the hard cover and soft cover version just to make sure there's no errors with them. The issue with the original version I showed pictures of earlier was that the comic pages got a little cut off on the sides because they were too close to the edge of the chopping zone in the print process, I took steps to avoid that for version 2 here, but I won't know for sure until I have it in my hands. I'll have the test print in like a week and a half, and assuming there are no errors we can proceed from there. Sorry for the inconvenience
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LicoriceAllsorts

LicoriceAllsorts

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Have you considered talking to the people who run Kupocon and making some kind of deal with them? They give away books at every Kupocon, in the sense that the cost of the book is included in the price of the ticket. I can't believe they wouldn't want this. My impression is that Melon's comic is pretty famous in the fandom. However, at that point it becomes more complicated because you've also used other people's artwork.
 
Odysseus

Odysseus

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Ody
Within book 1 it's just Melon's art, so that wouldn't be a problem. I'd need to ask crim for book 2, but that's a long time from now anyway. It's really none of my business what happens with this book past this point anyway, it would be up to melon to make that kind of decision.

Edit: wait you were talking about that credits page I showed you, right @LicoriceAllsorts? That wasn't art from other people, what those guys gave me was photos of video game cases. At the bottom of most pages is my copy of ff7 and a ps1 controller, just as something to make the area with the comment from melon more visually interesting. Me being mr funny man, I thought it would be fun if I had the game switch out when melon referenced other video games, which he does frequently. I needed pictures from other people because I don't own every game he references. That drawing from Crim was the only "non melon" art I wanted to use in the books. Sorry for the confusion.
 
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The Twilight Mexican

The Twilight Mexican

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TresDias
LicoriceAllsorts said:
Have you considered talking to the people who run Kupocon and making some kind of deal with them? They give away books at every Kupocon, in the sense that the cost of the book is included in the price of the ticket. I can't believe they wouldn't want this. My impression is that Melon's comic is pretty famous in the fandom. However, at that point it becomes more complicated because you've also used other people's artwork.
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The existence of KupoCon exclusives is more frustrating than anything. They don't seem interested in doing shows outside Australia, the U.K. or occasionally Canada.

Crim did a calendar for them last year I would love to have and am willing to pay a lot for, but there's no way to get it. Same with that one book they did the cover art for. With Melon's book, the plan at least seems to be that whoever is willing to pay reasonable ordering and shipping costs can have it.
 
LicoriceAllsorts

LicoriceAllsorts

Donator
Have you tried ordering the calendar from Crim's patreon?
He might sell you one if he has any copies left. He also keeps wait-lists and then, if he has enough, I think he will do another print run. Maybe.
When I suggested Kupocon I was just thinking about finding a big market and covering costs. I don't know how Odysseus plans to market this comic.
 
Odysseus

Odysseus

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AKA
Ody
I also just plain don't want to draw too much attention to this thing. Kupocon is the biggest Final Fantasy convention around, so if Square notices the book because of it they might shut us down. I don't want to be the guy who inadvertently killed the comic, you know? Anyway, here, I made a mockup of the page with the Crimson sun drawing on it:

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I sent him the image via PM but haven't heard back yet. I hope that's good enough for giving credit. I wanted the picture to be BIG. The version I saved from photobucked was a crusty little JPEG, but thanks to the powers of AI I made it huge, without any quality loss. So you could see the thing as large as possible, you have to turn the book on its side for this one. Hence "you gotta FLIP it. TURN WAYS."
 
Odysseus

Odysseus

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Ody
LicoriceAllsorts said:
I'm glad my little bit of self-indulgence is getting the attention it deserves! :monster:
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Hey, it's a pretty great bit of self indulgence! This is why I believe in the butterfly effect though, I dug up this silly thing you did ten years ago and now there's a bit of discussion surrounding it again! I had to dig up your ancient post about it to find the "date of origin" to put on the page there.

As a side note, all the digging I've done for the books here has made me feel like a bit of a stalker, between going through all of Melon's old journals and now old posts here
... I hope nobody is too weirded out.
 
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Odysseus

Odysseus

Ninja Potato
AKA
Ody
Yeah. I'm still astonished at all the big figures in Final Fantasy fan culture I've interacted with over the course of this project, considering I'm pretty much nobody. Guess I'm afraid of pissing people off by going too far.

I told this to Melon, but one of my goals with the book was preservation and to catalog the history of the comic on top of just being a way to physically own it. That's why I went the extra mile to include the artists descriptions, all of Melon's supplementary art and a few other assorted things. He has his own archive of the comic, of course, But some of those other drawings are only on DA, or even only on fucking photobucket, and not even he has copies. They say nothing is ever lost on the internet, but that's not true. I've seen a few too many dead photobucket links in my time to believe that. I know all of these images and other things will be lost, in time, L̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶t̶e̶a̶r̶s̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶r̶a̶i̶n̶ once deviant art finally dies, so I wanted to make sure it was all preserved somewhere.

It's the same with your silly commission. There's other fan art specifically for this comic, but this was a picture drawn by someone who is now one of the most renowned FF fan artists ever. I don't know if Crim has a copy, and I don't know if you have a copy either. Once the link goes dead that picture could just disappear forever, and I don't want that.

Okay, jesus, I talk too much. That's my big dumb motivation for all this, and that's why I dig so deep.
 
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