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| 2-12-6: I'm dumber than a sack of hammers... Oh! There's also some new stuff going on! Yup. Dumber than a sack of hammers... And almost as pretty! I just noticed that the rants that I thought were added to the site... Weren't... Sigh... Well, they're up now. Don't hate me... Also, in case you didn't see it already, we have the trailer for Desert Rose on here. I highly recommend heading on over to the Film section to check it out. The big news for me this week is this: We have found our colorist for Super! Who is this mystery man, you ask? This daring rouge, swooping through the night sky, doing deeds in the name of all that is colorful? Why it's none other than Matt Green (dude, even his name is a color!). We're hyped and hope Matt enjoys a lengthy and maybe even prosperous (oh, please, gods!) stay here at the Aberrant hotel. And before I forget: The first week of shooting on Tales From the Android's Dungeon is over... Expect a rant forthcoming. Might I say now though... I look damn good on film! |
| 2-1-6: Scans for colorists online, PLUS: Production on "Tales From the Android's Dungeon" is moving right along! Alright. It's been one productive week. First, let me thank all of you who are applying for the colorist position on Super. We've seen a lot of really nice samples... But now we're having a hard time deciding on who we think fits the title best... Which is why we decided to do this: post the pages up at 300 dpi and let you guys color 'em up to see firsthand what style works best. So, hit the link below this news bit and it'll whisk you off to the pages. Also, we got a bunch of pre-production work done on our first feature film (Tales...) this week. We should be able to start shooting this bad boy next week... Which hopefully will mean we can hit our mark for a summer release of the picture... Say sometime around... San Diego Comic-Con? Anyway, for the full story, go check out my Aber-Rant about it in the Bios section. That's all for now kids, see you in a couple days for another update! |
| 1-10-2006: Justin's Aber-rant Now Up! Preview Pencils for One More Hit! Well, after a few weeks of lazying about (the holidays always leave me wiped), it's time to get back to work. First up is my weekly Aber-Rant, where I do my complaining about whatever strikes my fancy. Look for it in the Bios section, next to my picture. Also, a pencil preview of the first few pages of One More Hit is in the Comics section. Check it out and don't forget to buy stuff while you're here... 'Cause frankly, some of us are starting to look a little scrawny. |
| 12-15-2005: Aberrant Press Is Back Online! Hey there everyone! Glad to have the site back up before for the New Year! We've been cranking out work lately here in the office and I'm proud to say that 2006 will be a HUGE year for us. I was going to wait until the previews of our new stuff was online, but I figured I'd go ahead and get the ball rolling now. We'll have everything looking much nicer soon. So with that, Browse around for a bit and see what we're up to. ~ Justin Newberry |
| 1-27-2006: Super preview up and... WE NEED A COLORIST! Alright, I suck. It's been two weeks since I've posted a rant. I know, I know. To make it up to you, expect to see not one, not two, but three rants up during the next week. In the meantime, a preview of the first five pages of Super is up in the Comics section. Give 'em a gander. We REALLY need a colorist for this book, so get in touch if you think you have the talent and can commit to six issues. Below is a sample panel, colored by Gilbert, to show y'all what we're hoping for... Oh! And you should be seeing some sketch books up in the next week. The links are already popping up in the Bios page, but they'll actually lead somewhere soon! |
| 4-1-6: Not an April Fool's Update! No, seriously, I ain't kiddin' around here. This is an actual update. The only fool is me for taking so long doing it. Man, I'm telling you, all the work we have to do around here is REALLY building up. It's getting hard to keep up with everything. But oh well. Hopefully you good folks will bear with me. We're a third of the way through shooting the film, I'm almost done moving around everything in my house, we've gotten our new wide format scanner and all other things are progressing as planned. Anyway, the updates: - All our books have been given their own pages. Just go to the COMICS section and click the "Preview" button under each book. - Gilbert has a new BIO pic, ripped right from our new film, Tales from the Android's Dungeon! - Our boy, Joe Green (no relation to Matt) has a BIO up now. - I have three new RANTS up now. They've been typed up for weeks, as have a couple more, but bear with me here, I'm trying. - We've started formatting some of our old short films and will have them up a.s.a.p. That about does it. I'm working on a new look for the site overall and hope to bring it to you soon. We also have tons of content and a whole bunch of news we want to get up here in the coming weeks. All I gotta do is get all this other stuff out of the way first... So expect another update by 2010! |
| Coming Soon! - Sketch books, Convention photos/videos in the bios section. - Previews of our new books and films: Aberrant Anthology, Tales From the Android's Dungeon, and more! - More items in our store, like: Apparel, Prints/Posters, Original Art, etc. - Online comics strips - AND MORE! |
| Just letting everyone out there know we're updating the website at the moment and adding a whole bunch of new material (plus getting rid of the crappy old designs)! But this ain't one of those sissy-ass "we'll upload the whole thing when we're done" update like your daddies' used to do. Hell no! This is an in your face, as we do it, kinda hoedown! Matter-o-fact, we've already redesigned all the pages involving Desert Rose in both it's book and movie forms. We've also added a short we did called The Wedding. It's only a large version in Quicktime, coming in at 30MB, so only proceed if you've got a decent connection or a lot of time to spare. I've also updated my bio page. Speaking of bios, we've finally convinced musical genius Octavio Diaz to allow us to put up a page for him. Octavio is the one responsible for the music in all our films. We'll be slowly and surely updating everything over the course of the coming months, so keep tuned. As I'm doing the bulk of the work, I'll be suspending my rant and any news that isn't of massive import until we're finished with everything else. Until then, ~Justin |
| The next site updates will be done shortly, but in the meantime, just a quick note to let you know that we're going to be adding a section for doing wide-format prints and business cards! Until the page itself is up, you can email or call us to get prices! |
| Lots to report today, July 20th, 2007! Okay, tons of stuff going on all at once! - IMPORTANT!!! Go to your local comic shop and order issue one of Super! You have until July 30th to place an order. If you don't ask for it, it is entirely possible that your retailer might not get any copies, and that would suck... Our order code for Diamond is JUL07 3189. - The page for Super has been updated. Ten pages and the covers for issue one are up and we'll have eighteen pages before we leave for San Diego on Tuesday the twenty-fourth. We may even put up some pencils from issue two. - Speaking of the Con, we will be running around, giving away copies of the ULTRA-limited preview edition of Super #1. We plan to give these to all sorts of industry people to try and get our names out there, but if you track us down and ask real nice, we might give you a copy... OR if you're the really cool type, we'd love to sell you a copy for 3 bucks! - Actually, almost all the pages on the site have been changed up a bit. Different links, different info and they all sport the nifty new background! Okay, that's about it for now, gotta get back to work! |
| Okay folks, we have the Myspace page back and better than ever, so now it's time to start trying to slowly build a sort of regularly scheduled update via blog (bear with me for awhile, you all know how I can be lazy when it comes to the internets). First things first, let's get this painful bit of news out of the way: Super will no longer be coming out in a monthly format. All orders through Diamond have been cancelled.... Umm, sorry... Below is a press release I just sent out to a number of people detailing why our book is being pulled from our publishing schedule for now in lieu of putting it out as a collected version early next year. The big lesson here is that when going into something like this, make sure your entire team is truly dedicated. I know for sure this is the last time I solicit something that hasn't had the majority of the color work done. Of course, in many ways, this turned out to be a blessing in disguise, from finding a better price on printing to being able to have the colors on the book exactly the way Gilbert and I envisioned them to not having to scramble to get a UPC code (new Diamond policy) for the last two issues (if they even made it to the solicitation stage). Anyway, on with the press release: A Small (Press) Setback: The Fate of Super LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – Aberrant Press has chosen to cancel all existing orders for its six issue miniseries, Super, with plans to release the entire series as a collected edition sometime in early-mid 2008. This Wednesday, a number of comic buyers are going to find something missing from their pull-boxes: issue one of Super from Aberrant Press. "What happened?" was the first question asked by retailer Derrick Taylor, owner of Comic Oasis, when Justin Newberry, owner of Aberrant Press and writer of Super, came in to let him know the book wouldn't be out. "Wasn't everything going really good?" was the second. Everything was going really good for Super. Thanks to a marketing plan that included sending out special edition copies of issue one to retailers ahead of time, aggressive promotion on Myspace and a guerrilla media campaign at the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con, Super was getting a lot of attention for an indie book by relative unknowns. Retailers ordered a promising amount of copies for the first issue. Comic news sites were carrying the press releases. The book's Myspace page was gaining hundreds of friends a day. Even G4 TV's own Blair Butler talked about the book on her show "Fresh Ink" (link at bottom of release). What could have possibly derailed the book? "One really bad week," Newberry began. "On Thursday we had our Myspace account deleted. I still have no real idea why. My assumption is that they deleted us for overuse. We were inviting up to 500 comic fans a day in addition to those that were joining up on their own… Maybe they thought we were a porn site or something!" Then came Friday, when Diamond told him that they might drop issues 5 and 6 of the series from the Previews catalogue. "The preliminary order numbers for the second issue spooked them a little because our drop-off looked like it would be massive. Not only that, it was unexpected, since we sent out the preview copies, which should have helped with the typical drop-off. If a retailer didn't think they could sell our book, why would they order the first issue with such vigor? It dumbfounded both us and Diamond." He continued, "Two things should be noted here though. First, Diamond has been nothing but great to us. Our contact over there is one of the coolest guys I've met so far in the business. He, and other Diamond staffers, even helped give out copies of the preview book at San Diego! So I fully understand their concerns and would feel the same in their position. What would you do if you had something that looked great one month and then terrible the next? Continue to lose money or cut your losses? The second is that, in the long run, the final order numbers ended up being much closer to what we needed them to be, and we probably could have saved those last two issues from the chopping block… But it did get the thought of pulling back in our head." What put the final nail in the coffin of publishing the book on a monthly schedule comes down to an unlucky decision made months ago. "Our original colorist quit on us for personal reasons, so we decided to hire on a new guy from Digital Webbing, this great resource for networking in the comics field. After going through a number of candidates, we decided on a guy from Italy. His stuff looked amazing, and he swore he could work within our schedule, but after waiting on him for some time, he'd blown his deadline and hadn't sent us more than a few pages for approval and constant assurances that he was on track… He screwed us pretty bad because even if we got someone else to take his place, they would have been fairly behind the eightball and the colors probably wouldn't have looked very good." Newberry and company felt like they couldn't live with that, so they decided to draw back. "It sucks that in the end, the main reason we're doing this is because of some slacker, but I take this stuff seriously, and I don't ever want to put out a half-assed product." He added, "I didn't want to pull back and anger any retailers, but at the same time, I didn't want to do anything that would anger the readers and the retailers and risk the full story not getting out." Back at Comic Oasis, Derrick had a new question, "So what now?" Now, Aberrant is going to hold off and print the book in one large volume. "We've got a plan to make this thing right. Gilbert (the artist on the book) is going to color the book with me, that way we're sure it actually gets done and done the way we want it. Then we're going to put the book out somewhere between April and June, with a price tag of about $11.99… Given that all the single issues ran at least 25 pages a piece, we think the final book will be somewhere around 184 pages. That's over 8 issues (by mainstream standards) worth of material for the price of four! Not only that, but we'll be getting the Myspace promotion going again (link below), and we'll slowly be publishing the first two issues worth of material online between now and the release of the book. So anyone can get a good taste of it for free!" And what does this mean for Aberrant Press' other publishing plans? "We've pushed back all our future projects to accommodate this and have also taken into account the idea that we may not be able to outsource things like coloring for awhile. We still have a couple of one-shots planned for 2008 and at least one mini-series, not to mention the films we're working on. Keep tuned!" G4 TV coverage: http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/678585/Fresh_Ink_Online_First_Issue.html New Myspace address: http://www.myspace.com/aberrant_press Note: If any other publishers want to know the name of the colorist so that they don't make the same mistake, please send an email to the address below. For additional information, sample artwork, interviews or a sample copy of issue one; contact Justin Newberry at (702) 658-7570 or through email at pr@aberrantpress.com. Super is trademark and copyright 2007, Justin Newberry and Gilbert Cuevas. Aberrant Press was founded in late 2003 by Justin Newberry to provide something different in the entertainment field. Currently publishing comics and producing short films, Aberrant Press is also branching out into feature films and music production with the intent to produce everything in house, giving artists more creative and financial freedom than other publishers. |