The writer's strike may have put a dent in some of my favorite iPhone sponsored TV shows like Moonlight and Chuck, but it's not stopping me from writing new iPhone manga. I forgot to mention that my latest release Blood Isle is up and available in the Alchemy Manga Shop, joining the recent Evidemic released last week. Blood Isle is a story I like to call a fantasy with a twist you won't believe. It follows an axe-wielding barbarian woman called Ozelle as she moves through the battles waging around her on this island. This is just the beginning of an iPhone manga series I am very excited about and so expect to see a lot more of this story as it develops. The twist in question will become more apparent in the next chapter and things really explode from there!

It was a fun title to work on as I chose to experiment with the look and feel of the piece, deviating from the sharp look of the previous titles to try something more painterly and earthy. I enjoyed playing with colors, foggy settings and depth in the scenes. Because the world of iPhone manga allows for a blend of techniques from print and screen graphics, there are a lot of interesting directions to go artistically. I am sure I wll discover and expand on this as time goes on.

Coming up this month, in time for the holidays, will be a new CG collection titled Manga Dolls: Holiday Wallpaper Pack. It will provide a way to give some sexy holiday cheer to your iPhone with some different holiday backgrounds. The CG collection will contain 16 beautiful background images featuring the cutest characters around in holiday themed environments. This will be the first of many seasonal CG collections to supplement the iPhone manga available in the store. CG collections are extremely popular in the digital manga world of Japan, and as more artist create content for iPhone Alchemy, I hope to have some image collections from some of the greats overseas in the store very soon.

Even though I'll be after great iPhone formatted manga content from a variety of artists in Japan and globally, that won't stop the development of my original stories. Look forward to the next chapter of Heaven's Burden, coming later this month, along with continuing stories of Evidemic and eventually, The Legend of Zahur. Also, the web app I mentioned previously is underway for the iPhone and should be showing up in the next couple of weeks. I feel like I'm on a roll now and I am having a ton of fun. Things are just beginning to accelerate!

Tags: Blood Isle, Mobile Content, Manga

It's a new month and it's time to kick this thing into high gear. I have big plans for this site and the world of mobile manga in general is going to be big. Companies in Japan are popping up extremely fast. I have recently found two new mobile and digital manga sites in just that last week. They see that this is where it's at. Not to be left behind in what I see as an incredible sea of possibility, I am creating some serious new work myself.

I am working on a new series called Evidemic. I don't want to say too much about it because it will be available for free download here very soon and you can see for yourself. Needless to say, it involves a very different kind of disease. I am learning a lot when it comes to creating art for the mobile content generation. The rules no longer apply. The one thing you will find here that most other places are not doing is content specifically formatted, nay, created for the mobile device in question. Chopping up print comics and making them fit on a phone may be a start, but the real revolution begins with content designed exclusively for the device. Why not take advantage of the technology?

Creating art for the iPhone as opposed to print yields some very different challenges. Your screen is smaller than a page, but it is also extremely sharp and crisp. You can't display a standard comic page, but you can do something new and fitting that I think is very impressive. There is a combination of page and screen coming into play. Now some things, image wise, which look good in video or film, can look good on a manga page. I will certainly be taking more advantage of that in this and future titles.

There will surely be a lot of titles, and not just by me. One of the many things I intend to do this month, as I kick things into high gear, is to get a full online store integrated into this site. I've already spoken to a few artists and publishers who have shown great interest. I expect the expansion of this site will be quick. Of course, I also have a ton of ideas and stories I want to tell, and I can think of no better way to tell them than through iPhone manga.

Another thing I intend to see accomplished this month is that I plan to go all out. I am going to advertise. When I created my first independent project, a DVD called Understanding Chaos, I did what might now be called traditional web advertising, and it worked. It brought people in and generated great interest in the project. Although I have created other projects since then, I haven't returned to the method of market generation I started with. Well, advertising is expensive right? Not today. It's easier than ever with all the tools available on the web. So I will do a real campaign to push and build this site.

All in all, I am preparing for 2008 to be the year of mobile manga. It will explode. In Japan, it already has. A fully Japanese version of this site and all products is on the horizon too. There's a lot to create in the coming weeks and months, so I guess I better get started!

Tags: Manga, iPhone

I finished up my tour on the Serenity today with watching the feature film spawned from the Firefly series. I meant to watch it last night, but got some ideas for a character and did some drawing instead. After watching the film, I decided to watch the extra features, even though I saw them when the DVD was new, just to be reminded of some things.

One of the great themes in the Firefly TV series is freedom. It's about not being under the heel of anyone. That's what the Serenity represents to her crew, her captain and, I think, to Joss Whedon, the show's creator as well. This is an idea really brought home in the series episode titled Out of Gas, which shows how the characters and crew came to be together. This idea permeates the extra features on the Serenity feature DVD as well. The movie that defied the system and yet lives. I think there is a spark somewhere in that idea that is very attractive to people. I think there is spark which leads to all things that makes Serenity and the Firefly universe something people can fall in love with.

One of the things Joss Whedon talks about in the extra features, concerning the fans and the San Diego Comic-Con, is that his goal is not to create things people like, but things people love. The scenes from Comic-Con show that he greatly succeeded. This is really what I have always wanted to do. This is what I am hoping to do with iPhone Alchemy. I am hoping it is my freedom.

Imagine taking a boat, that you own, out into the black... no one telling you where to be or what to do. All that open space is yours. You are free, free to come and go as you please, to travel where the win takes you. The internet can open such a door for content creators. You have a whole world out there searching for something new, searching for good content. They are searching for something they can fall in love with. On the net, the creation of that thing is anyone's game. It's not just "the alliance" of media conglomerates and studios and distributors who control what is available in other fields.

This is why I am excited about iPhone Manga and the possibilities here. It's my chance to create and, more fully, create things people love. This is something I have dreamed of for a long time, as far back as when I was on the floor drawing comics through my spiral notebooks for school as a child. I just wanted to create something people loved then too. Now, with iPhone Manga, it may just be that I can not only create it, but the means are there for so many to see it as well. That sounds like freedom to me.

Tags: Manga, TV

Mobile manga is already a huge industry in Japan, servicing the nearly 80 million mobile users to be found there. This is only the beginning. Mobile networks are growing globally and users are ever joining the expanding mobile universe. In fact, some see mobile content as the future of many forms of entertainment.

In Japan where manga and doujinshi (usually amateur, self published comic works) are huge, the mobile content market has opened entirely new doors of liberation. First, there's the elimination of printing costs, a serious obstacle for the indie artist. This also opens the door to full color works. Second, the issue of distribution is quickly solved because the works become only a click away as opposed to the difficulty of retail outlets, which are nearly impossible for the indie to get in. Limited shelf space becomes a thing of the past.

In the American comics market this becomes an even greater possibility. The American comic market is a world where distributors rule, retailers suffer, many going out of business at steady pace, and the publishers and creators are forced to play whatever hand they are given. All of this can be swept away in an all digital and mobile world.

Of course I don't expect this huge transformation to happen anytime soon. It's going to start small. With devices like the iPhone, though, featuring a revolutionary touch screen and beautiful color rendering, a new space is opening for mobile manga. New creators can get in, creating even specific iPhone manga, and have a huge and ever growing audience awaiting their work. The cost of color is no more. The cost of print extinct. Distribution is under control of the creator if that is the desire. With iPhone manga, or mobile content in general, it's a whole new world.

Tags: Mobile Content, iPhone, Manga, Japan