On Thursday night, Jason and I wrapped up the final pages for Amulet 3. Next week, I'll be making minor adjustments, and I still have to put together the title and acknowledgements pages. The real work for the book, 198 pages of awesome color comics, however, is done.
Jason Caffoe has done a fantastic job as the lead production assistant on the book, and the hard work and dedication shows on every page he worked on (which is a lot!). Jason helped me out with story editing duties on top of having to match my own coloring output, and for that, he gets the Bolt City MVP Award for his work on Amulet 3. We also got some great help on flatting from Denver Jackson, Michael Regina, Stuart Livingston, Kean Soo, and Ryan Hoffman. In addition to helping out with the flatting, Anthony Wu, Denver, and Michael provided assistance on the coloring. In fact, I feel that some of the pages Anthony worked on are among the best in the series. Thanks a ton, you guys!
Amy helped out again, (of course!) but in addition to that, she managed to finish the final manuscript for her new chapter book, all while taking care of Juni (I handle some of the duties, but it's a full-time job for the nursing mom). She's amazing. And speaking of Juni, he's doing great. He's grown a LOT over the first two months, and he's becoming more alert, aware and super adorable every day. I surely have the best wife and son anyone could possibly ask for.
This weekend, I intend to relax just a bit, before getting to work on the Amulet 4 synopsis and the Amulet 3 front and back matter details. I also have to spend some time organizing all of the company's finances and cleaning the house (still haven't taken down the Christmas tree).
Looking back over the past year, I realize I have reinvested pretty much everything I've earned from the Amulet books into the production of the new books, and this investment will hopefully be evident in everything we produce going forward. Some days the "all or nothing" attitude can be a bit stressful, but having so much faith in the work we're doing makes me feel rather calm about it, and is making hard decisions and sacrifices a lot easier to make. I'm very optimistic about how we're moving forward at Bolt City Productions in 2010, and I can't wait for the readers to see the results. Thanks to all our readers for supporting us all this way. We're going to continue to do our best to produce the highest quality reading material for years to come, and have a great time doing it!
