Author: John Fleskes

Gary Gianni’s graphic novel adaptation of Jules Verne’s Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea will be available on January 1. In addition to the adaptation within, we have an introduction by Ray Bradbury, new drawings by Gary Gianni illustrating “The Sea Raiders” by H.G. Wells, and the book is colored by Jim & Ruth Keegan in a beautiful hardbound edition.  Full details and sample art can be viewed at the Flesk Publications website here.

 

Besides the trade edition, and signed and numbered edition, we will have forty super-deluxe copies available containing pencil preliminary art by Gary Gianni. These pieces were actually created for and used by Gary in preparation for this book. Those who purchase this special edition will be able to match up their art with an interior panel. The art will be tipped-in on a special page bound into the book. These copies will be numbers 11-50 of the signed numbered edition.

 

For those lucky enough to pick-up a copy of Gianni’s super-deluxe edition of The Prince Valiant Page, I would imagine you would be pleased, since they sold out quickly. Gary was kind enough to separate himself from more of his originals for this new book. We don’t have them priced yet. I expect them to be between $150.00 to $300.00 depending on the artwork and subject matter contained within. If you are interested on being put on the waiting list, please send me an email. I will contact you as soon as they are available. I let people select the artwork in groups of ten, going in order of when you signed up.

 

John Fleskes

Flesk Publications

Franklin Booth: Painter with a Pen is almost sold out. I have about twenty copies left. After six years of being in print and three printings, I don’t have any plans to reprint this book. I certainly could always change my mind in the future, but my guess is it would be years away from now. If you want one, I would recommend adding it to your collection soon. More information can be found here.

In case you are not aware of it, my good friend Manuel Auad of Auad Publishing has a great hardbound Franklin Booth book out. It has no duplication with my book. Check out the Auad website for more information.

John

John Fleskes
Flesk Publications

Comic-Con International went very well for us. I am happy to have met so many new people, as well as to see a good amount of familiar faces stop by to visit. To have the opportunity to answer questions, and share our upcoming projects with people, is both welcome and fun for me.

I was very excited to have our new book The Prince Valiant Page by Gary Gianni on hand. This title turned out to be our best seller at the show, especially with Gianni providing head sketches in the book! We also unveiled our new Mark Schultz Xenozoic Tales print, which was our number two seller at the show. This is our first time producing a print and I am pleased with the results. Be on the lookout for a Mark Schultz portfolio in 2009.

One thing I appreciated at this year’s show was the crowd control. From the first day I showed up, I noticed a strong presence of comic-con workers directing people traffic. At the end of the day they even closed off the streets in front of the convention center, allowing for a quick crossing into the downtown area. The show opening earlier than last year seemed to relieve the crowds, too. There certainly were moments of deep crowds, but overall I found it much easier to get around this year, when compared to last year.

It was great having artist signings at our booth throughout the show. Thanks to Mark Schultz, who signed for two hours each day, Thursday through Sunday, and also to Gary Gianni and Steve Rude who made appearances. I am always impressed by how courteous Mark, Gary and Steve are with the fans. Each are gentlemen in their own right.

One of my perks is to go through Mark and Gary’s original art portfolios to savor the nuances of each drawing. Gary’s Prince Valiant original with a giant crab attacking a ship was unbelievable! And, Mark’s recent portfolio plates, prelims, and Storms at Sea Drawings! Wow! Later, I stopped by Steve Rude’s booth to see his art, especially the cool original demo he did live at the show.

I received an unusually high number of book proposals at the show. Almost all of which came on Friday. I have no idea why Friday was THE day for this? I normally do not view book proposals. The reason being is I collaborate with a small group of artists who I enjoy working with, and only have the time to publish a handful of titles each year. All of which I am extremely passionate about. Between the few artists I work with, and my personal projects, I am booked for the next four years–at a minimum. To date, the only book submission I have accepted is Brian Kane’s wonderful book, James Bama: American Realist. Brian set a high bar for other book submissions to follow. He provided me with a very professional and detailed book synopsis and chapter design samples to give me a full picture of his vision. That was in 2004. The reason why I immediately committed to Brian was because of his presentation, and the artist in question, James Bama, is someone who’s work I am crazy about. In brief, I am looking for someone who is capable of doing a suburb job on the book, and shares a passion with me for a particular artist.

Throughout the show, I was pleased to visit many creators I admire. One person I always enjoy talking with is Gregory Manchess. I have been familiar with his work for about fifteen years, going back to his children’s book illustrations and article in the Step-by-Step magazine. He is a supurb and powerful painter. He illustrated the third volume of The Complete Conan. Unfortunately, that’s the only collection that did not come out as a special edition from Wandering Star and has not been reproduced in color, yet. During the show, Greg did a painting demonstration of Hellboy at Arnie and Cathy Fenner’s Spectrum booth. I caught about ten minutes of the two-hour demo. This is one of the highlights of the show for me. You can view the demos online at their website.And speaking of the Fenner’s, I was ecstatic to spend more than a few minutes at the show with Cathy and Arnie and get to know my early inspirations on a more personal level. It’s no secret that the Fenner’s and Walt Reed (and Jim Vadeboncoeur) are my biggest influences in starting publishing. I’ll definitely need to write a blog covering everything they have accomplished and how they inadvertently helped get me started.

I got to see my friend Charlie Kochman, editor at Abrams. He’s the man behind the sweet new Jack Kirby book. It was a pleasure to see him, as always. I met Todd Hignite for the fist time at the Heritage Auctions booth. He has done some phenomenal work with his Comic Art magazine, and has completed a Jaime Hernandez book for Abrams. Other artist I respect and admire that I had the honor of talking with include Jim Silke, Geoff Darrow, John Zeleznik, Terry Dodson, Dan Brereton, Arthur Adams, Frank Cho, and many more.

Stopping by Albert Moy’s original art booth was as amazing as ever. His booth is like a museum. If you are interested in purchasing the finest comic art around, this is the place to go. Stuart Ng had a wide-assortment of cool books by artists I have never heard of. He continues to find a plethora of interesting French and random art books that make their way into my library.

One thing I hear every year from a certain few is the grumblings of San Diego not being like it used to be. The complaint revolves around the idea that the show has little to do with comics anymore. I disagree. Personally, I think the show is better than ever and I am excited by the changes and growth in the last five years. I agree the show is very different than fifteen years ago, but it’s still fun.

I think comics are greater than ever. I say this knowing comic book sales are dropping, but that doesn’t mean comics are dying. The difference is the delivery of the content is changing. People are getting their fix through alternative channels like graphic novels, books, television, movies, and pop-culture publications. What I recognize is that comics are still loved and enjoyed by a huge audience. Just because the individual sale of a comic book is dropping, does not mean the genre is dying. It’s alive and growing, as far as I’m concerned.

As always is the case, I came back from the show pumped-up to get to work. Having the chance to meet many talented artists and see their originals inspires me to work harder and get better at publishing.

A special thanks goes out to Cliff Moore, Paige Silverman, and James Walker II, who were a terrific help at at the Flesk booth all throughout the show! I couldn’t have survived without them!

Thanks again to everyone who stopped by, whether it was to visit, or purchase one of our products. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Best,

John

John Fleskes
Flesk Publications

With our postponing Mark Schultz: Various Drawings Volume Four until 2009 to allow Mark to focus on his upcoming book, Storms at Sea, we wanted to still provide a new Schultz product this year. Our solution is Mark Schultz’s first new Xenozoic Tales product in over ten years in the form of a fine art print. Its debut was at Comic-Con International in San Diego. This proved to be one of our best sellers at the show, of which we are grateful.

The Xenozioc Tales print is now available to order direct from Flesk Publications. Both regular and premium signed and numbered editions are available. Full details can be found here.

John Fleskes
Flesk Publications

We sold out of our few remaining copies of Mark Schultz: Various Drawings Volume Two (both the softbound and hardbound editions) and Joseph Clement Coll: The Art of Adventure (softbound edition) at the 2008 Comic-Con International in San Diego.

We have very few copies of the softbound edition of Mark Schultz: Various Drawings Volume One and the hardbound edition of Joseph Clement Coll: The Art of Adventure. Once these are gone, these titles will be out of print with no plans to reprint them. If you are interested in a copy of either of these books, now would be a good time to make your purchase. Please visit our website for details.

John Fleskes
Flesk Publications

Attention Flesk Publication aficionados: Flesk Publications regular Mark Schultz here, guesting for John, who was kind enough to yield the blog and allow me the opportunity to personally market myself.

One of the most common questions I receive is that of how do I scan the artwork for the Flesk books. A recent email from a young artist prompted me to write this blog with my knowledge on the subject. Before I offer my suggestions and dpi settings that I use, I would like to share a bit of advice geared towards the young and new artist, and any artist who does not currently archive their work.

First off, I’m not an artist. I am a publisher who understands what I need from an artist to put together a book collection of their work. Because of this, I will incorporate business advice. I will go over three things. Why should you scan or photograph your art, followed by scanning tips, and then how to backup the scans.

In my opinion, one of the most important things you can do as an artist is preserve and record your work for future use. Even if you keep the originals this is a good idea. Having your art scanned or photographed can benefit you for the rest of your life (and your family and legacy once you are gone). There are many reasons why this is smart. Here’s a list of examples. You sell the original and no longer have access to it. The artwork gets damaged. You used some cheap watercolors, or some other weird thing happened where the art degraded. You don’t want to ship the original to a publisher or client (send them a scan or transparency instead so you don’t have to worry about loss or damage). Plus, there are the financial benefits. You have a permanent record to use for book collections, prints, posters, ads, magazine articles, etc., that you can continue to use for your benefit forever. If you don’t have the art, and no scan or photograph, then you may be stuck when an opportunity arises to utilize past art. Remember you are an artist and a businessman. If you want to survive as an artist, you need to have a plan for your future.

As an example, I spoke to an artist who I highly regard, who has had a long distinguished career and is nearing sixty. He mentioned a publisher was putting together a collection of his work, but was having a tough time locating artwork for the book. The artist sold the majority of his originals, and never kept records.

Another example, I spoke with another artist who is at retirement age. He had had many of his paintings professionally photographed during his entire five decade career. Who knows where all the originals are? But, he has the next best thing–preserved film to reproduce the art.

Now on to scanning. As a general rule for halftone printing purposes, I recommend scanning your art at 400 dpi in RGB. This goes for black and white art, too. I have found the blacks are preserved better in color than in a grayscale scan. You can always convert your RGB file to grayscale. Scanning any higher is unnecessary for print.

For pure black and white reproductions (bitmap files, no halftones) scan at 1200 dpi in grayscale. Never scan as a bitmap. You want to make the bitmap adjustments in Photoshop yourself, rather than letting the scanner make the decisions for you. And that goes for all adjustments. I never use my scanning equipment to make lighting, or color, or threshold adjustments, when I have Photoshop to use for complete control.

When saving your files, save them as either a PSD (Photoshop) file, or Tiff file. Never save them as a jpg. I often see people save their art as jpg’s, and editor’s use jpg’s for reproduction. I never understood why, especially when tiff files are far superior. Jpg’s produce hard edges on the art, and don’t preserve the colors or details as good as a Tiff file. I see no advantage to using jpg’s.

I’m not going to get into the details about photographing art, but I will mention when you want to photograph versus scan art. I have found that scanning paintings on canvas looks terrible. The intense bright light of the scanner oftentimes makes bright pinholes of light in the nuances of the canvas, and washes out the colors. I prefer photographing paintings while controlling the light. I used medium format film up to two-three years ago, but shoot exclusively digital now. Digital cameras are finally providing affordable equipment with excellent results. For a long time they were expensive with poor results.

Now for backing up your digital files. I keep a second disk online as a mirror, so if one disk fails, I just keep on working. This has happened to me twice in the last six years. Disks are mechanical units and will fail at some point. Another option is to burn your files onto a CD or DVD and file away. You can even keep a second copy at a friend or family member’s house in case of a fire or catastrophe. Whatever you do, do some sort of backup.

That’s it for now.

John