Progress Update 17: All Art & Maps DONE!
about 2 years ago – Sat, Jan 29, 2022 at 03:39:12 AM

Greetings fellow adventurers!

With this update we wanted to let you know that we are officially 100% done with all of the art, maps and text in the adventure. Achievement unlocked!

Now it is only a matter of time for us to finalise the page design. Rest assured that it’s an all hands on deck situation and we’re working around the clock, especially our talented designer Alexandra Tsvetkova.

As this is the final part of our journey and discovery, we are extremely cautious not to rush things for the sake of rushing things. We got so far and we believe that we owe it to ourselves, all of you and the adventure itself that we “package” it in the most beautiful and practical way possible.

As the head of our creative department Hristo says: “you might have cooked the most delicious meal, however it would be rather disappointing if it was poured straight on the table without the proper presentation and garnish it deserves”.

We want to give special thanks to the beyond talented artists that we have had the pleasure to work with on this adventure. Their hard work and passion for their craft have made it possible for our vision for this adventure to come to life.

We thought that now is a great moment to share with you some of the amazing art they have created:

The names of these legends are: Yasen Stoilov, Georgi Slavov, Grzegorz Wlazło, Martin Roca, Margarita Stamenova, Krista Vacheva, Mihail Tenev and Murray Lewis. There are no words which can describe our gratitude so we just wanted to say a sincere thank you for all you’ve done, from the bottom of our hearts!

And to all of you, fellow adventurers, 

Thank you for your never-ending support and your trust in us.

All our love,

The Yellow Madhouse team

Progress Update 16: Last bits of Design
over 2 years ago – Mon, Jan 03, 2022 at 06:26:42 PM

Greetings fellow adventurers!  

We hope that you’ve had a beautiful holiday period and are ready to take on 2022 with a full rest, restored spell slots and an inspiration die!   

We can definitely agree that last year wasn’t easy, but here’s to all the exciting adventures the new year holds for us!  We’re moving on schedule! We're working on the page layout and design currently and watching these Google Docs pages turn into an actual book… it is such a surreal experience and we feel so lucky to have the opportunity to witness it! 

 As we’re going further into the design we’re also sorting out all the little details that need polishing such as - adding all of your names in alphabetical order, making sure we give special thanks to everyone who has helped us and that we add all the needed extra pages to accompany the adventure etc.  

Everything is looking good and it seems that in the near future we’ll be ready to send you the digital version and start printing! (Honestly I can’t believe the words as I’m typing them… this is crazy!)  

Thank you so much for your never ending and amazing support!   

With all of our love, The Yellow Madhouse team

Progress Update 15: Page Design is Underway!
over 2 years ago – Thu, Dec 02, 2021 at 06:06:53 PM

Greetings fellow adventurers!  

With so little left on our to do list before the release of the digital version of The Devil’s Bridge, this update will be short and sweet! 

Page Layout & Design

We’re underway with finishing the first step of page layout and design. So far everything is moving as expected so we’re keeping our fingers crossed that it continues this way!  

Proofreading

In the meantime in order to save as much time as possible we've started working on the proof-reading with the amazing Hannah Rose and suuuper minor spoiler alert - we've only heard positive and reassuring stuff so far (which caused us all to have a spontaneous burst of happiness and gave us a d6 inspiration die...) This being our first project, the support and reassurance we've received both from Hannah and Sadie Lowry has definitely made us feel like we're doing something right and we can't thank them enough! 

We wish you an awesome holiday season and send you all of our love!   

The Yellow Madhouse team

Progress Update 14: First Steps in Page Design
over 2 years ago – Fri, Nov 05, 2021 at 12:46:38 PM

Greetings fellow adventurers!

Fun fact - The Devil's Bridge was originally supposed to be a horror one-shot released on Halloween 2019 and we first began working on it in August 2019. Oh how naïve we were... "one shot"... written and released in "two months"... :D 

We hope that all of you who celebrate Halloween have had an awesome one! For us it was a great excuse to dress up like the nerds we are :D and wind down after a month of starting yet another task that we've never done before - page layout and design.

During this last month we laid down the foundations of what this process will be. Based on our previous experience with art, maps and editing it was crucial to lay out a plan of action so we sat down with Snezha (our page designer) and outlined the following steps:

Step 1 - Base Layout (we've started work on this step)

Here the designer basically copy-pastes all the text into their design software without ANY formatting. The main decisions to be made at this stage are: 

- Font, font size

- Gradation (size of titles, sub-titles etc), 

- Differentiating the "Title Pages" (the first page of each act, the first page of each appendix) 

- Layout of tables

- Adding all the illustrations (where and how they fit so it makes sense both with the text content but also with the layout of the actual page).  

Step 2 - Basic Layout

At this stage we'll be looking at: 

- Numbering the pages and creating a header and footer design 

- Colour coding the different acts (based on vibe and/or genre) 

- Colour/design of tables

- Discussing print details with the printing press (this includes super technical stuff such as... ok you know how when you look at the spine of a book sometimes it looks like there are lots of smaller "books" stuck together? to make these "smaller books" we might have to prepare to print pg1 with pg30, pg2 with pg29, pg3 with pg28 etc. )

Step 3 - Final Layout

Here is where the final touches come, including: 

- Extra designs and embellishments (add a smoky transition on certain illustrations so it feels natural, add a boarder with leaves because here we're talking about the forest etc.) 

- Additional illustrations (there's a gap left on this page and we need a new illustration to fill it up)

- Adding hyperlinks to the Digital version and finalising the print version.

At this point we will be able to get the final once-over the final product and send all of the digital copies to you and get started on printing. 

While all of this is happening we're polishing the final illustrations and maps (we've got a couple that need final touches added and dear gods are we excited to share them with you!!!) 

Timeline

With our newly acquired design knowledge we're estimating:

- Step 1 finished by the end of November

- Step 2 finished by the end of December

- Step 3 finished by the end of January

Hence digital delivery in February.

Thank you so much for your endless stream of support! We're putting everything we've got in this final sprint and soon we'll be crossing the finish line! 

We're sending all our love and positive energy your way!

The Yellow Madhouse team.

Kickstarter Update - Quest of Editing: Completed!
over 2 years ago – Mon, Oct 04, 2021 at 02:47:07 AM

Greetings fellow adventurers!

WE HAVE DONE IT! We’ve finalised the text! It has reached its ultimate form and now it is preparing to ascend to the realms of Design!

Here we would like to thank Sadie Lowry who is an absolute editing Wizard and has polymorphed our duckling text into a beautiful swan. You have been a creative inspiration to us all. Thank you.

As we’re delving into the unique art form of page layout/design, we’re learning so many intricacies that we didn’t even know existed, such as:

• Many little elements will need to be hand-drawn: the text boxes, the ornamented letters at the start of each act, the boarder around the page numbers (this is so exciting)
• We have to take page background design into account with the feel of each act and have to have a few different options within so the pages don’t feel “copy-pasted”
• Depending on the flow of the text we might end up with large spaces between portions of text so we have to have an illustrator at the ready to provide an unexpectedly needed illustration

At this point, we’ll have the intervention of Hannah Rose who will oversee the final product and proof read everything in detail. We’re anticipating some minor changes after her feedback which shouldn’t take long.

🙌🏻 Insert PDF release 🙌🏻

And this is all before printing prep where new things pop up such as:

• paper thickness + page quantity somehow will calculate cover spine thickness 🤔
• Depending on the above, the cover art might need to be modified to fit.
• All illustrations have to be in a specific format so the colours show the way the artist intended

We know it sounds like a lot, but we’re predicting it shouldn’t be any longer than 3 months until we’re ready to send off the digital version of the adventure.

We are all grateful from the bottom of our hearts for your support, patience and understanding. There have been so many new and exciting things which have unexpectedly popped up during the process which we never anticipated, but we’ve powered through thanks to you.

With all our love,

The Yellow Madhouse team.

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