GM Games August Sales Report: A Nod to the Artists

July 22nd saw the release of The Manor #7.  The great thing about this issue is I got to meet and work with several people I'd never met before or hadn't spoken to before.  I mean +Jim Magnusson comes out of nowhere and just kicks ass all over the place with his creepy cover and fantastic interior art.  Then I meet +Jarrod Shaw, again out of nowhere, and he provides me with the coyote and mind flayer picture.  Both them were great to work.  I threw them out generic ideas and they ran with them and produced some amazing stuff.

In the way back when The Manor was just an idea, blank folded papers with no words, my biggest worry was the art.  I have no ability to draw.  None.  And as Christian Walker's Loviatar was my inspiration, +Jay Penn did the art for every issue.  I did not want to produce something that lacked the standard Christian had established.  But I wasn't sure how to find and contact artists and I had nothing in my piggy bank to spare.  And here's what makes the OSR so fucking cool, before long I had offers from top-notched artists like +Jason Sholtis and +Johnathan Bingham offering to help me with my zine.  And since then I've had several artist assist making my The Manor a fun read.  Look at this line-up of artist that I've had the privilege to work with.

+Jason Sholtis has the cover art in the 1st and 6th issue of The Manor.  Did interior art for issues #2, #3 and in #4 he did a mini monster collection for me.  Without hesitation, Jason is one of the main reasons why The Manor has been successful. 

Emily Burnette did the cover for #2.  She was a co-worker who did fantastic portraits.  I saw her doodling during a boring training and afterwards asked if she would like to draw for me.  She was thrilled to participate.  Her portrait of Hugo and his crew are some of my favorites. 

My wife did the cover and interior art for issue #3.  First she made a skeleton who looked very happy.  Jazz hands happy.  I said, "Ummm, can you draw a scary skeleton?"  The next skeleton was frowning and looked sad.  I asked, "Why does this one look sad?"  She replied, "Because someone took his blueberry muffin."  So we had a few glitches to work out.  I really like her style, I think if I write an adventure for young ones, her artwork will be perfect.  She loves to draw cartoons.  And maybe the adventure will about finding the sad skeleton's blueberry muffin. 

I recruited another co-worker, Mike Varhola, to help me with some artwork.  He's another doodler during training (that doesn't sound right).  I guess the lesson here is don't doodle next to me or I'll put you to work.  (Hmm, that doesn't sound right either).  Mike worked his butt off trying to get the picture just right for me.  Originally he was just going to do the cover, but then drew this other picture that just came to him and I saw it and said you just gave me the conclusion to the adventure.

Issue #5 I was able to recruit +Jay Penn himself, the man who inked all the art for Loviatar, to do my cover.  I gave Jay this simple photo of a door and asked him if he could make it creepy...ha, hell yeah he did.  I loved it.  Jay even sent me the original art for it.  I have it hanging on my wall now.

Issue #6's cover was done by the already mention Jason Sholtis, and OSR alumni did some creepy ass artwork for me, +Dylan Hartwell.  His pictures set the mood to the adventure perfectly.  Dylan also did all the art work for Knowledge Illuminates.  This is again, is one of those times, where I thought the adventure I wrote was good (I liked it at least), the artwork just brought it to another level.

And finally the latest issue #7, getting to work with +Jim Magnusson and +Jarrod Shaw has been fantastic.  Probably too good because I plan on recruiting them again!

Oh.  Yeah.  This is supposed to be a sales report.  Here are my numbers for July.  There is of course,, always a big jump in sales when there is a new release, even at the end of the month.  I had a total of 4 sales until I released Issue #7.  For the month I has total of 103 sales.