Progress on XDM2e with Bonus Puzzle Sneak Peek

Greetings Patrons,

This week we've got another page spread GIF from the XDM2e project. (Latest full update here, If you want to place an order for the book you can do that here.) We didn't do nearly enough to push this project closer to completion over the holidays because we took an actual holiday where we attempted to really relax. Now we're looking at all the projects we want to do this year, (more Schlock stories, more prose writing, cool product ideas) but we need to fulfill our promises to XDM2e first. So the next several weeks will be crunch mode here at Chez Tayler.

Second image after the gif is a column comparison to show how fiddly the layout process can get when we have images, text, and footnotes all interacting with each other. In the first column the image is nestled neatly between the bottom of  the text and the footnote. Howard decides it will work better if the  final paragraph of text is after the image. So I slide the image up  (column 2) but for some reason InDesign decides that there isn't space  on the page for the footnote, so it pushes the last line of the  paragraph and its attached footnote onto the next page. It continues to  do this even when I expand the invisible text container far beyond the  space where text should go.  In column three I tweak the size of the  image to be a little bit smaller and InDesign suddenly decides that  there is PLENTY of space on the page for not only the last line +  footnote, but also for the header which belongs on the next page. In  column four I return the text container to its original boundaries and  the footnote stays put. All is good. I have balanced text, footnote, and  image. However if we make any sort of change earlier in the chapter, I  may have to fiddle with this configuration again. Also I need to go tell  Howard that I re-sized the art because he may want to tweak the text  size in the dialog bubbles to be the correct size compared to the  bubbles on the facing page. This is why we'll have several passes through the book after all the  images are in place that are purely to find out if InDesign did  something weird to our layout when we weren't looking.

Images 3-7 are stills of the page spread shown in the gif so you can examine the page and see the changes we're making at your own pace.

Images 8-10 are of a product test we performed with a print on demand puzzle company. Howard wanted to see the quality of their puzzle cuts and colors, so he picked the least expensive 1000 piece option. This turned out to have very, very tiny pieces. Howard's tweet thread about the puzzle is here, with more pictures. Will we do a run of puzzles? Not sure yet. We like puzzles a lot, but this prototype cost $60 and that cost is too high for the average Schlock puzzle purchaser. So now Sandra has some research to do in order to find out if we can get a workable puzzle in a larger size for a lower price.

Thanks for all your support and we hope to have more new things for you soon!