Poser-Photoshop Test Art

I've been working a lot lately on fine-tuning an illustrative style for my render art that suits the tone and mode of my current project, so I thought I'd start posting some of the results here, both so that you can see what I've been working on, and as a sort of mini tutorial series for how it was done. First up, this Viking Meadhorn test, which was intended to look something like a pen and ink with watercolor wash, which is a style I've loved for years, from the children's illustrations of Arthur Rackham to Quinton Hoover's card art for Magic: The Gathering (neither of whom this piece resembles in the least, by the way).

The basic piece began with a fairly straightforward render using Poser's default lights and camera settings. The prop is from the recently released Drinking Horns set by Valandar (available at DAZ 3D), to which I added only an edge-blend node to add more dark shading to its curvature. I also toned down the displacement on the horn engraving, though not on the rim detail, which I left alone.

I then did two additional renders in Poser using the Sketch Designer, one on the default Pencil & Ink setting and another in a stipple style by altering the line lengths to their shortest settings. These were then combined in Photoshop to create this black and white line drawing which captures the shape and shading in a nice stark black.

A second pencil sketch variation was created using Photoshop's "Find Edges" filter (under the Stylize category) on a copy of the basic texture render. This gives a more linear, outline drawing result with a high degree of detail. This is one of the things that distinguishes an illustrative style from most other art, aside from comics, with which it is closely related. However, I didn't want a comic book look for this style, with dark black ink outlines, but rather something a bit more more stark and bold to suit the Viking world.

The next step was to bring in color, and to do this I used a trick I stumbled on by mistake one day, and for which the preceding steps are necessary. Start by creating a new layer with a copy of the basic texture render and then process it using the Brush Strokes-Ink Outlines filter. For this one I used a short stroke length of 1, with dark set low on 7 and light cranked up to 50. This creates a highlighted color tone with sharpened edges.

This is then blended with the pencil-stipple render set on Soft Light to create the bleached out blood red effect. Two copies of this are layered over the basic render, one set to Lighten and the other on Darken Color (I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but it creates the stark lights and darks that brings out the texture and the other colors). An additional layer of 25% Noise is added at 14% opacity, the Found Edges layer is blended in at 50% to bring out the "hand-drawn" details further, while the shadows are erased from the outline layers to tone them down a bit, since they multiply with each new layer added.

The final effect is kind of a dirty, well-used drinking vessel both darkened and bleached by age, with a nice metallic shine to the trim details that resembles reflected firelight. The highlights are crisp and clean with plenty of subtle texture and color, so that it layers well on any background - and all without ever touching a pen or brush.

eBook ISBN Uncertainties - or, Is the ISBN Outdated?

With the rapid transition from print to digital underway, a wide variety of issues have arisen - from multiple product formats to digital rights management and licensing - many of which have yet to be worked out in anything but rudimentary form. One element underlying all these issues that has bubbled to the surface lately is the waning relevance of the International Standard Book Number in the digital age. In an online scenario where no physical barcode is actually scanned and the definition of what even constitutes a "book" spans the gamut from simple text to high-tech multimedia presentations, not only is the usefulness of the ISBN as an identifier debatable, but its capacity to even fulfill that function is coming into question.

In 2007 the ISBN was updated from a 10 to a 13 digit code in order to accommodate a wider range of data. However, this may very well be a case of far too little far too late. Amazon, for example, had already by this time given up on the traditional identifier for its own uses in exchange for an internally generated ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number), seen not just on ebooks, but on every product in its store. And while most items on Amazon carry both an ISBN and an ASIN, no Kindle edition has, in fact, ever had an ISBN assigned to it.

In part, this is due to the inability of the ISBN to distinguish variant ebook formats of the same title from one another in a segment of its code without having to assign an entirely unrelated ISBN to it, as if it were a different title. This is, of course, how the hardback / paperback / audiobook division was handled, but with an almost unlimited number of variations of format and content possible with digital, this becomes burdensome at best. Not only are there a half dozen major proprietary and open-source software formats in use, but there can be additional interactive content in each one, such as embedded audio and video, hyperlinked and touch-interface capabilities, different rights management encryptions employed (or not), lending-enabled editions, scanned pages versus reflowable text formats, and a wide open horizon of endless future possibilities as new media are developed and incorporated. The question then becomes what exactly is an ebook, and at what point is one version significantly different from another so as to require a unique identifier. Without a clearly defined set of criteria, and the means to differentiate them in code, no set of numbers can mean anything useful to a broad overall group involved in its production and distribution.

An additional concern is the role - and even identity of - the publisher of an ebook edition. Digital titles published for the Nook format, for example, are given an ISBN which identifies Barnes & Noble as the publisher, regardless of who actually published the print edition (mine was given a new one even though I'd already assigned one to it). This technically means that B&N "owns" the ISBN for that edition, and not me as the author/publisher. This is important because what, in fact, separates a true self-published author from an author whose book is produced by any of the many ebook distributors who reformat digital editions is the actual ownership of the ISBN: whoever owns the ISBN is the "publisher of record" (even though the rights to the work itself may remain with the author or other rights holder). Consequently, a single title in ebook format can now have many separate publishers, some of which are little more than retailers while others are megalithic literary conglomerates, a sign of how the roles are blurring in the digital age. The distinctions are obscured even further by the fact that a buyer of an ebook does not technically own the book they buy, but only purchases a license to read it.

The usefulness of an internal system by an online retailer is understandable, but the assignment of random unrelated identifiers to what is essentially the same title brings up a range of problems for everyone else, from libraries who need to catalog a title to the author who wants to track their sales across multiple platforms. Metadata conflicts are a growing concern, as voiced in the recent findings by the Book Industry Study Group (BISG), who have undertaken a research project to identify and define ebook classifications with an eye to revamping the ISBN system. For more on the issues involved, you can download a pdf Summary of BISG Report Findings (1-13-2011), which outlines their initial results and recommendations. As an interim solution, in November of 2010 the International ISBN Agency released an updated set of Guidelines for the Assignment of ISBNs to eBooks (including "apps"), in the form of a 13-point F.A.Q. which is useful for any author or publisher to read.

Ultimately, as with many things, it may simply come down to a question of cost, as ISBN blocks are not only relatively expensive to purchase outright from Bowker, the U.S. agency tasked with selling and recording ISBN data, but are now often given away for free by ebook retailer-publishers (such as Barnes & Noble) or for a minor fee (as the $19 fee charged by BookBaby), or they are simply eliminated altogether (e.g. Amazon, the major ebook publisher worldwide, with whom Bowker is understandably unhappy). But unless the price of an ISBN is all but eliminated (and soon), Bowker's days as caretakers of the univeral literary cataloging system are numbered (and in single digits, too).

Current costs (or "processing fees" as they're called) to purchase ISBNs outright from Bowker are $125 for a single number (which does not, by the way, include the actual barcode graphic - that costs $25 more), or $250 for a block of ten (which is what I bought), and $575 for 1000 (it goes up from there, but at that point you're not wasting your time reading this). Believe it or not, these are the recently reduced prices designed "to accommodate the digital identification needs of authors, publishers, libraries and the supply chain at large." A year ago a block of 1000 was $995. But even at a nearly 50% price reduction for that many, who's going to buy something that someone else is giving away for free? Especially when the highest prices are being charged for the smallest quantity. If anything, they should all cost the same regardless of how many you buy, since (like ebooks) there isn't anything physical actually being produced. But then, if you want to be the actual publisher of the book, you have to pay their fee.

In the end, the only identifier that will really work is one that incorporates all the new relevant data that surrounds a digital edition of a book, both external (production data) and internal (content data). Anything short of that is irrelevant.

iPad Sales Stats Addendum

Here's an updated look at the iPad sales trajectory for the first "trimester" of its life (three sales quarters, that is). As you can see, it's a happy, healthy little guy, humming along nicely on his way to tablet market dominance: iPad sales currently account for 90% of all tablets sold worldwide, figures any corporate head would kill for.

But while Apple commands their corner of the field, Amazon is holding their own just fine in the eReader duel. I came across some facts today from the International Data Corporation corroborating the figures given in my last post, and adding an additional tidbit or two of data that I found informative. An IDC report from last week broke out the current market shares of dedicated eReading devices, with the top four being:

1. Amazon's Kindle (41.5%)
2. Pandigital's Novel line (16.1%)
3. Barnes & Noble's Nook/NookColor (15.4%)
4. Sony's eReader (8.4%)

Pandigital, really? They're outselling the Nook? Wow. That came out of nowhere. Or maybe I just wasn't paying attention. The most intriguing factor here, however, is that Pandigital comes loaded with the B&N bookstore as its default ebook source, meaning Barnes & Noble have prime placement on 31.5% of eReaders being sold. This, of course, doesn't mean they're selling that many ebooks, but it's got to help. In my December 11 post I reported the "Nook bookstore" share at 10.61%, with no mention of Pandigital in the picture. But then, things change fast these days.

One disparity came out in IDC's report, which is their estimate that 10.8 million eReaders were sold in 2010, considerably more than Gartner's 6.6 million count. In addition, IDC forecasts 14.7 million units to ship this year (up from Gartner's 11 mil) and 16.6 in 2012. As far as tablets are concerned, ICD rounds out 2010 with 17 million units sold (14 of which we know are iPads, so that sounds right), with a prediction for 44.6 shipping this year, which is just about what I came up with for all eReader devices combined. That's a whole lotta personal ebookstores opening up in the coming months, which is good news for ebook authors.

Latest iPad Sales Figures

Apple announced yesterday they sold 7.3 million iPads during the final quarter of 2010, bringing total sales of the device to 13.8 million since its April debut. More importantly - at least for authors - a November consumer survey by the Codex Group reports that use of the iPad as a reading device has increased to 67% of owners, with another 19% saying they intend to start reading ebooks on it. However, only 29.4% of ebooks read on those iPads were purchased through the iBookstore, while 40.3% were channeled via Amazon's Kindle store.

Another revealing statistic from the Codex report found that out of all the Ipad owners surveyed, those who purchased books bought 36% of them in digital format, while Kindle owners purchase 46% in digital. Since the overall digital market share is hovering somewhere around 10%, what this says is that as readers adopt this new technology, their reading (and book buying) habits change. Consequently, as more e-reading devices are sold, digital market share must increase accordingly. In essence, what this suggests is that if every reader owned an iPad or a Kindle today, the ebook market share would be somewhere between 36-46% rather than its current ten.

The question then becomes, how many readers will ultimately adopt the new technology. This is, of course, a topic of hot debate, not only among the literate public, but quite certainly in the corporate boardrooms of every tech and publishing company throughout the world. Gartner estimated in early December that sales of dedicated ereaders (i.e. excluding tablets or smartphones) would reach 6.6 million units by year's end - they believe that Amazon has only sold 4.4 million Kindles this year, while other guesstimates make it almost twice that number (though as always, Amazon's not commenting). Using that as a base conservative figure, that puts some 20.4 million new e-reading devices in book buyers' hands this year (tablets and dedicated devices combined).

Now here's the really exciting thing: Gartner predicts that sales of dedicated e-reading devices will increase by 68% to 11 million units next year. Assuming a relatively equivalent increase in iPad sales (and extrapolating out the nine months of iPad sales thus far), we can fairly confidently expect to see another 29 million iPads in readers' hands in twelve months' time. That's a combined 40 million new users by year's end. Those are some pretty stunning numbers. 2011 looks to be a banner year for digital.

At some point sales will likley flatten out until an equilibrium is reached. But that won't happen this year, or likely even soon, given the number of new devices slated for release this year alone, and the rate at which screen technology is improving. When the color Kindle hits the market (very likely late this year, and certainly by 2012), those numbers will explode. Even if the digital revolution tapers off by 2015, by that point it will have attained a dominant position which it will not easily relinquish, and print will indeed be dead.

More About Amazon Rankings

Recently, the good folks over at NovelRank released the results of an interesting study they undertook in order to determine how various sales events effect book rankings on Amazon. Given the recent hullabaloo concerning the "fake your rankings" ebook scandal (if you can call it that), this comes at an appropriate moment, and gives us some real and useful information rather than the "scam your way to being famous" variety we've been inundated with of late.

The criteria of the study essentially set out to disprove (or support) several common "myths" concerning how Amazon's ranking system works. Amazon won't divulge the information themselves, but the practical application of a few controlled experimental purchases provided some useful facts nonetheless. Among the most interesting discoveries was that returns do not negatively impact sales rank (i.e. the book is returned, but the sales rank remains), and that sales of a book on multiple orders increases the ranking more than multiple sales of that title on the same order (so if you're buying your own book, only buy one at a time!).

Visit the NovelRank blog post to read the details and learn more. Also, if you're an author I encourage you to employ their definitive ranking and analysis tools to your benefit. They're very cool, they're impressively fast and thorough, and best of all, they're free!

One "myth" not tackled in the study, however, was that "if you buy your way to the top, someone else will buy your book too."

BookBaby

The latest entity to jump into the ebook self-publishing/distribution melee is BookBaby, an offshoot of the highly successful indie music distributor CD Baby. Similar in many ways to Smashwords, which both act as distribution intermediaries between the author and the retail outlets (the new province of the ebook publisher), BookBaby differs mainly in its pricing structure. So far BookBaby has partnered with Apple, Sony, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon, with plans to add more.

Whereas Smashwords takes a percentage of every sale in the standard way (generally 15% off the top, leaving 85% of the net profits for the author), BookBaby's approach is to charge a flat-rate fee up front, and take nothing from each sale. Consequently, for authors selling a significant volume, this may well be a better way to go. But determining where the sweet spot is will take some careful math, and not a little intuition (something akin to futures forecasting or mystical insight).

For example, at their standard title setup fee of $149 (currently cut to $99 per ebook) you'd have to sell just 19 books a week at $2.55 each (with a 70% royalty in place at each retailer) to recoup your cost in one month. Any profits after that are yours, as BookBaby passes on 100% of the retailer's wholesale cost to the author, taking no fees other than the initial costs, plus a $19 annual fee after the first year to keep the title "in print" (but see below for the caveats!). This also includes free ePub conversion from .doc, .html or .txt files.

They are assuming, of course (and rightly so), that most ebooks will never sell that many in a year (or ever), let alone a month. But if you're one of those self-pubbed authors who have reached a volume of roughly 80 units a month per title then this might be a serious consideration. Of course, you can sell half that and cover your costs in two months, or however long you like; but as a business model, you'll have to decide where that cutoff lies, and at what price you can guarantee that quantity of sales. Otherwise you're just shooting craps. And good luck with that as your strategy.

As with every business deal, there are caveats and stipulations, and not a little fine print. The base fee is for text-only ebooks with up to 30 chapter headings, and includes an interactive table of contents. Anything after that costs extra (including $19 for an ISBN if you need one, which is required). So for graphics, charts or tables, additional chapters, or multimedia features such as embedded audio or video the fees accrue rather rapidly. Again, you'll have to decide for yourself at what point the cost offsets the benefits.

If you just want to get your ebook on Amazon or B&N your best bet is to deal directly with them. But Sony and Apple are a little stricter and require leaps through far more hoops to get into their stores. A one-time fee will get your ebook out in four major retail outlets, and net you a larger share of the back-end than Smashwords, whose net royalties equate to roughly 60% of list. That extra ten percent could make a difference down the road.

Color eInk vs. Mirasol

Here's a look at the new Hanvon color eInk reader shipping this May in China. This is the first - and hence, still more or less prototype-beta level - production model of a color eInk screen. The colors, as you can see, are still somewhat muted and pastel, and screen refresh rates are said to be sluggish at best, comparative to the Kindle 1.0. Surprisingly, though, it's not only a touch screen device, but a digitizer as well, recognizing graphic input for handwritten notes and sketches via a stylus. Hanvon has no plans to ship outside China at present, but if successful color eInk screens are bound to proliferate at a rapid pace.





Now here's the real story...

Mirasol's newest color display screen: "it's essentially color e-ink with a reflective screen that can be read in bright sunlight like e-ink but also offers color and video with low power consumption and long battery life." The video is stunning. I feel bad for the Hanvon rep as she struggles to get the eInk screen to work.





Clear winner: Mirasol. Bright color, high contrast, fast refresh rates, readable outdoors, touch screen... what's not to love? In addition, there are plans to introduce "infused lighting" that will spread light evenly across the display for viewing in the dark, making it readable both in bright light and total darkness. Qualcomm, who produce Mirasol Displays, are hoping to find a hardware partner and get them on the U.S. market this year. And I truly hope they do.

Top 20 Literate U.S. Cities

Well, it's Monday after a long holiday and time to get back to work. To start the new year off, here are some interesting (and possibly useful) statistics published by USA Today this morning, listing the top ranked U.S. cities by literacy rate (numbers given in parentheses are rankings for the preceding five years):

1. Washington (2 3 5 3 3)
2. Seattle (1 1 2 1 1)
3. Minneapolis (3 1 1 2 2)
4. Atlanta (5 6 8 3 4)
5. Pittsburgh (4 12 9 6 8)
6. San Francisco (12 5 7 9 5)
7. St. Paul (7 4 3 5 9)
8. Denver (10 7 4 8 6)
9. Portland, Ore. (6 10 12 10 11)
10. St. Louis (11 9 6 12 15)
11. Cincinnati (9 10 11 7 9)
12. Boston (8 8 10 11 7)
13. Raleigh, N.C. (19 14 14 13 13)
14. Cleveland (13 13 13 14 18)
15. New Orleans (17 0 -- 0 42)
16. Columbus, Ohio (22 15 21 15 12)
17. Kansas City, Mo. (14 18 15 17 14)
18. Baltimore (26 16 27 24 21)
19. Tampa (20 29 20 21 24)
20. Lincoln, Neb. (23 0 -- 0 0)

As you can see, Washington has made an impressive run to the top over the past few years, knocking Seattle out of the coveted spot (Seattle lost a major newspaper last year and, like many cities, its independent bookstores are struggling). However, overall literacy ratings are down, and if Washington's current score was applied to the stats from 2004 it would only rank at number 7. And while San Francisco came in at #6, ten of the twelve largest California cities ranked in the bottom half of the top 75, with Stockton coming in dead last.

Rankings are based on six criteria, or "key indicators of literacy": newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment, and Internet resources (including online sales statistics). The complete study, by Central Connecticut State University, ranks the top 75 U.S. cities with a population above 250,000. The complete results can be seen at the CCSU website, where you can actually view the stats by any of the various categories, which is quite useful.

For example, if you're planning a 2011 book tour, or plan a focused regional ad campaign, the Booksellers rankings may help you determine where to aim your efforts (Seattle, by the way, is still number one in bookstores - as well as number one in education level - with St. Louis coming in at #2). Bookseller rankings are based on the number of retail outlets per 10,000 population, number of rare and used bookstores, and number of members of the American Booksellers Association.

For more analysis visit the USA Today post online here.

Amazon Sales Rank Update

Morris Rosenthal over at Foner Books has recently updated his Kindle Sales Rank Chart (at left) to show the best current estimate of how Amazon's sales rank stats equate to actual numbers of Kindle ebooks sold. Essentially, this allows you to more accurately track your Kindle book sales over time, or gauge how well other titles are doing, without having the actual data. This is less an issue for your own books now that Amazon provides exact sales figures for self-published authors via the recent Author Central upgrades, but the information is useful in analyzing and comparing works by other authors in your field or genre.

To use the chart effectively, you'll need to track a title's data over time and average the results. So, for example, a week's samples with a sales rank average of 100,000 reflect a title selling two books per week, whereas a rank of 10,000 equates to roughly fifty books per week. Since it's difficult to see peak rankings without checking a title's status hourly, the figures you come up with are probably skewed downward somewhat, but a fairly close estimate can be gained this way, enough to know what's really selling and what has only sold a few copies lately. Of course, the more samples you take over time (and the more often), the more accurate the results will be.

Extrapolating from this chart Rosenthal estimates that Amazon sold 3.5 million ebooks in the week between Christmas and New Year's Day. These figures are supported by recent reports from some of the major publishers concerning their post-holiday sales. According to Publisher's Weekly, Simon & Schuster reported a 150% jump in e-book sales for this holiday over the same period last year, while Random House reported a whopping 300% leap. Others, such as Kensington, are claiming as much as a 400% increase over 2009 for digital book sales, though much of this is likely due to their relative lack of an ebook presence last year.

Still, it is clear where the trend is heading, and who is leading the charge. This chart from Foner Books' site last year, shows the trend in graphic terms, with Amazon's domination both obvious and dramatic. Borders' decline is rapidly approaching "demise" as they shutter stores and employees, and have ceased paying their suppliers; and while the NookColor is doing well for Barnes and Noble, who saw their “largest retail sales day ever in the company’s nearly 40-year history” on December 23rd, with a 67% increase in digital sales over the previous year (plus a moderate 8% increase in store revenue), playing catch up to Amazon is probably the best that they can hope for in terms of online sales.

The real question will be how they handle their brick-and-mortar stores, in order to prevent the cost of operations from sabotaging digital and online income. As far as I can see, unless physical bookstore adopt the print-on-demand model - where print editions are produced on site to order - there's really little hope they can survive, let alone thrive, in the coming digital-dominated market. Otherwise, the days of the supersized bookstore are numbered. Either way, they're destined to be relegated to the art collector market.

Viking Arm Wrestling

This is a scene I've been working on the past few days using the new Saxon Settlement model I bought. It's mostly a lighting test to work out how some of the new Poser 8 features function, such as Light Falloff and Attenuation, used here to darken the background corners (possibly too much). I wanted to focus the main light source on the center of the action, while retaining a firelight ambiance. In reality, Viking mead halls were probably pretty dark most of the time. When fire is your only source of light and heat it's likely either too dark or too hot at any given time, particularly in summer - and wax for candles was hard to come by, even for plundering raiders such as these. Vikings were sailors and fishermen for the most part, so consequently they actually used a lot of oil lamps; but this set came with candles and I left them, as I wanted to do a render with the default set more or less as it came.

It was also a chance to test some of the textures of the older Viking clothing models I've acquired. Most of the male clothes are from the Viking Pack made by John Malis way back in 2003 for the Michael 2 figure, plus some from the Norse Villager and Saxon add-on packs. The two main figures plus the king and bard are all Michael 2, while the figure on the right is Apollo Maximus in his Viking Warrior costume, and to the left of the king is Simon G2 with the Erik the Red outfit (which includes his helmet on the table). The drinking horns are from the brand new set that just came out, while all the other props come with the Saxon Settlement set. Both women are Victoria 3 with the Nordic Women textures for the Morphing Fantasy Dress and Cloak, plus some additional adornments from the Valkyrie Pack. The wolf is lame and I need to get a better one.

I used a number of different hair props without much fuss or tweaking, but for the main bald figure on the left I added a custom tattoo to the base skin texture and refitted a displacement map from Michael 4 to make some bulging veins stand out on his head in order better to visualize the stress and pressure that he's under.

Those of you who have read The Saga of Beowulf might recognize the scene. It's an image I've wanted to visualize for quite a while, as it's hard to get across in words exactly how Viking arm wrestling works. But here you can get the idea right away. Not a contest you want to lose. For those who haven't read the book, the results don't turn out quite how you might expect, given the way they seem to be going. This also isn't exactly how I visualized the characters in the novel, but the purpose wasn't to do a character study, and I only did enough to capture their basic features. I did almost no morphing on their faces for physiques, for example. But it goes to show how much expression and hair make up a character that the two main figures are exactly the same: I literally just copied the one on the right and flipped it around to the left to create his opponent. And I basically did the same with the king and the bard, although I did manipulate their bodies and faces quite a bit to make one thin and the other pudgy. Other than that it was mostly posing.

If I ever do a graphic novel edition of The Saga of Beowulf I would do a lot more work to this image, if I use it at all, but for now it's served its purpose. And I hope you enjoyed it.