Project IITS Update

Hey folks,

I promised I'd give an update with a few details on the Project IITS, uh...project. The game stars Kayli, of course, and while it was the intent to feature her prominently for the game, I'm a great believer in allowing gamers to create their own persona within the world we want them to spend a great deal of time in. The scope of the project has scaled back and forth a few times but we needed a Kayli character in any version. For the game, I felt a smaller, cuter Kayli was more appropriate so we needed to re-imagine her a bit to fit into the game world. Below is the dynamite little package that we came up with:


While our readers will surely recognize Genevieve's distinct touch and style, I needed someone to create Kayli in 3D for the game. I was lucky enough to catch a former co-worker of mine, Mark Kobrin, in between gigs (he is now in NZ working at WETA Digital, no less) and he banged out a great 3D Kayli for me. Here's the result:


Given that Genevieve has been so busy, I've had to look elsewhere for some help in doing some concepts for environments that will later be turned into digital versions. My friend and former co-worker, Brandon Luyen (who is an instructor at the Academy of Art University in S.F.), suggested that a former student of his might be a good fit for the general style of the game and I contracted Cecilia Wong to do a few pieces for Project IITS...here is a re-imagined "Gordo's Island" that will be one of the set pieces for the game:


Hope y'all enjoyed this tiny taste of the Project IITS game. Thanks again to all our faithful readers for continuing to believe in IITS, supporting Genevieve and I, and spreading the word.

- Joseph

Long Time No Post!

Hey Folks,

Sorry for the extended silence, I feel bad for keeping everybody in the dark for so long but there really hasn't been a lot going on with Islands in the Sky for awhile. First the bad news, Genevieve and I have no IITS related shows currently planned for 2011. We're currently taking a bit of a break from the comic project but are collaborating on a few other smaller projects here and there...if we feel there is potential interest among our IITS readership regarding these other projects, we'll post the info here.

The good news is, neither of us have given up on IITS...but it's just a matter of the planets aligning correctly for Genevieve and I to find the time to get back to the comic. In regards to the comic, we were originally going to do a direct sequel to the first issue we put out but decided to reboot the series midway through. We're simply not capable of putting out a regular book so we've decided to put out a "one shot" IITS graphic novel that will give readers a complete story. Rebooting the story requires quite a bit of work in terms of figuring out what format we want the book to be and most importantly, coming up with a great story from start to finish. This is all on me and it will take awhile for me to put together the original storyboards for the book. I think the first step is to contact some printers about the technical aspects of the book type we want but I've been putting that off. When there is progress on the storyboards...I'll let everyone know here.

The other good news is that I'm currently working on an indie video game project that I've codenamed: Project IITS. As some of you may know, Islands in the Sky started off as a video game idea that was a natural evolution of game ideas that, as a game designer, I've developed over the course of several years. Now, I know a video game isn't of much interest to those of you simply wanting more of the comic but I love comics AND video games and I'm doing my best to be true to the feel of the IITS world and its characters. This post is already getting TLDR so I'll save some of the details about the game that I can share in the next post...probably a few days from now.

For all of you who still hold out hope that we're nearing the completion of a second book, thank you for keeping up the faith...we will do our best not to let you down and want to make sure that the IITS graphic novel will meet and exceed all your expectations.

- Joseph