Pages from the book

Timeline

|

DECEMBER 2017

The idea for “The Snow Cat Prince” was sparked when visiting Norway during Christmas. We saw a cat walking through the snow and Phil said it looked like a "snow cat prince” and I promised I would make it into a book. Funny how such a small idea ended up as a 124 page comic!

|

AUGUST 2018

The first official mention of “The Snow Cat Prince” happened during the Kickstarter Campaign for “Greylegs”! At this point Snow Cat was supposed to be just another small 30 page children’s book and I was aiming to publish it in January 2019… oh how wrong I was!

|

15TH OF AUGUST 2018

The first official concept for the Snow Cat Prince! I did draw a quick doodle of a cat for the Greylegs campaign, but this was more of an effort to try and make a proper character.

|

19TH OF OCTOBER 2018

Style exploration for the project! I originally wanted to do the Snow Cat Prince fully traditionally, but I had to abandon this idea once it grew into a much bigger project than just a children's book. I still do really enjoy the look of watercolour and pencils!

|

16TH OF NOVEMBER 2018

Still really in love with the idea that this book would be watercolour and pencil! But this video was the turning point for the actual story, it changed from being about an actual white fluffy cat to a mix between lizards and big cats. I used this new creature to build a whole new section to my world where all my stories and books take place.

|

DECEMBER 2018

I started writing the manuscript for the story! A lot of nonsense and bad writing, my dad was a gigantic help managing to weed through my rambling and find a storyline.

|

14TH OF DECEMBER 2018

I introduce a new character: Kit! I really wanted another animal in the story and Phil told me he would really like a fox. So I did! Still a children’s book at this point and still traditional. Probably still my favourite drawing of Kit!

|

JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2019

Story development is in full swing! I’m writing, rewriting, sketching and thumb-nailing. Again, my Dad is a huge help and somehow managed to understand my very messy manuscripts and text. I think I ended up with over 30 pages of text at some point.

|

20TH OF JANUARY 2019

The first thumbnails! At this point I was still optimistic it would only be around 50 pages max, told my Dad it would not be a comic because “I could never do that” and it was still a children’s book.

|

25TH OF FEBRUARY 2019

First vlog documenting the process of creating the Snow Cat Prince. The change was finally made to make the project a graphic novel and not a children’s book, yay!

|

4TH OF MARCH 2019

The manuscript is done and the comic pages are being planned out and concept art is being done. I also realise how big of a project this is and how long it will take to complete it!

|

12TH OF MARCH 2019

The style of the comic is still not decided at this point so I spend a bit of time exploring options! However, I didn't end up doing very many, I have a habit of just going with whatever feels the most comfortable, especially when the project it so big and overwhelming.

|

18TH OF MARCH 2019

This vlog wasn’t focused on The Snow Cat Prince but there is an interesting part where I talk about inspirations, styles I like and other thoughts about the project.

|

23RD OF MARCH 2019

First two “test” pages! Not really proper test pages because I never really thought of it as a test and I used them for the final book. I should’ve tested out more styles, but this one felt comfortable so I stuck with it.

|

29TH OF MARCH 2019

A video to show the style of the Snow Cat Prince and update YouTube on the progress of the project!

|

APRIL - JULY 2019

After that video of the process of drawing a comic page I was relatively quiet on social media about the project! I was still working on it, but other projects like MerMay and Sprout distracted me for a little bit. Honestly it was probably for the best to allow myself a bit of a break from this giant project. Of course I did start stressing about finishing it so I made this spreadsheet to help me keep some sort of a schedule… I did not keep it. But it is very fun to look back at!

|

AUGUST 2019

I started focusing on The Snow Cat Prince 100% instead of just in the background. I decided to launch the Kickstarter the 1st of September so that I would have a definitive deadline and it could push me to finish the book. There is nothing to really show from this period, but by the time I launched the campaign I had finished the lifework for chapter 1-6 and coloured 1-3 (there are 7 chapters total). Inbetween all the actual art, I also was preparing stretch goals, contacting manufactures and getting quotes on book printing and other rewards. This process is time-consuming but very necessary because you need to be prepared for all the costs involved with running a Kickstarter campaign. If you want more details about numbers you can find a post about this on my Patreon for $5 link HERE

|

1ST OF SEPTEMBER 2019

The Kickstarter launches! And what a first 24 hours that was… not in my wildest dreams did I expect to hit £20 000 in my first day and 457 backers! Which meant there was more people backing this project in the first 24hours than Greylegs had in it’s whole campaign. I also set a personal goal of hitting 1000 backers for this project! Here is the trailer, and you can find the full campaign and how it looked when it launched on the Kickstarter page HERE

|

3RD SEPTEMBER - 1ST OF OCTOBER 2019

The whole month of the campaign I think I was in disbelief over the amount of support and also the amount of work that was ahead of me. Yes, the money and the support was the best thing ever, but the workload was a lot. Luckily I had set my deadline for shipping out the books for February 2020, which meant I had plenty of time to make the book the best that it could be. Here is a fancy graph showing the growth of support during the Snow Cat campaign!

|

OCTOBER 2019

Working steadily on the pages and also prepared a “preview” copy of The Snow Cat Prince. I wen’t to the comic convention Thought Bubble around the 9-10th of November and I really wanted to show off this project at that event, but since the book wasn’t done I printed a few preview copies to sell at the convention and also tell people that they could pre-order the book online. This is the cover I made for it!

|

NOVEMBER - DECEMBER 2019

Working on the pages for The Snow Cat Prince is priority at this point! Yes, I had other things I needed to work on like YouTube videos and Patreon rewards, but all other hours of the day I was pushing to finish all the pages before I went away on holiday the 19th of December. I also did a bit of Vlogmas over on my new vlog channel and documented the day I finished colouring the LAST page! It felt amazing. You can watch all those other videos HERE

|

JANUARY 2020

The biggest workload of the project is done, but there was a lot left to do: editing the pages, hiring a proof reader, formatting the book, sending book to print and a ton more! After the holidays I did feel a lot more chilled out and ready to finally be done with this project that had at this point taken a year longer than I originally planned when I announced it during the Greylegs Kickstarter.

I hired a wonderful editor named Kate Nascimento, you can find her website here: kneditorial.com and she worked through the whole comic and weeded out the awkward parts and dialogue! It was nerve wracking letting someone read the Snow Cat Prince for the first time that wasn’t one of my family members, but Kate was extremely professional, quick and kind. With her edits I felt a lot better about printing the book, my strength is in art and not really writing (also English is my second language haha)

The cover was finalised and I am so happy I decided to go with a deep purple cloth spine and holographic gold foil stamped for the title. I also made the choice to not add an ISBN because I am not planning on printing more of these books than the 1800 I ordered. I had sold 1360 through Kickstarter and 100 through HushBird’s shop and I only wanted a few extra. This book is so expensive and big that it was definitely an exclusive deluxe copy! But who knows, maybe some publisher will one day pick it up and re-print a second issue.

|

FEBRUARY 2020

This month I placed the order for the books and all the stretch goals! Contacted a shipping company about delivering the kickstarter rewards instead of Royal Mail (thank god for this because the weight of the book doubled from my estimates and I had charged way too little shipping) and on the 20th of February I received all 1800 hardcover books at my door in my little house in a residential area. They turned out gorgeous and I could not be happier! 24th of February - 9th of March was dedicated for shipping all the 1360 Kickstarter bundles and 270 pre-order books. Here is the vlog capturing the stress of fulfilling so many orders by myself!

“FINISHED NOT PERFECT”

Is the quote from Jake Parker that I have lived by the past year. And it really does make you think about your projects differently. You have to dare to create, dare to fail and choose all the horrible ups and downs that comes with undertaking a project. It will not be perfect, and I knew this before I started Snow Cat. When you’re shipping out your finished, printed books to the people who support and believe in you, you will not feel 100% happy with the outcome. Sure, it’s beautiful and it’s there, it is done, but it is also incomplete. You feel you could have done so much more, spend a bit more time on changing this, been more invested. However, I do believe these feelings will fade and after some time you will look back at that project and be so proud of yourself for doing it… like wow, you actually DID that and look how amazing it turned out. So keep that in mind when you start your project, if that was why you looked through this timeline :)

So much of the process of creating the book has been done behind the shadows of my YouTube and social media and that is the one thing I regret with the whole project. I don’t regret going digital, changing it from children’s book to a graphic novel or taking a year longer to finish it than planned. No, I only wish I had filmed more and had more to show you of everything that happened, the ups and downs and just all the negative parts about venturing into such a big personal project like this where the end goal is not really set in stone. For my future projects I will document everything and I hope to learn a lot more about storytelling and self-publishing. I hope you will tag along with me for that when that time comes.

You can get even more behind the scenes, process updates, newsletters and sketches by supporting me over on Patreon! Please consider pledging a small amount each month to allow me to continue to invest all my time and energy into my projects <3

Thank you for reading/scrolling through this timeline of The Snow Cat Prince!

- Dina Norlund

Map