Some Updates

Hello friends! And thank you for your continued support of RHYTHM ZINEGOKU! I’m here today with some brief announcements I need to make regarding the zine!

1. Where’s the free digital copy? Good news! I have gone ahead and uploaded the digital PDF of RHYTHM ZINEGOKU to my Gumroad page. You can go there now and get it for totally free! I have it set up for PWYW if you feel like throwing a few bucks down for it  but if you just want it for free, have at it. Any profits from digital copies will go towards helping to cover the additional costs of the publication right now.

2. I haven’t received my book yet! Where is it? A very fair question. I have taken care of all the domestic orders over the past few months, with a few exclusions-- a small handful of books were lost or returned back to me in the mail, and I need to get those sorted out with the respective customers. If you haven’t heard from me already on that, you will hear from me soon.

I am, however, still working on getting international orders out. How is that you ask? International shipping has proven to cost more than originally expected. Much more. In some cases, twice as much as what was projected. As such, I’ve had to cover the additional expenses out of my own limited funds. Don’t worry, this does not mean I require any more money from you if you’ve already ordered the book! I am working on this on my own and I have the remaining international zines sitting right here safe and sound. A number of the international orders have gone out already and have arrived at their destinations-- the rest are on their way and I thank you guys who have already asked me about this for your continued patience. I sincerely apologize for any huge delays in the orders.

3. Are you going to start posting the images in a tumblr queue soon? Yes! I am working on getting the images queued up now. With hope, the blog should be ready to start updating next week (maybe this week if all goes well). Please stay tuned and follow the blog if you haven’t already.

If you guys have any additional questions for me, please feel free to get in touch and I’ll do my best to respond to the best of my ability.

And thank you again for your continued patience and support, you guys being so awesome is what’s been making this entire project worth doing, and I’m not even done with it yet!

Thank you!

BIG NEWS TIME!

Rhythm Zinegoku is finally available for pre-order!

The zine is pretty much an artbook at this point with 94 FULL COLOR PAGES of art, writing, and comics from nearly a hundred different artists! You can get your pre-order in now for $20 + S&H on my Storenvy page, with this first batch of orders going out in September after I’m done tabling at Omegacon.

The book will still be available to order after that point, but these pre-orders are going to get shipped out first and foremost, so don’t miss your chance to grab it!

The free PDF version of the zine along with art updates to this blog will start in September as well, so keep an eye out for that!

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask!

And thanks again a million times to EVERYONE who contributed, helped, shared, and just plain supported this project! We wouldn’t be here with y’all!

Final Artists Needed for Rhythm Zinegoku!

We’re in the final stretches of getting the Rhythm Zinegoku done, and while it’s taking a little longer than expected, progress has been made with over 60 completed pieces sent in so from contributing artists!

But as to be expected from an art project with over 80 contributors, it seems that there are a few artists who haven’t been able to deliver their pieces-- and that’s okay!  I honestly expected this would happen, and I’m glad that there’s only 5 pieces unaccounted for, a pretty small number.

So what does this mean for you?  Well, this means that I will need five (5) more artists to take up these five remaining slots.  The goal is to have a piece of art in the game for every main game, and by gum, we’re gonna do it.

The remaining games that I need pieces for are

THE FIVE SLOTS HAVE BEEN FILLED AND ARE NOW CLOSED. THANK YOU.

For quick reference, if you want to take up one of these pieces, here’s what I’ll need from you--

This is the final stretch, so its important that if you take up a slot that you please have it done ASAP-- the original due date was at the start of this month, so this really is the final hours here.

If you are interested in filling one of these final slots please email me at rhythmzinegoku [at] gmail dot com with which slot you want.  These slots are FIRST COME FIRST SERVE so if you want to get involved, don’t hesitate-- the original 75 slots filled up in two days.

Thanks again to EVERYONE who’s been involved and supporting so far!  Your support has been astounding to say the least.  If you need to get in touch with me, the fastest way is through Twitter @Sonic9jct/@rhythmzinegoku

Thanks again!

Two Last Minute Openings!

Hey guys!

Thanks so much for you continued interest in this zine! I’ve been hearing from a LOT of people over the past three months, and doing my best to respond to as many of you as I can, after all, I am only a one man operation.

As such, I make mistakes and it would seem that I accidentally left two games off of the original signups-- Hopping Road and Ninja from the original Rhythm Tengoku (GBA).

I’m trying my best to get all the submissions in over the next two weeks, so I will need two entries to fill up these missing spots. If you are interested in making a piece for either Hopping Road or Ninja to finish up in the next two weeks, send me an email at rhythmzinegoku [at] gmail.com. The piece needs to be 5.5″ x 5.5″ 300 dpi. The full rules are in earlier posts on this tumblr. First come first served! Sorry for any confusion--

Thanks, guys!

The last two spots have been filled! Thanks everyone!

SUBMISSION DUE DATES!

Hey, friends! Submissions have been trickling in over the past month and what we’ve gotten so far is really exciting.  If you’ve been following the Twitter, then you’ve already seen some of these submissions in previews here and there, but all pieces will be officially posted once all pieces have been submitted.

Which leads us to some business! On the original prompt for the project, the due date for finished pieces for the printed zine is Friday, April 3rd.  I apologize if that wasn’t clear to some of y’all, but it is there in writing.  Preferably, I would still like to have pieces in by April 3rd, but I will also have a grace period of two weeks.

So for those of you submitting to the physical zine who haven’t emailed me your pieces yet, that means you have until Friday, April 17th at the latest to get me in your pieces.  It’s been almost three months since slots were filled so I hope asking this is not too unreasonable.

If you do not think you’ll be able to meet the deadline, please let me know ASAP and I will make adjustments to get the spot filled by someone else. There were 85 slots for the zine and I still have people asking me about it, so the project rests on 85 artists following through one way or another.

Remember to email me your piece, a name you want to be credited with, twitter username, and a tumblr/webpage you’d like to be credited with too.  The email is rhythmzinegoku [at] gmail.com.

Thanks to everyone so far who’s finished their pieces and also sent them in. If you want to go ahead and share your piece, go ahead.  Just remember to let people know its for this zine and direct them to this tumblr or the twitter for the project.

Thanks, and I look forward to hearing from more of you soon!

WE DID IT! ALL SLOTS FOR THE ZINE ARE FILLED! ...SO WHAT'S NEXT? (AND WHAT TO DO IF YOU MISSED YOUR CHANCE TO SIGN UP)

As you can tell from the title of this post, all 75 of the main slots for Rhythm Heaven zine have been filled and claimed by various artists!

And it happened in less than three days.

When I posted the announcement for this zine Sunday night, I had a few requests trickle in, but I assumed it would take a least a month to get a zine's worth of artists on board.  But by the next morning, I was getting messages and emails left and right from people who all wanted to get involved and show their love for Rhythm Heaven.  That's seventy-five freakin' people-- unbelievable!

You can take a look at everyone involved by looking at the original Google Doc where everyone was signed up.  There's some really cool artists in there, I was getting responses from strangers, friends, and even artists and others that I look up to.  Amazing!

So now the question is-- what's next?  Well for everyone who's signed up, go ahead and get drawing!  I've had a couple of entries already come in from excited participants and they look great so far!  You guys keep it up and don't forget to email your entries to rhythmzinegoku [at] gmail dot com with the word "FINISHED" somewhere in the subject line along with whatever name you'd like to be credited as along with your Twitter and/or Tumblr name.  Feel free to contact me with any questions you may have.

As far as sharing your work goes, you guys are welcome to share your artwork early as you are working on it or have it completed.  I will not be posting any of the artwork to this blog UNTIL all pieces have been submitted, so that they may go up in the order they appear in the games and so that no pieces will get lost due to being up too early or too late.  I would personally recommend waiting until the completion of the zine to share your art, but you CAN go ahead and share it.  Its okay.  It's your art.

What about those of you who wanted to get involved but probably only JUST found out about the project literally a few minutes ago?  First off, I'm so happy so many people are this enthusiastic to get involved, that's seriously unbelievable to me. 

Secondly, I feel sorry that many people found out about this after most/all slots had been filled.  I had fully expected it to take at least a week or a month for word to spread to everyone who would care, but I greatly underestimated the love for Rhythm Heaven that exists.

That being said, I have a proposal for those who didn't make the cut in time-- there are a few additional games in the Rhythm Heaven series.  Diehard fans know these as the rhythm toys and endless games (personally, Glass Tappers is one of my top five games in any Rhythm Heaven).  Originally, I chose not to include these because I did not think the demand would exist (and boy was I proven wrong) and that it would simply serve to make the zine even bigger than it possibly might be at max capacity-- it bears repeating there will be over 75 INDIVIDUAL PIECES in the finished zine as is currently planned!

So what I think I am going to do is in a few days, I will open up submissions for these extra games.  These pieces WILL definitely be included on the blog and in the digital version of the zine.  For the time being, they probably won't make it into the physical zine.  This may change; no promises.

I'm deciding to wait to open up these games for submission so that some more people can get a chance to know that this opportunity exists.  So if you had friends who were bummed out that they didn't make it in time for the main event, let them know that a second chance is coming.

I still have some more planning to do for other ways for people to get involved.  I've had a lot of people reach out to me eager to simply get involved however they can, and I don't want to just say 'no' to this kind of passion and enthusiasm.  For the third time, this is seriously unbelievable to me and I am blown away by you all.  Stay tuned for some cool announcements and opportunities.

Now as for me?  I gotta do some work on my own and a little sooner than I anticipated for this zine.  As some you may have already seen on Twitter, I am already working on a cover for the zine.  I'll let you guys know once I decide on a final design.  I also need to finalize on a way to print this thing out.  As I noted, it's certainly far bigger than I was anticipating-- I'm definitely going to need an efficient way to make these zines and get them out to those who want physical ones.

Which leads me to my next point-- yes I will be selling physical copies of the zine!  The blog and digital version will be free to the public, but the physical paper version will be available from my online store (and any other sorts of public appearances I'll make at cons or whatnot). 

Why am I selling them?  Because chiefly, it will take money and effort to produce these things.  I'm not looking to make any major profit off of this, expenses just need to be covered.  I'm checking out logistics now and plan to price the zine for just a little bit more than what it'd cost to print and ship one.  Don't worry, you're not gonna have to break your piggy bank for this one and I plan to make this publication as nice as possible to make the physical copies more than worth it.

Thanks again for all the overwhelming support and feedback that I've received in only three days since starting this project.  This is a project I've wanted to start up for about a year now, and the just seemed right to put it into motion.  To those of you who are drawing, godspeed and good luck-- I just know everything that'll be going into this zine will beautiful and full of heart.

Seriously.

Thank you

~JC

PS - What a weird coincidence that they announced a new Rhythm Tengoku this week in Japan with 30 new songs and 70 returning ones from previous titles!  Fingers crossed that makes it out over here!

WOW WHAT A GREAT START

So I just wanted to make a post to let you know that this zine's been open for less than 24 hours and almost ALL the available slots are filled up!  There's just a couple left at this point and the overwhelming support for the the project so far has been, well, overwhelming!

I just wanna say thanks to everyone who signed up so far and has been sharing it around on Twitter and Tumblr.  Word of mouth has carried this one pretty far and some of the big things I wanted to do for the zine might be a little more possible than I first thought.  What kind of things?  You'll just have to wait and see.

Anyways, if you still want to sign up for a slot, there's still a couple left, and I'm working on something to accommodate those who might be finding this once the darn thing is actually filled up (after all, its almost full after one day and submissions are open until April).  So don't fret if you want to get involved but don't see the space to do so-- there will be something for you guys soon!

Everyone else who's signed up already, thanks again!  This project would be nothing without you.  I wanted this project to be a loving tribute to beautiful Rhythm Heaven games and I'm surprised to see I wasn't the only one dying for a way to celebrate that.  I'm excited to see what kind of art you guys end up making, and judging from what I've seen so far, it'll all be good stuff!

So thank you from the bottom of my heart for the millionth time, and go out and make some good art!  This zine is gonna be even cooler than I could've possibly imagined.

LET'S EVERYBODY GO!  YAY!

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR A RHYTHM HEAVEN ZINE

Hi there!  My name is John-Charles and I am a cartoonist and writer with a passion for video games.  I'd like to announce that I am putting together a zine inspired by one of my all time favorite game series, Rhythm Heaven (also known as Rhythm Paradise and Rhythm Tengoku).

As such I am putting out an open call for artistic submissions for the collaboration, with the goal of having one piece for each game in the three main Rhythm Heaven titles (GBA, DS, and Wii).

The deadline for submissions will be Friday, April 3rd, 2015.  If this sounds like something you'd like to be apart of, just read on for all the information you'll need to know to be apart of this project!