The Manifest Crew would like to thank everybody for their support, donations, and feedback. In case you forgot who you were,

Thank You: 

Pat Reilly, Toby Cantor, Jonathan Segev, Miles Votek, Chris Houston, Allegra Lundy, Jesse Kerman, Rachel Smith, Sophie Gross, Nolan Avery, Emily Thompson, Chris Sutherland, Dani Ray, Christina Carter, Hanna Alpert-Abrams, Keturah Cummings, David Lim, Pete Peterson, Stephanie Self, Aaron Farmer, Marc Nordstrom, Rob Fatal, Sunni Berkley, Michael Freeling, Revo Dubois, Savage Henry, Matt Thomas, Dan Irwin, Joshua Carlberg, Scratch Hunter, Joe Johnson, Steve Self and a special thanks to Phyllis Freeman.

Because of everyone who helped out, Manifest is currently being sold at Mission: Comics & Art in San Francisco. You can find it in the Locals section as shown above. You can also pick up a copy at Meltdown Comics in LA, with more locations to follow.

To those of you who donated, your packages will be arriving within the next couple of weeks. See, books and posters everywhere:

If you missed the chance to donate, or were unable to do so, you can still get a comic($5), poster($3), and even shirts($10), or all three by sending an email to manifest@ifywonline.com.

While we’re making posters and shirts to order, our supply of comics is extremely limited so if you’re able to pick one up at one of the comic shops that’s the best way to get one. 

Feast your eyeballs on this shirt design. Available on a variety of colors.

Once again, a huge to thank you to those of you that are helping to make this comic book possible. We’re very proud of what we’ve created so far and would not have been able to accomplish this without the support, feedback, and encouragement we’ve received from all of you.

On to the next one.

-The Manifest Crew

Josh, Orlando, and Sam

The poster designs have been finalized and are ready for print. While Sam is out hitting up the cons we have been preparing to run our first print of issue #1. We are weeks away and it is not too late to get your very own copy of the comic with one of these intense posters. 

Both designs will be screen printed on to heavy colored 11”x17” paper.

If you’d like to place an order please shoot an email to manifest@ifywonline.com

Check out the designs below:

The first issue of our comic book, Manifest, is two short-hairs away from being called “done.” With all of the artwork and lettering finished we’re about to send it off to the print shop. In the meantime have a look-see at the cover for some good ol’ fashioned blood and guts head-splosion.

(SPOILER ALERT) The best part is that when you start turning the pages there’s even more head-splosion.

Take a second to think about some things that are up your alley. If any of those things are underground societies, gore, telepathic assassins, giant monsters bursting out of peoples’ heads, doomsday prophecies, immortal wise men, the threat of world destruction, conspiracy, death, or the reappropriation of anything ever deemed unbelievable, then you should check out this comic.

It’s almost ready for print so if you would like your own copy you can make a donation to reserve yourself a book and ensure that this story can keep growing. Click the link on the sidebar or head to our Manifest page for more info.

To see more updates including some of the completed pages check out Manifest on Facebook.

Loose Cuts is the band that’s featured on Cack’s tee shirt and guess what? They exist in real life!

In fact, they’ve recorded the theme song for The Sack and Cack Show. Take 20 seconds out of your day and give it a listen below.

They’ve got more music to be featured in the show and may even make an appearance later on in the series. For more show dates and songs check out the Loose Cuts blog.

It’s been a while since we’ve mentioned The Sack and Cack Show, about 2 years if the internet is to be believed. But now that we’ve got something to show for ourselves besides a collection of photoshops and some vague promises we figured it was time to unleash some of the recent developments.

Here are the two stars of the show in front of a mock up of the stage. In The Sack and Cack Show we follow TV host Sack as he struggles against the Hollywood system to retain his credibility and control of his show. When his original co-host, Cack, is lost to drug addiction the studio steps in to replace him with a new Cack, thinking that the audience won’t notice.

In the pilot episode we introduce all of the characters that make up the world that is The Sack and Cack Show. Well, not the show within the show, but the show that we’re making, which is also called The Sack and Cack Show. So basically it’s a show within a show, ya know?

Here is a peak at the rest of the cast.

It’s good to see the whole cast come to life. Stay tuned for updates as we roll into preparation to shoot in the beginning of the year. Expect the first episode of The Sack and Cack Show early spring of 2013.

Some of you may have seen over the last month that we were running a Kickstarter campaign for our comic book, Manifest. After setting an ambitious goal of $15,000 we managed to raise a little over a 1/3 of that amount, or about $5,600. Unfortunately with Kickstarter if you don’t raise all of the funding you don’t receive any of it so we started looking at other opportunities to continue to pay the artists while maintaining our commitment to our generous backers.

We’ve set up a PayPal donation on the sidebar of this website where you can still donate to this project and receive the exact same reward you would have received via Kickstarter. For more information on what those rewards are and how payments are handled please head over to the official Manifest page.

Thank you again to everyone that pledged to the Kickstarter and spread the word about this comic. Because of you over five grand was pledged proving that there is interest in this project and a community to support it.

We’re very much looking forward to seeing the world of Manifest come alive and working hard to make it the best comic we can. To keep up with the progress of Manifest you can follow us on our Facebook page where we will continue to post updates of the first issue as it nears completion, as well as mini documentaries about the characters, and our trips to various conventions as we show it off.

Thanks again to everyone who pledged and to those of you that will consider doing so.

In between projects over the last several years there’s been one thing that’s always been on our mind, a comic book that we were dying to make. For most of it’s life it was untitled, or at most poorly titled, but the idea was strong enough for us to keep coming back to it again and again without ever having written anything down.

The concept has been with us for so long now that it’s hard to imagine our partnership without it. We were both still going to school in Sunnyvale, CA, studying animation and making shorts to throw up on our MySpace page.

                              One such example of an early “bumper”

We had ideas for other shorts and at least one feature but this idea was different. This idea was big.

The main project for us at the time was a short film involving animation and live-action. The working title was HPB: Heart, Penis, Brain. It was a film about a guy named Guy who had his thought processes personified (sort of) as a heart, a penis, and a brain. Each representing different aspects of his psyche. Kind of like the old sitcom Herman’s Head. As we kept working on the story for the film we kept coming up with new adventures for the characters. One of these ideas led us to what would become Manifest years later. A simple question: what if the characters inside Guy’s mind got out?

I remember the world of Manifest exploding into existence like no other idea I’ve ever been a part of. A world in which our own thoughts can become reality. A simple enough rule for a world but the complexities of it created such a rich opportunity to tell stories that we fell deeper and deeper into it. The what-ifs kept coming and the answers were flying out almost as fast as the questions themselves.  Who does this happen to? How do they deal with it? What is society like? What is the world like? Can the power be harnessed? If so, who does it? How do they do it?

At this point we didn’t have an idea for a story but we had the groundwork for one. We didn’t know who the characters would be or where they lived. We didn’t know there would be underground societies, telepathic killers, and immortal wise-men. In retrospect we hardly knew anything despite the firestorm of information we uncovered. In fact, the only thing we knew from the beginning was that no matter how excited we were to see this world, it wasn’t right for a film. This project was destined to be a comic book. And for the next few years that’s all we called it, “The Comic.”

Next post I’ll be talking more about character origins and our development of the first draft of the story. It’s a tale of talking about the project you want to make while working on the project that you hate and the struggles of wrapping your brain around a story that’s potential far outmatches your skill as a writer.

                             We’ve got a Kickstarter going on right now!

If you’re intrigued by the idea of Manifest you can help us make it a reality. We’re running a Kickstarter campaign to raise the money to finish the first issue which is already in production. Incentives range from the book itself to posters, unique artwork by our illustrator, collector’s editions, and even the finished pencilled and inked pages themselves. Head on over to the page to become a backer and see the real story of Manifest unfold. There’s also a video and more images and info about the book. If you can’t wait, here’s the video:

If you can’t contribute funds but still want to see the book happen you can help us by spreading the word through Twitter, Facebook, or reblogging this post on Tumblr.

Manifest on Facebook

IFYW on Twitter

A few weeks ago  we worked on a stop motion piece with our buddy Miles Votek. He is a mold maker and wax sculptor working on a stop-motion feature film and on his off hours working on an animation for his abstract-experimental short film The Califia Cycle.

He offered us the chance to work on this segment, assisting with the visual effects and directing the photography. 

It was a tedious process, as stop-motion tends to be, but sometimes the destruction of a creation can be just as satisfying as the creation itself. The set that Miles had spent so many hours painstakingly constructing was to be melted as we shot. He would take a blow torch to his wax creations and we would shoot one frame. Rinse and repeat until set opened up to reveal the light at the end of the tunnel.

As former animators it was a great treat for us to combine our orignal love of animation with the live-action execution we’ve learned since then. The Califia Cycle is set to be completed this Fall and will be submitted to film festivals shortly after.

We are in the middle of a few things at the moment in concept and pre-production land. More updates on those projects later. But for now, a little tale of the reprisal of Hector’s role in the music video for the hit single $10 Bill by MC Vulgar.

So, one day Josh says to me, “I put $10 Bill in a festival a few weeks ago. I forgot to tell you.” I replied, “Oh? Cool.” A few weeks pass by. Josh says, “Remember that festival?”. I say, “Yeah. We get in?” “Yup.”, Josh nonchalantly replies.

Turns out $10 Bill got accepted into Mission Loc@l’s first film festival this Saturday, April 28th, 2012. More information of the event can be found here. There’s a Q&A afterward so if you bring some Q’s we’ll throw some A’s at you.

Allow me to clear the air here. I know these past “Arting” updates have been a bit cryptic as to what the end result was for, so here’s the story: we drew our inspiration from a track by Nit Grit called Lupin and made a music video for it. Let it be known that this was all done without the permission of the artist. To say it in a way that someone who might attempt to sue us would understand: Nit Grit has absolutely no affiliation with the creators, the performers, or the video itself.  We have not received any endorsement or compensation from Nit Grit or his representatives. As far as we know, he has not seen it, and if he ever does, he might not even like it.

Aside from that, it was a great experience making something for one of our favorite artists and it’s the coolest looking thing we’ve ever shot. Hopefully you agree because let’s face it, we’re going up against Freebase and Daruthers here.