This is the history of our Calendar Project. It all started with my spontaneous idea to make a Gargoyles calendar with the help of the artists from the German speaking Gargoyle fandom. I had the idea in December 2003 and the project was very small back then. The whole calendar was produced by only 6 artists. These are the artists who drew for us from the beginning: Aranesh, Galax, Lilly, Neomae, Quinvinlah and I. The pictures were published month by month in Nery's Gargoyles Board, a German Gargoyle Forum (http://20697.rapidforum.com/).
After we had received lots of positive feedback and encouragement from the fans on the Gargoyles Board, in spring 2004 Aranesh came up with the idea of producing a printed calendar for the coming year. That year, we had 10 artists working on the pictures. In the course of the year, Aranesh and I learned how much work and time such a project requires. Not only were the artists under great pressure to finish their pictures in time, we also had to schedule the printing, ordering and sending of the calendars – not to mention that, at the same time, we had to make sure that the printing costs of the calendars remained reasonable. From the beginning though we agreed that we did not want some small calendar but a really big picture calendar! This is why, until today, the calendar is published at this big size (11.82 x 16.55 inch). Aranesh took care of the printing and with quite an amazing amout of personal commitment he managed to print our first printed version of the Gargoyles calendar at a price of 20,- €. Despite the fact that there were quite a lot of fans nagging about the price, we could still sell 28 calendars that year! However, it should not remain unmentioned that this first attempt at producing a printed calendar had been very stressful for me and Aranesh. We had quite a lot of trouble with this project and in the end we even had to invest a considerable amout of our own money to make it happen. That is why our motivation to produce another printed calendar was rather low at the end of that year.
There would probably not have been a Gargoyles Calendar 2006 without Azrael whom I talked to in Mai 2006. I told him that it was a shame there would be no calendar for 2006 and he spontaneously asked me if I wanted to work on a new calendar with him – and I agreed. During that year we got our first international support! Epantiras, RitaM and Venator Somniorum joined us and drew for the project. All in all there were 12 artists working on the calendar back then. Azrael took care of the printing and the shipment of the calendars that year. He invested a lot of his energy and with the help of his business network he managed to organize a high quality print while keeping the costs at a minimum. Arzael also created the calendar's design. We sold 38 copies of the Gargoyles Calendar 2006.
For the 2007 calendar I wanted to work again together with Aranesh. In Januar or February I though hard about what could be done to make this calendar a special one. Back then I notized all the wonderful collaborations between different artists on DeviantArt (www.deviantart.com) and this inspired me to organise a collaboration calendar. From the organisational point of view, this was one of the most time and work consuming calendars so far! 22 artists from all over the world joined us for this project – and all of them had their individual preferences, wishes and problems. I got a huge amount of support from Aranesh, who did not only help me with a lot of decisions but also created the best calendar design we had so far in my opinion. Aranesh also took care of all technical work that the calendar needed, like our online ordering form. We left the printing to a printing company in Berlin this year, who offered us high quality prints and fair prices. I took care of orders, shipment and all financial tasks. We printed 50 calendars almost all of which could be sold! There is more and more international interest in our calendar, we had orders not only from all around Europe but also from Canada and the US!
And what about 2008? When ordering for the calendar 2007 was still in progess, Aranesh started working on this website in November 2006. Now that the page is finished, we can start concentrating on the new calendar since we want to provide another beautiful calendar for 2008. At the moment we are still conceptualizing and collecting ideas, thinking about what can still be improved. |
