Article suggestion- Could you discuss the differences between producing CL#1 and CL#50 in regards to the evolution of the magazine and differences in the following areas: Production employees(TFG/ADB); cover art and interior art (paintings vs digital); printing process; production process, article writing, evolution of content; decisions on what to include; technology involved (computer evolution, typewriters, SSD drafting etc.); production staff (dept heads); and customer contributors.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, June 05, 2015 - 06:48 pm: Edit

CL1 vs CL50

Production employees(TFG/ADB)
CL1: I was the only one at ADB, and I did various articles and SSDs and scenarios with only the vaguest idea how many pages they would take. Vance at TFG proofread stuff but he kept trying to change the style to match the American Civil War (e.g., "change 'slime devil' to 'miserable curr' was a typical editorial note. Funny, they kept refusing to print the Anarchist article and years later when TFG-3 printed it TFG-2 said "oh, we thought it was "Antichrist".)
CL50: all done in-house by SVC, SPP, and JES.

cover art
CL1: I showed Allen the story and the drawing done by the guy who wrote the story. He found an artist and had him to a cover. Oil painting laser-scanned to four-film negatives. TFG did the back cover from notes I wrote, mostly.
CL50: I have Adam on speed dial and just told him what I wanted, showed him part of the story and a basic map layout. All digital. Printer took the photoshop file Simone did and printed four plates directly.

interior art
CL1: Whatever random art that random artists sent in that sort of matched what was on the page.
CL50: I sent Dale a laid-out version of the story and told him to fill the holes, moving around stuff as he thought best.

printing process; production process,
CL1: Printed on a web press in multiple thousand copies and bound/trimmed.
CL50: print on demand

article writing, evolution of content; decisions on what to include;
CL1: random stuff that showed up or I created. Nobody who wrote articles for Captain's Log knew that's what he was doing an article for as it didn't exist. We decided to do a magazine when that really splendid piece of fiction showed up.
CL50: Fill-in-the-page, assigned various articles to various people.

technology involved (computer evolution, typewriters, SSD drafting etc.)
CL1: Wrote copy on an old apple, printed it out, gave it to a typesetting who retyped it by hand and did galley layouts. SSDs were done with black tape and a razor knife and rub-on letting.
CL50: Wrote copy (or edited other people's copy) and id the graphics on an old Mac. Printed to PDF which went to Kyocera POD system.

production staff (dept heads);
CL1: there were no such things back then, and even "the committee" barely knew about Captain's Log until it was mailed.
CL50: Chuck does F&E, Tony does ACTASF, Daniel does Starmada, Steve Petrick does most of it, Jean does PD. I know I missed somebody (sorry).

and customer contributors.
CL1: People were always sending us stuff that we found a place to print. Until CL1 was mailed nobody thought of doing it for a magazine.
CL50: Lots of people do stuff but they know it's for Captain's Log. Gary Carney is always doing stuff.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Wednesday, January 27, 2016 - 12:50 pm: Edit

I can write fiction. I just can't write combat scenes very well.

You know, there are some decent authors on Trek BBS and also on Fan-Fic. Have you thought about posting a message there saying you're looking for stories??


Garth L. Getgen

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, January 27, 2016 - 01:24 pm: Edit

We tried that a few years ago and got a bunch of fiction that violated our license and a bunch of arguments from writers. Remember that SFU fiction has to be SFU fiction and the Trek BBS guys really aren't familiar with the differences and keep using non-licensed trek elements that would get us in deep trouble.