Since the days of the quarterly mag animavericks has come a far distance in producing fine quality work that will have a place in my magazine collection.
as an official unofficial southern sales rep
(hope no offence anyone, but it would be a good title) I was asked a few questions during my trip to Western Australia during wai-con. One of the major questions posed to me was:
being honest what is your feelings on the magazine?
so being honest i produced my feelings in answering this question: I feel that Animavericks is a great magazine, if you are asking weather or not it is a perfect mag..... no that it is not. It is good at the moment but there is a long way to go before we become great.... sure we aim at being perfect even though that will never happen (i mean no mag is perfect (Akula a mag about kanu is not 100% perfect, they forgot Haku)) but from what i see every issue animavericks is working hard to become better over and over again every issue.
as per last time i left a couple of suggestions as you may call them, and almost all of them have become fixed and implemented and deserves my congratulations...
anyway comments time!
Cover: Information this issue is clear and completely visible. The large issue number is a welcome site and will make ease in sorting the magazines in my collection and storage etc. As for artwork, i can't comment as i think both the artworks from 12 and 13 are both great.
Imagery this issue was better, and as far as i can see no more of those nasty pixelated images
. I feel the images this magazine are great yes there is a few still not quite up to scratch, but over 90% of the images being clear and sharp is a great job and i am sure hoping the magazine will stay this way
The magazine layout is much more organized and it appears a more chronological order has been struck making the magazine more organised/ structured and so forth. another thing improved is the usage of white space i am happy to see that the space in the magazine has been used well and thus adding to the layout!
Poster! yes excitement!
Timing of magazine, unfortunately i hate to say but i know you guys work hard but March issue released in mid-late April delivery gives little time for competition entries due on 1st May.... 2 options include moving magazine dates ahead a month i.e. next issue would be June/July instead of May and the other being a slight extension in future issues of competition dates...... Hopefully also future ads will be taken into consideration.... i.e. (conditional if they choose to become sponsors etc) Avcon and Manifest adverts in issue 14 ready for their events in July and August respectivly, if the next mag arrives exactly 2 months from now i would expect them in mid june for 14 and mid August for 15 (being late for both cons)
so those are the suggestions i made from 12 now a few new suggestions/ comments
Scoring: Many articles in the rear half of the magazine were not scoring type articles, this made the back half seem a little slopy in the respect of having that box in place displaying score out of 10.
redesign of the subscription form.... the current form is the template used at conventions, but is not 100% suited to magazine format. The form needs a few modifications.
First of all you offer a bank transfer as a form of payment, there is no instructions of what reference to leave with your payment. an idea is to leave their last name if transfer is made online or their contact number if payment is made in a Westpac branch as normally they only allow numbers in a branch to be used as a reference.
At a convention we get people to sign the form, it is not clear on the form that people need to sign it and the form has on it the words paid cash Yes () No (), excpet via mail in people can't send cash.
The form should also have a web address on it for access to more subscription forms for friends, redo a form in case of mistakes on the original, and best of all so no page has to be removed from the magazine.
if you want i can look at designing a form that would look better or at least a quick mock up as an idea.
Zodiac went back a step... dates missing this issue for some signs, they should also reflect the period... i.e. Leo July 23 - Aug 22 instead of being just July 23
anyway that will do for now.... congrats on many bug fixes and good luck on the next issue which i am sure will be going for better!
