I've got these business cards from Moo.com. The square shape is good for my artwork. The information side is the same on all (centre image), but you can have as many other designs as you want. The cropping was slightly imperfect, with parts of panel bordered showing: next time i would allow larger bleeds.
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I've cracked the problems with this. The 'move' function got the effect I wanted; 'slide in is designed to give that exaggerated slide in from far away.
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Unfortunately, after my last post, I seemed to have accidentally clicked something while trying to import assets from the Actions menu. It did ask me if I wanted to save and I said yes, but I can't find it anywhere on Madefire. I'm hoping it maybe just needs some time to appear on their system.

I've now created a panel with word balloons fading in in stages. However I have been trying to slide in an image of Vermeer pulling a curtain in from the right, and not been able to get that the way I want it. In the first attempt it slid in, but as if from a foot to the right of the panel, which I didn't like. i tried again, but there seemed to be know way to set the final location, and I have studied the instructions. I wonder if this is a glitch in the MAC OS version. I'll have a try on my iPad, in case that works.

The related problem I've been having, is that I would rather these just move within a panel border rather than from out of panel: as I didn't draw all the out of panel elements in the first place. The screenshot below shows the curtain in its starting position, which extends out the panel.
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I've been working on my Madefire motion comics page. I identified a sequence of panels from my first Vermeer comic. I had created these in Manga Studio 4, as a file with large numbers of layers in each panel (to create a painted colour effect). When making the original document I intended to cut and paste elements within the original story, so created it in folders of layers, for e.g. background, props (e.g. curtain), individual figures, balloons, text, etc. Given the huge number of layers, I wanted to avoid risking any damage to the original, so prepared these for Madefire as follows:

• I pasted the complete target panel into a new MS 4 document;
• isolated the key elements, and exported them as multi-layer PSD files
• opened each of them in turn in Clip Studio and changed the backgrounds to transparent
• exported them as single layer PNGs

Because the balloon tails overlapped, I had created them as single item (but with two layers, one a buff colour and the other white). I tried merging the layers but it lost the white layer and so made them too dark. I then created three copies, and carefully deleted (on each layer) parts to create three separate balloons. This was helped by the fact I had originally drawn a single tail  through the three panels - the vector file still had this info, making it possible to delete around it.

I have now created a new page in Madefire and imported this set of assets and created a multi-layer file on Madefire, to which I will later apply the motion elements.
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I have now received confirmation of award of my business start-up grant, put this towards a new iMac, and submitted the receipt to reclaim.

My web site was looking a bit outdated, so I've redesigned the overall look of it. The new design is optimised for wide-screen monitors, and the layout with a large portrait format image lends itself to display of complete comic pages, while minimising scrolling. For the sake of efficiency, and getting the new design published, I set a single image of one of my comics pages as the default for all pages, and then changed it for pages within a section (e.g. Dead Trees). 

I've also added a page in the navigation for some work in progress on my major project: (provisionally titled) The Eyes of the Artists.

I've also corrected some problems with the page order, that appear to have happened, when an update of the web editing tool led to some inadvertent changes to how pages were rearranged.

I'll continue to add further refinements, over the coming weeks.

I've visited the Madefire page and updated my Flash Player, so as to be able to try their tool.

II submitted my draft Business Plan to Jobs and Business Glasgow, and they have given me a small £250 start-up grant, for equipment, which i will use to buy a new Apple desktop computer.

I am seeing the plan as an iterative document that I will keep adding to, for example I'll revisit it in light of recent inputs on the production module about Intellectual Property and. I have already covered marketing in some detail, but I'll check if the input suggests any amendments. There were some points came out of the Intellectual Property input, that I will add to the Plan.

I have also received some further templates for my Business Plan, and for marketing, that I will check for any possible enhancements of my own.

I now have the admin elements of this set up in iTunes Producer, (international prices, etc), however there seems to be a problem with page aspect ratios, so I've sent it back to the designer of the iBook, for amendment.