While Ottaviani was putting his ideas together, he met Zander Cannon at the 2004 San Diego Comic Convention. Cannon and associates were forming a new production studio, "Big Time Attic"; Ottaviani mentioned he had a proposal he wanted to show them. Ottaviani considered such a new studio taking on as large a project as a 160-page graphic novel was "ambitious" and that he was lucky to have had the book published. Even the format—the book is wider than it is tall—was a departure for Ottaviani. He explained that since the story was talking about "wide expanses of territory" and the American West, the artists at Big Time Attic wanted a more non-traditional landscape orientation.