Christmas approaching

Regular as clockwork... or something...

Time off for the holidays as of... last Friday. I've already gotten a bit restless, and it's just Monday. Lazing about and reading comics online is fine enough but it feels wrong not to sit and draw for 6 hours or so a day.

So instead I've spent my day trying to sort out the horrible Space 1889 mess of a plot, or lack of plot rather, that I've avoided dealing with so far. I think I'm beginning to get a pretty good idea of the Big Plot, but there's still a few chinks that I need to work out. Some scenes are very vivid to me already, and then there are a few black holes of horror that I need to explore. What gives me a headache though is the character development. How much to keep, what to rewrite, which parts to remove entirely and how will that affect the interactions and later character developments? The same goes for characters, their pasts, their motives and whatnot.

I've managed to finish all the lineart for a good four pages though, which makes me happy. Unfortunately it's pages smack in the middle of the story (well, part one of the story) so I still have the horrible fighting scene in the very beginning to deal with. In medias res and all of that. Bothersome, to say the least. But aside from that first chapter of horror I'm pretty much done with the script for the first half of part one. Progress, at last!

December...

This teeny weeny thing? Not so tiny in real life.It took two A3 papers to get all 14 of the Airbitch crew and the 2 Very Important Women in one single picture. Still not entirely satisfied with the coloring but I'm going to let it be for a while as the deadlines keep clustering.

We did the 24 hour comic exercise last week, and though I didn't finish I did a whole lot better than I've ever done before - 20 complete pages, out of which I am pretty satisfied with 14. It's a small Space 1889 thing, semi-related to the actual project but only in the sense that the captain appears in it (at the age of 8-10). I like it though, and hopefully I'll be able to finish it by Christmas.

And the deadline for the third class fanzine is steadily approaching while I'm slaving away at horrible, horrible backgrounds. Victorian houses are not my friend, that's for sure. At least NaNoWriMo is over and completed so I don't have to stress out over that too, just... Christmas now, I guess.

Ahhh...

That's my official sigh of relief.

J-pop con 2009 is over and done with, Stronger (the Naruto doujinshi) sold surprisingly well. I was surprised at any rate, my friends were not. The cosplay went well too (the Black Lagoon group which I participated in won Best Music), and overall it was a very enjoyable event.

Also, I finished the Grumg'nesh strips (aka "Grumg'nesh the one toothed orc's magnificent adventures") for Sydsvenskan. Keeping it simple was quite a challenge, and I couldn't resist shading, even though coloring it took twice as long that way. It didn't help that I had no choice but to work with it in photoshop rather than paint shop pro which I know how to work with... but finished it is, regardless.

We'll see how that goes. For now, I finally get to play with those Space 1889 characters without feeling guilty about it. Well, aside from all those NaNo words I should be writing...

Holy shit...

All three comics are done, not a single deadline missed. A whole 7 minutes before midnight I finished the two year old Naruto doujinshi.

The vast majority of the art is old, but when I found it again after two years and didn't hate it and it was almost completed it felt wrong not to sit down and finish it now that I have the time. Sort of. Perhaps "now that I'm supposed to be drawing comics" is a better way to put it.

It will be coming along with me to Jpopcon this weekend where hopefully I'll sell enough to feel that the hard work was worth it.

NaNoWriMo

And so begins NaNoWriMo 2009 (which stands for National Novel Writing Month), my 8th NaNo total. 50 000 words or more shall be written during November, no matter how many cheap tricks I have to pull. Random dares? Flash backs? Cookie recipes? Excessive ramblings? Not leaving the house for a full week to make up for lost time? All is fair in the battle for those 50 000 words.


In more comic related news Think Ink's Mangazine is now available, and in it is Royal Games, finally completed.

All the inking on the doujinshi is done, so I'm left with the coloring of the cover and back and adding the greyscale... which I sincerely hope will not take too long because I have a bad novel to write. And a cosplay to sew.

I've also cheated a bit and started sketching on Space 1889... and to my horror realized that one page every three days will not be enough, because somehow I underestimated how many pages I need for every chapter. I'm fantastic like that. Three of the pages will definitely be done for December, as the class fanzine group decided that 'snusk' ('filth/smut') should be the theme and that really doesn't work with the vampire story. It does, however, work fabulously for my pirate captain and his beloved girlfriend when they meet at the Captain's Bounty, an inn/brothel in Karkarham where she works.

The strips for Sydsvenskan are also underway. I have eleven strip ideas with Grumg'nesh the one toothed orc, out of which I like five. But I do love the way that deadline is smack in the middle of the second week of November, which is about the last days when the writing is easy. Why oh why can't the world just stay on hold for November so I and the rest of the rabid authors in NaNo land can write in peace?

One down...

... two to go.
Sat up until 2 am in order to finish the grey scales on the class fanzine comic, which is the same as my long vampire comic which is still lacking a titel. Insurrection has been suggested so I guess I'll have to see if it sticks.

Hopefully I'll be able to flirt a bit with the fanzine group in order to get the theme for the next fanzine (due in December) to be something which allows me to continue the comic. I'll probably mainly work on the Space 1889 fanzine in November though, so if it's not for the class fanzine the continuation for this comic will have to wait for a while.

Doooooone~

I've been working on the coloring on and off since July, but the monster is finally done. Just because I say that, I'm sure I'll discover several mistakes in just a few days...

It will with all probability be the cover of a Space 1889 fanzine... which I can start working on more seriously in November...

Comics online

After hesitating for a long while I've gotten started on Smack Jeeves, and have started to publish The Queen and the Soldier, which appeared in the Think Ink fanzine Welcome to Wonderland.

The second class fanzine is on its way, which of course means that I'm suddenly working on six projects rather than five. Three of which practically have the same deadline. Oh well... I've inked the first eight pages as well as the back and cover on one, and can see the end approaching in the distance as far as sketching goes on the other one, so I'm sure it's possible. It's mainly a lack of ideas to the class fanzine which irks me. "Party" isn't really a theme that inspires, but I'm sure it will work out...

...

Busy preparing for the book fair - first book fair for me so it's nervosity mixed with curiosity. The class (the first year of Malmö's Comic Art school) has done a fanzine, after some ups and downs and troubles with the printer. No theme so I chose to do the first three pages on a vampire story I'm planning on doing.

Furthermore, I'm continuing to work on a couple of comics - an old, old doujinshi and Kungaspel/Royal Games which wasn't finished in time for Mangatalangen 2009 (which didn't happen anyway). Kungaspel will be printed in Think Ink's 'Mangazine' this autumn instead, together with our other Mangatalangen contributions. However, what I really want to do is a proper Space 1889 fanzine with Jerker and his crew. Oh well... in time, I guess...