The end of the year approaching...

And all I want is some rest. Doesn't seem like I'm getting it.

Finishing up two comic pages of Show, Don't Tell and the layout on 10 other pages for Substitute, a Red Planet sidestory... while glancing at another comic of 6 pages, and wondering why I don't have time for my school work. Ho hum.

Return to the living

November is over and with it NaNoWriMo over and done. I really pushed myself this year in order to reach 50 000 early so I could focus on my studies without worrying about my word count. Success. I have since been working my butt off with books, essays and other dull homework. But! Not all school assignments are dull.

I am also doing the dreaded first five pages of The Red Planet. Those horrible, horrible pages that have been putting me off drawing it for... ages. Well! No more! I need to finish them by Tuesday for a presentation. My right hand aches a bit and I've got ink on my fingers, but I've already inked pages 3 and 4. Somehow I always finish the pages in the middle first. And the first are always last. In order to keep up the pirate spirit I've made use of spotify and... oh my, there are a lot of pirate songs out there, in so many different genres. Still, my favorite must be You are a Pirate which unfortunately isn't available on spotify. Very catchy and with a tendency to get stuck in your head, and it certainly keeps you awake at 4 am.

That is not to say that I didn't laugh at finding Pirate Jenny... as female Jerker is indeed named Jenny. Additionally it's of the best pirate results spotify has offered me, though I have grown quite fond of the Merry Wives of Windsor, especially their song Letters from Sea.

Drawing five pages of only men did leave me rather itching for drawing more curves. I managed to squeeze in a pinup at a wall, and I fear it pleased me almost as much as finishing the 3D model of the steering cabin. Thank goodness for Jenny and the fact that I was also working on a cover for the about to be extended Show, Don't Tell. The picture has been giving me hell though. My friends have thankfully given me constructive critism (sometimes quite contradictory XD) but I feel that she's ready now. Just need some shade... possibly some color.

No Coffin Needed

... is the title of this year's NaNoWriMo novel. My curvy heroine is named Rigmor Mortis, because I have grown to like bad puns way too much, and she is a necromancer... in other words, a mage who raise the dead.

I'm currently at 45 000 words and I'm aiming to reaching the goal of 50 000 this weekend. Then I'll be able to focus on homework, comics and illustrations without that nagging feeling of doing something wrong.

In other news I attended AltCom, an adult comic festival, this Sunday. Unfortunately I'm so stressed that I didn't have time to be there Friday and Saturday, but at least I made it on the Sunday :)
I've begun to work on my addition to the anthology Swedish Comic Sin's sequel. This year my theme is fantasy in a different way altogether, no dryads in sight, and it's called Substitute.
As far as the first Swedish Comic Sin anthology is concerned, there's been an exhibition at Makeriet in Malmö where those who wish can view originals and pages from the anthology. I say 'been', but it's up until the 21st, so not too late yet :)

Fanart

Morrigan, from Dragon Age: Origins. Scanner killed the colors, but... yeah.

In other news, I'm still behind on my studies. I don't think anyone's surprised. And NaNo begins in... less than 25 hours. Ye-es. This is going to be... fantastic. Goodbye social life?

Copics

The markers have arrived <3

Unfortunately I'm swamped in studies, so I really shouldn't play around with them. Let's just say that I'm not entirely convinced that I'll be able to keep my hands off them D:

I've picked up some characters that I was working on while doing the Grumg'nesh strips for the Sydsvenskan competition, and I'm considering making a fantasy humor comic with them. Nothing too long, of course, but... yeah. I'm working on character designs and plot at the moment. It is inspired by a book I read many years ago, called Villains by Necessity by Eve Forward. I loved the villains-as-heros and heros-doing-less-than-heroic-things theme, and since I always love the villain better than the hero... well... this is the type of story that fits me just right <3
I've also taken my comic art teacher Gunnar's advice and handed the role as main character over to the female necromancer, rather than Grumg'nesh the orc. It fits better this way :)

At the same time, I'm working on getting started with the Red Planet comic. Script has been slightly edited, some scenes removed, some characters removed from scenes, other scenes added, etc. Two awkward 'I don't know how to solve this' sections have been removed and rewritten... So, progress at least :)

Comicpress

Perhaps the two weeks of being half braindead was a good thing. Once I got better I finally sat down and figured out how to install wordpress, in order to get comicpress going. So, the Red Planet homepage has seen some changes, and hopefully I'll have it look a whole lot better soon. And then... comics!
Now, I'll be the first to admit that I'm lousy at this sort of thing. It took me a good 2 hours to figure out what to write in four lines wordpress requires you to fill in (actually, just the one... three were easy) and then I went right ahead and messed up half an hour later. Do it again, do it right, indeed... This means that the 'fixing up' process is likely to be painfully slow, but at the very least I'll get there. Like some particularly stubborn snail, turtle or... perhaps mole?


Technology has been the theme for me recently in more ways than one. I've moved my little old scanner to my new home, only to be informed that my laptop doesn't do 'little old scanners'. Of course it's Vista that messes things up. Of course! Who thought this Vista was a good idea anyway?
Well, between the choice of 'spend half a day fixing this' and 'take it back and scan on weekends only'... frankly, option B is the winner. The homepage is giving me a big enough headache as it is.

Recovering...

Of course I ended up getting sick after I finished Show, don't tell. Of course my computer got a virus as well. Of course. Well... nothing lost, computer restored (still lacking some programs though), and I'm... almost well again.
The lack of internet and general non-functioning of so many things (such as being able to walk up the stairs without getting dizzy) did leave me with a lot of time to sit down and draw.

For years I've wanted to do a story about a 'skogsrå' (a Swedish mythological creature with either a fox or a cow's tail and a hollow back) and now... well, let's just say that I've been drawing this character a lot recently.

And yes, I do like those forest spirits quite a bit... :)

In less exciting news, I've got a lot of catching up to do as far as my studies go. Hooray...

It's been one week...

It's been one week since I got the idea,
Sat down, wrote the script and started working.
Four days since I laughed,
Finally done with sketching.
Three days since I inked the lot
And then spent two days fighting the scanner
Today I did the last
Of that horrendous grayscale-ing.

One comic, four pages, one week. Show, Don't Tell, starring Jenny (alternative universe!Jerker... sometimes I toy with the idea of having her as a main character instead, though the story would be mighty darker, methinks) and poor Ian who gets bossed around most heinously.

Copic markers

My friend Amanda let me borrow her copics a while back (before my trip to Plymouth) and I am completely in love.
My first attempt was the dryad of my Dry Spell comic, because I was a scaredy cat and didn't want to mess up the skin color. After that I did give regular skin colors a go, and that worked out well too :) I'm definitely going to buy some pens of my own.

Home again

Back from Plymouth now - two weeks and some 3000+ pictures and videos later. I have so much reference material now that I barely know what to do with it. But it was a most enjoyable trip, even though I was probably THE most touristy tourist of all there. 200 pictures of one building is perfectly normal, I say D:

I have to say that the staff of the church St Andrews was probably what made me the happiest. They thought that my interest in their church (where one of my main characters seeks refuge in my vampire comic) was a good thing and let me run around and take pictures inside <3 I left one and a half hour later...

'Resurgam' (sign put up after WW2 when the church was bombed, so sadly will not appear in the actual comic which takes place in the 18th century) means 'I will rise again.' Very fitting for a story about the undead :p

Pin-up

Moving and preparing a trip and... well, a lot of things happening all at once.
At least I'm done with the pin-up for the calender :D

And yes... drow are still awesome...

Practice makes perfect...

I've started practicing drawing birds (magpies, specifically) for a short comic. The first attempt looked more like a pidgeon, but I'm getting there...

Think Ink are working on our next fanzine, and this time I'm the one who is in charge of drawing our animal-selves. Spiders, birds, horses and now this. Not to mention that I have a dog illustration that I should be working on. Lots of animals right now.

Currently planning a research trip to Plymouth, England, and I'm really excited about it. Lots of 18th century buildings that I need to photograph for reference, and they've got a bunch of Victorian exhibitions (and buildings, for that matter) so it's two birds, one stone.

Then there's the pinup calendar that's in the making, together with 11 other wonderful artists. Lots of sketches and few of them good enough, but I think I've got the pose now :)

Aaaaaand I'm reworking the script for The Red Planet. We've got a 24 hour comic day coming up next week, and though I probably won't manage 24 pages (20 is my record) I think I'll treat it as a 'draw a lot for a period of 24 hours and spend the next day sleeping' thing. So, script and layout are to be done beforehand, and with a little bit of luck some serious progress will be made. Of course, it all starts with a fighting scene, just to make things extra difficult for me.

And it's over...

My year at Malmö Comic Art School is over, and I must admit to feeling a little bit lost. There is some comfort in the fact that I will be taking their summer course (though, to be frank, as I have already received one year of education I am essentially there to have a place to work) together with a couple of my classmates. This also means that it doesn't quite feel like it's over, just... strange.

I did manage to finish Ilta Dalharuk in one month *victory pose* I still need to fix those sound effects because they look horrendous, but... whatever. Still counts!
I've also been re-working the character designs for most of The Red Planet crew. Still not entirely pleased with the outcome, but it's better at any rate.

The good, the bad, the sad

My year at Malmö Comic Art School is coming to an end, and it's down to the last week now. Likelihood of tears: 72%
On a more positive note: We are going to have an exhibition: The end is here and you are invited If you have the opportunity to come and have a look, don't hesitate.

On a related note: the second years at the Comic Art School had their final examinations yesterday. I was there and observed last year (two of my fellow Think Ink-ers took part of it, after all), so I knew what to expect. I was still caught off guard when T Wadbro chose to present the comics in video form. Bo Ashi and I were the opponents, but I was so in love with the semi-animated Prison Boy and Fernando that I couldn't think of a single question at first. Luckily, my partner had his wits about him at the very least XD

3 weeks of work on Ilta Dalharuk and *drumroll* it's almost done. Unless things really blow up in my face, I'll manage to finish the 11 page comic in one month. Dry Spell, also 11 pages and no backgrounds worth mentioning, took me two months.
Progress: I like it.


The break from Mars has already paid off. I've made changes to the plot of The Red Planet, altered the introduction of a certain character, made some changes to designs, etc, in a single moment of massive 'oh!'. Not only do I like this beginning better, I think it will flow smoother and pay off later down the line.

The thing about titles...

... is that they ought to have 'umph'. A title with umph will make you pick it up and have a closer look. It sticks around in your brain, getting friendly with your grocery list and teases your imagination. They are also painfully hard to come by and I am notoriously picky and often forced to settle for less. I had no less than 20 potential titles for my drow story, but I've finally chosen Ilta Dalharuk ("her son") because it was relevant and yet neutral. Several of the other alternatives gave too much away or were just horrendously difficult to twist your tongue around.
So far I've inked 7½ of 11 pages in a period of about two weeks (!) and, well, it's looking good. I'm quite pleased with how this experiment is turning out. Unfortunately this would-be one-shot wants more attention than I originally wanted to give it. Three more scenes are clamoring for attention and... well... we shall see.

I think of it as my little break before I sit down and do some serious work on the Space script, letting my brain rest a little in dark caverns below ground before it's off to Mars again.

Now that I have a little bit of spare time again, I'm working on the iphone game once more. Trying a new style there too, to have the illustrations blend with the other artists' work. Interesting, to say the least.

Komiks.dk

I finally managed to finish Myths of Mars at long last and I brought it along with me to komiks.dk. Maria, T. Wadbro, Fanny and I sat and sold our fanzines and posters at the Genki table. Met a lot of interesting people and got a few things signed as well :)
Got home at a reasonable time last night, ate, and went to sleep. Back to school today, and the inspiration-lull that I've suffered from since SPX seems to have evaporated at long last.

I'm currently working on a drow comic, and it's surprisingly easy. Maybe one week of work and I feel like I am almost half-way through the sketching stage. I'm revisiting one of my old characters, Sszafein, who's been with me for not a full ten years, but close. I haven't played with him in years so in a lot of ways it's like meeting an old friend you haven't seen in ages.
However, drow means spiders. Searching and looking at the spider references brought tears to my eyes out of sheer disgust. I wasn't even aware of how much I disliked spiders until now. There were some pictures I couldn't even open because the preview was so awful. That is not to say that they were horrible. It's just me really, really not liking large spiders... especially not up close.
I secretly wish that drow would hang out with some more pleasant animals. Like dogs. Or horses. Though I recon it wouldn't be half as intimidating.

First time drawing infants too, and it went surprisingly well. I think I'll try some new techniques for this 11 page comic, to see if what we've learned in class is something I'd like to make use of in the future. And since the spider-drawing is over and done with now, I might be able to enjoy the rest...

Another week, another con...

It seems as if the conventions never end. SPX, KodachiCon, and next weekend... komiks.dk. I'm insanely busy right now, but at the very least this monster was finished in time (a few weeks back)

Whatever the reason, role-playing games seem to be my biggest source of inspiration. These characters are from a Vampire the Masquerade chronicle that has been going for... two years now? It was used as an illustration in the yearbook, as a Sverok ad, though in black and white. Despite the less than satisfactory print of the yearbook, this actually turned out quite well.

Home again...

Just got home a couple of hours ago from SPX and the long bus ride home in the dead of night. Slept better on the way home than on the way up to Stockholm, so while I'm definitely groggy and in no state to do any real thinking, I can still get some work done.

Though I didn't get to see much of Stockholm (aside from the tubes and escalators... saw a lot of those) I really enjoyed my trip there, despite (obviously) being sick half of the time. Think Ink had a table of our own, and we sold very well indeed :D Swedish Comic Sin was well received too, though unfortunately the release party was at the same time that Tim Pilcher had his lecture about erotic comics which I wanted to go to (and, obviously, was of interest to the same audience). I also met lots of interesting and fun people, some who I have met before and others who were fresh and sparkly new to me.
Though I have to say that one of the best parts was meeting Peter Madsen (who makes Valhalla which I have been following since I was 8-9 years old and still love to bits and pieces) and get a copy of the final volume signed, complete with a picture of Loke <3 I also got to see the old sketches and the new absolutely gorgeous cover designs.

Far too tired to crawl my way to school, so I'll settle for doing all those mindless things that needs to be done at home (the laundry pile is about as big and impressive as the fridge is sad and empty).

Swedish Comic Sin has arrived

Swedish Comic Sin has, indeed, arrived and it looks beautiful. As previously mentioned, it will be available for sale at SPX. As I'll be taking the buss in the middle of the night, I will with all likelihood be dead tired but at the very least I will be there.

However, photoshop has decided that this is the time to act up... Creating a new layer causes it to freeze 50% of the time, choosing a new color from the palette is a chore that may or may not have the same result as the other Dreadful Action.

I am not pleased. At all.
A couple of final 12+ hours a day might have been enough to finish Myths of Mars, but at this rate it probably won't happen. 3 pages that are not fully inked, and 7 additional pages in various states of coloring are what's left and... ugh.

Think Ink #4, SPX and more...

The Swedish Comic Sin has been sent to the printers and everyone involved are excited and nervous and hopeful. It will be for sale at SPX (Small Press Expo, which takes place April 23-25 in Stockholm, Sweden) and we will have a release party at Debaser.


4 out of 5 Think Ink members will be present at SPX and we are currently putting our fourth fanzine together. I will contribute with a seven page preview of The Red Planet, and possibly my Grumg'nesh strips.

I finished coloring the Sverok illustration a while back, and I have officially broken up with Photoshop's smudge tool. On the other hand, my tablet and I have made friends and we are getting along wonderfully. I'm currently working on finishing Myths of Mars, something which I will probably be working on at least 12 hours a day for the next week...
During all of this I'm supposed to squeeze out something for the fourth class fanzine as well, but I'm a little bit skeptical at this point. Myths of Mars is more important, but at the same time I have an old comic which would fit the theme and I do sort of like it still (just not the raster...) We shall see, I suppose.

Progress...

Actually managed to get some spare time this week but still got quite a lot of work done.
The first game illustration is done and sent, and hopefully they like it or won't require too much change made at the very least. It went surprisingly smoothly, seeing as I am not at home with working with a tablet. That will probably change though as I found it quite enjoyable :)

I've also completed the lineart to the ad for Sverok in the yearbook, which was ridiculously fun as I got to play with characters I haven't drawn in ages. I still need to color it... or rather, I want to color it.

I bought a domain earlier this month and I've found a little bit of time to work on it now. It's nowhere near done yet, but it's a beginning at the very least. Eventually The Red Planet will be posted there, but first the prelude Myths of Mars. And before that... well, SPX.

Deadlines...

Had the yearbook deadline this Wednesday, and I've concluded that working 12 hours a day is not good for my memory... I forgot my laptop at home today (for one horrible moment I thought I had forgotten it on the bus), then I forgot my notebook at school and just now I realized that I forgot that I let the dog out... But I can remember pretty much everything related to the yearbook and the information I was given about a game that I might help illustrate...
I'm so taking it easy this weekend.

I finished a 7 pages long mini-chapter of The Red Planet for the yearbook, as well as a related illustration and the Grumg'nesh strips that I made for Sydsvenskan. 10 pages in total, and I'll start working on an illustration for the ads section come Tuesday.
Up until Tuesday, however, I have to focus on getting Myths of Mars somewhat presentable.


Swedish Comic Sin has begun adding interviews, and I'm first up. I've also had a look at the test print and it looks wonderful. Everyone's worked hard and it shows - I'm really excited about it :D

So many things to do...

Dry spell is done. Complete. Finished. Thank whatever god is listening (probably an ent of some kind). Not entirely happy with everything, but overall I'm pretty satisfied (now that I don't have to do anything more with it - unless the lovely Natalia Batista finds something that I need to fix).

I've bought a domain and begun making small illustrations for it, and hopefully it will be up and running in the near future.
Additionally, I'm working on a suggestion for the cover of the yearbook. I quite like it, even though it's a lot of fiddling with details no one will care about. As usual, I guess. Gears take more time than they should...

Should finish those Myths of Mars pages too, which means... a final design for the Airbitch - the airship which carries the crew of the Red Planet all over Mars. A quite important member of the 'cast', in other words.

Facebook

Just lost my facebook virginity...

It has been concluded that March is a horrible, horrible month with far too many deadlines. I think I will stay at home and work tomorrow so not to waste two hours on the bus, especially as there won't be any classes.
Because really... I need to get that Malmö Fria thing done by Friday X(
On the other hand... the two comic pages I plan on using will be added to Think Ink's new fanzine, and it's Red Planet related so I know that once I get started I'll enjoy it. I just don't like having the deadline just around the corner.

The dryad story now has a good and proper name - Dryspell. Enough double entendre to amuse me, but not silly enough to ruin the mood. There has also been progress (thankfully). I've finished 7 out of 11 pages and gotten some serious work done on the others. Hopefully I'll manage to finish the rest this week so that I can ink and greyscale in peace next week.
Friends (and myself for that matter) have concluded that it is far too easy to make bad jokes and silly omakes for this story. I think I could make a small fanzine with the ideas offered so far.

Back to work...

So, the second term at Malmö Comic Art School started a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately I seem to have misplaced my inspiration somewhere in December...

Yet I'm working on a couple of comics at the same time. It makes it more difficult to actually finish anything but easier to find something I want to work with.

First and foremost there is the nameless Dryad comic for a sexanthology, which I want to call 'Knock wood' just for shits and giggles but it wouldn't really suit the mood. Boo. Deadline March 1st, and... I have zero inspiration.

I've done a couple of pages for The Red Planet (that Space 1889 comic that I keep talking about but never seem to actually get to work on) for a class assignment. We were given a feeling which we were supposed to convey, and I got 'ensamhet' (loneliness) which suited Jerker oh so well. So I did the first two out of four-ish pages of a dream he has. I was really surprised how easy it was to draw considering the difficulties I've had with the Dryad comic.

Another class assignment was to brainstorm a bit on humorous comics of some sort, so I continued with Grumg'nesh. Four new ideas that I like, and I've inked and colored one of them. One of the two secondary characters seems to be developing on her own, and suddenly has an ickle paladin running after her. It's always nice when the characters know what's going on when you don't.

I've also started the coloring of Myths of Mars, the 24 hour comic that I did in November. Just the basics so far as I'll need to test-print them to see how the colors look before shading. I would hate to have to redo everything because the printer messes up the colors (it tends to mess up green and add a shade of brown to everything for some reason).

Furthermore, the newspaper Malmö Fria (well, technically all (city of choice) Fria as they publish in other cities as well) have made a deal with the Comic Art School, and so we students will be granted one page every Saturday for our art and comics. Each student get one page each, or half a page if they feel more comfortable with that. I have a vague idea of what I want, but as I'm part of the group organizing the whole mess I really ought to get a move on. To set a good example or something.