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.

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.

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.

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.