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.