Like a pirate

So, today is Talk Like a Pirate Day which happens to be the day of choice for Captain Dan and the Scurvy Crew, one of the bands I do the most drawing to, to release their fourth CD. Whoo!
Additionally, it coincides with the completion of Myths of Mars and thus the beginning of The Red Planet. Awesomecakes :D

And by north I mean to this link.

I also managed to make it out into the forest in one of the few days it wasn't raining, for some reference photos and dog walking. I am officially the master of blurry dog. It is known.

March... month of fun?

On Friday I will disappear from the face of the world for a couple of days. The long awaited Dragon Age 2 will then be minemineminemine. But while waiting for the game's release I am still working. Mainly catching up on my concept art course, but there are a few other bits and pieces that are getting dealt with while I am procrastinating.

Corrections on Substitute have been made, I've finished the sketch for Think Ink's Absolutely Scandalous Stories cover, the sketch for our talented guest artist Teru has also been completed. Additionally, I've finally sat down and fixed the text in Ilta Dalharuk and as of the 13th of March it will update every Sunday.
The Red Planet's prelude Myths of Mars has been updating three times a month for a little while now, and I've completed four of the five first pages of The Red Planet itself. The fifth needs rescanning...

The zombie anthology is giving me a rather accusing look from the other side of my desk, and I think I'll be working on that next to get away from my studies. At least all procrastination isn't wasting time?

The Red Planet

I've had enough of this hesitating nonsense now. The Red Planet site has gotten kicked around a bit, and the prelude Myths of Mars will start at the fourth of February.

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...

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.

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.

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.