A busy month

Three weeks left before the summer holiday arrives for us at the Game Assembly. The rest of Sweden's students tend to end about... two weeks before that. On one hand, a bit jealous, on the other... we've got a lot of stuff to do and a lot of it is fun, and I know what I need to practice on during the summer.
We're currently working on our fourth game - a turn based strategy this time. It makes three weeks left seem short :O
I've also been a volunteer at Nordic Game (fun!), visited SPX/SIS together with Think Ink and sold comics and had fun with old friends and new, and been part of a game art exhibition. Additionally, Amanda and I have passed the 150 comics benchmark on Champions and Heroes (!!) and are preparing for one but possibly up to three new fanzines for next year, in addition to Think Ink's yearly new fanzine.

In other words, I've been quite busy and had a lot of fun, though I think I'll appreciate a breather when the summer break finally arrives. As much of a break as it will be.
Meanwhile, I've started experimenting with a new scribbly style. My comic teachers always told me I needed to stop fiddling with details (sorry, not quite there yet XD) and let go of my careful lines and add more black spaces. Well! I've been drawing some of my (huge horde of) characters from my NaNoWriMo novel that I keep working on, doing just that. And it's fun! And faster than my usual pace.

 

 

 

Evidently I can't decide on what to write about them, but on the plus side, characters who I've only had work names for before now have proper names. So that's... what I've been doing with essentially all my time this past month.

SPX/SIS coming up

And my team and I are finishing up game three at the Game Assembly. This time it's a shoot 'em up, and it's been fun despite it not being my genre of choice. I finished cutscenes and convo pictures earlier this week, and we got working on what little dialogue we have today. I might show the cutscenes off later, but for now know that I'm working on rim lights. ALL the rim lights.
We also finished the concept art course, during which I made these two:

We were to take the Grimm Brothers's story The Skillful Huntsman, and do a take on one of the characters. I had great fun doing thumbnails (a total of 87 before I realized that perhaps it was time to continue to the next stage XD) and ended up with enough time to do two.

And now I'm going to go and pack my bag, because I'll be way too tired tomorrow. If you're in the Stockholm area this weekend, be sure to come by. Think Ink is releasing our first printed book The Art of Fika, and we'll be selling some old pieces and some individual new pieces as well :)

Bioware dinner and Gamex 2012

It's no secret that I'm a huge Bioware fan. Baldur's Gate was the first game I really loved and it sent me headfirst into fantasy and Viconia and the trip into the Underdark in the sequel made me fall in love with drow for what seems to be for life. Neverwinter Nights, Dragon Age, Mass Effect and Star Wars the Old Republic have eaten large chunks of my life (I regret nothing).

Three weeks ago Amanda and I got invited to a Bioware fan dinner by Lion Martinez. I reacted like the mature adult I am (read: got silly excited, climbed walls and ran to the cloth store for cosplay materials) and tickets were ordered and preparations started. So, despite both of us studying full time and having such a short deadline we sat down and made Mass Effect costumes. I once swore I would never do a cosplay on short notice ever again. Well. Let's not go into the stress level any further than that.
Amanda went as a random scientist and I went as Shepard in her dress blues because I absolutely adore that design. Granted, I love it somewhat less after making it. Easily the most complicated piece of clothing I've done due to the two different cloths and the folding overs and the gold bands and... yes, yes, carry on. I will say this though: it is probably the most comfortable cosplay I have made in a very long time.

And comfortable clothes that look nice are awesome. I wish to extend my 'thank you's and 'good job' to the artists here. I'm not certain about how easy it would be to mass produce though. Still. I've cosplayed Orochimaru. Any cosplay that doesn't cause me pain and prevent me from moving brings me joy XD

Having been so focused on getting the cosplays ready in time, we were completely oblivious to the fact that SM in cosplay was taking place at Gamex and ended up getting dragged in while utterly bewildered. Either way, lots of fantastic costumes! It was wonderful to see such a high standard wander about the building. Sadly no pictures, because I didn't bring my camera.

We also met up with the rest of Svampriket (at long last!) and made some videos with them which are up on the site now.

As for the dinner itself we were lucky indeed. The Skype connection was unfortunately not the best and Amanda and I ended up being the last who managed to get a reply to our questions to David Gaider and Mike Laidlaw. The connection with Mark Meer was better, and by then the speakers were working well enough that we could hear most if not all even in the back of the room. Not going to deny that I smiled a bit extra, hearing his preference for dressing as villains and history of D&D playing XD

The locale (Sjätte tunnan) was oozing with charm, but sadly was not the best for such a large crowd to have conversations in. Throats were sore at the end of the night, but plenty of game discussions - mainly Dragon Age and Mass Effect - were had, from whether or not the genophage really needed curing to tips on how to beat Loghain in a duel (with added pleading from me that they at least consider sparing his life).
We got the request that we'd draw something while at the event, and we were only too happy to agree. A comic diary of the day will be up... maybe next Monday if all goes well (I need a scanner that works with my laptop. Garrus the ever calibrating scanner is too old and incompatible with anything younger than ME1). Until then I just want to add a thank you to the lovely people we got to meet, the people who surprised us by being familiar with the Champions and Heroes comic, Lion who invited us, Jessica Merizan and Chris Priestly for coming, and the Skype guests too :D I would definitely do this again, and I hope that this sort of thing is something that Bioware continues to do - it was great and I saw nothing but smiles.

We came home from Stockholm again last night, having had a wonderful time and having met a lot of wonderful people. I think we've earned some extra sleep, but I've got catching up on Maya to do and NaNoWriMo has started without me for the first time since... 2001. This will not do.

But yes, as earlier stated, no pictures of the actual event - sorry. Have some strong female Dragon Age poses.

It's part of a bigger picture where I abuse the spines of male Dragon Age characters. I lovingly refer to it as 'the butt picture'. More of that in the future.

After SPX 2012

Ok... the layout of blogspot has gone through some drastic changes and I'm... completely lost. I am not a fan of change in my technology.

Regardless, the SPX in Stockholm has come and gone and I have returned home after all the exitement, and I'm looking forward to a few days of doing nothing useful whatsoever. Four out of six members of Think Ink were there and we had a blast. We sold our fanzines, among them the latest Think 6.
Fanny sold her books and post cards and made adorable bookmarks. She had also remade a My Little Pony, and we had a 'name the pony' competition! Diana pimped her online-comic-in-print and a short story called Sägner (rough translation, 'folktales') which you should keep an eye out for. Amanda sold her sketch fanzines, and the two of us also sold Champions and Heroes fanzines for the first time.
May I just say that it was so much fun to meet Champions and Heroes readers, old and new?

And a huge thanks to the awesome cook Gilbert who came by our table with delicious cookes! (also, go check out his stuff - lots of curvy ladies in there ;))

And... Think Ink now has a joined blog which you can find right here. At long last!

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).