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?

February means deadlines...

And lots of them.
I'm making a flag for some family members who are going to do the Vasa relay race this year. With old, old material from when I was about seven years old. I'm going to have to buy some new paint...
And I have my course to work on, which is eating a lot of time and I'm stressing out all over the place.

But first and foremost I have been working on Substitute. The inking processes on the first page has taken me... about 25 hours. Yeeeeeah. Details galore. But at least it's pretty.

And none of the other pages have that detailed backgrounds so it shouldn't be the end of the world. Anyway, page 1 is all inked now. Whoo!

A new year...

And it's going to be fantastic - Dragon Age 2 and A Game of Thrones are both approaching their release date and I'm trying to convince myself that I won't spend April high on geekery. It's not going well...

The Swedish Comic Sin 2 anthology is in progress and I'm halfway done with the sketches for Substitute - which stars Jerker and Claire from The Red Planet, together with another woman.
Additionally, the calenders were printed and I've sold out. Only my own copy left :)

I'm almost done with all the magpies for the zombie comic, which leaves... pretty much everything else. But since I'm more concerned about managing birds than undead I consider this damn good progress.

I am also working on the cover for Absolutely Scandalous Stories, the next Think Ink fanzine, and something tells me that a certain someone is going to be on it...


Additionally, I've started a course in concept art which has inspired me a great deal already, barely more than a week after it started. I just wish that we were allowed to make our own game rather than the one that they've given us. As it is, I'm afraid I'll try to do both the assigned task and my own thing with what little time is left. I've already been drawing characters, and turned to my beloved The Queen spring and summer 1883 book for dress designs.

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 :)

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).

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.

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.