2 month update

Okay... long time no update, again. I've been crazy busy, to the point where I've gotten sick because of it, but it's been calming down now that the work for the Think Ink anthology is done. Now I've actually got spare time when I'm done with the school work (for what feels like the first time in six months). Not that that has stopped me from getting a cold, but hey...

This is page 1 of Forest born, the skogsrå comic I've been working on for what seems like forever. Finally done! :D It will be part of Think Ink's The Art of Fika anthology, which will be released at SPX/SIS this year, and four out of five Think Inkers will be there, yours truly included :)

As far as school goes we've started our third game - a shoot 'em up - and we're at the same time doing a course about concept art. First time doing photobashes, and I have to admit that I find it a bit difficult, though I can certainly tell that it speeds things up considerably.

We were supposed to do a form of mechanical transport or vehicle of some kind. I chose to do some kind of steampunky roman chariot with built in horse thing, though I ran out of time and didn't have time to fix the wheels and the legs which are off . Still, it was fun.

And then we did some landscape depth practice. I've tried this before, with the Shmil picture, and I quite like it, but I chickened out and went with a cave rather than buildings. Still, I got to try to draw saiga - possibly the world's ugliest antelope. So ugly they're cute XD
We're working on character designs for the Grimm brother's story The Skillful Huntsman at the moment, and I made 87 thumbnails before I realized that maybe it was time to stop and go on to the next step. Ahem. It's great fun though :D

Other than that, Champions and Heroes is turning 2 years at the end of the month. Amanda and I are both sick, but planning on a joint little birthday comic to celebrate.

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.

It's been one week...

It's been one week since I got the idea,
Sat down, wrote the script and started working.
Four days since I laughed,
Finally done with sketching.
Three days since I inked the lot
And then spent two days fighting the scanner
Today I did the last
Of that horrendous grayscale-ing.

One comic, four pages, one week. Show, Don't Tell, starring Jenny (alternative universe!Jerker... sometimes I toy with the idea of having her as a main character instead, though the story would be mighty darker, methinks) and poor Ian who gets bossed around most heinously.

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.

Christmas approaching

Regular as clockwork... or something...

Time off for the holidays as of... last Friday. I've already gotten a bit restless, and it's just Monday. Lazing about and reading comics online is fine enough but it feels wrong not to sit and draw for 6 hours or so a day.

So instead I've spent my day trying to sort out the horrible Space 1889 mess of a plot, or lack of plot rather, that I've avoided dealing with so far. I think I'm beginning to get a pretty good idea of the Big Plot, but there's still a few chinks that I need to work out. Some scenes are very vivid to me already, and then there are a few black holes of horror that I need to explore. What gives me a headache though is the character development. How much to keep, what to rewrite, which parts to remove entirely and how will that affect the interactions and later character developments? The same goes for characters, their pasts, their motives and whatnot.

I've managed to finish all the lineart for a good four pages though, which makes me happy. Unfortunately it's pages smack in the middle of the story (well, part one of the story) so I still have the horrible fighting scene in the very beginning to deal with. In medias res and all of that. Bothersome, to say the least. But aside from that first chapter of horror I'm pretty much done with the script for the first half of part one. Progress, at last!

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.

NaNoWriMo

And so begins NaNoWriMo 2009 (which stands for National Novel Writing Month), my 8th NaNo total. 50 000 words or more shall be written during November, no matter how many cheap tricks I have to pull. Random dares? Flash backs? Cookie recipes? Excessive ramblings? Not leaving the house for a full week to make up for lost time? All is fair in the battle for those 50 000 words.


In more comic related news Think Ink's Mangazine is now available, and in it is Royal Games, finally completed.

All the inking on the doujinshi is done, so I'm left with the coloring of the cover and back and adding the greyscale... which I sincerely hope will not take too long because I have a bad novel to write. And a cosplay to sew.

I've also cheated a bit and started sketching on Space 1889... and to my horror realized that one page every three days will not be enough, because somehow I underestimated how many pages I need for every chapter. I'm fantastic like that. Three of the pages will definitely be done for December, as the class fanzine group decided that 'snusk' ('filth/smut') should be the theme and that really doesn't work with the vampire story. It does, however, work fabulously for my pirate captain and his beloved girlfriend when they meet at the Captain's Bounty, an inn/brothel in Karkarham where she works.

The strips for Sydsvenskan are also underway. I have eleven strip ideas with Grumg'nesh the one toothed orc, out of which I like five. But I do love the way that deadline is smack in the middle of the second week of November, which is about the last days when the writing is easy. Why oh why can't the world just stay on hold for November so I and the rest of the rabid authors in NaNo land can write in peace?

Doooooone~

I've been working on the coloring on and off since July, but the monster is finally done. Just because I say that, I'm sure I'll discover several mistakes in just a few days...

It will with all probability be the cover of a Space 1889 fanzine... which I can start working on more seriously in November...