My next big project: Mjau! The Anime

I'll do this in English, so my international readers may follow the process of my next big project as well as my Swedish readers.

I have been doing comics and manga for 10 years now (professionally since 2006, but finished my first comic in 2005), and at some point you might want to change things a little or try something new. I feel I'm there right now.
So... I'm going to level up and try to do my own anime!

Yes, yes, I know what you're thinking: "But Natalia, anime is made by an animation studio! Will you be able to make anime on your own?"
And I can only give you a short and simple answer: I don't know. But I'll damn well try it!

So I'm going to [try] make my kitten manga Mjau! into anime.
Mjau! has so far been my best selling manga, and has been published in Sweden and Portugal.
In Sweden, it has sold over 10 000 copies, which is s lot in a country with only 9 million people, and most comic books sell only about 500-1000 copies.

This has actually been a bigger project in the making for about a year now, and not something I decided yesterday.
About a year or two ago, I started daydreaming about making my own anime, but I kinda thought it was impossible. But at last year's NärCon (Swedish manga convention) I met Eric Bradford, one of the creators behind Senpai Club, a hilarious anime parody made for youtube. He's a young and ambitious animator that started the project together with his fiend Olivia Bergström and together they make a full anime, without any huge anime studio.

He really made me believe that my dream was possible!
It felt like destiny, I needed that moment of clarity. He showed me how they work, which was great and made me understand the process.

Also, more destiny:
About that time, a guy called Richard "Ahturo s" contacted me because he saw my trailer for Sword Princess Amaltea on youtube and wanted to make a dubbed manga video of it, together with his gang of awesome Swedish dubbers (yes, they are awesome!). Sadly, I was super busy at that time with making the manga, but I always felt I wanted to do something with them...
And so this project formed in my head. It WAS destiny.

And some othe destiny things:
I posted a question on a facebook group for Swedish animators asking what payment and contract I should give my voice actors, and some days later Johan C.B., a comic making colleague came by my table at a comvention and started asking about it. He's into making animation too, and knows a lot of good people to know in the business. In speaking with him, I learnt even more vital stuff that could make or break a project like this, and now he and his friend Tobias are kind of mentoring me in this project.

So is Eric Bradford, and Richard is helping me find voice actors right now, sending his best group members to me.

✩✩✩THIS IS GOING TO BE AWESOME!!✩✩✩
I'm so hyped!! (as you probably can tell)

I have started working on the anime bit by bit. Most of it is not for show at this point, except for this:

Character Sheets for the first episode (chapter 1 of the manga).

My plan so far is to make 5-10 min episodes of each chapter. And look for sponsors and funding. But one step at a time, and right now I just want to animate!

I'll keep you posted. Oh, and please follow the Mjau Manga facebook page or my instagram nataliasmanga for more progress updates!
✩ Thanks for reading! ✩