Some weeks ago, I visited one of Germany's biggest comics event, Leipzig Manga-Comic-Con, which has since a couple of years ago been a part of the huuuge Leipzig Book Fair in the middle/end of March. The German manga scene has grown steadily for the past two decades and dominates the comics part of the fair. Here's my report from the event and as always I include some cool artists I met there and tips for you who might think of going there to sell your own comics and art!
This is the map for the enormous Leipziger Messe.
The comics and manga part was in one of the five halls. The rest is the book fair...!
Inbetween the halls was a glass hallway which was so big I bet you could fit a commercial airline in there, or two. This was where a lot of the food courts where and naturally the cosplayers too because of the sunlight, good for photos!
These three manga publishers is behind the majority of the manga that is published in Germany. All of them also have their own German manga artists, whom are seen as an asset to their publishers as they have their own big fanbases and the publishers own the International rights and can sell licenses for their mangas. This was clearly show as both Egmont Manga showed of Niloo's debut manga Mein erste Mal and Tokyopop showed off Anna Backhausen and Sophie Shönhammer's manga Sternen sammler.
Two publishers with roots in other countries that has established themselves on the German manga market: Panini Comics from Italy and Kazé Manga from France.
Both of these only publish imported Japanese manga and don't publish German artists, yet. Panini Comics also publishes other comics besides manga.
Among the newer publishers are Pyramond, focusing on Non-Japanese manga and comics by Non-Japanese artists but with a Japanese aesthetical inspiration, and it is going very well! Another proof that that the German manga market have matured enough so that the prejudice about who can and can not make manga is irrelevant.
Pyramond is also my publisher of my mangas Sword Princess Amaltea and Mjau!.
Altraverse is a new publisher with the former Tokyopop chief editor Joachim Kaps at the wheel, focusing on importing Japanese manga.
There are also several smaller publishers, mostly aimed at self-publishing or certain themes (a lot of BL at some of them). Here's some:
Schwarzer Turm, selling mostly German made comics, not just manga.
Several manga and comic artists had their own booths at the fair, so let me introduce you to some of them:
Désirée Kunstmannand Nana Yaa, two amazing manga artists mostly self-publishing but also published with publishers. Désirée at Delfinium Prints and Nana at Tokyopop. Nana is also part of the American Tokyopop initiative"International Women of Manga" that I'm also a part of.
The twins Gin Zarbo and Ban Zarbo, super cool and skilled manga artists and also part of Tokyopop's "International Women of Manga" with Nana and I.
German-Japanese Mikiko Ponczeck, now living in London (I met her at last years London Comic Con too). She makes a living drawing manga full time, partly thanks to her webcomics on Tapas.
One part of the fair is called MCC Kreativ, and this is their Artist Alley. A bit cheaper than a booth.
One of the super cool artists I met in the MCC Kreativ is PearsFears, who also make webcomics. Mostly BL, which is super popular in Germany, so she was not alone.
In the middle of the comics and manga part of Leipzig MCC, this stage was the drinking spot for everyone thirsty for the news withing the German manga scene. Publishers had booked time slots on stage and presented their newest books.
My publisher Christian Allmann presenting the upcoming titles at Pyramond, among others my own kitten manga Mjau!.
Going back to Germany is for me like meeting relatives that lives far away. This is my second big event in the country since DoKomi in 2015 and I have made so many friends online since then that I was elated to meet in person. Some of them have become really close friends like Marika Herzog, whom joined me for the Italian event FumettoPolis last year.
Marika (cosplaying from YOI) and I.
Some artists I have mostly admired on a distance, like Reyhan Yildirim, one of my "artist-crushes". This time I was brave enough to talk to her and got one of her mangas signed. Yaaay!!
To be able to meet all these amazing and kind artists that I have followed for so many years, and to hang out with them in the evenings too, it was a dream come true! ❤
Last but not least, this event was the pre-release of Sword Princess Amaltea vol. 1 in Germany, and thus marks another step in my career. I signed so many books (thank you everyone for buying it!!) and feel so honored to be part of this flourishing and high-quality manga scene.
Besides the snow storms covering the city in an almost Arctic aura, this trip was a well needed boost for me as a Swedish manga artist and fan. In Sweden, last year was the first year since the end of the 90'ies where no Japanese manga was published in Sweden. No publishers dare to put in the effort anymore. I could write a whole blog entry about it, but in short; the editors at the big comic publishers in Sweden are either not interested or not knowledged enough to do the job. Plus the kids here are too good at reading English (and the American manga distributors reach us well). So for me, seeing how the German publishers put money and time into manga, and get rewarded likewise, makes me both happy and envious. They prove that manga was not just a fad. Maybe this is where the Swedish manga publishers would have been if they wouldn't have given up that easily.
Oh, well.
____________________________________________
Last but not least, here's my tips for you who want to go sell at Leipzig MCC (based on my experiences of the fair):
Cash Is King in Germany, so bring lots of change, in Euro of course. Most people seem to want to pay in cash, but the most common alternative seem to be PayPal so make sure you have that too.
Book the tables waaaay in advance. The MCC Kreative seemed to have some issues with tables going fast or something, which was partly why so many artists had their own booths.
Book hotels and traveling tickets early too. I went by train, which was not as awefull as some seem to think. Took 10 hours from Sweden but I only payed 200 euro for the tickets (both ways included).
Fanart was apparently an issue, I heard, they discuss how much should be allowed. Check the rules before you apply, if you are a fanartist.
Manga, webstyles and fiction or funny cartoons seemed to be the dominating part of the artists selling, so that might be something to keep in mind.
Time for a summary of the past year. Initially I'll warn you. This entry will be littered withBad Excuses. When I look back at the past year, I feel a little embarrassed. I havn't done as much as I could have, I feel. Well, maybe I feel like this because the past year was mostly planing, planing and planing. I spent most of my time planing big things for my future, but I didn't get to start any of them yet. Well, you'll get more explanations in the text below.
For you who don't prefere to read, I made this into a video as well, so that you can listen instead.
Milestones of 2016:
January
What the heck did I do in January?? I usually make these yearly reports based on my blog entries, but as I have been less and less active here on the blog, I have NO entries from January! Instead, I have turned especially to Instagram to promote my everyday life as a mangaka. According to my Instagram uploads, I worked on my manga When I Close My Eyes to Nosebleed Studio's 10 Years Jubilee Anthology all through January and finished the inking by the end of the month.
A photo posted by Natalia Batista, mangaka (@nataliasmanga) on
At the same time I worked two days every week at Serieskolan (the Comic Art School), my day job so to say. I now have a routine, working monday and tuesday at the school and the rest of the week wth my comics. This is my Bad Excuse no. 1, for not making so many comics this year. I love my job at the school, and feel blessed to work there, but it also takes a lot of my focus, time and energy.
In January, I also did some animation. Sadly, that's pretty much where I stopped (except for some few hours in April), mostly because of lack of time. Bad Excuse no. 2. (wow, this is going fast..!)
February
I visited NärCon Vinter 12-14th of February with Nosebleed Studio and sold our books. Sword Princess Amaltea volume 3 sold out on Saturday, my usual mistake to bring to few books. I made a report here at the blog with some complaints about how the panel I held was treated by the organizers.
A photo posted by Natalia Batista, mangaka (@nataliasmanga) on
I was also invited to talk in Swedish national radio about how manga came to Sweden, as some kind of expert since I work at the Comic Art School and am one of the few Swedish mangakas published. You can listen to it here (In Swedish):
I also worked at the school, while screen toneing my manga When I Close My Eyes, organizing events with Svenska Tecknare Syd (Swedish union for illustrators and comic artists) and planing for the next Malmö Seriefest, a local comic convention I am the founder and one of the organizers of. These are not excuses! I want to put my time and focus on not only helping myself but also others in showing their works to the world, so these commitments are important to me.
March
In March, most of my time went to three things; working at the school,
making the next anthology with Nosebleed Studio and planning for the
upcoming Malmö Seriefest in April.
This month was also a heavy month when it comes to events:
5th of March: SciFi-mässan in Malmö, Sweden 18th-20th of March: J-popCon in Copenhagen, Denmark 25th-28th of March: GothCon in Gothenburg, Sweden
They where all in different forms: I signed Sword Princess Amaltea in the booth of the publisher Apart at the SciFi fair, since the CO of the company Johan Kimrin is a friend of mine. At J-popCon, I was selling with Nosebleed Studio and holding a lecutre. At GothCon I was sellign on my own, since Nosebleed Studio didn't go there. GothCon is for fantasy and table top gaming so I wanted to focus on my fantasy manga Sword Princess Amaltea, and sold pretty well.
It was at GothCon I met Daniel at Saga Games, the key person to my next project. We started talking about my manga and Daniel proposed we do a RPG book together in the world of Sword Princess Amaltea. I was of course super interested!!
I was also in the media spotlight this month: first interviewed by My Bergström, a friend of mine, for the librarians magazine Biblioteket i Fokus, about my work as a manga artist and my works, and then I was featured at the Swedish national television show Superlördag for kids. The latter practically made me famous among all the 8-10-year olds I met the following months, haha. I talked about drawing manga and drew a little portrait of the show host Tobbe, a well-known Swedish magician.
A photo posted by Natalia Batista, mangaka (@nataliasmanga) on
April
Finally time for Malmö Seriefest, which I am part of the organizers of. It took place on the 2-3 of April at the Malmö City library. The video below shows a part of it. All in all we had about 700 participants in 2 days, which is an increase since 2015 when about 500 showed up. Success!!
A video posted by Natalia Batista, mangaka (@nataliasmanga) on
The rest of the month was for some much needed artist rest, mostly focusing on work with Nosebleed Studio, the Comic Art School and holding several manga workshops at schools and libraries.
I also got some time to go shopping some new clothes for me; Morikei. Morikei is a Japanese fashion style and it means "forrest type" or "forrest style". It's often layered outfits with cozy cardigans and long skirts, colorcoded and preferably in a more muted or sober colors like dark purple, moss green or grey tones. I just tried it and found it very comfortable, escpecially in cold Sweden where layered styles and cardigans fit right in!
A photo posted by Natalia Batista, mangaka (@nataliasmanga) on
May
So, after some months of hard work, finally we had out new book, and sold it at Stockholm International Comic Festival on 7-8th of May. As 2016 is Nosebleed Studio's 10th year together (Yup! That's a looong time!), our book was dedicated to all these years together with the theme of 'friendship'. This is the magnificent result:
A photo posted by Natalia Batista, mangaka (@nataliasmanga) on
I also made a blog entry about my manga in the book, When I Close My Eyes, a 40-page short story manga about a young traveller in need of friendship.
With this new book, we also travelled to Confusion in Gothenburg on the 13-15th of May, the biggest manga convention on the west coast of Sweden. We love coming back to this event, it's one of our fav events of the year!
I also got to make a very cool thing at the nerdy book store SF-bokhandeln's new store: a painted pilar! (Yup, I painted it all myself! Took like 40 hours or something...)
This was seriously so honoring, to get to have Amaltea
with her sword raised standing in the middle of the store,
greeting the customers when they enter through the sliding doors.
I will be proud of this forever and ever and ever and...
Back side of the pilar, with Prince Ossian and a dragon!
June
At this time, I was planing my next big projects, and therefore took a trip to Stockholm to meet my editor Fabian at Raben & Sjögren, a Swedish childrens book publisher. We plan to make a children's comic book together, a new story about my mermaid character Minna from my previous manga Hooked On You. So exciting! And my plan is to make it all in water colors...
In Stockholm, I also met up with Tomas at Saga Games, the writer with whom I will be making the RPG-book about Amaltea's world. This is also a super exciting project! How many manga artists can say their manga has been turned into a playable RPG?! Not many! And soon I'm one of them!
Cover for the PRG-book, planed to be released
in Swedish in the Spring of 2017.
In the middle of the month, I was invited by my friend Daniele Rudoni to do a livestream as part of Indieversus "Meet the artist"-event. Other great artists like JP Ahonen and Sam Chapman has been featured on their livestream webinar, so I felt very honored to get to be part of this! Basically I was drawing a digital painting and replying to questions for 2-3 hours, and it is all online for you to watch, in English, at their site. Go check it out and also see what other events they'll have!
July
I started the month with turning 30! Yay, now I'm officially "an old lady", haha. Just kidding.
In July, most of my time went to drawing storyboards for my Mermaid Minna water color manga for Raben & Sjögren, while writing down lore about the world in Sword Princess Amaltea, for the RPG book. Writing is actually kinda fun. I wouldn't mind writing a book one day. You know, one of those without pictures in it... Ok, maybe some pictures. I can't help myself, haha.
During all this, I also had two week-long manga courses at two different
cultural houses. It was so much fun to get to teach young kids for more
than a short 2 hours event. The week-long courses let's you get to know
each other, and we even got time to make a fanzine together. They were
so diligent and productive!
Oh, and I sew pen cases with Amaltea on! All by hand!
A photo posted by Natalia Batista, mangaka (@nataliasmanga) on
I wanted some new merch for the upcoming NärCon Summerin Linköping on the 28-31st of July.
This is the biggest manga convention in Sweden with about 8000 visitors, and one of our regular events of the year. We held a well attended manga drawing workshop (all seats were full!) and finihed it off by announcing out next project; a "How to draw manga"-book in Swedish. It was 10 years since there last was such a book being printed in Swedish, and we also want to make ours fresh and new and more body and gender positive. We asked the participants what they wished to have in the book and got some great tips.
We also held our super popular event "Free Chibi Portrait" and I got to make a couple of cute portraits of coplayers!
A photo posted by Natalia Batista, mangaka (@nataliasmanga) on
August
In August, I finally made another video for my youtube channel. I seriously need to give it more time, since it is actually the one of my social media accounts that has the most followers, haha...
I'll try! I promise!
I made a little mini project for a card game developer I met at GothCon in April, some illustrations for his pitch of the game to a bigger developer. We'll see if it pans out to something, would be cool to get to make illustrations for card and board games one day, since I'm a total board game nerd, haha.
A photo posted by Natalia Batista, mangaka (@nataliasmanga) on
Except for that, and some illustrations for the RPG-book, most of my summer went for resting, and resting... and well, more resting, of what I gan recall. So you know, all that about "not enough time" is truly Bad Excuses. Haha...
Oh, right! Summer vacation was over at the Comic Art School, so I went back to work.
September
So I went on vacation! To my father's new (and old) home: Portugal. He moved to Sweden when he was only 25 y o or so, and now that he's 67 and finally retired, he's moving back. So I helped him go look at surely over 10 different houses in pursuit of The Right One. And in the end, after some looking, we found it! Sadly, he changed his mind when I had returned home, but he's happy with the new one he chose and that's all that counts.
At home again I trvelled to the biggest book fair in all of the Nordic countries; the Gotheburg Book Fairon the 22th-25th of September. There I not only signed countless of Amaltea books, but also took the stage a couple of times at the booth of the Swedish Comic's Assocciation (Seriefrämjandet). One of the times was to interview the Brazilian comic artist Bianca Pinheiro, invited by the Brazilian Embassy. Such a fun and nice person she is! I found a new friend in her and after the intevew we had time to go around and talk about the comic markets and politics and all kinds of stuff. I'm so glad I got the honorable task to interview her!
October
No, it's Inktober! I repeated last year's popular event by making a small inked illustration ever day on my instagram and give it away to the first comment on the pic. A really fun event with several of my follower keeping a close eye on my account all days long, haha. I'm so sorry for making your eyes hurt, my friends!
A photo posted by Natalia Batista, mangaka (@nataliasmanga) on
This one was one of my favs, which I also made a youtube video of while making it:
November
In the end of October and beginning of November, I went with my boyfriend Emil to Italy for the first time in my life, and this was no ordinary vacation. We went to the famous Lucca Comics & Games in Lucca, Italy, on the 28th of October to the 1st of November, the biggest popcultural event in all of Europe, I think, with over 250 000 visitors!
I had wanted to go there for some time now, especially because I have gained so many Italian online friend thanks to the publishing of my Sword Princess Amaltea in the Italian manga web magazine Doraetos Manga (since 2014). I got to meet many of them, and talk about both work, life, tools, the future of manga and all kinds of interesting stuff. I made a loooong report from the festival itself here at the blog, so you can go check it out so see more photos from this amazing event.
I feel every time I go on an international trip to an event like this, I get an extrem boost of energy to make more comics, and after a very tired and somewhat depressing Spring and Summer with my manga page count on an all time low, I felt this trip really made me re-focus and gain some energy back!
December
Both November and December mostly went to working on Nosebleed Studio's "How to draw manga"-book. This will be a really good one, we feel, since we once were in the shoes of our potential readers and now can make the "how to"-book of our dreams, with all that which we wished for as young aspiring artists.
Here's a couple of the illustrations I've made for the book:
Also some planning of my short story manga for our next antology. It will be out in Summer of 2017 (we pushed it a little to get enough time to make it good!) and will have the theme of Swedish history. I'm planing on taking on a very interesting part of this country's history, namely the Emigration century in the 1800s. I have put maybe 40-50 hours of reseach into this story, probably the most research I've ever done for a short story manga, but I really want to make it authentic and real. I'll make a longer blog entry about it soon, and also start updating my instagram with pics from it. So don't forget to follow my instagram to see sneak peeks from the process.
All throught the year, I also kept publishing my manga Sword Princess Amaltea online at it's own homepage. Once a week with only a few delays or missed weeks. But I don't know how many reads it, and how well it is spreading... I wanted to track how many visits the site, and preferably have some advertisement on it, but right when I made the site EU changed the laws and now all homepages who wants to track the user's activity (which Google Ads and other advertisement sites wants to do if you use them) then you have to ask for permission from the user first. That's why we see this annoying bar on top of every site nowadays. Good for privacy, though! But because of lack of time and effort, I havn't managed to make it work on my site. Bad excuse no. 3.
Well, that was pretty much all of my 2016. A year of... planning? Yes. A
lot of planning. Sketching storyboards, researching, writing and
so on... This might sound like another Bad Excuse, but I hope you understand. Some years have to be like this. But if everything goes according to keikaku (keikaku = plan in Japanese) I will have not one, not two, not three but FOUR books out next year! Nosebleed Studio's "How to"-book and the Sword Princess RPG-book in the Spring, while the Mermaid Minna book and Nosebleed Studio's Swedish History Anthology in the Fall. That will be epic! I look forward to holding them all in my hands, cradeling them like small babies... lol
Okay, so even if this year was a Bad Excuse year, with lot of resting and not as much manga making as I'm used to, the whole year still feels like a small step forward. Or a big one, in some ways. I need to be proud, and I think I am.
Finally, one more awesome year is over, and time for a look back at what I've accomplished.
This past year has been a year of routine work, lots of projects, conventions and jobs but nothing that unordinary. And it was kinda nice actually, as 2013 was kinda adventurous.
Milestones of 2014:
Sketch for the cover of book 2.
January was a month of drawing Sword Princess Amaltea book 2 and teaching part time at Serieskolan (Comic Art School) in Malmö two days in the week. A pretty nice and stable routine.
In February, the drawing-and-teaching-routine continued, but I also went to NärCon Vinter(20-23th of February) in Linköping for the second time – fun! I was there with Nosebleed Studio, and I also held some presentations about working as a manga artist and about my manga Sword Princess Amaltea. I also worked with selling in the exhibition Vicky Jackie Wendy (about the history of girls comics mangazines in Sweden) to libraries and other venues. I still need to make a blog post about that project... soon...
March was a month of intense work. Beside the normal routine, I also taught at Malmö University's course Comics International Perspective and worked on Nosebleed Studio's latest project. We usually make a book each year, but because most of us has had other big projects or lack of time this year, we couldn't make a new manga anthology. But we felt it was time for us to make an artbook, with some of our most resent works in color. We set up a crowdfuding campaign for it, but tried out the site IndieGoGo instead this time. It was a huge success, funding 169% of what we asked for!! Thanks to all who supported it!!
I also attended Scifimässan (1st-2nd of March) in Malmö, together with Kolik förlag. I'm more used to the mangafans at manga conventions, so it was quite interesting to meet another kind of audience. Similar but yet different, like at Gothenburg Book Fair. The month finished off with a visit to Denmark's biggest manga event J-popCon (28-30th of March), selling my and Nosebleed Studio's books there and holding presentations!
In March I also got a new cat! Lovis is her name and she was a homeless cat, brought in by Rädda Katten and then we adopted her. Hilda now has a friend and a sister! ❤
I posted a link here to Bokjuryn
asking all of my fans to vote for Amaltea in the yearly youth's book
competition, but sadly it didn't make it in to the top 3. What is a
little irritating is that Bokjuryn previous years showed the top 10 of
all comics, like with all other genres. Today they only show top 3. ☹ I
have emailed them about this and showed them how many awesome comics
for teens/kids that are published each year that they have looked past. I
hope they'll make it a top 10 again...
April was a hectic month when it comes to conventions! First Seriefest (5-6th of April) in Lund, then GothCon (18-20th of April) in Gothenburg and then FairyCon (25th of April) in Kalmar. Three quite different events, as Seriefest was held in a library with a mainstream audience, GothCon is a board game con with mostly male 25+ y.o. nerds and FairyCon for the usual manga con crowd; teens and cosplayers. My book Sword Princess Amaltea went pretty well at GothCon, to my amazement. I did some guerilla marketing by putting up posters for it here and there at the con, and got pretty good response from that – I sold out! Yay! At GothCon, I also got to be a part of the nerd feminist event Isis, and held a presentation about Sword Princess Amaltea there. Thanks, Anna, for letting me be a part of this! ☺ (Also, I have made their logo above)
In May, it was time for Sweden's biggest comic event of the year; S.I.S. - Stockholms Internationella Seriefestival (16th-18th of May). It's the most prominent fanzine and self press fair, combined with a market event where most of the Swedish comic book publishers is represented. Nosebleed Studio was there, of course, selling our artbook and anthologies. At this point, I was about to finish the second volume of Sword Princess Amaltea, and made a sneak peek fanzine with one chapter form the coming book. I also held a presentation on gender stereotypes in manga at S.I.S., a much appreciated topic I think as manga is far too often overlooked at comic events because some seem to think it was just a fad. No, it's not. The manga events hit new records in attendance each year, so manga is not "dead", just because Swedish publishers don't publish as much manga as before.
In June, I finally finished the second volume of Sword Princess Amaltea! After that I finally had some much needed and well earned vacation. Spent it mostly playing Minecraft, or doing other meaningful things, haha. Well, I also visited KodachiCon (6th-8th of June) in my home town Lund. ❤
July was a month of traveling; first to Småland and the family of my boyfriend, and then to Portugal and my relatives (on my father's side). There I got to meet some readers, fans and fellow manga artists, a get together arranged by my dear friend Ricardo. It was nice meeting all the awesome people there again! ❤ And as soon as I got home, we were off to NärCon (24th-27th of July) in Linköping. Lot's of people, the event hit new records of attendance with over 7000 people! And I sold all Sword Princess Amaltea-books (book 1 and the new book 2) I brought before Friday was over!! Wow! Held several presentations at the con, well attended and appreciated as some from the audience always comes up to me afterwards and wants more tips.
I also wanted to make some merchandise for Sword Princess Amaltea, to sell at NärCon and othe events. But I really want them to be mostly eco friendly and fair trade, so I ordered tanktops and bags made of organic cotton and GOTS certified.
In August and September I mostly worked on other projects and did some writing on the third book of Amaltea. A new semester began at Serieskolan in Malmö and this Fall I got to have more hours and was class teacher for the first year students. I visited the bookstore Scifi-bokhandeln in both Malmö and Gothenburg at their jubilee week in August, and signed my new book! And also the [mandatory] Gotheburg Book Fair (26th-28th of September), for more signings~
It was quite silent here during October and November. These where some dark and heavy months for me. My grandmother ended up in hospital and was close to death a couple of times (luckily she got out alive before X-mas) and also there was some drama and conflicts at my work. All at the same time... Sometimes life deals you a bad hand, I guess. So I got some stress symptoms, that I still deal with (stomach ache, sleep deprivation, forgetfullness etc.). I just need to calm the f* down right now. ☕
Still went to one event in November, the MIYABI Japan Story (29th-30th of November) in Stockholm, an international event that even had Japanese editors there! I got to show Sword Princess Amaltea to one of the editors from a shonen magazine, and got some feedback.
In November and December, Nosebleed Studio crowdfunded our latest manga anthology, a big fat hardcover book in Swedish with more than 450 pages of awesome manga! It was fun to see all the great support, and we sent out the books as gifts for X-mas, in nice golden wrapping! We reached 117% of what we asked for, so thank you all who helped us back this project!!
The year finished off with a visit to the best manga con on the east coast (of Sweden): Confusion (12th-14th of December) in Gothenburg. New place, not great locales but still, people are super friendly there! And I sold out all my Amaltea-books I brought, and we sold most of Nosebleed Studio's new book too! Yay! $$$ (hahaha)
So, that was my year! Lots and lots of trips to events and places, an even thogh I'm a "at-home-person", I still like going on these trips, to meet manga fans and other great people! It's stressfull having to leave the house (haha, I'm such a hikikomori) but when I'm actually there, it's such a energy boost!
Hope we'll meet at one of those events in the future~
Oh, and the sales of Sword Princess Amaltea went awesome this year! In less than a year after the first book was printed, more than 2000 copies has been sold and the published printed a third edition! Yay!!
Even thogh the end of 2014 gave me a hard time, I still feel I exceled this year in many ways, like landing a second volume as fast as I could (not getting caught by the "first volume only"-virus that sadly hit many manga inspired artists in the west get). Now let's finish this series this coming year, and make history again!
Sorry för det långa uppehållet, jag har förlöst en bok. Det blev en flicka, en svärdsprinsessa!
Dock har jag inte fått se ungen än, det blir lite av en överraskning för min del också när den släpps på Bok- och Biblioteksmässan i Göteborg i helgen!
Jag kommer närvara fredag och lördag, och missa inte detta:
Fredag
11.00-11.45 Seriescenen: Utopiska visioner - att skapa världar i serier
Genom fantasy och science fiction kan tecknarna ställa frågor om kön och
klass, om samhället och hur vi relaterar till varandra. Natalia
Batista, Lisa Medin, Kim W Andersson och Lars Krantz pratar om sina
världar med stora persongallerier som de byggt under lång tid. Moderator
Fabian Göranson.
Lördag
12.00-12.20 Seriescenen: Podcasten Seriesystrar snackar kvinnliga röster i nördkulturen
Nördkultur har blivit poppis i media och underhållning, men var är de
kvinnliga nördarna? Dags för fler kvinnliga röster om serier och
nörderi! Medverkande: Natalia Batista och Yossra El Said
16:00-17:00 Podcastscenen (Digitala torget): Seriesystrar LIVE!
Vi spelar in ett avsnitt live på podcastscenen inför publik och allt! Se hela schemat för podcastscenen här.
Dessutom signerar jag boken i SF-bokhandelns monter på fredagen mellan 14:45-15:15, och i Koliks monter all annan tid!
Alla som ber om en signering får också en fin bild i boken! :D
Jag kommer även ha signeringar i Skåne och Stockholm, mer om det inom kort!
Samt mer om allt annat jag hittat på i sommar, som resan till Japan, fast det får vi ta efter Bokmässan...
Tills dess, här är en fin trailer jag gjort för boken, för att locka er ännu mer!
Summer is over and I'm trying to crawl back to my worktable and get busy again... it's hard!!
Right after returning from Portugal, me and my colleagues went to NärCon, a Swedish manga con in Linköping. It was fun and a good experience, first time visiting that con.
Every con has it's own "soul" and even though some of the people from UppCon came to help out at NärCon, it still differs a lot. Both in good and bad ways... NärCon is at the University and the locales are made for lectures, which means there's a lot of places to sit down and hang out at (unlike UppCon) but also less glamorous and high tech as the UKK where UppCon used to be. Also, the focus of UppCon and NärCon is not always the same. Sure, cosplay is the main attraction, but other than that the lectures get more attention at UppCon than at NärCon. But they're working on it... This was actually the first year they had lectures, and it was okay when you take that into account.
Well, big things ahead! Nosebleed Studio got international attention!
How do I know? Some weeks ago, we got invited to the biggest manga event in both Lituania itself and all of the Baltic States, NowJapan in Vilnius this coming week end. Cool huh?!
We will be selling our books and fanzines and stuffs in their Artist Alley, but also hold two lectures, a workshop and a Manga Battle event!
The lectures are my job: 13.00-14.00 on Satrurday 18th:A Swedish Mangaka in Japan - about my attempts so send my works to Japanese editors at Shueisha's Ribbon magazine, and the response I got.
16.00-17.00 on Satrurday 18th: Yaoi-manga - about the history of Yaoi manga, the stereotypes in it and some theories about why it's so popular.
My sister Catarina will doing the manga workshop at 15.00 on Sunday and together with Joakim Waller we will be doing the Manga Battle at 14.00 on Saturday.
The Manga Battle is a tournament of skill, speed and wittyness! First, we artists from Nosebleed Studio challenges each other to duels, to draw a picture in less than 2 minutes based on a theme given by the audience. The winner is then decided by the audience. After that, the audience can challange us artists to Manga Duels, one by one. After that, people from the audience can get into the real Manga Battle Tournament, duel each other for the ultimate prize: Nosebleed Studio's latest manga anthology Seaside Stories!
A picture from when we held the Manga Battle
in Bonnier Carlsen's booth at the Gothenburg Book Fair back in 2008.
If you're going to NowJapan, make sure to come check our events and lectures, and check our table in the Artist Alley!
