Bokjuryn 2013 och Scifi-mässan!

Till alla läsare som är under 19 eller som känner någon under 19 år:
En av Sveriges främsta barn- och ungdomsbokspriser kallad Bokjuryn tar nu emot era röster för bästa böckerna 2013! Det är alla ni som bestämmer vilka böcker som var de bästa som gavs ut förra året, så gå in och rösta!!
I kategorin "Serier och manga" hittar ni såklart min bok Sword Princess Amaltea bok 1, och jag skulle vara oerhört tacksam om ni ville rösta på den som bästa seriebok för barn och unga, och slå ett slag för bra svensk manga!!

I helgen var det Scifi-mässa i Malmö, i den nya Malmömässan. Lokalerna var mycket större än förra årets mässa, så det var jättemycket folk på plats!

Det var många cosplayare och andra utklädda på plats, en så nördig och mysig stämning! Kunde inte låta bli att be om ett foto på detta underbara gäng:

Aang, Zuko, Toph och Katara från Avatar The Last Airbender!

Jag signerade Sword Princess Amaltea vol.1 i Kolik förlags monter!
Dessutom var jag med och tecknade två A3-original som tillsammans med de andra Kolik-tecknarnas bilder lottades ut i slutet av varje dag. Här är en av dem:

 

Samtidigt som jag åker på event och signerar böcker (se listan till höger för vilka platser jag kommer dyka upp på) och ritar seriesidor till vol.2 av mangan samt lär ut på Serieskolan på 33%, har jag även liiite fritid. Vad lägger jag det på?
Jo, en del av det går till att träffa familj och vänner, gå på bio eller restaurang för att komma ut från hemmet lite.

Dessutom har jag ju en katt, som vill lekas med. Fast...
...det räckte inte. Nu har vi två.

Främst för att Hilda (den första) ibland blir ensam i ett par timmar när jag är borta hemifrån, och nog skulle behöva en kompis. Så vi adopterade lilla Lovis (6 månader gammal) från Rädda Katten!

Lovis är så liten och tanig! Hon var en illa skött bondkatt 

som Rädda Katten tog hand om tillsammans med hennes två syskon.

Efter ett par dagars morrande och fräsande verkar de ha blivit vänner nu. De leker t.o.m ibland, om än lite klumpigt och osäkert. Men det ska få ta tid, snart är de nog bästisar!
De delar redan saker:

Tack för att du läser! *(^w^)*

Hooray hooray ~

Today's my birthday (yaay, 27!), and since it's 2 months since I last wrote here I better make an update!

Some new things have come up, but otherwise I'm just eagerly trying to meet the deadline for Sword Princess Amaltea Book 1 (pushed a little to the middle of August).

So far, I have drawn and inked 120 pages out of 160, and I think about 100 of them are screentoned. There's a huge load left to do, so my awesome sister Catarina and my amazing boyfriend Emil is helping me out (as I wished for that instead of birthday presents!). With their help, and the help I've recieved from my dear friends Joakim Waller and Yossra El Said, I'm pretty sure I'll meet the deadline.
I think...

I want to tell a little about the assistant work they are doing. As I'm highly inspired by Japanese manga, I often like many others in my situation try to meet their standards in each page, since that's what the manga readers here in the West are expecting in some way. This is very hard, as many of the Japanese artists has sometimes up to 7 assistants helping them out. To be able to get close to their quality of work, I'll have to work full time for a long time (maybe even a year per book) to do the same amount of work, which neither me nor my readers have patience with. That's partly why I wanted to have as much help as I could with this, without losing the creative control. Inking frame lines, scanning, tracing background photos and laying basic screentones are things my controll-freakish mind could give away to someone else, haha.

I also think the system they have in Japan, with a master and her assistants, is a very learning and good structure of an comic making industry, without losing the "auteur feeling" of the work (as the master still does all the storytelling, sketching and inking of the characters). The books gets done a little bit faster, and also the assistants is introduced to the market and the industry this way, as interns in any other company would. It's also a great way for inexperienced artists to collect works on their C.V., as they could claim they have worked under more experienced artists and thus get that reference for future publications.
I think this would help the Swedish comic industry a lot. We have comic art schools/courses but no real structure in the industry to pick the students up after graduation... So I really hope more publishing artists takes in assistants in the future, it's truly not that shameful.

Anyway, here's a sneak peek from the fourth chapter!

Oh no! Amaltea is in real danger! O_O

Since my last update here on the blog, I've been to two conventions with Nosebleed Studio:

KodachiCon - The weather was terrible but the people was nice and we sold some books, yay! As this con is in my hometown, I have been visiting since the days I actually was a part of the team working on the con, and today we have a group of followers that we just have to attend to meet!

Copenhagen Comics - Expensive tables, but we had heard it was huge and thought it was worth it. Sadly, all our potential customers was missing, there was mostly older guys or young kids. Also, we artists had to pay the same table fee as the companies who earns a lot more (since they sell all the popular titles) which I feel is wrong. I would not return unless they actually had an artist alley, as most comic conventions does. With more affordable tables... (we just barely earned back our expenses)

Now to the coming future, and my plans for the rest of the summer!
Something crazy happened this Spring. Yes, truly "once in a lifetime" crazy! Via Fredrik Strömberg I was invited to attend famous Japanese manga artist and teacher Baron Yoshimoto's artist event Robopic in the end of July. Flight and hotell payed~
I could not say no, even though this trip is in the peak of my deadline stress, hahaha... *sweatdrop*
Catarina is coming too, yaaay!!

So, just like last time I went to Japan three years ago, I could not resist try to get a meeting with an editor or two in Japan, so after some help from my friend and colleague Elise Rosberg, this pile of packages was sent off:

 

...and I have already recieved some replies! OwO
More about that soon...

Ok, that will have to be it for this time, I'll get back to you soon with more information... Thanks for reading!!

Teaching, PRAO and a new project

Long time no see!
Sorry for the one month silence here... Well, life have been busy and I wanted to get rid off some stuff on my table. Here's a report on what I've been up to!

Two weeks ago, I was teaching at Serieskolan in Malmö for the first year students, about how to build a story.
It was very fitting, since I just recently finished John Truby's The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller, a very good book on how to tell a story with natural and organic storytelling. I read it because since I started sending in my mangas to the Japanese manga magazine Ribbon, I have wanted to evolve my storytelling (since that was one of the main problems my stories had).

So my week with the students at Serieskolan was aslo a perfect chance for me to repeat the ideas of Mr. Truby in my own mind, and see them in use.
We also talked about visual storytelling; how to construct a picture and how the reader reacts to a picture or sequence of pictures. I recommend Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics to get knowledge on visual storytelling and comic perception.

The week after, I had a PRAO (an intern) here at my studio at home. She was nice, working hard on her own project and practicing drawing wolves. Rawr!


And now, I have started working on a new project. Like before, this will be a Ribbon manga entry, but also a short story in Nosebleed Studio's next anthology!
I don't want to spoil too much, but as Ribbon editors have suggested I do something more Swedish this time, and because Nosebleed Studio's next anthology will be a Swedish-themed, this story will play out in the Swedish countryside during the shojo-manga-esque traditional Midsummer Eve. Flower crowns, nice dresses and the romantic feeling in the air will be perfect for a Ribbon manga entry, don't you think?

Here's some quick sketches I did of the main character, Julia. Oh, and her childhood friend Dennis as well.

I've just finished the layout sketches and will probably start drawing any day soon. I look forward to it!!

A Sword Princess Tale, my longer project, is also developing nicely. I have a Swedish and a Danish comic publisher on the line and they are both interested in publishing it next year. Because I don't want to get too hasty, I won't reveal  names before contracts are written, but it is surely looking good right now!
Some things should not be rushed.

Oh, and now some shameless advertisement!

Nosebleed Studio is having a December Sale on our webshop!  
Our anthologies Seaside Stories and 5 Years Jubilee Anthology are both 10% off, and also the Deluxe Set is on sale!
Here's a perfect chance for you to get an awesome and uique X-mas present for someone, save some money and also help us fund our future projects!
Please, check it out!

~*~*~*~ Happy Holiday Everyone! ~*~*~*~

New York Comic Con Report!

Wow, long time no see! A month since I last wrote here, and that's because I've been quite busy... With everything else than making comics, sadly. Still enjoyable stuff though, so here's a HUGE report!

In September I was teaching comics art and visual storytelling at Malmö University again, thanks to Gunnar Krantz - my ex-teacher from Malmö Serieskola (Comic Art School). It was fun and this time I had the chance to go through more than the basics, which was nice.
The course was Serieteckning och visuellt berättande if you are interested in taking it. It's in Swedish but there's also an English one every Spring called Comics, International Perspectives.

Ok, now over to what I've done in October!

Guess where I have been off to?

Me and my boyfriend Emil went to the US of A! More precisely New York City, for their yearly New York Comic Con! It's the second biggest comic convention in the US, the San Diego Comic Con being the biggest.

Why New York? Because I have wanted to see these. You don't find this in Sweden, and the Big Apple is such an interesting and energetic city. It's not really an American city as much as it is an International city, especially Manhattan (where we hanged out most of the time).

 

The food. Oh, the food.

These huge pancakes (pobably more than 20 cm in diameter each) was our breakfast. Twice, and then we realized it would actually kill our stomachs...

Thursday was the "Professionals and VIP's only" day! So after standing in this line for one hour we finally eneter the huge convention center.

Huge. ((This word pretty much describes most things we experienced in the US))

Powaaaah!!

Back to the future!

  All the big videogame and comic companies was there. Big booths, a lot of "booth babes" (both female and male ones) and cool sculputers, life size models, figurines in glass cabinets... So much to see!!

These historical originals was displayed for the charity auction, check out the starting bid!

Also, there was a lot of shops and smaller companies and studio's there, selling all from nerdy T-shirst and self-published comics to steampunk stuff and small production toys.

Yes, a steampunk keyboard...!

 Lego also had a booth, with awesome models like these of Gandalf and Bildo. They're smart, they know their audience is not only young kinds but old kids as well!

We had to check out the Artist Alley, which was in it's own big hall. So many fantastic artists! Most into the American comics style, but also some into manga and more European styles. Mike Mignola had a table, which just shows the level of artists there. Some where more green though, and the diversity was appealing. So inspiring!

I usually don't buy prints, but since some of the artists was so freaking amasing, I just had to. I think we spent more than 100 dollar on prints alone!

I also took the chance to talk to editors at Yen Press (yes, I know, I'm a workaholic!) and their great and insightful feedback made me change a lot of my agendas and plans. They where harsh and honest, which I love!! Hopefully a collaboration in the future, a great contact!

The next day, we went for a walk in Central Park. Here's the statue of the sled dog Balto, who aslo got his own animated movie, remember? 

Even the squirrels were huge! And cute~

 We stopped by the Natural History Museum and checked out the space exhibition and the dinosaur skelettons!

HUGE!

 

Saturday, and back at Comic Con. If we ever though it was packed on Thursday, this was HELL. So much people it took us 3 times longer to get anywhere. 

A lot of awesome cosplayers and people dressed up for the costume contest.

So... much... people...

The Artist Alley, a little more packed, huh?

The Javits Center (where Comic Con was held) from the outside. Um... huge?

 On Sunday we had the chance to check out Midtown and Downtown, and especially the shops we had maked on the map before the trip. Among them was Forbidden Planet on Broadway and Midtown Comics at Times Square. Both have a lot of comics and figurines and made me even more poor...
We also went to Chinatown, Financial district and walked along the High Line, a former train bridge that was turned into a floating park along the West side of Midtown. 
We walked a lot... I meassured on the map, and we went like 60 km all 6 days! O_O

Monday was return day, but we still had the chance to go on a visit to Parsons New School of Design thanks to my friend Dinah (the same Dinah that helped me back when I got my contract on Ein Lied für Elise with TOKYOPOP back in 2010). It was interesting to go there, see the school and participate in a lesson.

Wow, a trip I will remember and that mattered a lot to me. Tired and dirty we returned home to Sweden.
Feels like this trip was like a piece of the puzzle of my life, put in the right spot and made things a little clearer. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Now some tips for you who think of going to NYCC any time in the future:

1. Book a hotel on Manhattan, as close to NYCC as possible. The island is HUGE and walking in the city makes your feet hurt... Bring good shoes as well!
2. Make sure you have the ESTA (a traveling visa you have to apply for at least 3 days before your trip). The Americans are super duper careful, scanning every inch. And don't lock your bag, they have to be able to check it if they want to.
3. If you are a librarian, artist, game developer, publisher or any other professional, apply for the NYCC Professional Pass at least 2 months before the trip. It's so much cheaper, plus you get entrance to the Show room at Thursday, which is the only day you actually can breathe in there.
4. Do a lot of planning before the trip! Check the Internet for shops and restaurants and attractions you wanna go see. Print out maps, mark the shops and restaurants and always have the addresses written down. Did I mention that the city is HUGE? People are helpful though, so as long as you have a map and an address you'll manage.