Every year, I usually make a blog entry about what my coming year should be all about. Like a view ahead. I try to make these blog entries early in the year, but this time, my year have already been so hectic that I did not have time until now to do it.... So, here goes!
I also used to do New Year's resolutions, but have stopped doing it, because I learned that I sometimes have a hard time controlling what will happend to my time, when opportunities sometimes litteraly gets dropped from the sky and I just have to catch them.
My previous "My Year Of"-blog entries can be found here (some of them in Swedish): 2009 - Året då allt ska hända! 2010 - Året då allt kommer att hända! 2011 - Men var lite stolt för fan! 2012 - The year of new beginings! 2013 - Let's draw! 2014 - A year of reaping the fruits 2015 - The year of new challanges! 2016 - Time to evolve! 2017 - My year of fulfilling my dreams
This year will be epic, both career-wise and personally. I am sure I will remember 2018. Here's why:
Career: My mangas Mjau! and Sword Princess Amaltea will be released in 4 countries (USA, Germany, Italy and Czech Republic) all through the year. I will be travelling a lot and visiting events in each country to promote the mangas.
Personally: My bf and I will build our own house, by hand. More info and photos to come...
The German and Italian versions of Sword Princess Amaltea is already out! Here's the German one:
Thus, my year will be filled with travelling, bulding, travelling, building, travelling... and even more building!
This is my plan:
April:
Part time work at Serieskolan (the comic art school where I teach every week) while demo-ing the old house.
Finish a short comic for an anthology project, while working on Nosebleed Studio's upcoming second "how to make manga"-book.
✿ 27th of April: Sell books with Nosebleed Studio at J-popCon in Denmark.
May:
Part time work at Serieskolan while finishing the demo of the house and start preparing the base.
Release my watercolor manga Sjöjungfrun Minna and the free manga magazine Every Girl Is A Hero at Stockholm International Comics Festival (more about the project in an upcoming blog entry), plus working on Nosebleed Studio's "how to draw manga"-book.
✿ 5-6th of May: Sell books with Nosebleed Studio at Stockholm International Comics Festival in Stockholm, Sweden.
✿ 10-11th of May: Sell books with Nosebleed Studio at KodachiCon in Lund, Sweden.
✿ 17-20th of May: Sign books at Zanir's booth at AnimeFest in Brno, Czech Republic.
June:
Part time work at Serieskolan while finishing the base of the house and hopefully start with the wodden frame.
Some more work on Nosebleed Studio's "how to make manga"-book.
✿ 19-20th of June: Visit Armenia to do workshops as part of the Every Girl Is A Hero-project.
July:
Summer break for classes at Serieskolan, so we will work full time with the house. Hopefully finishing the wooden frame, and possibly the roof too.
Hopefully releasing the Nosebleed Studio "how to make manga"-book at NärCon Sommar.
✿ 5-8th of July: Sign books at Tokyopop's booth at Anime Expo in Los Angeles, USA.
✿ 26-29th of July: Sell at NärCon Sommar in Linköping, Sweden.
August:
Summer break still, but school starts at the end of the month so we will try to work as much as possible with the house. Hopefully finishing the roof AND the walls with exterior siding and all.
✿ 3-5th of August: Sign books at Pyramond's booth at Animagic in Mannheim, Germany.
September:
Part time work at Serieskolan while hopefully start work on the inside of the house, starting with the clay floors.
✿ 27-30th September: Sell books with Nosebleed Studio at Gothenburg Book Fair in Göteborg, Sweden.
October:
Part time work at Serieskolan while working on the inside of the house; interior walls and bathroom.
Maybe some spare time to start working on some future projects...
✿ 31st Oct - 4th Nov: Visiting Lucca Comics & Games in Lucca, Italy.
November:
Part time work at Serieskolan while working on the inside of the house; bathroom and kitchen.
Maybe some spare time to start working on some future projects...
December:
Part time work at Serieskolan while working on the inside of the house; the rest... Hopefully moving in before New Years Eve, but I think it will take some more weeks, maybe even until February 2019.
Maybe some spare time to start working on some future projects...
So, as you can see, I have my whole year planned out for me! I love this! I am that kind of person, who likes knowing what I will be doing not just a week or a month from now, but preferably a year from now! I think it's partly because I am a storyteller, and good storytelling is all about planning. Without a plan, you can't fore-shadow things or make a good dramaturgy for the whole story. That is why I make these posts; it's like writing a story – the story of my own life.
Let's finish this wall-of-text-entry with the cover design for the Every Girl Is A Hero-magazine I'm going to release in May. More info soon!
Btw, this is my tenth year blogging, yaaay!
I posted my first blog entry back in August 20th 2008. So I will try to make some special entry here on that date.
Hey everyone! Let's do an entry in English, for all my (possible) International readers!
I love doing these kinds of convention reports, both for my self (to remember what was good and not so good about them) but also to let other con goers and artists that might be interested in knowing a bit more about them.
So, here's a long overdue report from this year's London Comic Con, back in 27th-29th of October:
I had been trying to get here before, but the tables at the Comic Village (the comic artist part of the convention) is really, really diffucult to snatch (like at most big conventions nowadays). They release them in the begining of August and one table with one entrace ticket costs £80 (very fair price for an event with over 100 000 visitors!).
The Comic Village, pre opening.
I was a little scared to go alone, so I brought two comic creator friends called Sam and Nora, who call them selves Studio Dhuppi and make the LGBTQ comic Come Queer With Me. Check them out!
My boyfriend also tagged along and helped me out a whole lot, plus was a great travel companion.
Me and Sam at our table in the Comic Village.
My issue with not going before was that I did not have any new comics in
English that I could sell. But since Mjau! was Kickstarted with Phoenix
Dreams Publishing the month before, we could do a quick print run of 50
exclusive "pre release" books, that I could sell at the con!
The convention was huuuge. This is a photo of just one part of one of the spacious halls filled to the brink with nerdy stores, companies, studios and asian fast food restaurants.
And here's some photos from the Comic Village! There was soo many tables there. Rows and rows and rows with fantastic artists, creations and projects!
One thing I actually am a big fan of is the fact that Comic Village has a
ban on selling fanart. So all the se tables was original artworks!
Compared to any other con, where the Artist Alley usually overflows of
often unlicensed fanart and many times stolen trademarked logos etc.,
this was such a breath of fresh air for the artist community. Instead of
competing with fanart (which because of the original characters being
Internaional franchizes with huge PR budgets, that some fanart seller is
leaching upon) we where actually on equal playing field!
Don't
get me wrong. I love fanart that are made to show the original creator
you love their works, or made as part of a fanart competition held by
the original artist. But selling it? No. Unless the original artist
and copyright holder have given you their written permission to profit
from something they have worked hard on to build up, then that fanart
seller is a thief. That's my honest opinion. So the Comic Village rule
of banning fanart is in my mind the most legal and fair way to organize
such an event.
Let's "meet" some of the artists at the con!
Two artists that caught my eye was Tom Oliver and Claude TC because I really liked both their styles and themes; fantasy and comedy! Go check them out! Plus awesome fancy prints~
These three amazing artists travelled far, just like we did, for this con! They are Marvin, Mrion and BLOP from France! Just jaw-dropping art and interesting stories, from historical to fantasy to slice-of-life.
Last but not least,I really liked Dan Scarlett's style, a bit of manga mixed with more animation-ish styles, if you know what I mean.
As always, these trips makes perfect "date-trips" for me and my bf too (because when you date a workaholic like me, you have to live with all date-trips being partly work!). So we crammed in some tourism too, and just like when we went to New York to visit Comic Con, we make sure we check out some dinosaur sceletons while traveling. National History Museum and Brittish Museum made the trip perfect!
All in all, London Comic Con was just as amazing as I expected. Not as big as New York Comic Con (but still HUGE) but in some ways I liked this trip more. Probably because I had a table this time, I love experiencing a con from sitting at an artist table selling. And it was great being at a con and actually being able to speak to the buyers that come up to your table (not like when I visited DoKomi in Germany, my German is terrible), and network a lot with other artists!
Sam, Nora and I also got to be interviewed by the UK culture website The Panoptic. Check out the interview, where we talked about why we decided to come to London Comic Con, about self-publishing and working with publishers.
Here's some tips for you who would like to sell at London Comic Con in October one day:
Make sure to get a table in the Comic Village (this is the hardest part!). Keep your eyes at their Twitter account in the end of July/beginning of August. Remember to also book extra tickets when booking the table if you are more than one artist at the table.
Book flight tickets and hotels waaaaay in advance, they are hard to catch the last weeks before the event. And get the Oyster Card for the subway as soon as you arrive in the city.
If you travel far, by plane, you might want to ship your books/merch instead of carrying it in your bags. We asked the hotel and got to ship the books to them, they were so kind to take them in and we could pick them up when checking in.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So I highly recommend this con for anyone who wants to go sell at a comic convention in the UK!
Let's do this in English, because this will be about the future International publishing deals of my mangas!
My latest entry was actually 3 months ago... WOW! This is probably one of the longest pauses I have done on this blog. You who follow me on Instagram have seen that this pause has not been because I did not do manga – on the contrary! So this blog entry will be a summary of my past 3 months, and all the amazing things that have happened!
14th-18th of September: Attended FumettoPolis in Novara, Italy and released book 1 of Sword Princess Amaltea in Italian (I will do a separate report about this in some days).
28th of September to 1st of October: Attended the Gothenburg Book Fair, which by now have become one of my "must-vists" of the year, partly due to this year yet again getting the honorable assignment to interview an invited comic artist from Brazil, on behaf of the Brazilian Embassy. This year it was Mary Cagnin, and amazing artist with such a jawdropping skills in water coloring! Check out her tutorials!
Ett inlägg delat av Natalia Batista, mangaka (@nataliasmanga)
1st-31st of October: I did the Inktober challange again, and gave away the artworks as always. Third year in a row, and I did not miss one day! You can find all of them on my instagram but here's one of my favourites:
Ett inlägg delat av Natalia Batista, mangaka (@nataliasmanga)
26th-31st of October: Travelled to London, UK, and attended London Comic Con, to sell my mangas in the Comic Village section (I will do a separate report about this in some days).
3rd, 11th and 18th of November: Held signings sessions and play tests with the Sword Princess RPGbook at three locations in Sweden; Kulturhuset in Stockholm and the nerdy bookstore SF-bokhandeln in Malmö and Gothenburg. It went well and we had some fun moments with the fans.
19th of November: I could finally annouce another great news; both my mangas Sword Princess Amaltea and Mjau! will be published by PYRAMOND in Germany! AAAAAAHH!! *faints again*
Ett inlägg delat av Natalia Batista, mangaka (@nataliasmanga)
During all this time, I also finished painting my mermaid water color manga and gave it to a company who scan them professionally. I got them back this week and will be doing the lettering (digitally) and prepare it for print before the deadline in the beginning of January. A lot of work!
I also held a whole bunch of manga workshops all over; in Malmö, Stockholm, Mariestad, Knivsta and Arlöv. It's a bit tiring with all the travelling (I probably wasted about 50 hours on just travelling to and from workshops during this Fall), but I forget that when I'm finally there, doing the workshop. I wish I could just teleport myself to and from the workshops, haha...
Also, I am part of the group of comic artist that will organize the annual comic fanzine festival Malmö Seriefest, and this will be our 4th year in a row! It will be held on the 3rd-4th of March 2018 and the tables (which we give out for free to artists) was filled up in less than one minute when we released them last week! WOW! I am so glad to feel that what I was part of initiating now have become something so desireable! We will have more than 150 comic artists represented, so don't miss it if you're able to get here!
This coming 2 months will be intense, tho. I have to:
Prepare the pages of Sword Princess Amaltea vol 1 for Tokyopop. DEADLINE: 18th of December
Prepare the pages of my mermaid manga Sjöjungfrun Minna for print DEADLINE: 8th of January
Do the book keeping for Nosebleed Studio! DEADLINE: 29th of December
Prepare the pages of Sword Princess Amaltea vol 1 for PYRAMOND. DEADLINE: Sometime in December
Prepare the originals and other perks for the backers of the Mjau! English Collection Kickstarter. DEADLINE: Early January at the latest!
Prepare the release of a HUGE SECRET PROJECT that will be my focus of 2018 and 2019! DEADLINE: Early January.
Draw a 30 page short story manga as part of the project Every Girl Is A Hero (more about that in a later blog entry) DEADLINE: 31st of January or mid February at the latest!
I... have a lot to do.
How will I survive, you might ask? Well, as always, I have my master level skill: Dicipline!!
So, now I better get back to my work!
Last but not least, don't miss out on our December Sale at Nosebleed Studio! Or click on the image below to get there~
So, um... Every year, I make New Year's resolutions for what to accomplish the upcoming year. It has previously helped me to keep myself on trackwith plans and fullfill my dreams.
But...
The last year or two, you can see (if you track my ersolutions back in time) I have started to fail miserably. I'm not sure why. If I would guess, either the plans I put up for myself is not important enough for me, or they just get pushed aside by more urging/interesting/financially motivated stuff I do.
Let's check the New Year's resolutions I did för 2016: I will make an animation!
Aah, perfect example. I actually had this plan for 2015 as well, and gave myself a second chance by aiming to do it in 2016 instead. But no, that was not what happened. Don't get me wrong, I truly want to make animation, and I did do some few cuts during 2016, but in the end of Spring I got several more urging and financially motivated projects (like the Sword Princess RPG-book I'm about to release with Saga Games in April, and the full color Mermaid manga I'm making with Rabén & Sjögren, to be released this Fall). Also, Nosebleed Studio started working on our "how to draw manga"-guidebook, which is actually going to be out in stores next month! All this made me quite preocupied during the mid and end of 2016. I'm not regretting them, so I guess the animation project need to stay on the shelf a little longer.
A video posted by Natalia Batista, mangaka (@nataliasmanga) on
My second resolution was: I will go to Japan again!
Well, yeah, no. That didn't happen. See all excuses above for explanation. I did however visit Lucca Comics & Games in Italy, which I think helped me alot both in my creativity and my career. This is not me finding excuses, but I actually truly think this trip helped me a lot more than a trip to Japan would. I have realized from several years of looking to Japan and studying (and even attempting to enter) their comic market, that it is perhaps not the working environment I wish to subject myself to. I like having spare time and a chance to do other projects than draw all the time.
Previous years, I have put a grade on my performance of these resolutions, but I'll not do that this year. It won't do me any good.
And I also usually make new ones, on the New Years Eve, but to be honest I don't even remember if I did any or what it was this year. So this year, I think I will just let my spirit and dreams take me whereever, and not focus so much on the bigger picture. Also, I do have personal plans I want to achieve this year, but since I still feel it's a little too early to tell the whole world about them, I'll keep the mystery a little longer. Hopefully, I'll make a longer blog entry about it this year. *mysterious smile*
Next, I want to address my travel plans for 2017!
23-26 of February: NärCon Vinter in Linköping, Sweden 4 of March:Scifi-mässan in Malmö, Sweden 1-2 of April:Malmö Seriefest in Malmö, Sweden 14-16 of April: GothCon in Gothenburg, Sweden 21-23 of April: J-popCon in Copenhagen, Denmark
As you can see, the event for the Fall of 2017 is quite vague, so I'm still keeping it open for changes.
I will mostly be selling with Nosebleed Studio in the Artist Alley, except on the following events: Scifi-mässan: I'll be in the booth of the publisher Apart förlag, signing Sword Princess Amaltea. GothCon: I'll be selling my books next to Saga Games, who will sell my RPG-book Sword Princess. Nordsken: I'm invited as their official guest, so I'll be selling and signing my books on certain times, more about that in a later blog entry. Göteborg Book Fair: I will be signing in the booth of Kolik förlag (Sword Princess Amaltea) and Rabén & Sjögren (Sjöjungfrun Minna).
A small preview of two of the pages of my mermaid manga, work in progress:
My plans this year is to draw, draw, draw all through February - June, making both my 70 page mermaid manga in water colors, and my 42 page historical manga for Nosebleed Studio's next anthology (to be released at NärCon in July). In June and July, I have some game design projects (exciting, but right now secret!). In the Fall, I don't have any plans more than just working at Serieskolan (teaching, my day job) and perhaps take up the animation project if I have time. We'll see...
Wow, this was supposed to be a short blog entry, but as always I just keep babbling about my life. Since this is kind of like my personal diary, I usually just write what I think I need to document.
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.
Hey everyone!
Wow, I need to make time to write blog entries more often...
So much has happened since April! The three biggest events of the year, Stockholm International Comics Festival (SIS) and Confusion in May and NärCon Summer in July, came and went like two tornados in my life. It was super fun and Nosebleed Studio sold our new book Nosebleed Studio's 10 Years Jubilee Anthology.
Ett foto publicerat av Natalia Batista, mangaka (@nataliasmanga)
We also held a manga panel at SIS and a manga workshop at NärCon, and we taped/filmed both of them. Hopefully I can post links to them as soon as I have some time to edit them.
Now on to what I'm up to right now:
I'm making not one new book, not two new books but FOUR new books!
Two of them are with Nosebleed Studio and two of them with the publishers Rabén & Sjögren and Saga Games. Here they are:
1. Sjöjungfrun Minna
(Mermaid Minna, preliinary title)
I'll get to revisit one of my all time favorite characters and settings of my shorter comics; the characters and settings of Hooked On You, my mermaid manga from Nosebleed Studio's Anthology - Seaside Stories. This is a collaboration with the childrens book publisher Rabén & Sjögren, and my former editor for the Amaltea books, Fabian Göransson, who now works at this big publisher. I will make a full color manga, about 70 pages long, and my plan is to make it all in watercolors (!!). Hahaha, first time I make such a long story all in color, and not a simple technique to boot. I'll update you about the process as it comes along. To be released in Fall 2017.
Here's a color test I did:
2. Sword Princess - Rollspelet i Amalteas värld
(Role playing game in the world of Amaltea)
This will be so fun! Me and the RPG publisher Saga Games is making an RPG (pen and paper style) book to take place in the world ofmy manga Sword Princess Amaltea. I've been writing down everything I know about the lore and the skilled and experienced RPG-maker Tomas Arfert is writing the gameplay and tables. I'm also making the illustrations for the book. To be released in December 2016! (In Swedish)
Here's the preliminary cover design:
3. Nosebleed Studio lär dig teckna manga
(Nosebleed Studio teach you how to draw manga)
We're making a "how to draw manga"-book!! After 10 years of working as manga artists, we feel ready to give the world a piece of our knowledge and learned experience. We also see a demand of these kinds of books in Swedish, as the old ones are breaking apart and most of them are at least 10 years old. Time for some fresh new input in this field! We're right now in the production process, drawing step-by-steps. To be released in Spring 2017.
4. Nosebleed Studio's Anthology - Swedish History
As always, we also plan on making a manga anthology for nex year, and our theme for this one is Swedish history! This is so exciting!! We have so many interesting periods and characters from our history to make comics about, it's even hard for me to chose... Well, lyckily I have until December to come up with a story with about 40 pages (bl/w), that's when we start making the book. More about this project later... To be released in Spring 2017.
Woah, this coming year will be jam-packed with work! But also so fun!
Thank you for reading, I'll keep you posted on these projects.
