2015 - the year of new challanges!

Heeey!
Time for some planning of the coming year, and new year's resolutions (a [bad] habit of mine).

Let's start with the resolutions... Last year's was:
I will get myself a drivers license!
Um... yeah...
So, well, that didn't happen.
Yeah, ok, I have no real explanation, except... time. Time is something I wish I could ask for for X-mas. Sadly, it doesn't work like that.
Usually, I'm going to grade myself on how well I achieved my resolution, but no. I won't even do that. Let's just forget this ever happened and start over with...

THIS NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION IS:
I will get myself a drivers license!

Yeaah... Well, at least I'm not giving up, right?

And one more:
I will make an animation!
There, now I have made it official!
This year, I will try to make animation of my manga Mjau!. Why? Well, because I have to. Now and then, you realize you have to strive higher, make something that you personally think is impossible, just to prove yourself (and all the non-believers) wrong. This is that time for me.

Now, let's do some planning for the year to come!

January to June: I'll be teaching at Serieskolan in Malmö 30%, an focusing on finishing book 3 of Sword Princess Amaltea rest of the time. In June, I'll send it to the printers, and thus finish my longest manga ever! Yaaay!
Oh, and I have made a homepage for the manga now (coded it all on my own!):

www.SwordPrincessAmaltea.com

 

 There, I'll update the manga in English twice every week, so please check it out and follow it! 

July to August: Take a much needed break from making manga, to start some animating and also work on some projects that have been falling behind. 

September to December: Work at Serieskolan again, and also.... I don't know? Hopefully my attempts to animate haven't crushed me at this point, and hopefully I'll be making something awesome with it!

And these are the events I've already planned on visiting:

28-31 of January: The International Comics Festival in Angoulême, invited by the Swedish Institute in Paris. (Thank you!!)
21-22 of February: J-popCon in Copenhagen, Denmark

28-29 of March: Malmö Seriefest, fanzine festival organized by myself and a colleague

2-5 of April: GothCon in Gothenburg

11-12 of April: PicaCon in Kristinehamn

9-10 of May: Stockholm International Comics Festival (S.I.S.)

14-17 of May: KodachiCon in Lund

22-24 of May: Dokomi in Düsseldorf, Germany

23-26 of July: NärCon in Linköping

Hopefully, I'll also get to finally go to MCM London ComicCon in October! It has always been the same weekend as something I had planned, but now I won't miss it!

Well, if I do go to London, then I will have visited France, Germany and the UK in the same year, crazy!

So, that's my plans for this year! Hope you also have grandiose plans for these coming 12 months of your life. Remember, you'll never get them back, so do something creative in all that time. ☻

Thank you for reading!

My much needed summer vacation~

Hello everyone!

Long time no see... haha... *sweatdrops*
I really should be posting here more often, but I guess I'm just working alot more nowadays... Naaah, I'm just too lazy to write.
Truth is I now have more sites than just this one to focus on, such as Sword Princess Amaltea's Facebook page and the Inkblazers page, where I upload two pages on every Tuesday and Friday, all in English!! Check it our and please add it to your "book shelf" and spread it to your friends, please?


So, what have I been doing all this summer?
Well, after finishing the second book in the middle of June I took some much needed vaction!
First a trip to Småland (a region in Sweden with lots of trees and nice people in classical Swedish red wooden houses with white corners), where my boyfriend Emil's father lives. Fishing, resting, eating tasty food and hanging out.

After that, we went to my fathers family in Portugal, to stay with my supernice aunt. More resting, driving to family dinners, eating tasty food, hanging out with awesome people and eating some more tasty food. Actually, this summer was pretty warm in Sweden, and even Portugal was cooler! Climate change WTF... -_-'''

Here's some stuff we did in Portugal:

  

My friend Ricardo had arranged a workshop for me 

together with other local artists from Lisbon, at the city library!

Thank you, Rick!!

 We talked about comics, manga-making and web publishing,

and drew a board full of pictures together!

So cozy, and fun group of people! Thank you all for coming!! ♥

 Emil, father and I went to the beautiful town of Sintra, 

for more reference photos for my fantasy manga.

A beautiful garden called Quinta da Regaleira with 

amazing caves, pathways and an elaborate mini-castle.

We also happened to pass a LEGO exhibition somewhere 

close to San Martinho after lunch one day. Really cool!! 

They had built many different parts, like a town,

a beach part, an airport etc.

Last but not least we went to the Convent of Crist in Tomar, an old Order of the Christ (heires of the Order of the Templar when that was banned) cloister/convent. Really inspiring, and I also made a decision: the last castle I'll draw in my manga Sword Princess Amaltea (Prince Ossian's mother's castle) will be based on this beauty! So, with almost 500 reference photos in my camera, I return to Sweden ready to make book 3!



Well at home, we quickly packed our bags and the car full of books and went to NärCon, the biggest manga convention in Sweden (with over 7000 visitors) in Linköping. I had planned my pre-release of Sword Princess Amaltea book 2 at this event, so I was pretty excited!!
With 30 of book 1 and 40 of book 2 I though I was set for the whole event. Not quite... I sold all of them even before Friday was over! Both happy and frustrated feelings at the same time..!!

Nosebleed Studio made free chibi portraits for one hour on both Friday and Saturday, but only for one hour since others in the Artist Alley do it for cash and we didn't wanna steal their customers.
Here's some pics!

♥ Two happy fans with their new books! ♥

Woah! The line for the chibi portraits!!

Catarina and I at Fridays portrait event. Happy!!

Our table from above, so many nice things!

Me drawing a happy chibi and it's superhappy friend!

After that, we finally went home to rest! Phew!! What a hectic Summer!
Now I have started working again though, both on book 3 of Sword Princess Amaltea, but also at the Comic Art School in Malmö. I'm really excited about this fall, so much fun things to do and achieve!

Onwards, my friends!! Thanks for reading! ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ

I'm dooooone!! (almost)

Yesterday, I finished inking the 161th page, which is the last one in book 1 of Sword Princess Amaltea. Yaaay for me!!
Now I just have to text and screentone like hell to meet the deadline, but as things are going according to keikaku (=plan), I know I will make it!

Here's a sneak peek from the book. And no, I won't tell you what's going to happend, haha. You'll all have to wait till September when the Swedish book is out.

Oh, right, there's some big news aswell!
Sword Princess Amaltea will be published in the Italian online manga magazine Doreaetos Manga!
I'm looking forward to hearing from Italian artists and readers about what they think of the manga~

Right now, I'm mentally preparing for the trip to Japan next week, to participate in the drawing tournament Robopic, courtesy of Baron Yoshimoto.
I have also, as I mentioned in my last entry, tried to get some meetings with manga editors while I'm there, and so far I have not only one but two meetings  booked! This is so exciting!!

To finish this energetic blog entry off, let's show the latest issue of Banzai, that just arrived from Portugal!

It's so fun to read your own manga in another language! My kittens from Mjau! is really learning that language so fast~ *proud mother*

Thank you for reading, and hope you get an awesome weekend!
The weather is way too nice to sit inside, so I will catch some sun and beach before returning to work again. See ya'!

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.

NowJapan in Vilnius!

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!

Nerdy trip to Portugal

I'm back from my vacation at my aunt and family in Portugal!
It was a hot, tasty and nerdy trip, so here's a report and some pictures:

We travelled the country with my aunt and my father (also visiting his home country). First we visited Buddha Eden, not far from Caldas da Rainha where we live at my aunts place.
Buddha Eden is a huge garden made by a rich wine farm owner who loves art and Asian culture. The garden is next to his wine farm and when you buy an enterance fee, you also receive a wine bottle!

Buddha with the sun behind him.

On our visit to Lisbon we went to my yearly must; the comic book store BdMania. It's like a real goldmine for comic nerds like me, so I highly recommend it if you go to Lisbon some day! 

The store has American comics and graphic novels, Japanese manga, European
comics and I even found a book in Swedish by Knut Larsson, a Swedish graphic novel artist.

Later, we went to the big bookstore chain FNAC to look at their range of comics, and found Banzai in their shelves! Awesome!! 

 We also went on a trip to north of Portugal, and while checking out Porto, we found this comic book shop, Mundo Fantasma. 

 Annother fantastic store for a comic book nerd, with an impressive range of manga! No wonder why, the manager Vasco who I met and had a long and interesting chat with is huge a manga fan too. We talked about the industry and the talents of the manga here in the West. 

They also have exhibitions in the room next to the shop, with both
national and international artists. The framed picture in the front is
a Craig Thompson original, made for the shop!

I also had the chance to meet up with one of the editors at Banzai - Ricardo - and talk some work. You know me, I never take vacation... Hahaha...

Just before we were to go to the airport, we squeezed in one more nerdy activity: we went to the Museum of Popular Art in Lisbon because they had a video game exhibition! Over 120 games to play, friggin awesome!!!!

Game On - an exhibition of the history of video games, with both new
and old games from Pong, Donkey Kong and Astroids to Tomb Raider,
Guitar Hero and Star Wars Kinect.

Hand held consoles - from old to new!

And some original art of games like Sonic and Pokémon!

Of course, the trip also included great food and deserts, like these pasteis natas, bought and consumed at the famous Pasteis de Belém: 

And I also took a lot of reference photos for my future mangas, of houses and nature like the one in the national park in the north, close to the Spanish border.  

An amasing trip, warm and fun but also tireing. Now I will rest, before going to NärCon in Linköping this week end. Phu~
Hope I see some of you there! :D