Showing posts with label vacation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vacation. Show all posts

21 January 2017

2016 - In retrospect

Time for a summary of the past year. Initially I'll warn you. This entry will be littered with Bad 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.


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.


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):

Sveriges Radio - PP3 | Så blev mangan stor i Sverige

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.




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!!



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:



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!



I wanted some new merch for the upcoming NärCon Summer in 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.



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 Fair on 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!



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. 

Thank you so much for reading!
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13 August 2014

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
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02 January 2013

2012 - in retrospect

2012 was a little bit disappointing... Well, not now that I look back on all the fun things I managed to do this year, but when it comes to all the things I was hoping for but didn't achieve. To defend myself I want to point to the fact that the things that I hoped for that didn't come true was because of others, not me. Sometimes in your life there's things that can't be done because other people don't give you the chance to do them.

I don't blame them though, I blame myself. One day, when I have become more well respected within the industry, I might get all things I hope for. Today, I have to live with the benefit of the doubt from others.

Time for a look back on the milestones of the past year, as I usually do this time around!


Milestones of 2012:



 

  • In January I worked hard on finishing all three major comics that I made that year. Good way to start off the year, haha!
    A Sword Princess Tale - chapter 1 (fanzine made for SIS/SPX in Stockholm in April)
    Hooked On You (published in Nosebleed Studio's Seaside Stories anthology)
    A Song for Elise - REMIX: Memories (published in the Boy's Love anthology GUYS!)
  • February came with a small achivement: my entry for the Japanese manga magazine Ribbon's monthly manga competition resulted in an honorable mention, a prize called もうひと息賞 ("Mou hito ikishou" = one more try-prize). My manga was mentioned in issue #2 this year, you can read the full review here.

  • All through Spring, Summer and Fall, I applied for several artistic funds but recieved null. This was quite dissapointing. I know I can't expect to get any, but it's still heartbreaking every time you get a letter from one of the organizations saying "...you application could not be approved."
    Well, they won't get rid of me that easily! I'll keep trying until I get some!

  • I was aslo teaching at Malmö Univeristy in their English comic course Comics, International Perspectives, specializing in the Japanese manga market. Very nice and fun, I like teaching at the University because it's so professional and enjoyable!


  • In March and April, the main focus was to finish all the projects before Small Press Expo at Stockholms International Comic Fair (the biggest comic event in Sweden) in the end of April. Nosebleed Studio's book Seaside Stories was to be released, as well as the latest edition of Swedish Comic Sin (book 3) that I'm the editor of.
    Chapter one of A Sword Princess Tale was also sold at the event as a fanzine, and I also began my search for a publisher in these months, both inside and outside of Sweden. Most publishers take some time to think over things, and even though I had a Swedish publisher and a Danish one that was quite interested I wanted more. Back then, my goal with this project was to have at least three or more publishers working with me on this, to make the best out of their collected feedback, and also to get enough pay to have an assistant working with me on this.



  • In the beginning of 2012, my childrens manga Mjau! also got an International deal with Portuguese NCreatures and their manga magazine Banzai.

  • May and June was mostly waiting for replies from the publishers. I had also sent in my second entry to Ribbon in March, and got the results in June: the same honorable mention in issue #6! Read the full review here.

  • I used all the spare time to work with my friend and colleague Elise Rosberg on the coming site NonstopCon, a Swedish community for Asian-fans of all sorts! During Spring and Summer, we worked on the layout, putting up a crowdfunding page (and recieved the full amount in the end!) and planned all the features of the site. Our webb developer Rick worked his ass off all Fall and Winter, but still didn't get it done until December which was our plan. The site is a little late, but it's all becasue we're not okay with just any crappy community site, we want this one to WORK!
    For our Swedish fans, follow the work on our blog.

  • A well deserved vacation was made in July, to my aunt and relatives in Portugal. More inspirational trips made, and lots of photos taken!

  • In September my sister Catarina and I finally finished Nosebleed Studio's new Worppress site! It's so nice to finnaly have a professional and working webshop and also a manga reader with flip-book funtion! Check it out!!

  • I felt I needed to make a trip to some of the bigger comic fairs in the world, both for my self an my career. As I am a big fan of American reality shows (yup, one of my sins), I decided it was time to go to the big land over seas. So, Emil and I went to New York Comic Con in October and I got to talk to Yen Press, a meeting that changed my perspective on things and also my focus for A Sword Princess Tale. I'm no longer pursuing a multinational deal to begin with, but focusing on making something for a Nordic market that might work elsewhere.
    Check the full report here.
    Afterwards, I also made a report from NYCC in comic form for Bild&Bubbla, that will be printed sometime in 2013.

  • For the second time around, I got to teach at Malmö University's comic course in Swedish, Serieteckning och visuellt berättande. Yet again, so rewarding! Teaching is a great way to learn more about your own profession, it forces me to overlook my work process and put it on paper (I make handouts for all courses, I think I should put them here on my page actually).
    I was also teaching at Serieskolan in Malmö, which also feels cool and honoring (they trust me!). The week there focused on storytelling, very convenient because I had just finished a book (John Truby's The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller)  and some self-studies on storytelling!

  • Some Swedish media attention during this year:
    ✎ An interview in City Malmö (nr 2012-08-23) about nerdy hobbies.
    ✎ An interview together with Catarina in Lokaltidningen Lund on the 28th of September.
    ✎ The above shown frontpage and article of Sydsvenskan Omkretsen on the 11th of November.

  • All through the year, Nosebleed Studio visited a lot of manga/comic conventions:
    KodachiCon in Lund (May) - where we sold a lot of our books to our fans in Skåne (the Southen most region in Sweden). I also did my Yaoi presentation again, which was fun!
    UppCon in Uppsala (June) - I did a presentation on my attempts to get into the Japanese manga market, and we sold a bunch of our Swedish manga to many awesome fans, thank you!!
    NärCon in Linköping (July) - I did the Yaoi presentation here as well.
    NowJapan in Vilnius (August) - we where Internationally invited to this Lithuanian convention, cool huh? I did the Yaoi presentation there (very well attended!) and we also did the manga battle tournament, fun!
    AltCom in Malmö (November) - not a manga con, but still fun. We managed to get into the paper as well!
    Confusion in Göteborg (December) - I did the Yaoi-presentation again, and there was a line of people who didn't even get in... It was popular! We met a lot of awesome fans and gained new ones as well.

  •   In the end of the year, comics started calling for me again. I had almost stopped drawing at all during April to October, and now I not only have to make a 32 page manga to Nosebleed Studio's next anthology (sneak peek to the right) but also I need to start making the layout sketches for A Sword Princess Tale! The first 4 chapters are planned to be finished before July and the Swedish and Danish publisher are both eager to have it and so am I! Okay, let's go!!


Hm... I think that's a pretty good summary of my year. I probably forgot some small things here and there, but all in all it's pretty much like this.

This year was disappointing in some ways. I didn't get a contract with A Sword princess Tale as early as I wanted it (I would have wanted to start working on it in the Fall) and the God of funds was not on my side this year. I do survive though, thanks to all the childrens books I have made last year.

But, I'm still pleased with the victories; 2 honorable mentions in Japanese manga magazine Ribbon, the publishing of Mjau! in Banzai, a new homepage for Nosebleed Studio and all in all 90 manga pages finished (and another 60 pages in rough sketch). Not my most productive year, but still pretty awesome!


✰ Okay, onwards to 2013! Let's make history!! ✰
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26 July 2012

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

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21 December 2011

Merry X-mas everyone!!

The picture is made by Catarina (my sister) and me.
She did the lineart and I colored it in Adobe Photoshop CS5.

Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year to you all!!
I hope you'll have a nice holiday and time with your close ones, with lots of good food and a chance to show your love and appreciation for each other!

I will be doing some time off from my work, and having a chance to meet the family and Emils family too. Looking forward to it! Even though the loss of work will be painfull for a workaholic like me, hahaha!

Best wishes to you all!
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28 July 2011

Vacation time is OVER!!

English again~

I'm BACK!! 2 weeks of hot, yummy vacation at my relatives in Portugal has made my skin darker and my butt bigger. Here's a little resume:

Me and Emil lived at my aunts place. She's like the best aunt in the world, with a great laugh and awesome chocolate mousse. I asked her to take us to any medevial castle we passed and had time with, so during the trip we took over 600 pictures of mainly 4 castles; in Leiria, Guimarães, Silves and Almourol. I also met my second cousin Diana who had more castles from France on her computer, so I got 4 or 5 of them on a USB-card! Woohoo!!

This is the Templar Castle in Almourol,
built on an island! So cool!!

So, why this manic collecting of castles, you might ask. Well, let's say I couldn't resist being a total workaholic and make my vacation into a research trip for my upcoming manga project. I have most of it though out now, much thanks to the trip. It's a fantasy story, about princesses and princes... But you need to wait for the details!

Ok, back to the trip.
We visited a lot of my family there, and ate a lot of food. Portugese people like three things alot: football, food and driving. So we ate and drove! Not so much football, but that's ok.
During the two weeks, we ate (if you are vegan, please don't read the rest of this sentence) octupus, squid, clams, shrimps (all sizes), swordfish, crab, codfish rabbit, duck, pig, piglet, cow and chicken. Not only did we try the specialities of Portugal, but also Brasillian Rodizio and Angolan Mouamba. Yumyum!!
So, back in Sweden and time for some hard-core fasting! (just kidding)

Well, all in all, the trip was great.
I had a lot of time to think about my [past and future] projects without having the slitest angst about not drawing or working (actually!). The trip was a mental clensing, in a way.
And I return with even more power and inspiration! I havn't felt like this since the trip to Japan in 2010! I love it!!

Before I leave, I want to recommend you checking out my second cousin David's one man band Noiserv. He does all the music by him self by recrding and repeating the sounds during the live-show, and thus making every show unique. On top of that, he also teamed up with Diana (my other second cousin), that does live drawings to his music at the conserts! It's fantastic to see, both for young and old. I saw them live in Algarve, and it was inspiring!
Check it out:
Noiservs homepage
Noiservs Myspace

Here's some youtube videos with him:







It's just so inspiring with talented and original artists!!
His CD's are avaliable i.e. here.
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