2018 - My Year Of Global Breakthrough

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:

My manga in German!!!! <3 Thank you @pyramond !!! <3 #mangaka #germanmanga #mangabook #mangaart #mangaartist #published #swordprincessamaltea #princess #genderflipped #matriachy #girlpower #womencan

Ett inlägg delat av Natalia Batista, mangaka (@nataliasmanga) 16 Mar 2018 kl. 8:49 PDT

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.

✪ Thanks for reading! ✪

2017 - In retrospect

I usually make a summary of the past year, but since I now use mostly my instagram (or at least more than I blog) I will make this summary even more summarized than normal. If you want more details, check out my instagram.

So, here's some important things I did 2017:

• Visited a bunch of comic conventions!
  (links to my blog reports):
  23-26th of February: NärCon Vinter (Linköping, Sweden)
  1-2nd of April: Malmö Seriefest (Malmö, Sweden)
  14-16th of April: GothCon (Göteborg, Sweden)
  21-23th of April: J-popCon (Copenhagen, Denmark)
  26-27th of May: Nordsken (Skellefteå, Sweden)
  27-30th of July: NärCon Sommar (Linköping, Sweden)
  15-18th of September: FumettoPolis (Novara, Italy)
  28th Sept - 1st Oct: Göteborg Book Fair (Göteborg, Sweden)
  27-29th of October: MCM London Comic Con (London, United Kingdom)
  28th of December: Mellandags-marknad! (Panora, Malmö, Sweden)

• Made a lot of manga pages!
  I finished my 42-page historical short story manga Goodbye Sweden, later published in the Swedish manga anthology Nosebleed Studio reser i den svenska historien and the Italian manga anthology Comic 2 Bite. I also finished my 75-page watercolor manga Sjöjungfrun Minna och den hemliga vännen, which will be released in April 2018 in Sweden.
  
  
  

•  Held a lot of manga workshops!
  ...and lessons at schools, libraries and of course my dayjob at Serieskolan (Comic Art School) in Malmö. Plus a bunch of role playing game events with my RPG-book Sword Princess, based on my manga Sword Princess Amaltea.

Dags för mangaworkshop på Österängs bibliotek i Kristianstad! Kl. 14-16 idag. Är ute och håller workshops hela veckan. Imorgon blir det på Anderstorps och Burseryds bibliotek i Småland, på torsdag blir det Kirsebergs och Lindängens bibliotek i Malmö. På tisdag nästa vecka kommer jag till Kristianstads stadsbibliotek. Boka plats hos biblioteken om ni vill vara säkra på att ni får en plats! #tecknamanga #workshop #mangaworkshop #ritamanga #mangateckning #manga #svenskmanga

Ett inlägg delat av Natalia Batista, mangaka (@nataliasmanga) 11 Jul 2017 kl. 3:54 PDT

And last but not least:

• Signed a bunch of International deals!
  Not just one or two, I signed 6 International contracts for publishing deals for my mangas:
  
  
  
  Sword Princess Amaltea will be published as an omnibus by Zanir in Czech in April 2018
  
  
  
  Mjau! and Sword Princess Amaltea will be published by PYRAMOND in Germany all through 2018.
  
  
  
  Sword Princess Amaltea was published by Kasaobake in Italy in September 2017 and will continue through 2018.
  
  
  
  Mjau! will be published by Phoenix Dreams Publishing in the US in early Spring of 2018 and Sword Princess Amaltea will be published by Tokyopop in the US starting in June 2018.

So, in the end, I'm pretty satisfied with this year. Couldn't have asked for a better year, actually. This year was a year of travelling, a year of completion, a year of International recognition and a year of a lot of new friends!

And in my private life, big things have been happening as well... oh, what the heck, I'll tell you!

Me and my BF have bought a house! A tiny 50 square meter house that we will rebuild to our liking. All on our own. THIS HAS BEEN MY DREAM FOR SUCH A LONG TIME! It is finally coming true!

Here's a photo of the cottage right now. It will look totally different in a year or so, when we're done with it. I will keep you posted now and then, I promise.

It's the bigger house in the back. The one in the front is a small
guest house in terrible shape, that needs to come down too.

Thank you so much for reading!

London Comic Con 2017 Report!

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!

My side of the table! I sold Nosebleed Studio's 10 Years Jubilee Anthology!

 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.

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Here's some tips for you who would like to sell at London Comic Con in October one day:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

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So I highly recommend this con for anyone who wants to go sell at a comic convention in the UK!

Thanks for reading!