30 December 2017

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!

29 December 2017

Report from FumettoPolis

This report is long overdue, but here we go!

The 14-18th of September this year, I returned to Italy and my newfound and old manga friends there, as I was invited to the comic festival FumettoPolis in Novara. Big thanks to the amazing Daniele Rudoni, organizer of FumettoPolis and one of the heads behind IndieVersus, an online platform for artists an fans to meet.

He also invited a bunch of amazing manga artists from all over Europe:

Marika Herzog from Germany, the creator of CHASM and Demon Lord Camio.

Maaria Laurinen from Finland, the creator of Phantomland.

Fillis and Rafael from Mangatellers from Greece, the creators of RUN and Wi Fi Wars.

Maaria, Marika, me, Fillis and Rafael
Let's start the photo report!
Novara is a beautiful city situated close to Milan in the north of Italy.
The town is historic and the houses so inspiring and pretty!
All through town, you could see these advertisements for the festival.


The festival took place in the castle in the middle of the city!

Inside the castle, the comic market was held in this long hallway.
So cool to be standing in this historical building and selling
modern comic art, like a fantastic mix of old and new~

They also held a special area open for live painting!
So the artists, both invited and exhibitors, could sit down and show
the visitors how they work. This photo is of Maaria drawing one
of her main characters from Phantomland.

This is me while live painting. Wacom supported this event
with great hardware with all our favourite programs avaliable,
so we could paint just like at home!

Together with the other invited manga artists, I also participated
in this panel on stage, where we talked about the working conditions of
European manga artists, the view on manga in our countries and much more.
It was also livestreamed for the IndieVersus viesers, I think.

 Now let me introduce you to some of the exhibitors!


I met these lovely artists, Elena (Ofride) and  Giulia Adragna
back in October 2016 at Lucca Comics&Games. They are so kind and talented!

Even though a lot of the artists where clearly had inspirations from manga
and/or online comics, there where also other kinds of comics represented,
like this horror comic project The NOISE by Pietro Gandolfi.

Kyōdai Manga is a manga artist collective just like
Nosebleed Studio (my group here in Sweden)!
So cool to see others also forming these kinds of collectives
to help each other out, it is a great way to get things done and
keep up the work.

NuPress is another such collective, but with many more members and they also produce
a magazine/anthology called NuName regularly with their members works.

This jawdropping comic, La Calaca de Azucar, by Cristina Guidetti
and Eleonora Gatta is a fairly new work, which will be online and in print I think.

TataiLab is an awesome gang of artists and creators that make
impressive comic projects and print them in luxurious hardcovers.
I am always amazed by what new things they put out!


The festival also included an exhibition of the works of us invited International guests. Both high-quality prints of our manga pages, as well as a life size cut out stand of our characters.




To be able to take a photo next to your own character like this is almost surreal... It feels like something real International famous comic artists do... haha!

What was also super cool was the fact I got to hold this baby in my hands:


I am greateful to Kasaobake's chief editor and publisher Elena Toma who decided to take a chance on Sword Princess Amaltea and print it! First book is out and second soon to come~

The Kasaobake team, I feel blessed to be part of it now!
All in all, the festival was not as huge as i.e. Lucca Comics&Games, but even better; the focus was on the artists and the networking, and this seemed to be why so many artists attended. Not the stress and pressure of a huge event with high costs for the exhibitors, more of a friendly, cozy environment where new friendships can be made.

So I highly recommend this event to other artists who wants to go to an Italian comic event!

Thank you for reading!

13 December 2017

EVEN MORE BIG NEWS!

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!


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:



5th of October: I finally annouced this; my manga Sword Princess Amaltea will be released in the US by Tokyopop!! AAAAAAAHH!! *faints*



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 RPG book 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*


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...

In November, I did a press release about the RPG book and ended up in several local news papers, like Lokaltidningen Lund, Lokaltidningen Malmö, Sydsvenskan, Hallå Lund and Fria Tidningen.


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~

www.nosebleed-studio.com


❄❄❄ Thanks a bunch for reading! ❄❄❄