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.
Also: New Years Resolutions.
(Oh boy, this will crash and burn...)
First, the resolutions of 2015:
I will get myself a drivers license!
This was actually my resolution for 2014 too. Um.. yeah. I havn't even tried, I'm so sorry (mostly embarrassed towards my parents who gave me a gift card for some of the lessons at a driving school that I have so far not used... 2 years ago). I get extremely embarrassed by talking about this. I hate feeling like I've lost or failed in something, and this is such a thing. To be honest, I'm just too scared to drive. I am so scared for traffic, high ways, driving, myself behind the wheel... I just feel in my gut I will die in the roads some day!
That's why I think I'll have to deal with this in my own time.
So, if I should grade myself, then a E- perhaps? (Not so sure about this alphabetical grading system, haha)
But I also had another resolution! I will make an animation!
And this I did! Or at least started doing... Did I fail this too?! Bu hu hu hu...
Well, at least I did make about 50 seconds of my animation. Time is not in abundance and too many other projects and work is taking my time (not in a bad way, I like most of it).
I'll give myself a C+ for this. I didn't animate much, but what I did was good!
And that's why the first of the resolutions for 2016 is: I will make an animation! (I give myself a lot of second chanses, haha) I hope to be able to finish episode 1 (5 min animation) of Mjau! this year. Wish me good luck!
Ett filmklipp publicerat av Natalia Batista, mangaka (@nataliasmanga)
And the second is: I will go to Japan again!
This is a bit tricky. I want to go, mostly because I want to bring my boyfriend and do it together, but I also wish I had more time to go to London and Paris, and the two main comic events there.
We'll have to see how this year pans out...
Now over to some planning of the year!
I have already planned for some events me/Nosebleed Studio will have a table at.
Events of 2016 (so far): 12-14 of February: NärCon Vinter in Linköping 18-20 of March: J-popCon in Copenhagen, Denmark 25-27 of March: GothCon in Gothenburg
As I mentioned, I would also love to go to one or both or Japan Expo in Paris and MCM London ComicCon, but mostly as a visitor so I can get a chance to talk to publishers about Sword Princess Amaltea.
We'll have to see...
Apart from this, my year will be filled with working at Serieskolan in Malmö, making 2 books together with Nosebleed Studio (more about that in upcoming blog entries), and animating.
This will be a year I need to focus on what I want to make. So I'll use my time wisely.
Hope you have time to focus on your own passions too!
I usually do (as my long time readers of this blog knows) a summary of the past year. This blog has been my open diary for 8 years now and I like doing these yearly summaries to show for myself that I did a lot of amazing thing in a year. Sometimes you get discouraged by all the work and need some perspective, and I find this a good way to get that and pat myself on the shoulder.
This year has been shaped by one focus: finishing my biggest manga project so far. And also some international trips opening my eyes. A good change from the routine work of 2014.
Milestones of 2015:
January
When the year started, I was already working hard on the third and last volume of Sword Princess Amaltea. Since the publisher had some company changes in the end of the 2014 and my editor left for other adventurous jobs, the deal with book 3 was hanging loose for a while, but luckily the Editor in Chief Josefin Svenske decided to continue the series and publish the last book as well!
This decision came in the end of December 2014, and really made my holiday complete!
In the end of January I also got the amazing opportunity to be invited to 42nd Festival International de la Bande Dessinée d'Angoulême in France, courtesy of the Swedish Institute in Paris. It's the biggest comic festival in the world when it comes to size, since the whole town is involved. I made a blog entry about this inspirational and eye opening trip, and the new contacts I got there at the French publisher Kazé Manga. February
I took a short break a couple of days from the work on Sword Princess Amaltea 3 to make a 10 page short story for the anthology Freya – Sequential Love Stories, which I also was part of the organizers for. I tried a new technique on that one, and learnt some stuff. Even though I have my prefered materials and techniques, I believe it's important to never stop experimenting and try new things to elevate your creativity. I also kept on drawing and inking Sword Princess Amaltea 3 and my plan was still to have it printed before the Swedish event NärCon Summer in July... Yeah, spoiler alert; that will not happen.
The event of this month was J-popCon (Copenhagen, Denmark) the 21-22th of February, where me and my sister Catarina, both members of the Swedish manga collective Nosebleed Studio had a table in the Artist Alley and sold our latest book Nosebleed Studios Stora Mangasamling (in Swedish). The book is also selling amazingly well to Swedish libraries, who in the end of February had bought about 200 copies already!
March
All this time I had also started using instagram and uploading images from my everyday work. I realized I mostly used Facebook and this blog to comunicate with my fans, but since my fans are so young and can't have a Facebook account I was not reaching the kids. Most of them are haning out on "new" stuff like those apps and such. (Oh, I'm so old!) So I got myself an Instagram account.
And now I hear talks about Snapchat and all that... plz ppl staaap!!
I used instagram for showing my drawing and promote events I was visiting, but also to show some images from Serieskolan (the Comic Art School) in Malmö where I work twice a week, like here where the students held a mini-fanzine-event for practice (for the students only):
Ett filmklipp publicerat av Natalia Batista, mangaka (@nataliasmanga)
March was also the peak of the work on the fanzine market event Malmö Seriefest at the Malmö City Library that I was organizing on my own at this point. Blogging and facebooking and marketing with flyers and posters! This project was in collaboration with Seriefrämjandet (Swedish Comics Association), Malmö City Library and ABF (Workers' Educational Association). It all came to fruition in the last weekend of March, a huge success with over 500 visitors, and I made a blog entry about it all (in Swedish).
My goal with the event was to show it was possible and to create a new market space for fanzine and self press comic creators, with free table space at a central spot in town. A great collaboration and everyone seemed satisfied!
Sadly, the sound and light in the room made the videos we made hard to make something good of, and some videos also got lost... This was a way too big of a project for one person to handle on their own, so 2016's edition is organized by a fantastic team, more about that in a coming blog entry.
April
The month started off with both me and my boyfriend being sick and miserable, and missing out on the nerdy board game convention GothCon which is a tradition of ours. ☹
But I kept drawing and when I was finally up at my feet again it was off to PicaCon (11-12th of April)in Kristinehamn, a bit of a trip from Lund where I live. It was the first time I got invited to a manga convention and actually was payed for the presentation I did there, as an official guest!
I have been a guest before, but since Swedish manga artists are not as visually interesting to look at as cosplayers we are not usually on the VIP-guest list at the bigger cons here in Sweden. So I was glad to finally get some recognition~
At this point I was also trying to get the fifth edition of Swedish Comic Sin together for print, the indie-erotica-comic-anthology-project that I have been organizing since 2010. This edition had similar interest as previous books, with a couple of them dropping off through the project because of lack of time and inspiration. We did finish a 180-page book (and made a crowdfunding campaign for it too!) but since the drop off rate is still quite high, I have decided to take yet a years break and start the next one this Fall for a release Spring 2017. That one will probably be the last of the Swedish Comic Sin books. If you or someone you know wants to participate, I recomment reading about the project on the blog and read the project desctiption (in Swedish).
The other anthology I participated in was Freya – Sequential Love Stories, which we also did a crowdfunding campaign for and got international attention even! (Thanks to Anette Bengtsson who was in charge of it, good job!!)
The book came out nicely, but the crowdfunding success also ment we had to pack a lot of books and stuff to backers a couple of days, haha! Phew!
You can see more previews of my comic in Freya here.
May
This month was a crazy stressy funny time! SIS (Stockholms International Comics Festival) in 9-10th of May, the biggest comics-only-event of the year, started it off with a bang and we in Nosebleed Studio had booked three tables this time.
Sadly, they had done some rearrangement of the market tables and we got some shitty places in a sweaty and airless part of the locales. We could see how people didn't cope with is and turned away before getting to our tables, and even our fans told us later they didn't find us. And this showed in our sales, which was less than the year before even though we had our new Swedish book. Not satisfied, I sent a feedback email to the organizers, but only got a dismissive reply.
I hope they think about it to this year's event...
At this point I had realized that Sword Princess Amaltea 3 would not be finished before July, since it was 30 pages longer than the previous two books. I spoke to my editor at Kolik Förlag and we decided to release it in September instead, so I made a preview fanzine with the first chapter in the third book to sell at SIS for the fans that couldn't wait, haha.
The weekend right after we attended KodachiCon in Lund, my hometown. It was nice to be able to sleep in my own bed on an event, for once, haha. And the week end after that, me and my sister went to Düsseldorf, Germany, for the manga convention Dokomi! It was truly an eye opening experience to see how the manga self press scene has developed, and truly inspirational for us artists trying to grow the fanzine and self press market here. I made a happy blog report about it all (in English!).
June
This month was mostly spent on drawing and drawing to finish Sword Princess Amaltea 3 on time, but I also got some breaks doing an exhibition in Malmö with the team behind Freya.
July
Drawing, drawing, drawing! So close to the end of the book I could SMELL IT!
I also spent some time this Spring on the planning and organizing of the Artist
Alley at NärCon Sommar, the biggest manga/nerd/cosplay-convention in
Sweden with over 8000 attendees. Nosebleed Studio have attended their
Artist Alley several years, but most of the times it has seemed a bit
unorganized and a little sloppy. So when I contacted the previous
organizer and they told me that the spot actually was vacant, I took the
chance! I was determined to make the best Artist Alley in the history
of NärCon and I think I succeded. I knew what info the artists needded
and also made sure they ended up on the website with names and links and
all. I had invited guests with signing sessions, Q&A's and
presentations. Later I made a survey for the artists who had tables and the response was
overall positive and thankful.
The chiefs of NärCon also took
notice of my efforts and appreciated it! Sadly, this year they made a
rearrangement of the whole area, which ended up making the role I had
get a bit chopped up. After some back and forth I decided it's best they
try their new organization of the area this year, and if they want me
back next year I'll ask for the same postition I had 2015. I hope they
want me back, because I truly have grand visions for the Artist Alley at
NärCon! ♥
Oh, and:
Alexandra cosplaying Amaltea!!!!
August
This month started off with me FINISHING SWORD PRINCESS AMALTEA 3!!
I could finally get back to the blog and my life, and made a long blog entry about my summer.
At the beginning of August my boyfriend and I took a short vacation by train (mostly) to Oslo and Bergen in Norway. It was a nice and well deserved time off, we had both worked almost all Summer. He's been working hard, as a level designer on the game The Division at the game studio Massive Entertainment (a UbiSoft studio) which will be released on the 8th of March this year!! Stoked!!
And so I took a couple of months relaxing celibacy from drawing... NOT!!
Haha, nope, I started a new project instead: Mjau! - the Anime!
I first did some research, tanking to people that I met at events and online. But since I have been thinking of this for a while now, I already knew I wanted to do this and also how. I had been looking forward to this all through the months of working with Sword Princess Amaltea 3. Like a tasty carrot dangling in front of me...
I uploaded some videos of the process at my instagram, and when I had the time to animate I could make 2 seconds a day. Sadly, I had a new book to promote too (such a luxury problem, right?) and did only finish about 50 seconds during the Fall. But I have not given up on the project, oh no!
There will be more updates here and on instagram as soon as I have time to work on it again.
Ett filmklipp publicerat av Natalia Batista, mangaka (@nataliasmanga)
September
This is the other crazy stressy funny time this year. While working at Serieskolan again (with a new class of aspiring creators, ready to get their dreams crushed and get molded into strong warriors!) I went to a bunch of events. First off: Comic Con Malmö 12-13th of September.
This was the first time for this event, and it went very well from our (Nosebleed Studio's) perspective. The team behind the comics area did a good job and was very inviting and accomodating. I highly recommend it!
Sadly the third book hadn't arrived from the printers yet!
Elise Rosberg is our latest member, together with my sister Catarina and I.
The Saturday after I went on my own to Östergötlands Bokmässa (the Book Fair of Östergötland County). It's a pretty small event if you compare it to other book fairs I've had the chance to visit, but it was still an honor to be invited to hold a manga course there and do some signing.
And so, the week end after that, the biggest book event in Sweden, Gothenburg Book Fair, marked the release of Sword Princess Amaltea 3, the final book in my longest series ever! I was sooo proud! Many signing sessions and together with Henri Gylander who also released a book with Kolik förlag at the book fair, we held an awesome release party at a Kulturhuset Oceanen, with live music and live drawing and all! It was really fun and the best way to celebrate the completion of this 5 year project of mine! Here's my blog report about the events this month.
Oh, and Nosebleed Studio's book was selected to the prestigious children's books catalogue that was released at the Gothenburg Book Fair! This is probably one of the biggest achievements of our 10 year together!
Ett foto publicerat av Natalia Batista, mangaka (@nataliasmanga)
October
In October I took the chance to try the Inktober challange: to make one inked picture every day for a month. It felt like a good thing to do to fill my Instagram with illustrations... but I thought I could make it even more interesting! I decided I would make it into a give-away thing, and donated the image to the first person who commented on it on Instagram. I didn't know what I just started... but it became a monster! People where haning around my feed for hours just to get a chance, and even though I gave away 30 illustrations, there was still a bunch of awesome fans who didn't get any. Sorry about that. I'll make a post soon with all the pics so you can see them, but here's one:
This month also ended up getting quite event-heavy in the end: 17th of October: HBTQ Book Fair at the Malmö City Library
24th-25th of October: I Seriernas Värld, a childrens comic festival in Malmö 29th of October: Manga workshop at TioTretton in Stockholm 30th-1st of November: Comic Con Gamex in Stockholm
The HBTQ Book Fair was small but fun since we had Freya to promote. I Seriernas Värld ("In The World Of Comics") used to be bigger but they have changes the location again and that probably made them lose some visitors. A lot of them. The manga workshop in Stockholm was a huge sucess with 50 participants! And last but not least Comic Con Gamex, which was so fun, lot's of people and a good mix of different nerdy interests. Nosebleed Studio had a booth!
November
Since mid October, I have been working more hours at Serieskolan, because one of my colleagues was on parental leave. This went on until mid December, and even though it was super fun, it made me have less time to create stuff. But I still made time for drawing, and I had something I needed to make: my contribution to the next Nosebleed Studio anthology, our 10 years jubilee anthology none the less! We decided upon the theme of friendship. My short story (42 pages long) is called When I Close My Eyes. I'll make a blog entry about it soon...
December
I drew my short story manga, uploaded sneak peeks on instagram (like the one below) and worked at Serieskolan. Most of the days.
Ett foto publicerat av Natalia Batista, mangaka (@nataliasmanga)
A proof of Amaltea becoming popular is the fact that the library in Ängelholm asked me to make a painting to decorate their new comics section. I felt so honored! After some sketches we decided upon a 1:1 scale Amaltea with her sword so the visitors can take pictures with her!
The painting is digital and printed on canvas, which makes it less fragile compared to a painted... painting.
This was my 2015. A year of conclusion. A year of closing the door and opening a new. Of turning a page, starting a new chapter.
I also got some eye opening experiences and meetings. Trips to places, new friendships and old that came back. I also think that I now, the year before 30, feel I am finally quite satisfied with where I have arrived. And this is not the finish line, by far!
Oh, and the sales of Sword Princess Amaltea is hitting the roof! Till today the first and second book have gone into reprints again, and sold together over 5000 copies! The third book was therefore printed at a first edition of 3000! I'm looking forward to the coming year and being able to sell them all together as a full package, a proof of what you can accomplish with hard work, determination and a dream of creating manga.
I already know from the several fan letters I have received that I am inspiring the new generation of manga artists right now. And that feels soooooo goooood. ♥♥♥
