Happy New Year everyone! :) Just wanted to post my official holiday image that I sent out as post cards to friends, family and colleagues!
I also want to remind you that I posted an extra page on new year's eve! Check it out! <3
It's about time I introduce the flat artists of The Din! Last year (2014) I was so eager to wrap up/catch up with colors (due to posting the comic in black/white first) that I decided to hire some help doing the flats. With this help I also managed to color all of the Prologue and Chapter 1 in time for the annual comic festival in Stockholm: so I could bring a printed copy!
Randi was the first one I reached out to! She's been doing flats for colored pages of the Medley series (A Swedish ongoing comic by Lisa Medin), and I heard she had done such a great job. Naturally, she did an amazing job with The Din pages as well! :)
Randi went to a comic school in Hofors/Gävle in Sweden, which is pretty cool (I am jealous). I got to know her through a friend who went to that school. Man, my friends are pretty awesome that way!
So, what does a page look like when I send it off for flats? I'll share the process a bit!
LINEART
I send the page in it's original size with line art and black solids in separate layers (black solids: the grey areas as seen here).
COLOR KEY
I also send her a quick "Color Key" version of the page where I basically just paint on top really quick. Usually this looks more thorough, but since there was a page before this one where I set the general mood/color key for this scene, I made notes about where she could pick colors from in the previous page. :)
FLATS
In return, I get the whole page in flats, organized in layers.
LAYERS
It's super tidy! Look!
Erm, yes, that's Swedish...
However, about 42 pages into Chapter 1 I realized that this was a really tedious and time consuming way of coloring and putting flats. Right now I only organize my flats in few layers (2-5) for each panel and paint out a lot of the separate colors by hand! Makes things much easier and quicker for me and the flat artist. :)
FINAL RESULT
This is where I come in and do all the fun work! After about 3 hours of happily shading the well prepared flats, this is the final result. This is what it looks like without speech bubbles, hurray!
I am planning to hire Randi again as soon as I have edited and tweaked a big batch of the old, uncolored pages. It's going to be a great help to wrap up Chapter 2!
Randi has currently been doing flats on a total of 14 pages!
These specifically:
Prologue 01
Prologue 02
Chapter1 28
Chapter1 30
Chapter1 37
Chapter1 38
Chapter1 41
Chapter1 42
Chapter1 46
Chapter1 51
Chapter1 52
Chapter1 55
Chapter1 59
Chapter1 60
Anyway, if you are a comic artist and interested in hiring a flats artist, I recommend Randi! Contact her through tumblr or let me know and I will give you her contact info! :)
I just want to show you this awesome drawing I got from Anna Landin! She had a christmas-giveaway over at her Patreon-campaign and I was the lucky winner! I got this lovely drawing of Lorentz and tons of pretty goods from her webcomic Grassblades! :) You should check it out! Grassblades is also available at Tapastic!
Lorentz! <3
And the other awesome Grassblades goods! <3
Hello! As promised (like months ago) here's the rest of the Old Chapter 1 - Lorentz part. It's now uploaded to the Extras section!
If you have no idea what I am talking about: The Din has an old iteration that was drawn traditionally and printed in fanzine format. As mentioned in the info-section, I rewrote (and naturally had to redraw) most of the beginning of the comic when I realized I could do it much better. I promised to upload the old pages as soon as I finished posting the new Chapter 1. I am a bit late, but... better late than never? :3
My previous blogposts (seen here and here) on Gregg's part of the old pages have been a bit analytical. I'm going to do the same thing about Lorentz' part of the old pages in this blogpost. Keep reading if you are interested in knowing why I decided to rewrite/redraw the beginning of the comic!
Here goes!
So the biggest issue of Lorentz' part of The Old Chapter 1 is that the characters were very similar to eachother. I had a rather clear picture of the characters stories, purposes, general traits, but for some reason most of them ended up being angry, quirky and goofy on my first try to introduce them. And they swore a lot...
Look at how angry they are! Even Fozt's landlord is angry!
So I scrapped that.
I also wanted a more interesting introduction of Lorentz. In the old pages he's just a weird guy who cares for his drunk friend and decides to move in with him to make sure he stops drinking. He also happens to have a daughter and a wife that he just leaves behind for some odd reason. In the first few pages he also hangs out with a random dude (who will be properly introduced later) with a big glass of beer. Hypocrite much?
In the new pages I really wanted to push the interesting parts of his character: his interest for mechanics, technology and adventure. Also that he tries hard to combine those interests over wanting the best for his family and friends, even though it's hard to make ends meet. In the new pages I think it's easy to tell that he's kind and a bit selfless by the way he's around Tova, Merleva and Fozt + the way he runs his delivery business - so I don't really need him to go as far to move into Fozt's apartment.
Which is why I decided to burn the apartment down completely instead. *gasp*
I also removed the introduction of two supportive characters and moved it to Chapter 3 instead. Edmund (the guy with long, dark hair at the bar) and Denilou (the angry guy at Lorentz' and Fozt's work place). I tell you, everyone are angry! They are not important at this point, which is why I removed them.
Another important change is the level of technology presented in the old pages. There is a TV, telephone and a radio in their homes. While this advanced technology do exist at this time of the comic, telephones are rare in homes, Fozt could possibly not afford a radio and Lorentz could not own a TV. So this was removed too. (Lorentz does however own a radio, but there will be more on that later!)
Merleva was one of my biggest issues with the old pages. She is angry most of the time, she cleans her kitchen to calm down (*face palm*) and Tova doesn't seem to like her that much. She is supposed to be a worrier, alright - but I want her to be likable and an important, stable piece of the family. But she felt disconnected in the old pages.
Even if she only appears in a few pages in the new version, I tried to make her more interesting and warm. She's still around the dishes (doh), but she runs their coffee shop, works hard and is more warm and welcoming towards the rest of the family.
I like the new Merleva much better! <3
And here comes the sadest change of them all:
I removed the family parrot Shout Machine. Brölmaskin in Swedish.
It's really difficult for me to make her fit into the rest of the story, so I removed her. Also, since Lorentz is having allergies/asthma, it's a bit weird for them to own a bird. (Then again, back when my family had a gazillion of budgies, my allergic grandmother would not react to them? It's different for everyone, I guess.)
I miss the parrot, so who knows - maybe she will return in one way or an other. :)
That's about it! I really like the new introduction of Lorentz' part of the story, compared to the old one. I hope you do too! I had a bit of a laugh reading through the old pages, of course. There are some good qualities there and I was a bit better at establishing shots and ambient/mood/wordless panels (even if they were a few). But all in all, I think the new pages are for the better - and I plan to move on from here and just keep improving by analyzing what I am good at and what I could work on more (both art and storytelling wise).
Go here to read Lorentz' part of the old Chapter 1
Thanks for reading!
Hello everyone! I just want to share a little something for you all to see! A guest artwork of Gregg by Yossra, the artist of the webcomic Raedus! <3
We've been pep-talking eachother a lot this autumn and she was so sweet to draw this for me during her inktober challenge. What a happy surprise! <3
If you want to see a really well executed comic with high quality art, I recommend heading to Raedus, her current comic project. It's awesome!
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On a slightly related note - here's the Guest Comic's schedule for the rest of the guest comics that were sent in:
16:th of November: A pretty cool book - by Lho Brockhoff
14:th of December: Feathers and Bones - by Jeff McClelland
11:th of January: Airplane games - by Jenny Hannula
If you sent in a comic and it's not listed here, let me know! Might've gotten lost in the mail. :S
I'm finally back from New York!
So, I went to New York Comic Con - my first really huge convention ever. It was great! Me, Robe and my old friend Lauren went together!
I met some lovely people and fellow comic creators in the Artist Alley. :) It looks like a huge convention in itself!
Really happy that I got to meet Isa and & Meg, the creators of Namesake! I was so excited when I saw they would be there. Super kind people, nice to talk to and I now have a signed copy of book 1 of Namesake! *swoons*
Finally met Jeff McClelland for the first time since I started to color his comics! Which was pretty cool! Jeff has always been such a great colleague and friend - great to work with and super helpful. I was honored to draw in his legendary Thing Sketchbook - it's soon complete! Ongoing since 2003, I think?
I also met Yasmin Liang, an amazing artist whom I was lucky to participate in an art rp together with a while back on tegakie! So nice to meet her in person and I also got a lovely print that I now have on display in our living room!
Ok, so I've been gone for two weeks now. Of course I wasn't at the con for two weeks, but while in the states we decided to explore New York a bit.
Our favorite experience in New York, except for Comic Con, was a play called Sleep No More. It's kind of an interactive play where you as the audience get to wear a mask, walk around in the setting of 4 floors among the actors/characters. Sounds awkward and weird, but it really wasn't! I truly enjoyed exploring the setting since the setting was very old-fashioned. I read books and even ate some candy from the old candy-shop-setting. Haha! Me and Robe got different plotlines of the story since we were dropped off at different floors and chose to follow completely different characters. Which was great because then we spent the night trying to tie it all together. You should look it up if you're in New York!
The last day in New York I had a relaxing 5 km run in Central Park, which is something that I've had on my bucket list for some time. It was magical!
We also went on a 4-day trip to Boston where Robe's cousin studies. All in all, it was a really nice trip, but I am so happy to finally be home and get back to drawing. :) We get home sick easily, so it was a bit risky to be away for two weeks. But all went well - trains, busses, flights - everything! So travelling will feel less worrisome next time!
Here's an obligatory photo when flying from Sweden! We're pretty close to flying above my childhood town. So pretty! This might sounds strange coming from me, but I am a bit afraid of flying. I don't know when it happened, but it must've gotten worse over the years because I have been flying in a small 2-passanger airplane and a helicopter when I was younger, without any problems whatsoever. But flying felt really nice and relaxing this time, so I'm really happy! Might have gotten over my fear and control-issues a bit! :3
Hope you enjoyed the photos!
Hello everyone! If you are a fellow artist, read this!
I am currently looking for Guest Comics for The Din! :)
I'm going away to NY for two weeks in October and need to secure epic content in case I won't manage to build a 3+ colored page buffer until then. I currently have 1 buffered page, but unfortunately I am booked most of the weekends until I am going away in October. As we all know: free weekends = perfect time to work on comic page buffer. Sooo... this is an exellent time for me to look for Guest Comics! :)
So how does it work? You create one or more Guest Comic pages for The Din, and I will post them here on the main page sporadically, starting sometime in October. Each page will be up for a week!
Here's some main points to keep track of:
I wish I could pay you for making a Guest Comic, but right now a link back to your site is what I am able to offer.
If you want to check out some good examples of how Guest Comics could look like, make sure to check out Martin Kirby's webcomic Freelancer! He had a chapter break a few months ago and had a lovely set of Guest Comics. Start reading them here, and while you are at it - read the whole comic! It's great!
Depending on the number of Guest Comics I get, I will spread the posting out a bit. I don't want to put the main story on hold too much! That's why I'll post them sporadically. Probably maximum 2-3 pages a month.
Just a headsup: If your Guest Comic involves content that I don't feel comfortable posting on the main site, I might post it separately with a thumbnail on the main page. It's pretty much the same way I handle some of the more explicit content in the comic. :)
If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask! :)
Thanks!
I want to show you some fan art I have gotten recently!
The first one is drawn by Diana, also my table neigbor at SIS2015. I've known Diana for so long! I think maybe since 2002? She is one of the sweetest persons I know and she is a great artist too! Her recent traditional work just blows me away. Imagine my reaction when she sent me this lovely piece of art of Tova and Lorentz! homepage, tumblr and her instagram.
The second one is drawn by Lho, a comic artist I got to know through twitter�a few months ago! I just love meeting new art friends on social media -�and Lho was a typical case of that! She drew me this lovely piece of Lorentz�recently�and it totally made my day! She has been working on her soon-to-be launched webcomic for some time now; The Lost Oracle. I can't wait until it launches, �you should check it out too. Only a few days left!
Tova and Lorentz by Diana.
Lorentz by Lho.
