As I’m eagerly waiting for my printed books, I thought it could be fun to share some images between chapters in the latest SPEJS book and maybe talk a bit about the characters :)
Calder is the grumpy director of the Aeros Military’s digital division! He doesn’t seem too keen about Swagata though, what is their deal? That will be revealed in the upcoming SPEJS book! :)
Got a bit inspired to make a sort-of finished illustration! I’ve been putting characters in caves filled with crystals lately, this time with an added bonus of creepy enemies bothering them as well ;)
As I’m eagerly waiting for my printed books, I thought it could be fun to share some images between chapters in the latest SPEJS book and maybe talk a bit about the characters :)
Ragna was pretty reluctant about joining SPEJS at first? How did Swagata convince them to join? Find out in SPEJS #4, available in May!
As I’m eagerly waiting for my printed books, I thought it could be fun to share some images between chapters in the latest SPEJS book and maybe talk a bit about the characters :)
Destiny is a new character that will be introduced in the longer SPEJS story! She’s an old friend of Swagata and one hell of a computer genious! She works for the military on Aeros and is very confident in her capabilities :)
As I’m eagerly waiting for my printed books, I thought it could be fun to share some images between chapters in the latest SPEJS book and maybe talk a bit about the characters :)
Let’s start off with a flexing Morwen ;) She’ll join in on two stories in SPEJS #4!
The art VS Artist meme seems to circulate around the webs again, so here’s my take on it for April 2018! I had to take some illos from 2017 to fill it up, but eh, I don’t think I’ve changed that much in style yet ;)
(This post will be in Swedish, but basically I’ll be at Malmö Seriefest this weekend at Malmö City Library! Come over and say hi if you’re in town!)
Den här helgen smäller det, jag kommer ta det tidiga lördagståget till Malmö för att besöka sta’n för första gången, hänga med coola seriemänniskor och sälja min serie SPEJS på Malmö Seriefest!
För er som inte känner till SPEJS så är det en lattjolajban-sci-fi-serie, men den innehåller allt jag tycker är viktigt: representation av queera karaktärer och olika kroppstyper, avsaknad av sexism eller andra sunkigheter, men så klart även en massa humor, roliga karaktärer (för jösses vad detta är en karaktärsdriven serie!) och lite allmänt raj-raj i rymden!
Förutom böckerna kommer jag ta med mig lite stickers, halsband och några bokmärken. Allt fint som får plats på ett halv bord med andra ord!
Seriefesten håller till på Malmö Stadsbibliotek, från 11-17 på Lördag och 11-16 på Söndag! Jag sitter vid bord 41, längst bort från scenen, typ ;) Leta efter en bordshalva med turkos duk och du är hemma ;) Jag ser fram emot att träffas i helgen <3
The first half of the year has come to be a “work around the clock to make the next SPEJS book ready” period for me. Except for this year, I had actually made twenty pages worth of comics in October-December. Which is great, because Stockholms Internationella Seriefestival is almost a month earlier than last year, meaning I’m having one month less to finish the book. I’m actually more or less done with inking and coloring all the comic pages, but I’ll use some of my time to look over the art and dialogue a bit more, making sure the next book will look as fab as it can :) I’m also taking a short two weeks pause from SPEJS making to prepare for Malmö seriefest, and meet a deadline for a comic anthology’s open call. Hopefully the pause will give me some new perspective on SPEJS, and maybe I can fiddle a bit with layouts, the cover, etc during my stay in Malmö (or at least the train rides…if I’m not sleeping during that time) :)
This is my second piece for the Fantastic Makeover project where this month’s theme was “I ship it”. I decided to make a fluffy piece with someone just being considerate and giving their partner a coffee while they’re hard at work ;)
Another Procreate experiment! I had the intention of drawing all the SPEJS characters, but I ran out of time ^^; But here’s Ragna!
I’m still so slow and awkwkard (I finished this during two episodes of Star Trek: DS9!) when it comes to painting in Procreate, but it feels I’m still learning something new every time I try :) I’m also still extremely amused by the time lapse function in Procreate, so here’s a video of that, enjoy:
I’m part of this art project called Fantastic Makeover, where a bunch of awesome artists make their own images based on a theme every month! This is my first piece, which as supposed to be a self portrait in a fantastic world of your choice. This is my contribution, I drew myself as a character in my own comic, hehe :D
I really wanted to try and make more paintings this year, so this project is a really good fit for me! This weekend, I’ll try to finish the next piece :3
I saw that Critterdeck was a thing on twitter, and decided to jump the bandwagon! Here’s me as a grumpy half-orc ranger, enjoy!
I drew the portrait in Procreate on my iPad. I still have a bit of a hard time working with it, but some brushes are really neat and I really like the time lapse you can create of your work :) I guess I have to practise my drawing on iPad-skills a bit more, practise makes perfect, right? ;)
Got a bit bored with the design of SPEJS’ webpage, so I decided to give it some new colors and background images. Drew these three chibies of Seisa, Ragna and Gav and thought they turned out cute enough to be displayed here :3 I really like how Gav looks like a scared t-rex behind Ragna lol XD
if you want to know how I used thee in the new web design, check out the web page!
These are 6 months old, but I thought they were nice, so why not post ’em on the blog as well? SPEJS is a comic with a pretty queer cast, and during Pride month last year, I drew the main cast with little bow ties representing them :3
I took part of a meme thing on twitter in December, where I presented one of my OC:s for each like I got. I thought it would be fun to showcase it here as well since I doodled my characters as I went :3
Naturally, I started with team SPEJS!
First off, Swagata Yadav! Founder of SPEJS, hacker and self-proclaimed genius! She likes tech, sweet drinks and getting spoilt in a spa!
Morwen of Gilios! The muscle of team SPEJS! She loves art, fashion, fine wines and beating people up in a game of boxing!
Ragna Korppi! SPEJS’ sniper! Likes strong liquor, romance novels and complaining about stuff!
Gav Moroz! He’s the newly recruited pilot of team SPEJS! He likes sweets, cars and cuddles (as long as there’s consent!)!
Continuing with supporting characters that have appeared in SPEJS chapters this far!
Artis! She’s Morwen’s ex and part of the military on planet Pangee. She likes sour drinks, pretty ladies and a good massage.
Seisa! She’s a criminal and has a past with Ragna. She likes strong liquor, big guns and luxury!
Then I added Ragna’s parents since I have a pretty good idea of them!
Atla Korppi (here drawn younger than she’d be in the current timeline)! She’s Ragna’s mother and is known in Aeros as a hero for her peace keeping work in the military. She likes white wine, adventures and her family.
Pavlu Korppi (here drawn younger than he’d be in the current timeline)! He’s Ragna’s father and one of the best doctors in Aeros military force! He likes a good meal, nursing people back to health and his family.
And then there’s Gav’s parents which haven’t been introduced yet, but I do have a pretty good idea about them too :)
Yegor Moroz (here drawn younger than he’d be in the current timeline)! He’s one of Gav’s dads and born on planet Seri. He likes beer, felines and gardening.
Karsen Moroz (here drawn younger than he’d be in the current timeline)! He’s one of Gav’s dads and born on planet Pangee! He likes beer, working on vehicles and being left alone.
After that, I ran out of SPEJS characters, so i drew some of my old sins ;)
Vlad! He’s an old RP character of mine that’s kind of a werewolf? He only changes in shape though, so he keeps his happy nerdy personality even as a werewolf. I really thought this guy was cute and would love to use him again :3
Motte! He was part of an old comic I drew. He’s an incubus and only attract ladies…which is a personal problem for him since he’s attracted to dudes. He’s also part moth and grows wings and an extra pair of arms when he’s threatened or excited!
Funh! She’s a 20 year old oc of mine, used in my fantasy webcomic I drew between 1998-2000! Princess and healer, and probably a little Usagi in her XD I just had to adjust her outfit a bit now ‘cuz I didn’t want to draw her in only a bikini XD
Zimis! She’s from the same webcomic as Funh, a swordslady and tomboy! I really liked her but since I was 14-15 when making this comic, my writing sucked XD I have to do better with my current characters :3
Zomis! Also from the same webcomic as Funh and Zimis and my name giving skills were really awesome XD He was my very first grumpy bish and he was a heckin’ brat I tell you! But I blame my 14 yo writing skills yet again ;)
And that’s it! It can be quite a good challenge to somethimes just take a look at your characters and try to get the essence of them to fit in a tweet :3
I realized I haven’t properly shown the sticker and charm designs I’ve drawn this year, so let’s remedy that :)
These sticker sheets I made in march this year. I’m always a little scared when ordering big chunks of sticker sheets and charms and such, but to my delight, they have been pretty popular :) I have a few of these on my work computer actually :)
These crystals were made into acrylic charms, and I thought they turned out pretty neat! I had lots of fun drawing crystals and flowers and would love to do more designs like these sometime in the future :)
These stickers, I kinda drew and made on a whim in October when I was feeling a bit down for various reasons (and I wanted something new and small for some fairs I was going to table at), and to my delight, the passive agressive cute animals were very popular! I have the unicorn on my work computer and will probably add more of these on my sketch books etc ;)
Let’s see what I’ll whip up in 2018! I’m having a lot of fun with cute animals saying the darnest things, and would love to do more feminist stuff, but we’ll see! I want to make stuff that I can be 100% behind and feel proud about having on my table :)
So I got some inspiration to draw this guy! I don’t know much about him yet more than that he’s probably a druid with a grumpy personality :3 He might be my new role playing character for a D&D game, and I look forward to fleshing him out a bit more :)
It was a while since I painted something digitally and I guess it shows. But it was good practise, and I’m starting to not hate it anymore, so yay? I actually saved some WIP shots of this piece, so let’s have a look at that:
These are the initial sketch and a more cleaned-up sketch. I wasn’t 100% sure if I was going for line art or painting at first, but I though “hey, I could do with a challenge”, so painting it was!
I guess I should have used two layers – one for the chair and one for the character, but I was a bit afraid I’d end up painting on the wrong layers anyways, so I went for everything on one layer. I thought it’d be nice to try and figure out the colors I wanted to use at first, so yeah! The chair got really colorful, I guess 8D
Here I’ve added some shadows and highlights, and a background. I should’ve probably chosen some background colors from the beginning, because I had a hard time finding anything that looked good. I kind of left it like this and let it rest for a week, hoping to find more stuff to adjust later on.
And again, the final result. I added a darker shade to the character and the chair here and there, which I believe made the character pop a bit more. Also did some more work on the backgrud, added some grunge maps and added a vague overlay color. I’ll probably leave this piece like this and continue my quest to paint with some other piece. I’d love to get better and hope I get the opportunity to practise a bit more with this technique :3
Hey people, long time no bloggin’! I’ve spent most of my free time getting the next chapter of my comic SPEJS ready, and I still have a little way to go before I’m all done, but I’m trudging on, and I’m starting to believe that I’ll probably be able to get this chapter printed and ready for SIS 8D
While working on big projects like these (because believe me, making 50+ pages of colored comics in 4 months is a big project when you have a full-time dayjob), it’s easy to feel like you’re getting nowhere, doubt yourself etc. So I started to look at my older SPEJS chapters, especially the coloring since I’m trying to up my game a little when it comes to colors.
The first chapter was originally just in greyscales. When it went to web, I decided to add some colors, but I had no idea what I was doing and some results were rather garish. When I did a re-print in color, I decided to re-color the pages again, and while I’m not super excited over the colors, it looks a lot better than previously (Left is old colors, right is new colors).
As for chapter 2, I tried to have a theme color (purple), and while I liked the idea, the colors still felt a little stiff (colors a bit too saturated at times, not sure if I like the colors I paired up with the purple), but it felt like I was heading in the right direction.
As for this chapter, I have tried to stick to two colors, green and pink, and done my outmost to make the colors harmonize. I have also played a bit more with lineart colors and tried to get a more wholesome feeling. I’ll probably find a thousand errors within a year, but right now I’m happy how it looks and looking back at previous chapters I can definitely see an improvement!
For most of my artist life, I have really struggled with colors, it’s really hit or miss for me. When I started to adress this on twitter, I got a lot of helpful tips from people about tutorials etc, and why not share some links?
Videos:
Blenderguru’s Understanding Color – this is a pretty long video, but it was a pretty good eye opener for me. It talks about saturation, values and color harmonies!
Sycra’s How to choose colors that work
The free Ctrl+Paint library has some short and sweet painting tutorials with examples and exercises. Really nice if you don’t know what to study, just look at a video and try to imitate. He mostly works in Photoshop, but I can tag along just fine in Clip Studio as well :)
Books:
Color and Light by James Gurney (who also has a blog here) – I really like the examples and well written explanations in this book, well worth my money!
The art of Kung Fu Panda 3 – man I can’t get over how beautiful the colors were in this movie! I have this book as inspiration for colors!
Web utilities:
Paletton – make your own color harmonies
Adobe color CC – more color harmonies
While I still have A LOT to learn regarding colors and color harmonies, it feels like I’m starting to get it a bit better now. For me, that’s a huge relief since it has been my arch nemesis for years :D
What is your relationship with colors and do you have any good sources if one’d like to learn more about colors?
Whenever you draw something, and the whole body doesn’t fit onto the page because of bad planning, where do the rest of the body go? I decided to play with that in this piece, and just let it appear on the top instead ;)
Hey there, long time no see! I have been busy getting back in the rut, playing Witcher 3 and inking pages for the next SPEJS chapter (I’m pretty much on schedule, even though it’s a bit sweaty). I’ve also been reading a lot while commuting, hence the lack of metro doodles. But I decided to treat myself to some new markers (specifically the Winsor & Newton ProMarkers) and decided to start doodling a bit with them in my new sketchbook. This book I bought looks very fancy, but I’m not sure if the paper is good for anything really. Markers look pretty okay though, so I might continue filling it with marker doodles :)
Let’s start this year with a doodle dump of some SPEJS related stuff!
some people on Tapastic are starting to doubt that male pangee exist. Well, they do, and look fabulous! But they haven’t really been introduced properly in the comic yet. I’m musing a bit about the next chapter where this dashing lad might show up though :)
Speaking about pangee, it’s very uncommon that pangee and seri are getting along, even less common that they are romantically involved. These two fellows are getting along quite well though, and I can’t wait to tell you more about them. I’d love to make a short spin-off comic with these guys, if I have the time I’ll try to make it before the end of march :)
A fancy Swagata, just because I missed drawing her <3 Also experimenting with the looks of Seri women. I’m sort-of musing with the fact that it might be more common with them having a bit more body hair, and not feeling forced to shave it off or whatever, especially not on their home planet. We’ll see, I’ve yet to show some seri women in the comic too, so I have time to experiment for a bit ;) Also a random cat as an extra ;)
