Odd and the Frost Giants page 20 (chapter 2)

Right. Continuing my romp through Neil Gaiman's "Odd and the Frost Giants". I'm quite pleased of the recent progress of this thingie.

Cheerio.

Neil Gaiman is happy too...

This is great news!

Cheerio.

Ian Gilman is happy...

Ian Gilman, the mastermind behind InfiniteCanvas, "A Funky Side Project from Microsoft Live Labs", emailed me that they have reached 35,000 hits and loads of positive feedback. Now go and do your own Scott McCloudish web comics. Shoo!

Cheerio.

Matchbox sketches...

I'm still sketching new "Odd" pages, so even though there's not anything new to show you, I could show you some old "matchbox sketches". Not interested? Well, I'll show them anyhow.


Yes, the blurred part is the next page.

Cheerio.

About vampires...

Right. What I'm about to say is my opinion of the matter. If you don't agree with me... that's just fine, OK?

When I saw the trailer of "Twilight" some time ago, my first (and second and even third for that matter) thought was "Oh, for chrissakes. Not AGAIN." I was seriously DONE with all that Hollywood vampire crap with pale teenage models with pale grey or green contacts and a push-up bra, wearing leather clothes and moping around about loving someone non-vampiric (maybe even lycantropic) high school student. And I was just about to declare the whole un-dead breed of teenage vampire movies... well, DEAD-dead, when I saw this. It's called "Let the Right One In"

It's an AMAZING Swedish vampire movie. It's bloody... and it's beautiful... and it's DIFFERENT.

It's honestly the best vampire flick I've seen since Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula.

Go see it.

Cheerio.

Man carrying a dog...

Read Neil's latest blog entry and damn nearly snorted my tea...

It was the photo. Go and look closely... now, is that an embarrassed dog or what! You can just hear him thinking "GOD, this is SO humiliating... bein' carried around like a DAMN poodle! I'm so glad my friends are not going to see this... they would piss themselves laughing... What? Aww, no way! No frigging way! Someone's taking a photo. That's just bloody marvelous..."

Poor Cabal. ;-)

Cheerio.

No "Odd" today, go see "Saucers" instead...

I'm taking few days off from doing "Odd" page 20. NOT because I'm tired or fed up with it though. Quite the opposite actually. You see, during these past two weeks I've been working so fast I ran out of sketched pages... so, during the next days I'll be rummaging through old sketches and doing new tiny "matchbox-sketches" of pages 21-35 or something like that.

In the meanwhile you can go to InfiniteCanvas which is, and I quote, "A funky side project from Microsoft Live Labs" and see "The Day the Saucers Came" in a whole new way. It's really cool!

Now, all you have to do is go to InfiniteCanvas and click... well, InfiniteCanvas. There's some fun things there (for example a piece from the great Scott McCloud).

Cheerio.

Odd and the Frost Giants page 19 (chapter 2)

As promised. Also re-colored page 18 a little bit. I think they're ok now.

Cheerio.

The pleasure and pain of seeing art...

Occasionally you see art that is... beyond great. The kind of stuff that on the other hand makes you happy just watching it but also makes you feel small and insignificant since you understand that nothing you have done yourself so far hasn't reached that level.

Dave McKean does that.

James Jean does that too.

And this man also does that. I've watched his art in DeviantArt and his latest piece just... well, just look at it! So simple, so pure... so LIVE. You can smell the ocean and feel the weight of the water in that picture. I wish I would possess HALF of that talent.

Sigh.

Cheerio.

Cool photobook...

I have mentioned about capoeira before, right?

(at least here)

Now, a photographer Jari Kivelä has taken amazing photos of the guys who teach at the "academia" and made a beautiful book of the stuff.

It can be found here. There's even a preview, so you can see some of the photos. The most amazing thing about the photos is that there's no "tricks" used in them, no wires etc. I've seen those guys doing the moves... The book is a really cool combination of unique artistic and physical skills.

Cheerio.

PS. I'm pretty sure I can post the next "Odd" page tomorrow!

Odd and the Frost Giants page 18 (chapter 2)

...the saga continues. And if everything else in life goes as nicely as "Odd" at the moment I may be able to do another page too during this week. That would be cool.

Cheerio.

Twittering idiot...

Caved in under pressure and got me a Twitter account. Now, for a person who is incredibly un-exciting and lives absolutely ordinary life, I've accumulated way too many accounts on various net-based social-interaction-group-hug-nonsence-thingies there is. Mostly I just get those to be able to read about people I know who have more eventful life than I do.

This is a good example how those things usually end up.

Cheerio.

PS. I'm currently inking page 18 of "Odd". Having fun.

Odd and the Frost Giants page 17 (chapter 2)

I have to admit that I really like this page. The new style is quicker, better and so much more fun to do.

Me happy.

Cheerio.

Past the peak.

It's been a crazy sort of fun month. Checked some of the statistics and found out that this blog of mine was visited 3334 times during the past month. Now that's kind of an improvement compared to 72 visits of the month before. But as these things go, now we're slowly getting back to normal... and much closer to the 72 monthly visits.

I'm currently inking page 17 of "Odd"... and I'm having way too much fun doing it.

Cheerio.

Odd and the Frost Giants page 16 (chapter 2)

So, this is the new beginning... in many ways. First, the REAL story of Odd starts here. Second, from now on I have to change the text (and even some minor things in the story) more, to make it fit better the comics format. And third, as you can see below (and perhaps have read earlier) I have to change the illustration style... meaning I got quite frustrated of using couple of hours doing the pencils and inks and then spending a week (or even weeks) trying to find time to color the page and even then having too little time to do it well... so, for now on I'm putting heavy emphasis on inks and the greys will only be used to spice the inks a bit.


Right. It will look more or less like this from now on.

I kinda like it... and feel more... comfortable with it. Hope you do too.

Cheerio.

Odd and the Frost Giants pages 14 and 15 (chapter 1)

Right. This wraps up chapter one.

The previous pages can be found here: page 1, pages 2-3, page 4, page 5, page 6, page 7, page 8, page 9, page 10, page 11, page 12, page 13.

See you in chapter 2... hope it doesn't take as long to finish (10 frigging monts! For 15 pages... Christ. That is so pathetic...)


Cheerio.

Where am I this time?

Since I summoned the god Ukko and promised to sacrifice honey and ale and warm pig's blood weekly for wealth and fame, my name has been popping up in strangest/coolest/weirdest places. This weeks coolest place is without any doubt Joe Hill's web page. He says very kind words about "Saucers". I thank thee Mr. Hill.

Cheerio.

Odd and the Frost Giants page 13 (chapter 1)

Making my way towards the end of chapter 1...

Cheerio.

New year... same job

... but I'm certainly not complaining. I'm havin' fun with "Odd" even though I haven't been able to do finished stuff as much as I wanted lately (read: "during last six to eight monts")

So, during the holidays we (my family) were on the road "up north" visiting relatives. No internet. No email. No Photoshop... it was nice for a change.

BUT... I DID have paper and pencils and ink... And Odd things in my mind. A frost giant, for example (and no, I don't think this is a spoiler... the story IS titled "Odd and the Frost Giants" after all).


...and here's another sketch.


...and now that I got back to office, I wanted to do some vector magic to this one...

Cheerio.

Post-X-Mas post

Been off-line for few days. X-mas was great. And New Year also. Will post some drawings soon.

Cheerio.