If you liked my previous post about traveling from Berlin to Italy, you will love this one about my train travel from Finland to France! The trip is way longer than in the last comic, plus in this one I’m going to a comics festival in Angoulême. I hope this comic can inspire others to try traveling by land, even if it is a bit slower than traveling by a plane.
I am going to say this in the comic too, but I must say it here as well. Traveling by land in a train where it’s okay to get up, move around and go to different sections of the train is so much better for my heath than sitting still on a plane. Movement is needed even for making comics and I don’t mind the extra time a train takes. What else would I be doing with that time, even if I wasn’t on a train, than making comics? Nothing! And I can definitely draw comics on a train too.
Here I am in Switzerland with my very heavy cart full of comics. The suitcase is Siiri’s.Here I am in a train from Basel to Strasbourg and the beautiful content (views) go by as I draw comics.Here you see me drawing the previous page! I have the InterRail app screenshot as a sketch layer, so I know where we have been and where are we going.In this picture I am in the foreign rights tent in Angoulême in the Finnish booth finally taking apart the heavy boxes of comics! This was the happiest moment of my trip. Both me and the cart survived! Surprising!Here I am pointing out two Finnish comics creators in the EU Webtoon exhibition: Sari Sariola and Tuomas Myllylä.The toilet is for everyone, but one must venture into it alone… Except if you’re a pair of shepherds or a centaur with a sweet ass duck!
“Germany? What do you mean Germany, H-P, you’re Finnish?” Yes, I am, but I only started drawing since leaving Germany. Last summer I went to Trento Italy for an ethnography and qualitative research conference together with my colleagues Juulia and Carmen. I traveled through Berlin where I also met a long time Instagram friend! I made this comic during the long train rides and I first published it on my Patreon for backers only. Now it’s been a while since that happened, so I decided to make it public.
I think people are interested in doing longer travels by land, but they might be worried if it’s really difficult. And yes, it is more difficult than flying. But it’s also amazing and exciting and relaxing and part of the whole experience of traveling! So maybe this comic can inspire you to try out something other than a plane next time you travel.
The reason I’m posting this comic now is that I’m leaving to Angoulême in France tomorrow! And I’ll be traveling by land again! That reminded me of this comic. I don’t know if I will draw a travel diary this time, but I’m thinking about it. I’m traveling together with a friend of mine, the Finnish comics artist Siiri Viljakka.
These two photos are taken from a moving train! That’s Alps! Incredible.
This is a river from Trento in Italy. We took a cable car from where the photo was taken to that building you can see on top of the mountain!
This photo was taken from the mountain where we got to with the cable car. I had thought Trento to be way smaller of a town than what it turned out to be! It was weird seeing it all laid out like that. The size of the mountains is something I as a Finnish person will never understand. (We have no mountains in Finland. I even happen to be from an area of Finland that’s the former sea floor! Osthrobothnia that is.)
Wouldn’t you like to study here? Well I did! This is the courtyard of the Trento public library. I went here to work on my university stuff.
Now that I’m traveling in January, the views will be completely different from what they were in June. Our route takes us from Stockholm (Sweden) to Copenhagen (Denmark) to Strasbourg (France) and then finally to Angoulême (France) to attend the gigantic comics festival held there every year! I’ll try to at least write a blog post about it, even if I wouldn’t necessarily draw a comic. We’ll see!
Now that you’re here, consider this. You become my Patreon backer, I make more comics! Sounds great, right? Here you go:
The title says it all. I finally made more videos on my YouTube channel, despite my voice dysphoria.
Basically the problem is that before my transition I was fine with my voice, not because I liked it, but because I was used to it. When my voice changed (to better!!!), it didn’t change as much as I would have wanted and since then I’ve been very uncomfortable with my voice. I took some singing lessons, because that can help with the overall voice use, but to this day I struggle. I especially feel really self conscious if I have to talk loud. This is new for me. I have always been quite loud and excited person. My voice dysphoria made me more timid. I spoke softly and stayed silent a lot.
A thumbnail I made for the third video. Doesn’t this corner of my studio look nice!? This video will go online a bit later, so better go subscribe to my YouTube.
I have really wanted to get back on track making videos. How I started was from Instagram stories. Knowing that the clips will disappear after a while helped. Then I made some reels (and tried out Tiktok, but hated it). Now I was able to finally listen to myself long enough to make over 20 minute video! I’m so proud of myself.
The videos
The first one I made is about how people in Finland have been asking me why am I quitting comics. Well, I’m not. So this video explains that.
The second one is about the joy I find in making comics. It kind of continues from where I was left on the first video. I could never stop making comics, because they are so dear to me!
I have just made a third one and that’s scheduled to appear on my YouTube channel quite soon. If you have any ideas on what I should talk about on the videos, please drop me a comment! I’m running out of ideas quite fast.
Also I made one almost half an hour video where I talk more about my art process and show my art from my archives. That one is Patreon exclusive for the $10/month tier, where people get to see my beautiful works in process! If you have the cash and want to support me, go see that one on Patreon!
Ps. If you didn’t already notice, I also updated Millenials Kill comic today! You should totally go read it!
Now that I have finally published the tenth chapter of Millenials Kill, I can also publish this blog post! I found the art a few months ago and finished the new artwork today!
So, I found some really old art. At this point I have no idea what it was meant to be, but I assume it was an idea for a comic that includes a band. I had completely forgotten about this so you can probably understand how surprised I was when I found this and read the band name I had chosen.
It was Dead Line!
I had designed Dead Line way before I had even thought of Millenials Kill! This drawing was from around year 2008! Well, I knew what I had to do. I had to redraw the illustration with the current members of Dead Line in my comic Millenials Kill. Here’s the new version.
I kind of found the glitch tool on Procreate and this was the first time I tried it out. It was cool! Though I did erase some of the glithes, because I didn’t want them to cover the characters’ faces.
And here’s also a screen recording of me drawing the illustration. There’s no sound in it, so feel free to listen to your own music while watching it.
Oh by the way, if you liked seeing the WIP video, I post those on my Patreon all the time! I’m always mentioning the Patreon but really, I like being able to survive!
So I have been getting a lot of wonderful (bot) comments on my anti-capitalist queer mafia parody webcomic Millenials Kill. But because there’s just so many, it’s impossible to reply to all my (bots) fans! So here’s a blog post where I reply to the most thoughtful comments that have been repeated several times. I’m so sorry I can’t personally reply to all of you (bots).
The fan (bot) comments:
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment, Hairstyles! I’m afraid that as my webcomic Millenials Kill (that you’ve commented on) is about organized crime, you shouldn’t search for message boards discussing the same topics. I believe you shouldn’t get feedback on mafia crimes I assume you’re interested in performing. Maybe you should try some other hobbies instead! I’ve heard that the knitting community has a wonderful messageboard you could join! All the best! – H-P
Hello 29 Gorgeous Braided Updo Ideas! I’m very happy you like my writing so a lot! I’m sorry but I think you’re mistaking me for someone else. I have no articles on AOL. I’m also not a specialist on home renovating or building codes (I assume that’s what you’re searching for based on your comment). I’m a specialist in comics, currently studying social sciences, but unfortunately not houses. But no worries, it’s an easy mistake to make! I hope you find your specialist elsewhere! Cheers! – H-P
Hello dear direct lenders! I’m really glad you took the time to leave a comment on your first visit to my website! I’m glad you seem to like my comic a lot! Fans like you are the best! See you around! – H-P
Hello cbdoilreviews! Thank you for your heartwarming comment! I hope you’ve found an enormous source of facts elsewhere, because this is indeed a fictional comic and not an info comic. Try out wikipedia to start with! Cheers! – H-P
Hello gold-ira! My info on this comic comes from my head, as the comic is fictional. Of course there’s some parts that are more real, but for examle, the whole town of Breamburg is completely made up. If you want to know where my inspiration comes from, I am planning on writing a whole blog post about that! But I can list a few here: – Homestuck by Andrew Hussie – Night Mind – Youtube channel – Koirasarja Bob Dimitri – on Youtube – Hannibal (TV-series) I hope this helps! All the best! – H-P
Hello dear Resource! I’m really glad you want to find more of my comic! You can either wait patiently or you can go over to my Patreon, where you can read at least 5 chapters more for only $6/month! I hope you’ll become a long time Patreon backer! Have a great year 2023! – H-P
Very flattering offers
Hello Ervin! Happy holidays to you too my friend! I’m really honored you thought of me with this job offer! This really shows your holiday spirits, as you’re always on the lookout on how to help your fellow netizens. Unfortunately I don’t really have time for another job. My hands are full with studies and drawing comics. I appreciate the offer though! Have a great 2023 as well! Best wishes! – H-P
Hello Bernardine! This is like SO random! You’re not even the first person to suggest this kind of work for me! I’m now starting to think my english skills are way above the average finn as so many people keep asking me to start a career in translating! This really brightened my day, even if I’m not that interested in starting translating. I hope you find someone else to work on the translations! All the best! – H-P
Hello Lucretia! Wow! You’re a third person who thinks I’d be good at translating! I’m so happy you think I seem hardworking and reliable! Thank you and have a great week! – H-P
Award for best comment goes to…
Hello Anessa! Sorry for only showing a part of your very long message (2401 words long to be exact). I assume you sent me this message, as you seem to be somewhat of an anti-capitalist yourself too! I’m always happy to discuss the problems of capitalism with someone who feels betrayed by the system catering to the richest 1%. I also hope you can find help in your faith and bible. I personally really like the part in bible where Jesus goes to a temple, gets shocked by the fact that the temple had been turned into a marketplace and starts flipping tables. Here’s a part of it:
“And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.” — Matthew 21:12–13
See how Jesus calls the people selling things thieves? Capitalism as it is didn’t of course exist back then, but the bible verse surely fits our current situation. Though I do have to admit, your long message was closer to conspiracy theories than anti-capitalism. I think you might want to touch grass and maybe go to therapy. Please don’t take this the wrong way. I know the battle against an injust system can be hard, so it’s totally okay to sometimes need some outside help! If a therapist seems hard to approach, you can also try to talk to a minister in your church! All the best! I hope you have a wonderful year 2023! – H-P
That’s all the comments I can reply to for now, sorry about that. If my fans (bots) like this, I’ll be happy to continue replying to you like this! I’m also very sorry for not accepting any of these comments, no matter how awesome they are. It’s not that I hate fans (bots)… it’s not you, it’s me. Anyway! See you!
I was watching a video by Danny Gonzalez about Conspiracy Theories while I was going through papers I have stacked everywhere. He talked a lot about time travel. Among my other papers, mostly art, I found evidence that I am a time traveler myself! (Or an oracle, but I think time travel is cooler.)
So here’s what I found out. I either predicted COVID19 in 2008, or I had already seen it happen in 2020, then gotten back to year 2008, made art about it, gotten amnesia and lost all my memories of my time traveling. Let me show you the proof!
Content warning: A disturbing drawing of a murderer clown and a victim with blood ahead
Proof of time travel
In this artwork we see lady liberty covering herself with a cloth (=mask) and she’s trapped inside a bubble with the weird shape that doesn’t resemble anything else than this…
Photo from: https://www.cdc.gov/media/ – PHIL ID #23312
How do we know it’s lady liberty? Well see the colors? It’s white, red and blue! The colors of American flag! It could also be Croatia, United Kingdom, Iceland, Norway, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Paraguay, Dallas, Labuan, Rocha, Sorbs, Federal Rebublic of Yugoslavia, Serbia and Montenegro, Republic of Crimea, Espiríto Santo, Fort Smith, Gaugauzia, Kayin State, Khahassia, Mannheim, Mindanao, Liberia, Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Sabah, Schleswig-Holstein, Valledupar, Turov, Serbia, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Transnistria, Maracaibo, Bydgoszcz, Manatí Puerto Rico, France, Iowa, Cabo Verde, Costa Rica, North Korea, Thailand, Cuba or Hawaii (and there’s even more options here) because they share the same colours, but let’s just go with the most obvious answer, USA.
So what about this artwork? Is this COVID19 too? (Art from 2008 again.)
Clearly this creature is shaped like the COVID19 virus and it’s breathing! COVID is a respiratory illness, so breathing is a clear symbol for… breathing! But wait, there’s more!
This one predicts the stock market crash after the COVID19 lockdown in 2020. And the artwork is from 2008!
As you can see, the woman’s dress is made from the stock page in a newspaper. There’s blood dripping from the top of the artwork, but the blood turns into spores, that look like COVID19 viruses (yet again!). The red color on the bottom of the page looks like a fire that’s going on somewhere in the distance. The fire symbolises the destruction COVID19 did to the stock market. The woman also seems to hold a glass of alcohol. That probably symbolises the alcohol people drank during lockdown while getting pantsdrunk. Or maybe it’s not alcohol, but blood!
Other predictions
Being able to predict COVID19 alone isn’t that impressive. A real time traveler would know so much more! So here’s some more examples of things I have predicted with my art!
Here’s a weird one. Seems like a completely normal drawing of a mermaid, right?
WRONG!
See the text hidden in the waves? “Pahuuden makkara” meaning the evil sausage. This is a prediction of the poisoned sausages of York in 2019! And the artwork is done in 2005!
How would you feel if I told you I also predicted the controversy behind the 2020 Froot Loops Toucan Mascot’s design change? Well I probably didn’t, but look, I made a lino print of a toucan in 2002! Close enough!
This artwork from year 2003 predicts a hit movie from 2014! Over 10 years after this piece was made, the movie Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda hit the box officed with a storm!
Now I assume you’re eager to hear my actual thoughts behind my own artworks. If you’re an intelligent human being, you probably guessed this was all just satire, so let’s go through the real ideas behind the artworks.
Lady Liberty and COVID19
I had just gotten new aquarelle pencils and learned that you can do all kinds of tricks with them. Tricks like scrape pieces off of them on wet paper! The “virus” on the first art piece is just me testing out how the pencil works on wet paper. I then decided to draw a sketch of a woman next to it. They are separate drawings at this point. But they look like they belong together, so I draw the bubble around them and add similar scraped aquarelle pencil on the woman’s cloth to make them match. That’s all there is. Two separate pieces on same paper to save paper.
COVID 19 virus breathing
That’s not COVID19, that’s pallosiira. It’s a character of mine based on an isopod species living in Finland. Also it’s not breathing, it’s sucking! For some reason Pallosiira sucks.
Market crash lady
The reason I used stock market page for the dress was that I didn’t want the dress to have words. It was the only page that had enough stuff other than words to cut out the dress shape. The background is yet again just me testing out the aquarelle pencils.
Killer Clown
This is fanart for a horror movie I saw.
Saimaa Ringed Seal
My teacher told us all to draw an animal. I chose the easiest one.
D&D podcasts
I was a tabletop rpg nerd as a teen. This is just fanart for a game I played.
Evil sausage mermaid
I was going to send this to a teen magazine under the pseudonym Pahuuden Makkara, but accidentally also put my real name on it! So I never sent it in.
Toucan
Yet another piece where someone else told me what to make (an animal) and I chose the simplest one.
Ford Mustang
It’s just a horse.
Sharktopus movie
I was obsessed with sea monsters at one point. It’s not even a sharktopus, but my point was to show that if you just squint your eyes enough and dig deep enough, anything can be a prediction of almost anything.
Did you like this post? Meybe you’ll like my other posts where I talk about my own art process in a more serious tone! The tag Art-Analysis is where I store my ramblings of my own art and the process of making it.
You have probably read about a million articles on how to be a conscious consumer. I have too, we all have. But I have come to the realization that this whole conscious consumer thing is a hoax and a lie. If you think we can be wasteful or not be wasteful, but being a conscious consumer will not save the world, you’re absolutely right! Unfortunately media wants to tell us that with small changes we can change the world.
I love small changes, my whole blog is filled with small changes! But I don’t believe those will change the world if we don’t also make big political changes. This is why I made this comic.
When I first posted this comic on Twitter and Instagram, many people misunderstood my point. So let’s make this VERY clear. I am not saying this so that you can think “Okay, so the small things I do don’t matter, better just buy a big car, a big house and use as much energy and resources as I can! YOLO!” I am saying this because we shouldn’t be obsessing over the small details.
Did the climate activist eat imported soy? Who cares, they are trying to make bigger changes happen! Did the environmentally conscious politician wear fast fashion, that means nothing if they manage to stop big corporations from dumping waste water into our lakes! Are you watching people, trying to see their mistakes like this? You are wasting your time. Instead of making one person feel bad for what they eat, you can spend your time to get an office full of people change their morning lattes to oat lattes.
tl;dr
If you absolutely have to police someone, police yourself or police big corporations. Individual activists policing each other will not further our cause for a more sustainable world.
June was quite a boring month, sorry about that. The most interesting part of it happened inside my head while I was sleeping, which makes that quite uninteresting. (The moment someone says “I had such a weird dream…” I get so bored I fall asleep instantly. Rambling incoherent explanations of dreams aren’t interesting!!)
I did do a lot of crafts and I mended a lot of pants. I actually managed to fix 4 pairs of pants in June! On top of that I also made two pairs of fashionable pants! Not entirely from skratch though, I had some pants that were way too small for me, so I deconstructed them and made something new out of them! I might want to make a blog post about those too at some point. (I have to say, I do love having my very own blog where I can post whatever I want and write as much as I want with no fear of censorship or character limit!)
So let’s get into the comic already!
But before that I must say this: Are you Interested in reading all of the No Buy Year posts? Go to my No Buy Year -tag! Or start from the first post to read them all in the rightful order.
H-P Lehkonen presents, no buy comic of June:
Can you see how much I’m sweating in every panel? June was very hot here in Finland. We also happen to live in top floor of our apartment building and that makes our home even hotter. Finnish houses are built to keep the heat in, not out! Winters are great in these apartments, but the summers suck. July has started off way cooler even if there’s a deadly heatwave tormenting the rest of Europe. I am worried, as always. Climate catastrophe isn’t just our future. It’s here right now.
If you’re into my this whole H-P Lehkonen no buy challenge thing, you might also like this comic:
It’s a comic I made a couple of years ago and it talks about sustainability, zero waste lifestyle and poverty.
One more thing. I want to thank you all for reading my blog! Looking at my statistics some people actually come here to read my comics! I know you can just get these on social media, but really… that just isn’t as effective! I don’t have all this space to write whatever I want there!
I’ve been to a lot of conventions. The first convention I ever went to was Nekocon in Kuopio in 2006. I was just a visitor back then, but nowadays I’ve been doing all kinds of things in conventions. So let me write some of my best lesser known convention tips for comic artists!
I’m not going to tell you all the things other people have already said a million times. I have in fact organized a wonderful collaboration ebook called Making Money from Webcomics, that was made in Saari Residency in Finland by an international comic artist group!
Cover illustration by Eelis Nilukka
You can read this PDF ebook for free from the Helsinki Comics Center website here. I feel that I don’t need to repeat everything said in that ebook.
But I have some small tips that aren’t mentioned as often. I have been to conventions in Europe and in North America. All of the tips don’t work in every convention, but I’ll just write them out anyways. Use them if you will.
1. Get an orange or yellow high-visibility jacket or vest
Why? Well, conventions are often full. Like really REALLY full. If you want to go from place to place fast, wear a high visibility vest. People will assume you’re on your way to fix something and they will give you space. This won’t work if the vest is on top of a cosplay though.
2. Convention tickets cost too much? Host a panel!
Many conventions give out free tickets to people who do some kind of a programme. If you feel like you’re dumb af and can’t talk anything intelligent, host a panel. Invite people who can talk about things to it. Your job is just to ask them questions and make sure everyone gets equal amount of time to reply. I have often gone to a convention where I have an artist alley table, but the table plus the tickets to get in are adding up! So I host a panel or do a lecture about something relevant to the convention’s themes. That way I get free ticket for myself. I often share the table, so my table mate has to take care of the table while I’m doing the panel, but other than that it’s pretty simple. Also, some conventions give you free food if you host programmes!
(I also have to add, if you want to become a memorable comics artist, doing talks and programmes helps on that too.)
3. Make your business cards as stickers
I used to have normal business cards and after every convention I found them in the trash cans around the area. I had paid to get them printed! Next time I printed more, I printed circular stickers with my website and social medias instead. I never saw my business cards in trash cans anymore. I did sometimes see them out in the wild! Like in bar bathroom walls or telephone poles outside. But that’s just free advertising!
(Some say bookmarks work too, but I personally throw those away just as much as business cards.)
4. If you want to network, volunteer at the convention
Interested on networking? If you’re a total beginner and you don’t know anyone I suggest instead of trying to mingle with the cool kids in the bar, just volunteer at a convention. You get access to the greenrooms and backstages where you get to be the person the cool kids are so happy to see! The guest of honor needs a pen? You’re the volunteer who gets it for them! You also get to mingle with the other convention organisers while you’re on your break. Besides, if you don’t know how to approach people, it’s way easier to start a conversation when you’re carrying a pile of chairs together with someone than if you have no common goal at all.
(If you’re afraid that the cool kids would treat you like a lesser person or as someone not worthy of their time because you’re “working for them”… don’t worry. The actually cool people don’t do that. And the ones that do… They’re not the ones you want to network with. If they don’t treat the staff right, you really think they would help a beginner artist out? Not gonna happen.)
5. Network with the staff
The previous point works the other way around too. People who are working in a convention are VERY motivated to make the comics scene a better place to be in. They are the people you want to hang out with. The cool famous comics artist might be a cool person, but everyone is already trying to get something out of them and that gets tiring. That’s why it’s not always worth it to try to force yourself in on their inner circle. I know a ton of people who in one year are organising chairs and the next year they’ve published a comics anthology.
6. What conventions get you the best sales?
How to choose the convention that has a better chance to get you really good sales on your comic books? Check out who are the main guests! If all the guests are actors, don’t even bother.Selling fanart of the characters they play might work really well, but your original comics aren’t going to be a hit. If there’s a lot of comics artists as a guest on the other hand… that’s the convention you want to go to! The visitors often choose the events they attend based on the guests, so you need to choose the events you go to based on the people that are going to be there. You need comic fans to sell comics. Movie fans don’t buy them as much.
7. Apply for a travel grant
I know that about 45% of my audience is based in USA. This might not be for you, I’m sorry. But I also know that about 40% is from Finland and 10% from Sweden! This is for you. If you go to a convention in another country, especially if you go for the first time, you probably won’t sell much. No matter how much your friends who have been there for years tell you they sell so well and they make same kind of stuff as you. They sell well because they’ve been there before. They have established themselves as a part of that community. If you’re going for the first time you might very well make so little money that it doesn’t even cover your travels!
So apply for a travel grant. When the grant pays for your travel expenses you’re not going to be in as much pressure to sell a lot and you can concentrate on building some new connetions.
(Tip to Finns, sorry for the moon language: Kun kirjoitat apurahahakemuksen, älä kirjoita siihen että menet coniin. Coni on lainasana, joka kuulostaa epäammattimaiselta. Käytä vaikkapa sanaa messut, tapahtuma tai festivaali. Esim: Haen 2000€ matkaan ComicCon -sarjakuvamessuille Puolaan.</moonlanguage>)
(Another extra tip for everyone! To make it easier to get grants, email the convention and ask if they can send you a PDF invitation! It can look like anything, as long as it at least pretends to be official. A paper like that makes the grant foundation believe that your trip is well planned and legit! Basically every convention I’ve asked has been happy to write me an invitation.)
8. Volunteer in your local comics organization for better networking
Okay so this is a networking tip again. But let me tell you this works! I have been volunteering for the Finnish Comics Society long enough that I eventually became a board member and then the chairman. That job is not paid, it’s still just volunteering, but with more responsibilities. But I gain so much from it! First of all I get to know everything happening in comics, I get to go to every event ever, I get invitations to art exhibition openings and so on. But for networking it’s amazing.
This has just happened to me recently. I went to a comic con and saw very interesting art on a table. I went to talk to the person behind the table. They replied to me, but it wasn’t really a conversation. They wanted me to buy something and leave (not very good networking from their end). When I mentioned them I am the chairman of Finnish Comics Society, the person even got up and shaked my hand! Suddenly I was worth networking with! I have to admit, I didn’t like the attitude, but I understand if the convention has been long and you can’t bring yourself to be as excited about every person you meet. This artist was actually very wonderful, they were just tired from the con.
This helps me a lot outside of Finland too, because people often know about Finnish Comics Society, but they definitely don’t know who I am. So just having that thing they recognize, me being a board member, helps us connect in some way!
9. Start a mailing list
This isn’t only a convention tip, it’s an all around great tip for any comics artist. Start a mailing list, because on social media you can’t be sure who sees your posts and who doesn’t. I use Mailchimp for my mailing list, but I actually just started by sending a lot of emails from my own personal email! It doens’t have to be anything fancy, main point is that it’s a direct way people are sure to get the information on where you’re going and what are you doing!
I send emails about once a month or two months. I never send affiliate marketing links or spam. That’s not the point here. The point is to send people package of information on which cons you’ll be in, what comics have you published and where to read them!
I would also suggest getting your own website, like this one that I have. I have been posting my comics on Instagram and Twitter for a long time, but I have noticed that it’s actually really hard to browse through all of them and read them on one go! So that’s why I changed my old portfolio website into a blog oriented website. People can actually read all my comics, I can put alt texts in them!! (That hasn’t been a feature on Twitter since I started posting there, it’s very new.) I can make up my own categories and people can search through them based on that! It’s way better than having them all in one feed on Instagram where it’s impossible to organize them into categories.
Also, Millenials Kill wouldn’t work on Instagram at all. It needs to be read one chapter at a time, not panel by panel or page by page.
So those were the convention tips for comic artists! I hope they help!
I just realized many of these convention tips for comic artists were about networking. This is because I have personally found networking to be very difficult but at the same time one of the best things to help me further my career in comics. I have gotten almost all of my paid jobs in comics because I talked to someone who then told me about an opportunity I would have missed otherwise. I rarely drink alcohol, so networking in a bar is not for me. I’m also quite bad at small talk so I need a common ground with the person to be able to talk with them. I hope these tips help you too, because I have had to spend 10 years to find them and finally be able to network!
This whole post about convention tips to comic artists started from quite a weird place. When I get anxious, I tend to start cleaning. That’s what I’ve been doing a lot lately as I’m waiting for the results to come in from the University I have applied to. As I was cleaning, I came accross a huge pile of convention badges. Ever since my very first convention I have saved all the badges from the events where I’ve been either on the artist alley, volunteering, as a speaker or as a featured guest of some sort!
The badges were in a horrible messy pile, so I decided to film the process of me untangling them and talk about the different events I’ve been to. If you want to see me talk about the conventions I’ve been to, here’s that video!
Ps. I often do lectures on how to make webcomics into your career, which includes this kind of talk about convention tips! If you’re interested in getting me to your event/school/organization to do a talk, you can contact me through the contact form on my About page!
As many of you know, I’m the author of Life Outside the Circle webtoon, a comic about two men finding love in the Finnish countryside. Let’s talk about how I made the comic!
I could go on and on about the plot and characters and everything else, but on this post I want to concentrate on the art. So I’ll tell you the main points about the other parts of the process in short.
History of Life Outside the Circle
I got the idea for Life Outside the Circle webtoon in 2014. At that point I hadn’t even started my first Webtoon comic Immortal Nerd yet! In 2015 I started making my first Webtoon original series Immortal Nerd and after that one was over, I asked if webtoon would be interested in Life Outside the Circle. They were!
The plot I had was initially only written in Finnish. I paid a translator to translate it to English for me. Then I worked together with my editor Bekah Caden to make the comic the best it can be.
The Art of my Webtoon
I personally love the art of Life Outside the Circle. I’m so proud of the things I did with it! I think it’s the best looking comic I’ve done in my life, which is why I want to talk about the choices I made with the art in more detail.
Life Outside the Circle webtoon is in grayscale, there’s only one spot in the comic that uses colour. That part is the Helsinki Pride! And in there too there’s no other coloring than the rainbows that are in pastel rainbow colours. Like this:
I have gotten wonderful comments on the colors. People have told me the impact of suddenly having the colorful rainbow flags surprising and memorable. The podcast Talking Comics told in their Thirsty on Toon series that they didn’t even remember the comic being black and white, because it felt colourful.
The drawing process
First of all, I sketched the comic panels separately on red pencil.
Then I inked them with a NIKKO school nib and indian ink. The kind of a nib that you dip in an ink bottle.
Then I colored the smaller details with copic markers in different tones of gray.
And in the end I used ink diluted with water to do the larger grey areas and the shadows.
Then I scanned the illustrations and edited the red out of them on Photoshop, making them greyscale.
Here’s an example of what the scans looked right out of the scanner. Bad… The diluted ink wetted the paper and made it warp even if I used thicker paper.
But with a bit of editing I turned this into a neat comic panel!
So this was the process for the normal comic panels. But this alone isn’t the thing that made me love the art I did for Life Outside the Circle… This is:
The emotions! I love drawing them! Let’s analyse these a bit further.
The Analysis
In this picture I have changed the tools I used for inking the picture. Instead of using a thin nib, I used a brush with the ink. Normally I would also make sure the perspective was believable, but in this one I intentionally bent the perspective. It’s warped. I did this so that the panel would look like what Juha is supposed to feel. Juha feels dizzy and he feels heavy. The darker heavier lines make the panel feel claustrophobic. Exactly what I’m trying to portray!
I use a lot of silhouettes in my comics. There’s three reasons for them. 1. They are simple. The readers eye doesn’t focus on anything else than the main point I want to portray. 2. They create contrast. For a very important part in the comic it’s good to create more impact with contrast. 3. They are fast to draw. I save a lot of time with them.
Here’s something I don’t save time with. Panels like this take ages to draw! But I often loved to start a chapter with a beautiful tall illustration of either nature or actual buildings in Helsinki. I love drawing environments and I think drawings like this create sense of time. A beautiful moment the characters have stopped to enjoy.
So what about this one? Quite often I had to draw the same places over and over again. That was pretty boring. Not for me really, I could just reuse the same drawings but I didn’t want to do that too often. So sometimes I showed this aeriel image from the place! I used this in one panel in Helsinki too, but that one you have to go see yourself from here.
On this panel Juha is angry, but he’s trying to keep it in. I drew him with a black crayon, pressing hard and making jagged lines. The illustration was very big, but I scaled it on Photoshop to fit the panel. I think the artwork looks angrier, because I drew it with “angry motions”. While holding the crayon tight I tensed all my muscles. I made myself feel the anger Juha feels and I think it shows on the illustration.
So what about sadness and helplessness? I’ve drawn this with a very thin marker with no sketch. I held the marker very lightly to make it shake a bit more. I would let my hand make mistakes, like the lines that are too long on Juha’s hair. That’s not how I draw his hair normally. This all makes him look very anxious. I drew like I was scared of the paper! The coloring is also threwn in there in blobs, not spread smoothly like normally.
This is what makes me believe Life Outside the Circle is one of my most artistic comics. I set out to portray emotions and even the art, not just the story, emphasises the emotions.
I hope reading me patting myself on the back doesn’t make you think I’m a horribly self centered person. It’s quite sad that artists are often expected to dislike their own works and only find faults in them. Don’t get me wrong, I find faults in all my comics, Life Outside the Circle webtoon included! But the comic is done and published. Only focusing on the faults wouldn’t change anything. Letting myself enjoy my work and celebrate the best parts of it makes me want to draw more and come up with new ways to make my art even better.
And if you want to, you can subscribe to my mailing list and hear all the latest news about my comics career about once a month. No spam, no affiliate marketing.
