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!
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.
My emotional abuse comic, I Survived Him, is definitely one of my favorite works of my own. I’m especially proud of the art in this one. The comic is now available on my itch.io again! But before you go get it for yourself, I want to tell you more about it and show some of my favorite pages.
I Survived Him was made in 2020. Even if it is a comic about emotional abuse, it doesn’t describe the abuse in detail. The comic begins from the moment the abusive relationship was over and the story describes the process of letting go and healing. I want to show you the first scene of the comic.
I don’t often make autobiographical comics about such tough subjects. Portraying myself as the victim in my art isn’t really something I want to do. I very much believe in the theory that one can change the way they see themselves by controlling how they talk about themselves. Of course one has to be realistic, but I don’t want to unnecessarily dwell on the negative parts of my life. Making a comic takes a long time and if I were to make a comic about something very traumatic, I’d almost have to relive the trauma for months on end! I’m totally not up for that! No way! What I can relive is the healing process.
This comic was drawn in 2020, now that I reread it in 2022 I felt powerful, I felt at peace and I felt strong! I have survived this and I am proud of that. When I finished the comic I still felt scared, and some days I still do, but it becomes rarer every day. I love seeing this comic and remembering how far I’ve come.
The Art
I told in the beginning that I was especially happy with the art on this one, so here are two pages from my absolute favorite scene artwise.
On the first page’s first panel you see me laying on my face in a bottom of a rocky pit. The pit is drawn on normal paper with ink markers and pencils, but that me! I drew myself on a piece of used napkin! The two illustrations were then combined on Photoshop. I love how I used the drawing material to really show the desperation.
And the rocky pit… man, that’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever drawn. I love it. I also love the combination of pencil and ink. All the illustrations that illustrate my memories are drawn on pencil only and I love it.
As said, I’m very proud of this one. I think this comes only second to Life Outside the Circle. It might be a good idea to later write a blog entry about the medias I used for that one too… I love the art on Life Outside the Circle!
So where can you get this comic?
I have a store on itch.io. The emotional abuse comic is $5, but you can choose if you want to leave me a tip. It’s up to you! I always try to keep my comics accessible to most people, so the tipping helps a lot in keeping the comic price fairly low.
Please note, despite this blog post having alt texts for more accessible reading, the ebook doesn’t have that.
