Cartoonarchy

New blog!

2011-04-05T14:26:00.003+03:00

I´m not using this blog anymore. Go to http://cartoonarchy.com/

Wild, wild, broadcasting...

2010-07-23T10:32:00.003+03:00

So... Time to start blogging again.

Just wanted to inform about some of the new avenues of Kim where you can get all your weekly Kim-goodness. Ummmhhh... Yeah...

Well, turns out I'm becoming a house-regular on Art&Story Extreme! Which is nice. Art&Story was one of my favorite podcasts, and being a part of it's sillier little brother is a great privilege. I think Wedensday is my day. Or monday. Or none of the above. Anyhow, you'll find me, and if not, the other shows ain't half bad either. So go be EXTREME!

I've also gotten an audioboo-page where I talk in 5 minute chunks about... stuff. Art. Space Monkey. Fear. Some of it is good content, some is... less. But go hear my boos anyhow.

And I've gotten a uStream channel, where I draw stuff live. I'm gonna do a lot more of this VERY soon. Actually, today. I'll announce a time in some hours on twitter, where you should follow me. I've done one sessions where draw whatever you want me to draw from start to finish in one hour. It was fun, and I'll repeat it regularly(And later today). Anyhow... Check out my channnel on uStream. Or just watch my last session here:

So yeah. Bizzi me. Gonna update more soon...

Vacation from lying...

2010-07-09T12:24:00.002+03:00

I´m taking a much needed vacation from my Wednesday lies. I will be back in some form come fall, stronger than ever. Have a nice summer!

Sunday/Wednesday LIES, LIES, LIES! Right hand work 2...

2010-06-27T12:20:00.003+03:00

What? Is it Wednesday? No, it´s Sunday! Does this mean we´re back to Sunday Lies?
NO!!!
It only means that I´m a bit behind. Bad mood and inflamed shoulder.
Which is exactly what this one is about.
Drawn exclusively with my wrong hand.

Wednesday Lies: The Fog of Draw...

2010-06-16T20:10:00.006+03:00

Due to arm injury I couldn´t translate todays lie. Which is about drawing with the wrong hand, and was drawn with my wrong hand. Check it out here.

So... Instead I took the translation of the very first Wednesday Lie I ever drew. I didn´t even know it was gonna be a regular thing then. I just had to draw something. Anyhow... Arm needs rest. Enjoy.

Wednesday Lies: Arm...

2010-06-09T21:21:00.001+03:00

Wednesday Lies: Oslo Comics Expo part 1 of 3...

2010-06-02T20:00:00.000+03:00

No more Sunday Lies?

2010-05-30T14:15:00.003+03:00

Writing this from Oslo, where I've been at the fantastic Oslo Comics Expo. Got to meet a of nice and talented people, sell a good batch of comics, trade fanzines, and drink a lot of beer. Unlike many of my colleagues I managed to stop drinking before it was too late, and I'm not too hung over today.

But... Of course I didn't remember to update my translated Sunday Lies. So no new comic today.

This is a part of a reoccuring problem. With translated comics on Sundays, that means three different day a week I publish webcomics. And I'm going to up that number soon. And... To be frank, I just can't juggle it all at once.

But I'm not going to stop translating my autobiographical lies. I'm just moving them to Wednesday, so I can update them and the Norwegian ones at the same time. Ideally this means I sometimes will translate the comic the same day as I draw it, and the lies will be more current. So it's all good.

But it does mean you have to wait for Wednesday....

Sunday(?) Lies: Juggling part 1...

2010-05-26T23:53:00.003+03:00

It's Sunday, right? Anyhow... Part 2 was last week. This week is part 1.

Be Supreme...

2010-05-16T14:49:00.002+03:00

Now... More than a few of you reading this blogg have probably heard of me through Art&Story Extreme, the wonderful podcast that I'm a regular guest on. So then you already know about Art&Story and the new Art&Story Supreme.

But to those of you who don't know, I wanna sing some praises to the guys at Art&Story.

Jerzy Drozd, Mark Rudolph, and Kevin Cross, who all have their unique expertise and approach to making comics. Each week they delve deeply into another issue related to comics, whether it be technical, philosophical, or having to do with marketing and business. Sometimes it's the basics, other times it's high falutin' theories, and other times it's just silly fun. Basically it's my favorite podcast to listen to while working.

And not enough with that... Art&Story Extreme is a daily podcast which is more centered on the daily studio talk. Just ramblings, fun stuff, silly stuff, and the type of stuff you talk about in between drawing and writing comics. And fart-jokes. And me as a guest, now every Wednesday.

But finally... They're launched Art&Story Supreme, which is a paid service. What you get is a whole slew of other podcasts, where the hosts ramble about issues either alone, or in a weekly extra Extreme, or a monthly extra full Art&Story. And you get access to the Art&Storriors forum, and office hours where you can talk about your comics with the Mark, Jerzy, and Kevin.

My favorite aspect of Supreme is the extra podcasts. It's a lot of fun listening to them going go deeper into their own favorite issues and struggles and rambles than they allow themselves on the non-paying podcasts.

The forum, apart from the silly, silly "Storrior" name, is also excellent. Everyone seems to really put a lot of thought and effort into their topics and replies, and it's a place on the internet where you can nerd out to the fullest without fear of trolls and silly people.

So...

Basically what I'm saying is that you should check out Art&Story, and if you're an aspiring artist or writer, you should definitely think about joining Supreme. It's 10$ a month, or 80$ a year, and you really get a ton of content and whole bunch of new internet friends for the laughably low price.

To sum up: Art&Story Supreme has my fullest endorsement, and I honestly believe it's worth the price of admission for most comic-creators. So sign up today for a free trial, or just check out their regular podcasts to see if you like it.

Cheers!

Sunday Lies: Juggling part 2...

2010-05-16T14:20:00.002+03:00

Originally drawn and published last wednesday. That is the 12th of May, 2010.

Part 1 will be published next week. But they don't really have much in common except the juggling.

Anyhow... Enough has probably been said about Frank Frazetta's death, so I'll keep it short.

Most aspiring artists, in their tweens and teens, have a phase where in our minds technique and draftsmanship are elevated to the highest of arts. That's usually the phase where we start loving Dali and the Post-Raphaelites and fantasy-artists. I went through a lot of fantasy artists, like Joe Jusko and Luis Royo, and some I still love like Simon Bisley. But whenever I look back at them, a little more of the charm I once saw is gone. The more I learn about technique, the less interest a Dali or Royo holds on me. But Frazetta... Every time I go back, I see more and more. Because his work is unique, in all art. And I know that every time I go back, I will always see more.

So, rest in peace, Frank Frazetta. You will continue to inspire me forever.

Sunday Lies: The Day Goes By...

2010-05-09T20:33:00.000+03:00

Originally drawn and published in Norwegian the 28th of October, 2009.

Sunday Lies: Ideas part 1...

2010-05-02T20:33:00.000+03:00

Originally drawn and published in Norwegian the 9th of December, 2009.

She cannae take it, cap'n...

2010-04-29T00:30:00.003+03:00

Things are going too fast for me these days. But stuff gets done. The plan is always to blog a bit more regularly on both this and my Norwegian blog, but now that a lot of stuff worth blogging about is happening, I don't find the time and energy to blog about it. But here's some of it:

I now have a collection of 19 autobiographical lies on sale at Indyplanet. Hopefully the price trouble gets fixed. It should be $9.99. Please buy it and support me.

Wow! I'm published in English! Insanity!

Anyhow...

It's also available for free download. Please review it, or find ways to print and distribute it. Click here to download and review.

Of course all of this is released under a Creative Commons attribution license, which means that you can do whatever you want with it(as long as you attribute it to me, and tell me). So if you're interested in publishing any of it in... wherever you want... Please do it. Drop me a line to get better 600 dpi resolution.

So I'm available in English and for free? Insanity, I tell you!

More coming... sometime... including download and buy links for the sidebar.

Sunday Lies: Work...

2010-04-25T20:33:00.000+03:00

Originally drawn and published in Norwegian the 7th of October 2009.

Sunday lies: Knuckles...

2010-04-18T20:53:00.001+03:00

Originally drawn and published 29th of April 2009.

Sunday lies: Summer's coming...

2010-04-12T03:27:00.004+03:00

Summer is still a good while off, but it was sunny and you could pretend like it was hot today. And I did spend the day inside. So...

Originally drawn and published 15th April 2009.

Sunday lies: Excuses...

2010-04-05T13:34:00.003+03:00

Ops... So I might have forgotten to post this one yesterday. But it's probably Sunday somewhere in the universe, isn't it? And time is relative and all. Anyhow... I thought it fitting to post my lie about excuses...

Originally drawn and published in Norwegian 23rd of September 2009.

Easter and the kindness of strangers...

2010-03-30T21:54:00.006+03:00

So I'm all out of daily-sketches, and I promised something would happen. And while it will take some time before that something actually happens, it is time to officially reveal exactly what:

As I unofficially revealed on Art and Story Extreme! I gave up on my daily sketches because the one I did of a Space Monkey Vs a Frost Giant was simply too cool for school. So I decided that instead of regular boring daily sketches, I should make a weekly sketch-comic about the life of a Space Monkey, in which YOU(yes, you) decide what happens next.

Basically it's going to be an improvised adventure where I use twitter and other social networks to let the readers decide what's going to happen, either by voting on alternatives put out by me, or by suggesting future twists.

And it's going to be my first real experiment in doing a proper webcomic page. Yes, and internet page. Not another blogspot-thingamabob!

How is this funded, you ask?

Well, most of the funding is already in, thanks to the neat little donations button on the side of the page. I've gotten some contributions that are enough for me to dare to order a webhost and a domain name. What's the name? It will be revealed shortly... (But it's nothing fancy)...

And, the awesome Jerzy Drozd, of Art&Story fame, who just launched both Art&Story Supreme and GoGoIllustration, has put up two sketches for sale for my benefit:

Yes, it's Megatron and Storm Shadow. So go to GoGoIllustration to buy them and more!

How's that for awesomeness?

Anyhow... where was I? Yes... I will be launching the new comic pretty soon. But first I'm going to take an Easter break (Though I may write a blogpost, or two, perhaps). The translated Sunday Lie will update on Sunday, but no more drawings until after Easter. Then I may be posting some older comics for a little while, until I can get my head around making a proper site for the webcomic. But I can promise a launch within a month.

So... Please support me by donating, or by buying Jerzy's fantastic sketches.

And... a million thanks to those who already donated!!! (You know who you are).

And... Have a great Easter!

Sunday lies: The mood...

2010-03-28T18:50:00.000+03:00

Originally drawn and published 11th of march 2009 on my Norwegian blog...

No More Daily Sketches EVAH!!!!

2010-03-26T18:16:00.002+02:00

I guess this is the final daily sketch.

It's for the Kids Read Comics charity auction.

So now...

... the end is near...

... and the daily sketches face...

... the final curtain...

The End.

No more daily sketches countdown 02...

2010-03-25T18:21:00.001+02:00

Drawn yesterday.

Only one more daily sketch after this.

No more daily sketches countdown 03...

2010-03-23T18:17:00.004+02:00

So I may have counted wrong how many sketches I had in the backlog.

Ran out today.

Maybe I forgot about or lost a sketch?

Anyhow... to complete the countdown I guess I'll have to draw sketches again.

Like this one, drawn today. Took about 20 to 30 minutes.

Inspired by the Joe-loving chaps at gogoillustration.

And by finding an old G.I.Joe magazine at the office.

Mainframe was always my favourite.

(Possibly because he was the least likely to be anyone elses favourite).

No more daily sketches countdown 04...

2010-03-22T18:11:00.001+02:00

Sunday lies: Great expectations...

2010-03-21T19:26:00.001+02:00

Originally drawn and published in Norwegian the 8th of June, 2009.

No more daily sketches countdown 05...

2010-03-19T18:18:00.002+02:00

No more daily sketches countdown 06...

2010-03-18T20:17:00.003+02:00

The finished Mr Ghoul, whose drawing process is chronicled here.

No more daily sketches countdown 07...

2010-03-16T20:06:00.001+02:00

No more daily sketches countdown 08...

2010-03-15T14:53:00.002+02:00

Sunday lies: Cats...

2010-03-14T22:43:00.003+02:00

Originally drawn and published 14th of October 2009.

No more daily sketches countdown 09...

2010-03-12T19:21:00.003+02:00

No more daily sketches countdown 10...

2010-03-11T19:53:00.002+02:00

So I decided to stop the daily sketches and begin something... new.

It's still gonna be something that's sketched and updated several times a week.

But not daily sketches.

Nope.

No more of those bastards.

But right now I'm gonna just finish publishing the backlog of sketches,

and set that as a deadline for beginning my...

...

... other project.

Cheers!

Daily Sketch 14...

2010-03-09T18:15:00.005+02:00

Drawn today. Brush and pencil.

Me thinks I'll start doing the daily sketches the same day as publishing them.

Backlog can be used to fill in tough days.

Yes, good plan.

Edit: No. Bad plan. But now have good plan. Good secret plan.

Daily Sketch 13...

2010-03-08T18:48:00.001+02:00

Brush, pen, and pencil.

Sunday lies: Kim time...

2010-03-07T11:07:00.003+02:00

Drawn and published on my norwegian blog the 25th of March, 2009.

Daily Sketch 12...

2010-03-05T19:01:00.003+02:00

Daily Sketch 11...

2010-03-04T17:37:00.001+02:00

Quickie, less than 10 minutes, brush and pen.

Daily Sketch 10...

2010-03-02T18:11:00.002+02:00

Pencils drawn over a few days, cirka 30 minutes inking, pencil, ink, brush.

Making a daily sketch: Mister Ghoul eating...

2010-03-02T02:32:00.005+02:00

So... I decided to try filming and commenting while drawing an upcoming sketch. It ended up with lot's of mumbling and some singing and lot of sillyness and a really nice... or ghoulish, rather... ehmmm.... ghoul. Yes. Watch. Enjoy.

It was fun. Wanna do it again. Anyone like? I like.

And... yes... Daily sketches... Is it cheating to make the sketches and wait to publish them and still call them daily?

I mean... I try to make one sketch per day,but sometimes I do less, that is... none, or... sometimes I make more. And I don't have easy access to a scanner right now. But... Should I start trying to do the sketch and publish it the same day when I get access to a scanner? Just use the backlog of sketches for the days I can't do one?

The problem with that is that it requires uploading each time. And it's a lot more practical to be able to upload a small bunch in a row.

What to do, what to do...

Daily Sketch 09...

2010-03-01T17:01:00.000+02:00

Quickie, less than 10 minutes, brush and pen...

Sunday lies: It's snowing...

2010-02-28T17:03:00.001+02:00

Daily Sketch 08...

2010-02-26T17:00:00.000+02:00

Ca. 30 minutes, brush, pen, pencil, and white-out.

Daily Sketch 07...

2010-02-25T17:00:00.000+02:00

Quickie, less than 10 minutes, brush and pen.

Daily Sketch 06...

2010-02-23T17:00:00.000+02:00

Quickie, less than 10 minutes, brush and pen.

Daily Sketch 05...

2010-02-22T20:33:00.001+02:00

ca. 40 minutes inking, pencils doodled over a few days, 42 x 29,7 cm, brush and pen.

Oh, and it's the Undertaker Vs Marvin the Martian

Sunday lies: Donations...

2010-02-21T15:30:00.003+02:00

Starting today, and each Sunday from now on, I will present a translated autobiographical lie from my Norwegian Blog.

This one just happens to be about the donations button. And... More reasons, objective reasons actually, for donating will be updated here some time in the future. Expect fancy prices.

Anyhow... Sunday Lies is the new feature, Sunday Art-Week review is out(But may come back in some form some time some how).

Daily Sketch 04...

2010-02-19T17:00:00.000+02:00

Pencil and brush. Sketched over several day, then inked in ca. 40 minutes.

Art for my Pickmans Model adaption. To be reworked and reinked at some time.

Daily Sketch 03...

2010-02-18T17:00:00.000+02:00

Brush and pen, less than 10 minutes...

Daily Sketch 02...

2010-02-16T17:00:00.000+02:00

Brush and pen, less than 10. minutes.

Daily Sketch 01...

2010-02-15T17:00:00.001+02:00

Brush, pencil, pen, ca. 20 minutes.

Every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday I will from now on present one scanned sketch. Basically I've been working more and more exclusively digitally the last years, and I need and want to do stuff on paper more regularly again. So why now daily sketches?

Now... I will be cheating and already have a backlog of sketches to post, but the goal will be doing one sketch each day(As I have been for the last two weeks or so). I'll be posting from the backlog in order to be able to make the posts in bulk and save time, and also in case life makes daily sketches hard some time.

Anyhow... This here ghoul with a Lovecraft-quote is the first one up...

Ch-ch-ch-changes....

2010-02-14T13:58:00.002+02:00

So there's not been many updates lately, but... well... It's been a year or so since I started this, and my Norwegian blog, so it's time for some changes... First... Starting tomorrow... Daily sketches each Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday...

Apart from that... I will hopefully be doing some much needed redesigns, and unrolling some more regular/semi-regular features in the coming weeks... so... Stay tuned!

Special St.Satan comic....

2010-02-05T19:23:00.004+02:00

St. Satan is going to record their new CD, release it, and have a release party all in one day, and I'm going to document it in a special limited edition "making-of"-comic and release it all in the same day.

Since they've cheated and made their cover earlier, I've cheated and made 20 hand-inked covers for the comic. Apart from the 20 limited editions, the whole shebang will be uploaded in high-res for anyone to print. Hopefully all in time for the release-party.

Inking the same drawing 20 times was... fun...

...

More info on St.Satans blog, or you can just follow them on Twitter or Myspace or Facebook or stalk them through the streets of Bergen...

Kjem på sleppefesten i morgon for at kjøpe CDen och serien och sjå ein sikkert heidundranes konsert.

Sunday Art-Week Review 23?

2009-12-07T01:04:00.007+02:00

It´s not Sunday here anymore by... nine minutes... But still... I actually have some updates.

First up is this weeks autobiographical lie:

I did a miniconcert on Tuesday, and had not had time to... well... Really prepare... As usual. So the usual stress got to it´s usual hights, and when it was time to draw the usual lie on Wednesday I was just... Empty. Which is the title. Luckilly I got this image in my head pretty quickly, all finished and stuff. I long wanted to do something with thin light fines and light shading. But... I´m gonna have to do more with that style because I think I was a bit empty that day, and can do better another day. Still... Clever way to not have to draw to much on a hard but satisfied day.

Speaking of the concert, I´ve done a little test to see how the audio goes together with a quick video of the images from the comic-version of the songs:

Me thinks the concert went pretty damned well. I wanna do a whole video of it, with the speaking bits in between.
I really think there´s a lot of potential to do pretty awesome versions, both live and on video. I´ve been psyched about trying to fit sort of stand-up´ish stuff with comics and songs, and this was the first time to do it in a full, if three song short, concert.
Hopefully I´ll get to do this little concert more times to get the flow of the whole "story".

Oh, and I need to find a better program for this stuff that Windows Movie Maker... Suggestions? For Mac? For Free?

And finally... The opening image for an article I´m drawing about Alan Moore:

Not much to say, except that I spent way too much time on that single image in a 4-page long article... Jeez...

All in all... Good week... But need to do more, more, more...

Whatday Art-Week Review of Good Intentions and Hell...

2009-12-02T17:41:00.004+02:00

So I didn´t manage to update this Sunday either. The whole week got spoiled by the flu. And then I had to scramble to get ready to play a concert yesterday... So did I draw anything last week? Mostly just absolutly nothing. But on Sunday I did get to do the sketches for some art for the concert, and even though they weren´t finished untill Tuesday morning, I´ll still post them here:

I like ´em... Lot´s of love and stuff... Loose art... Works... Did wonders under the concert.

Hopefully next week I´ll update on Sunday, and have something to update with. Cheers!

Almost Sunday Art-Week review 21´ish...

2009-11-23T13:18:00.005+02:00

Yes, I´m picking up the count where it left off. So we´re at 21 weeks or so. And yes, it is monday, but... It´s gotta be Sunday somewhere on the globe, or? Who cares...

Anyhow... Pretty short art-week review this week. Have mostly been finding quotes, writing, and editing for a Alan Moore graphic-article I´m writing and drawing. Have also done som art, but nothing worth showing yet.

Then I´ve been sketching away at some new songs, since I´m gonna have a concert in a week, and I really want to finish drawing two more songs so that I can print up songbooks for the whole little concert. One of them will probably be published as my weekly autobiographical comic on my norwegian blog this Wednesday. But nothing to show yet.

What I have to show is, of course, my weekly autobiographical comic for this last week:
I suppose the title could be translated to "Nag", and the thought-balloon at the lower half says "Nag, nag, nag...". The rest of the text is just thoughts going from positivity about all the possibilities of what to do in a day, then turning into panic over having too much to do and never getting anything done. Simple stuff, but it´s the first very visual layout I´ve done in a while, and I like the colours.

Then I´ve gotten one more piece for Battle For Wesnoth committed to the game.

This one took way too long to do, with too much back and forth. In the end, there´s still several weaknesses, such as inconsistant lighting on the metal surfaces, but all in all I´m pretty satisfied. Seeing the portraits in-game in the Hammer of Thursagan campaign is awesome.

Now... That´s basically it for this week. I have to prepare some courses and finish the article now, and I seem to have the flu, so next week may also be a bit thin on updates. But I will post something. Maybe even on Sunday-proper!

Sunday Art-Weeks Review what, What, WHAT???

2009-11-16T00:11:00.006+02:00

Weekly updates, huh? Yeah, right...

So as I may and may not have warned people, consistency is not really in my nature. But hopefully I can avoid breaks as big as this in the future. But who knows?... Anyhow... The plan is to update weekly again.

Why was I gone so long? Well... Life? Lack of productivity? Love? Lazyness? All of the above and more... But no matter what I´ve actually done a lot of work since the last time, and I hope to sum most of it up in this post.

Firstly, the weekly autobiographical comics are too many for this post, but you can find the on my Norwegian blog...

Then I´ve done some illustrations for posters for Absalong about pirates, sex and religion, and the history of vibrators:

I´m pretty satisfied with them, all though they´re not my best Absalongposters. I haven´t seen them with the text on yet... hmmm...

Then there´s some sketching for a friends project. Not sure if I can say anything, but I like the drawings:

Who knows what´ll become of it. Not what you see in these, at least.

Then I just finished a T-shirt for the legendary Bergen coverband Heavy Metal Kings, for their Big Heavy Metal Fest:

I´m gonna love wearing that T-shirt....

And I´m doing a article on Alan Moore for the Nemi-magazine, and also did a leader-illustration for it:

Need to get the article itself finished very, very soon...

I´m sure I´ve done some more too. Some may still be in sketch-form, some I´ve just forgotten, and some will be posted in the weeks to come.

So... yeah... updates every week. And probably some more random blogging now and then. Keep fingers crossed. Rock on!

Sunday Art-week review 19...

2009-07-26T20:33:00.002+03:00

Gah... Slow yet hectic weeks... Only a sad song to show... but I'm really satisfied with the art....

Sunday Art-Week review 18...

2009-07-19T19:30:00.002+03:00

Not much this week. Just another autobiographical song. Have also almost finished two more illustrated songs, but those will have to wait untill they´re revealed on my Norwegian blog...

Cheers....

Sunday Art-Week Review 17(On a monday)...

2009-07-13T13:43:00.002+03:00

Nothing much this week. Am back in Bergen. Forgot that yesterday was sunday. Ops...

This weeks autobiographical lie:

And that's it. Between all the moving, travelling, partying, and yes, reading, I haven't actually drawn anything. Meh... Back next week with more.

Sunday Art-Week Review 16...

2009-07-05T23:02:00.003+03:00

Ahhh... Slow week. Lot´s of reading and writing, and now packing and cleaning. I´m going home to Norway on Tuesday.

So.... This weeks autobiographical lie, with a song:

And an update on a Wesnoth piece:

And, just for fun, I did two EXTREMELY QUICK videos for great Stratosgutane songs:

Download the whole album on a CC-license through the record-labels myspace-page.

Now back to packing and cleaning.

Kims songbook(A birthdaywish)...

2009-07-03T19:36:00.002+03:00

Since it´s my birthday, I wanna make a wish. It´s that someone will cover one of my songs.

And yeah, I know they´re in Norwegian, but who cares. Music is beyond language, ain´t it?

So I collected all the words and the chords in a litte "songbook". Listen to the videoes, and try to read the lyrics, and make something, if you wish. I´m keeping my fingers crossed.

All the songs here are of course available for the public domain. Copyright is the work of Satan(And not in the cool rock´n´roll way).

The songbook kan be downloaded here.

Drikkevise:

Vintersol:

Høstvise:

Mislykket kjærlighetssang:

Overtalelsesvise:

Vandrevise:

Johnny Gitars Nye Sang:

Abstinensblues:

Udugelig:

Galen Øy:

Me, me, ME! (On Art&Story Alive)

2009-06-29T16:25:00.003+03:00

Just thought I´d do an update on me calling into the... Art&Story Alive podcast, hosted by the talented Jerzy Drozd, Marc Rudolph, and Krishna Sadasivam. Art&Story Alive is the live component of Art&Story, where I, the listener, and probably you, the listener, gets to call in and bug the hosts with our ramblings.

(Yes, I just copied and pasted that bit from my last post about this. I´m lazy)...

Anyhow... I´ve called into some more, and tried to tell some bad jokes and good points. Or the other way around. Here´s the list of the ones I´ve been on so far:

067 - Art & Story Alive! (With other guest, the always lovable Ryan Dow of Introspective Comics, discussing bad advice making baby Jesus cry, finding your voice, and making comics that communicate like a grunt to a loved one)
068 - Art & Story Alive! (Discussing coloring and getting cut-off by my stupid Skype)
069 - Art & Story Alive! (With birthday-boy Ryan Dow, discussing making comics for kids, and reinventing the college roomy-genre)
071 - Art & Story Alive! (Discussing why digital distribution of comics is bound to fail until we have better methods of reading them, and how to use panel-borders).

UPDATE: And I did call in last night, for the funniest, fastest, and most intense A&S Alive I´ve been a part of, again including Ryan Dow, about breaking into the local art scene, origin-stories, and something about the problem with modern color-print and motion(And it seems motion will be the topic of next weeks podcast, so stay tuned). Here:
072 - Art & Story Alive!

Art Week Review 15...

2009-06-28T20:00:00.000+03:00

This week has been a bit random, with my WACOMpen being in Scotland and/or my mailbox, and my mood being a bit... shit.

But here goes...

My autobiographical comic of the week, with no proper images and text in Norwegian. Don´t worry, the text is just depressive poo, so you´re not missing anything:

And I did a self-portrait reflecting my mood for my blog:

And even more randomly, a portrait of Ayn Rand. By popular request I´m thinking of changing the text to "Ayn Rand, I´d rape her" with "I´d rape her" written in soft pink letters. I think that´d be sweet. Funnily enough I´ve gotten some weird ultra-capitalist Twitter-followers lately, and I figure that someone might have seen my #aynran tag, but not clicked my link. Hilarious!

And I did this quick one for an article/blogpost I wrote about game-critisism on tokyo.no. The text basically is two word-balloons worth of artsy fancy-talk, and the kid giving the punchline "And a fucking impressive high-score".

And this nice sketch of my garden:

Apart from that I´ve been working on an comic-article about the homo-erotic aspects of Judas Priest, which has been going slower than it should due to the lack of a digital pen. But it´s looking good. Maybe I´ll show some of the sketches next week?

Illegal Review 1: Hung episode 1...

2009-06-26T19:22:00.005+03:00

So I originally intended for this blog to have both reviews of free stuff and of things that should be free, but have been far too lazy to do so yet. Until now. Anyhow... firstly... What´s an Illegal Review?

Illegal Reviews are where I review things that are either illegally downloaded, or should be illegally downloaded to boycott those who seek to destroy the free nature of art by imprisoning it with the chains of copyright. Since I´m a weak person I cannot promise that every item review is illegally downloaded, but just because I occasionally buy stuff doesn´t mean you should.

Hung(TV-series)
Season 1 episode 1
HBO

Rejecting is hard for newbie man-whores.

Like for most people with taste, HBO has almost singlehandedly managed to restore my faith in American TV-series. With writing at a level that´s often far above your average Hollywood blockbuster, and great production, shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, and Deadwood are amongst my favorite pieces of newer cinematic art. Even the shows that I personally never got hooked into, like Sex in the City, Rome, and Six Feet Under, are truly admirable and finely crafted undertakings.

Now, debuting sometime soon, Hung is HBOs newest attempt at a quirky comedy-drama, created by Dmitri Lipkin, who also did The Riches, and his wife(?) Colette Burson. Having never seen The Riches, even though I´m a big fan of Eddie Izzard, I didn´t have any special expectations from Hung, and I don´t think expectations would have helped much.

Hungs plot is about a divorced and broke high-school teacher and coach, Ray Drecker, played by Thomas Jane of The Punisher fame, who decides to use his big penis, which remains mysteriously absent from the show, to his economic advantage and become a male prostitute.

The first episode is directed by Alexander Payne, whose biggest claim to fame has to be About Schmidt, and tries to tell the story leading up to Rays decision to become a man-whore. Unfortunately the story is told by loads of half-clever voice-over narration that never manages to amuse or enlighten much, and does a very poor job at making one really believe this regular-Joes reasoning behind jumping into his new career.

Other than that the direction is competent, with some funny quick cuts in time here and there, and generally good dialogue and acting. Few of the characters really stand out yet, but there is potential for them to grow. The poet lover, played by Jane Adams, starts off as noisily annoying as the script dictates, but ended up charming me. Anne Heche is suitably bitchy as the ex-wife, and Eddie Jemison is his usual amusing self as the new husband. The drama between Ray and his kids never really grabbed me, as neither kid seems like very convincing characters as of yet, but I´m willing to give them time.

And all in all that´s my judgement of the whole episode. I´m not convinced by the slightly awkward mix of comedy and drama but I´m willing to give it some time, at least until we get to the actual whoring. We need more shows about male-prostitutes.

So... Hung may yet prove to be well-hung, but I give episode 1 a score of a half-erect penis out of full boner:

My homage to a great lady...

2009-06-24T23:12:00.004+03:00

Lately there´s been some talk about Ayn Rand an objectivists. And you know, all the usual stuff comes up, like "How boring is her books???", "Should objectivists be locked up for their own safety?", "Was she really that insane or was she a pre-internet troll?", etc, etc... But there´s always one very important point missing. So I tried to illustrate it in this little sketch:
Someone should make a T-shirt out of this. I´d wear it.

The Revolution should not be Twitterized...

2009-06-23T12:23:00.003+03:00

Something strange is a happening in on Twitter. Things are turning green all over.

No, not the nice enviroment enviroment-friendly green, nor the green of money. It´s not a fit of jealousy making it green either, and it´s not even the Hulk.

It´s the green of the Iranian Revolution. Yup, that old revolution. But strangely, it´s use on Twitter is not in support of revolutionary hero Ayatollah Khomenei or his successor Khamenei. It´s to support "Democracy in Iran".

And all over Twitter people are tweeting about the election and the demonstrations, upset about the fraudulent result and the brutal state-violence, following the hundreds, if not thousands, or Iranian twitterers that have popped up all of a sudden bringing up to date news, and warning people about the Twitter-puppets of the government who try to infiltrate and ruin the freedom to tweet.

Now... I admit that I turned my avatar green for a little while, but it´s back to it´s normal self now. Because... I´ve been thinking.

A few weeks back the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, had it´s first year of massive Twitter-following. Now, in the world of video-games, E3 is kind of like Christmas and Birthday rolled into one, but in the world at large... E3 is not really that important. Still, Twitter, awash with false stories, manufactured hype, and general nonsense, was by large deemed to have been a non-satisfactory tool for reporting on E3, with some gamers even declaring that "Twitter ruined E3!".

So.... Not good enough for E3, but good enough for a revolution? Something seems strange here.

And, as often was the problem during E3, do we really know that the tweeters are who they say they are. There are countless of people now tweeting live from "inside Iran", but shouldn´t they perhaps be out revolutionizing instead? And why can´t I find any Iranian tweeter that has a history of tweeting before the elections? Who in Iran even has internet access? Certainly not the majority(Which are the ones that should win elections in a democracy, I guess).

And it´s not like there´s no other interested parties. Not to sound to conspiratorial, but USA has actually on multiple occassions expressed the intent to fund a new Iranian revolution, and their intelligence services has the goal of dominating the internet. It wouldn´t exactly be hard for someone to... say... manufacture some revolution-hype? I mean, companies at E3 managed pretty well.

Not to mention... What do people know of the elections in Iran? Do they know that all the candidates are sanctioned by the same supreme leader, for instance? Or anything about Irans eclectic demography, and how it reflects in the electorate?

And do they remember the support and celebrations that the last Iranian Revolution got all over the western world before the dust settled and people realized that maybe it wasn´t such a great idea to let religious fundamentalists rule one of the biggest countries of the world?

I don´t know much about Iran, personally. But I probably know at least a bit more than many of the green-avatared horde infesting Twitter. At least I know enough to admit I don´t know enough.

And quite frankly, that makes it irresponsible to join Twitters Iranimania, doesn´t it?

I don´t know. I just think it´s all a bit fishy, and it sounds like the kind of thing that comes back to bite you in the ass.

Because revolutions are serious business. They should not be Twitterized.

But I may be wrong.

Art Week Review 14...

2009-06-21T20:00:00.000+03:00

Much sketching, not much drawing this week. Scotland was... insane. As reflected in this weeks autobiographical lie:
Bagpipes at the Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond.

Then some of the sketches from the few times I was sober enouigh to hold a brush(Or pencil) straight:
Gourock, waiting to take the ferry to Dunoon and on to Ardentinny to go to someones birthday with open-air concerts and lot´s of midgies and a nice waterfall to bath in and hungover canooing on Loch Eck in the morning...

NED in water at the bonnie bansk of Loch Lomond. A NED is apperantly a "None Educated Delinquent". They were throwing rocks at eachother. In the background are resident Austrians Laura and Kate swimming.

Around the campfire at Loch Lomond. In-between bagpipes and flutes and country-music, flute-player Cameron tries to translate a Scottish song to Solveig. Other people in the picture are American bicyclist Rob Roy McGregor(Yes, real name), his cousin Mike, and bagpipe-player Donald(Who never took me fishing).

Solveig playing the fiddle.

Laura dancing to the jamming bagpipes, flute, and fiddle.

A swan came to listen to the music, and that Solveig charmed with her magic powers. Later, as it was dawning, it came back, and I serenaded it with the last song of the evening. A true swansong(Townes Van Zandts "To live is To Fly" with the word "Swan" put in as often as possible).

And this was just the insanity that I was sober enough to record. Crazy gawd-damned week...

Anyhow... I like how loose the last ones turned out. Have to do more like that.

I also filled a few pages of a sketchbook on my long and arduos journey home, but I managed to forget it on the plane. Bugger.

Thanks to all the countless great people I met on the trip.

Now I really have to get to work on some serious shit again...

Sunday Art-Week Review 13...

2009-06-14T20:00:00.002+03:00

Reporting in from Glasgow on this unlucky 13th art-week.

Had a hell of a journey where everything that could go wrong did go wrong at some point, but met a lot of nice British people, even drew a portrait for the price of 1 beer, and was as if by magic able to do a sketched script for a whole 32 page childrens-book from concept to first-draft on the trip. Yay for me!(Though I won't get it up to a presentable version to shop around before the summers over).

So... first... some sketches of British charter tourists(Showing why I dislike drawing with pens):

Then the sketch where I got the concept to the childrens-book(With censored synopsis. Art not representative of anything yet):

Then the weekly autobiographical lie, called "Burdened under my own expectations"(Which I no longer am, having survived the journey):

And an updated Wesnoth piece:

So... Glasgow is quite nice, isn't it? I should really try to draw some... yup.

That's all folks!

Sunday Art-Week Review 12...

2009-06-07T21:17:00.007+03:00

So... Been reading and writing a lot lately.

I did a drawn article about H.P. Lovecraft a few months ago. Basically the most work I´ve ever done per page. But it came out nice.

Now I´m tight for money, so I came up with a few more ideas for articles, even though the pay-per hour will end up... not too great. They did actually pay me a lot more than usual for the Lovecraft article, but that won´t happen for the new articles.

I´ve gotten one about Judas Priest and their more homo-erotic lyrics accepted, and working on suggestions for articles about Emma Goldman, the more esoteric and political sides of Alan Moore, and finally the mythmaking of Norwegian Black Metal. Pretty diverse shit to research. But I´m getting my head around it.

I really need to get the Lovecraft article translated and published somewhere else, because... multiple publishers is the only way I can make these articles profitable enough. And they´re fun to do...

Anyhow... Just uploaded the article to my comicspace-page:Click the image, silly...

So.... Art... This week... Yes....

Of course my weekly autobiographical... This ones called The Discussion.... and is as (non-)readable for silly-speaking people as for Norwegian-speaking people:

And I did another quick poster for free. I originally did it in B&W, but I got the urge to color it. Still came in slightly under the 2 hour mark, so I´m following my own guidelines for these well:

And finally, these two Wesnoth-portraits may be ready to committ. Still waiting for final word:

Oh, and I´m going to Glasgow on Tuesday. Never been in the UK before. Very much looking forward to it. Hopefully I´ll still have something to show next sunday. Have to get the weekly autobiographical lie finished before I leave, at least.

Skål!

(Edit: Updated the Ratheln portrait)

Sunday Art-Weeks Review 11

2009-05-30T23:22:00.011+03:00

So... I slacked off for a couple of weeks with these posts...

But I´m back, hopefully more reliable than ever(HA!).

Anyhows... Even though there´s been some weeks since the last time, I haven´t got all that much new stuff to show. There are some projects that I don´t want to reveal too much on, like Pickmans Model and Bomtur, which I´ve done a lot of work on.

Pickmans Model is now readable from start to finish. While there´s still a lot that´s only sketches, and a lot of work left to be done, it´s looking good. If you want to read it just send me your e-mail, and you can have a look if you promise to tell me what you think. Yeah, YOU!

Apart from that I´ve been reading a lot, doing both research for Bomtur and for some new comic-book-articles I´m gonna do(I´ve gots some paid work! WOOH!).

And I´ve done a lot of pencil-doodles trying to come up with new short stories to sell. But no luck so far, and it´s all too doodly and fragmented to bother scanning.

So... you may wonder... What have I done that I can show?

Well, I´ve updated my weekly autobiographical lie steadily(Good boy, Kim!)...

Missing week 1:

Missing week 2:

Missing Week 3:

Missing week 4:

And I´m progressing slowly on my Wesnoth-pieces(Though no new ones are finished yet):

And lastly, I did a fundraiser piece to be auctioned away to help the guys at Big Illustration Party Time get a new microphone, so we can enjoy their voices in all their silky-smooth glory:

I´ll post the details of the auction when it´s settled.

And that´s about it.

Next week I´ll do a regular update. Hopefully I´ll have done something interesting...

Me on Art&Story Alive!

2009-05-30T14:53:00.002+03:00

Last monday I called in on the Art&Story Alive podcast, hosted by the talented Jerzy Drozd, Marc Rudolph, and Krishna Sadasivam. Art&Story Alive is the live component of Art&Story, where I, the listener, and probably you, the listener, gets to call in and bug the hosts with our ramblings.
Anyhow... It was a nice little conversation about bad advice, doing your best as an artist, and baby Jesus crying.

Listen to it here.

Since I spent 10 euros on Skype-credit, and have little to use it on except Art&Story Alive, I will probably call in next monday also.

Whatday huh-review part X?

2009-05-26T10:03:00.002+03:00

Ummmhh...

So I´ve been a little slow updating.

Actually I´ve been part busy, part forgetful, and... yeah... part lazy. I should have had SOMETHING up, even if I didn´t have the chance to do a art-week review. But... Oh well.. That´s just my usual ups and downs, and if I´m realistic there will come more times like these.

BUT.... Art-week review will be back, with a full review of the last three weeks also. And I´m planning on at least another weekly update sometime soon.

Anyhow... you´ve been warned. Now go be productive!

Sunday art-week review 10... on a monday???

2009-05-04T12:21:00.002+03:00

Ops! shit. Been on holiday in Norway, and not doing much art yet. Simply forgot posting this yesterday. *blush*

This week I haven't done any art worth showing, except a few marker-sketches that I haven\t scanned. I have written a lot though.

The autobiographical lie here was conceived over a year ago, then completed a few weeks ago. The text is basically "Sometimes when the mood strikes me\ I strike at the wall\ untill my knuckles bleed\ it doesn't help with the mood/ but it does wonders for my artstyle"

Next week I have to draw a new autogbiographical lie, so I will have to attach my drawing board and get to do some work. Also I have to take a lot of photos. So... Long post next week???

Sunday Art-Week Review part 9...

2009-04-26T11:03:00.006+03:00

On Thursday I went on "vacation" to Norway, and am right now in Oslo without a proper computer to work on. And much of the early week went to work on stuff I won't show yet. So... short one this week:

My weekly autobiograhpical lie. Meh.

10 minute sketch of Enslaved guitarist Ivar Peersen done for mye Norwegian blog after interweb fisticuffs about filesharing and the Pirate Bay trial. The general consensus is of course that I'm right, and he's an evil capitalist scumbag, but Enslaved still makes lovely music.

And that's basically it for this week. Apart from that I've done what I can on Pickmans Model without more photos, but will take them in Bergen next week. Oh, and if anyone knows where to find images of Bostons North End from the 1920' s, please drop me a line.

The next two weeks I'll strolling through be trying to take all the photos I need for Bomtur, which will be a lot. But I'm hoping to also get some time drawing. Fingers crossed.

And there's a few shorter ideas floating around in my egghead, trying to hatch... so we'll see... maybe I'll have something cool soon...

Sunday Art-Week Review 8...

2009-04-19T20:31:00.002+03:00

Another week... Too much sun.... Still some work got done. Have been doing a lot of sketches, concepts, and thumbnails on paper this week, lazing on sunny afternoons, and unfortunatly there´s little point of photographing the doobles through my iMac-camera.

So I´ll just post what I´ve done digitally:

Pickmans model page 4 and 5. Have finally gotten images of the model, and starting to experiment with the flashback style. I´m not sure I´m satisfied, as they might be a bit stiff and photographic. The most important thing when drawing on top of photographs is to make it not seem like photographs.

And of course, my autobiographical lie of the week:

And that´s it.

BTW, someone has made a fanpage for me on facebook. Join, or I will cry myself to tears every night.

Sunday Art-Week Review 7...

2009-04-12T17:07:00.007+03:00

Another week, another... art?

Ummh... Yes....

Thought it was easter this week, but it seems the Greek know better. Easter started today.

Anyhow... Been doing a lot of stuff besides art this week, but have still gotten some shit done.

This is a poster for something I´m told not to write about quite yet(Men folk i Bergen kan få vite at dere bør gå på arrangementet plakatene er for). I do posters for these guys for free(I get food and beer sometimes, though), so when I started doing it I decided to never do anything that takes more than 2 hours. Sometimes I´ve broken that promise and done close to 3 hours, but this one came in at one and a half hour from concept to finished art. Good work, Kim!

And of course my weekly autobiographical lie:

This one is a comic with a song, so if you hate your ears, check it out here. Or if you hate your life, check out my other songs here. I´m no musician, but I do have a lot of fun singing and writing songs about myself.

And I´ve sketched some various things around the village. I don´t have a scanner, but I thought photographing this one with my Macs built-in camera was fun:

And last, but not least, I´ve (almost) finished another dwarf for Wesnoth:

Also done some work on the other projects, but not much, and none to show. Hope ya´ll had a great easter, and I´ll go have a great easter this week!

I wrote "ya´ll". :(

Sunday Art-Week Review 6...

2009-04-05T16:02:00.005+03:00

Ahh... It´s actually been a great art-week, but I ain´t got much to show for it. Work progressing on the Confusia-redesign, on Pickmans Model, on Bomtur, doing stuff for Wesnoth, and I´m trying to get a headstart on the weekly autobiographical stuff. In other words, lot´s of stuff I can´t or won´t show yet.

And since I´m having a slow Sunday I´ll just make this post short and sloppy.

This weeks autobiographical lie:

Jesus VS Aslan Cagematch!(Don´t ask, because I don´t know):

And finally, a sneak-peak at how Richard Upton Pickman will look:

Have a great week! Now back to watching wrestling...

Sunday Art-Week Review 5...

2009-03-29T15:03:00.008+03:00

Yes, getting slightly better by the week.

Been drawing way too many dwarves, orcs, mages, werewolves, and horsies for Wesnoth. It´s very fun, and I´m learning a lot, but it´s taking too much time away from my comics, so I need to cool down slightly.

Anyhow:

Finished dwarf. Took a lot of work doing and redoing the armor. Got a lot of help and learned a lot about painting metal.

Another dwarf. Was very satisfied with the sketch and linework for this one, but trying to paint it I´ve been running into huge problems, and have ended up tossing away the first three attempts prematurely. Bah! But I´ll get it some day...

Nice elderly mage. I like this one.

Elven rider. Supposed to be snotty and rich. I´m not sure about this one. A bit boring? Hmmm...

A wizard that has been trapped in the mountains for a while. Has a DIY Griffin coat, in a little story related joke. I loved the face in my sketch, but somehow he lost "it" in the linework.

A Warg, which is some sort of wolfman race. I like this one a lot.

Sketch for dwarf-lord. Jeez, I do huge hands.

Dwarven warrior sketch. Supposed to be cornered in, but I need to change this to be less boring.

Sketch of the bad guy.... ohhhh....

I´ve learned a whole lot from these, so it´s worth it in that way. But I have comics that are screaming for attention. And I have worked a bit on all of them this week. Drawing on Confusia has been a mess though, and for Bomtur I´ve been working on a single 3-point perspective shot that takes a lot of time.
For Pickmans Model I do have a few frames to show. The last three frames before I jump into the first flashback and show Pickman himself:
Still haven´t confirmed a model for Pickman though. I have some more talking heads that I can draw further on in the story, but untill I get a model I can´t really finish any pages.

And on wednesday I did my usual autobiographical lie:

I´m satisfied with this one. This one is about post-poning stuff.

And finally I finished the birthday-greeting thingie I think mentioned last week. You can check it here.

So... yeah.... getting better. Still not up to 100% efficiency, and I need to manage my time a bit better. But oh well.... I´ll get there....

Ciao!

Sunday Art-Week Review 4...

2009-03-22T18:40:00.009+02:00

Ahh... This week is a bit better than last week. Not quite up to a 100% yet, but I´m definetly breaking the funk.

Still I haven´t got too much to show for it. I´ve tried to do work on Confusia, Bomtur, and Mörkanger this week, but it´s just been slow and full og CTRL-Z, again and again. I did get some good hours in though, but nothing to show yet.

And I did manage to do my weekly autobiographical lie, and even though it went slow and I´m not that pleased with the finished art, people seemed to enjoy it.

It´s just called "Training", and is pretty much self-explanatory.

Then I got invited to write for a new norwegian gaming-blog with some really cool people at tokyo.no, and did a review of the fantastic World of Goo. I really need to write more pure text, and start to get a portfolio of things so I can perhaps get some paid work. Illustration and comics alone seem too hard emotionally. Writing is something I can do that doesn´t drain me quite as much. Yet, at least. Oh, well.

Anyhow... for the review I did a tiny review-score. Mostly as a joke because I don´t like review-scores and because I needed small silly things to draw to get me out of the funk.

I like it.

And also, to get out of the funk and mostly just to be a nice guy, I committed to drawing a birthday invitation for a friends 30th birthday. It´s almost done, but it would be rude to show it here before showing it to her.

And lastly... The biggest and most helpfull thing to get out of the funk(I´ve been sayiing "the funk" too much, sorry)...

... After the World of Goo review was done I was thinking about other games to review. Having just a mac, and not any Windows installed, the options are limitted. I know I´m gonna do Fallout 1 and 2 some time, but after that... What to do?

I´ve become more and more old-school in my game tastes, and have a growing fascination for the indie-scene. So while searching for indie-games playable on the Mac, I rediscovered The Battle for Wesnoth. It´s a pretty marvelous open-source project, trying to create a vast, cohessive, and very modable strategy game in the style of Fire Emblem and Advance Wars. So very old-school, utterly playable, and very addictive. In addition to being very strict, minimalistic, and balanced gameplay-wise, it´s got some excellent feautures that most retail games don´t even dream of, including direct downloading of add-ons from in-game menus, the best autosavesystem in a long while, and an excellent level-editor.

Oh... where was I?

Yes!

Art!

Of the week!

So... while browsing the Wesnoth forums I came across a great tutorial for doing portrait art for the game. Being really inspired it, and seeing some photoshop-techniques and tools I simply haven´t used before(I´m slow), I decided to have a go, and did a dwarven portrait.

At first it was a bit... meh.... But with great help from the awesome people at the Wesnoth-forum it quickly turned better.

And now it´s gonna get in the game as an alternative for the Dwarven fighter art, or something. So that´s fantastic! Having art in a game is a dream come true, and open-source games are like commercial games except cooler since your don´t have to suck on Satans cock.

I´m gonna try to continue doing art for Wesnoth, because it´s a fantastic project, and I really, really need to have a side-project that´s purely art, to keep me on my toes. And with Wesnoth the art is very much up my alley, the community seems great at feedback and I can learn a lot, and it´s altogether very much inspirational.

So hopefully next week, in addition to updates om my comics and other work, there will be some more dwarves! Yay!

Sunday Art-Week Review 3

2009-03-15T20:11:00.004+02:00

Ah... Crappy week.

Haven´t done much art. Been doing too much, and having too little spare time lately, so I´ve done gone ran myself into a wall, as per usual. But I´ll be back on my feet soon enough. Ah, the glorious adventures of bi-polar disorder type 2. Or whatever the excuse is. Oh well...

BUT... I did actually do this:

The translation would read something like "Hate.... hate... food... hate...", but with a few to many vowels. A pretty accurate account of last weeks highlights.

Having committed myself to doing one of these autobiographical shorts every week, whether a single panel or a longer pager, is probably a good thing, to keep some consistency. As most creators will know, it´s hard when you set your own deadlines.

Anywho... will be back stronger next week. Mark my words. OR sumthin....

Sunday Art-week Review 2.

2009-03-08T23:01:00.009+02:00

First of all, happy womens day!!

I got the bright idea to do this image late last night. But I should have known what I was stepping into. Frank Frazetta is just a god among artists. Now, as Robert Crumb once noted, he´s incredibly boring, but it´s just so technically fascinating.

And technically, doing this was pure hell. Anyhow... I started with Frazettas fantastic Conan cover.

Then I traced it quickly and drew in Confusia:

Then I made miniature copy of the original Frazetta image on it´s own layer, and just started doing drawing with the pencil-tool and different opacities, referencing the miniature layer and the trace layer. At first I mostly used the trace layer, but towards the end it became a distraction, so I mostly used the miniature. Then, because I was running out of time, I hastilly finished up by some filters and adjustment layers.

All in all a very good exercise, teaching me that even though I´ve toyed around with a few digital painting I really don´t know shit yet. The kinds of use of colour and shadow that Frazetta does... I don´t even stand a chance of emulating it on a computer(Or in on canvas, for that matter). My stuff just became blobs of pale flatness. Oh well.

I really want to do more experiments trying to do something Frazetta-like on the computer, but I want to do some original stuff, and do it over a long, long period. A single day is just not enough, by FAAAAAR.

But it still was more then I was hoping to use on this image, which is more a joke than anything.

Anyhow... Art-week... Yes....

I´ve finally broken trough a little wall on the Confusia redesigns, which was the reason I got the idea for the image above. I´m sticking pretty close to the original designs, but darkening it, and making it more practical both to draw and to wear. I´m kind of thinking of it as a 500 BC Batman suit, but made for traveling long distances outdoors. I´m filling it with various pockets and knives and cool stuff. Been checking out concept art for Assassins Creed, and that´s pretty close to what I´m aiming for, but more Ninja-like.

It´s not done yet though. So the Conanusia-image is the only one I will show today.

Then, on Thursday I finished up Pickmans Model page 3.

Not much to say about this really. As chronicled in my Norwegian blog, I´m drawing this on top of photos of myself. It´s just to many talking heads for it to be worth drawing a character again and again. But that means I had to shave off my beard and have a mustache. Well... my beard was finally starting to grow out again, and then I had to shave it off one more time for some extra images. I would have though that 400 were enough but noo.....

And... I have to get a model to use as Pickman... A Pickman model, if you pardon my pun. I know who I want, but I just got to get it cleared, and got to get someone to take pictures of him. I´ve been putting off doing this for a while now, for no good reason, but Pickman gets introduced on the next page(With som slight changes in the storytelling), so I can´t really put it off much longer.

Then on Wednesday I updated my now Weekly Autobiographical Lie:

I think it turned out nice. It´s called "A little pause: or why I love cold water". It´s the first one the works in any language, more or less. Basically it´s just my attempt of explaining why I love to dive. In to cold water, preferably. Blabla, yadayade, no explaination needed, really. I didn´t take long to do though, so that´s nice.

Then finally I did another panel or two for Confusia: Lifs Story(Working title):

So that´s a slooow beginning. I´ll write more about this later. Now I have to wrap this up. The Conanusia-image screwed up my schedule.

So... Apart from this I´ve actually done some work on another Confusia-tale, and some daily work on Bomtur. But nothing worth showing yet. So it´s been pretty productive. And the weather was even nice for a few short days.

Cheers!

Free Review: Sita Sings The Blues

2009-03-04T21:00:00.004+02:00

(Free Reviews is going to be my hopefully somewhat regular column for reviewing stuff you can get for free, legally. Now ideally this would only include things that are free of any copyright, but unfortunately that would be a bit difficult, so I will include anything you can watch, read, hear, or otherwise enjoy for free, no matter what type of copyright arrangement the creators put on the work)

Sita Sings the Blues.

An animated feature by Nina Paley.

Can be downloaded in full HERE, or at any good torrent-site, or viewed through streaming HERE.

The short review: Sita Sings The Blues is a unique animated feature with a fantastical visual range and great music. Very well made, often funny, occasionally hilarious, sometimes emotional, and quite a good lesson in Indian mythology, it ultimately doesn´t live up to it´s potential because of a few minor technical shortcomings, a bit slow pace and a story that doesn´t really add up. Still not a bad way of spending 1 hour 17 minutes. Recommended.

The long review: What do the Ramayana, 1920´s and 30´s pop singer Annette Hanshaws´s blues, and modern cartoonist Nina Paleys long-distance break-up have in common?

Not awfully much, actually, but that doesn´t stop these elements from being put together in visually breathtaking and often hilarious ways in Nina Paleys animated feature Sita Sings The Blues.

But it´s almost impossible to review this film without mentioning some of the drama around it. The film is written, animated, directed, produced by Paley alone over a period of several years, and is built up around 11 songs performed by Annette Hanshaw. While the performances are no longer copyright-restricted, Paley soon found out that the compositions were. So in a valiant effort to protect the fundamental rights of long dead composers, the music-industry-knights in shining armor have fended off Paleys grievous breach of the holy laws of intellectual property, and justly demanded a modest sum of a few hundred thousand dollars or so for allowing the commercial release of this piece of thievery.

Luckily for us Paley hasn´t payed, and instead released the film under a creative commons license. So we can all download it. Yay for the music-industry!

If you want to know more about the story behind the film, check out this interview.

Now... back to the film....

Let´s start with a quick breakdown of the various elements that make up this film. First of all we have the two stories, one of the legendary Indian hero Rama and his wife Sita, and the other the autobiographical tale of Nina and her husband Dave.

Then we have narration, which is cleverly animated over the sounds of three Indian people confusedly discussing, in delightfully Indian english, what the Ramayana is about.

Then we have the songs, which are intercut with the plot of Rama and Sita, kind of like little funny music-videos that pop up with alarming regularity.

All of these elements are drawn in their own distinct style. The contemporary story is drawn in loose and lively line-art close to Paleys comic-book style mixed with photos. The epic of Rama and Sita is in a painted in a semi-Indian style mixed with Indian art and photos. The narration animated with shadowy silhouettes of traditional Indian idols. And the music-videos are done in a very cartoony flash-animation style sometimes reminiscent of the best of newer Cartoon Network productions. And these are not the only different types of art and movement in the film, so it is truly a delight for any fan of animation.

The best part of the film is without a doubt the narration, which brilliantly mixes the confused ramblings of the narrators trying to understand the absurd mythological narrative with great comedic visual interpretations of their discussion. Anyone who has ever tried to get the internal logic of any ancient epic knows that a lot of hilarity will ensue, because quite frankly... People used tell really absurd tales. And these bewildered discussions with strong Indian accent really captures the comedic potential in a delightfully casual way.

Now this contrasts starkly both the contemporary and the epic story. You go from the delicious flow of a real conversation, to the stilted dialogue of people who shouldn´t be voice-actors delivering woody lines.

In the modern setting Nina Paley fails to voice herself with any degree of conviction, and the lines are simply not very well written. They might be functional for a comic, but when delivered by real voices they fall flat in their simplicity. Adding to the the actor playing her husband Dave is grating to the ear.

In the epic setting the lines are supposed to be pompous and cliché, but are delivered without the passion to fulfill either it´s dramatic or comedic potential, and the Indian accents that were so charming in the narration now just lessen the impact of the epic drama.

Then there´s the music-videos... There´s 10 of them in the main movie, not counting the intro, the credit-roll, and another interesting part in the middle. All of them are the full songs, all of them are animated in the same charmingly minimal flash-style. And while they all are full of creativity from beginning to end, there´s just too many of them, and they go on too long, so no matter how creative and clever and funny they are, at times it´s difficult to keep paying attention.

This does not, however, keep the best of the music-videos from being the absolute highlights of the movie. My personal favorite was the incredible battle of an army of monkeys against a horde of daemons, set to the sound of "Who´s that knockin´at my door?". Quite brilliant in all it´s cheerfully bloody glory.

But still, the constant music-videos combined with a bit of general sloppiness in editing down the story to it´s basic elements, and, actually, a bit of sloppiness in the editing of the film as well, makes the whole experience a bit slow, and I was left with a feeling that 1 hour and 17 minutes... might have been half an hour too much.

But it´s still a pleasing experience for both the eyes and the ears, so it´s in no way a wasted 1 hour and 17 minutes.

These may seem like an awful lot of complaints, but all in all they´re just minor irritations in a fantastic visual telling of an uniquely personal story.

The real complaint however, which keeps me from all-out praise, is that while the story is uniquely personal, it isn´t all that great. The Ramayana, Annette Hanshaw, and the divorce might all be connected in Paleys experience, but for me as a viewer it just don´t add up.

On closer inspection the modern break-up and the epic story of exiled love, do not parallel each other. And the more they start to drift apart, the less they add to each other. And while they both reach their satisfying individual conclusions, Sitas story more so that Ninas, in the end I was left confused and unsatisfied because I was hoping for some sort of thread to truly bind this together into a single film, instead of a series of disparate animated shorts.

Which is a shame, because it deserves to be so much more than what it ended up being.

Sunday Art-week Review 1.

2009-03-01T16:06:00.010+02:00

First proper post on this blog! Yes!

So.... What I´m planning is that each sunday, I´ll post a little update on what I´ve been doing the last week. BUT.... since some readers might not know what I´m doing at all, I´ll dedicate this first one to go through my projects.

Confusia will hopefully be my main project for a long long time. It´s also the only one where I´m writing primarily in English. It started out as a simple excercise for a comic-book course, but developed into something far, far larger.

Confusia is an action-adventure, historical sci-fi, conspiracy fiction, realistic fantasy yarn, following the lost daughter of Confucius and her interactions with the sec

ret cults that for millennia have tried to control the world.

The plan is to tell the story through shorter disparate chapters that can be combined into a whole sometime in the future, and to develop and distribute it as an open-source comic. But this takes a lot of work to be able to launch.

So... I´ve registered both a blog and a google-group for Confusia, but both are empty as of yet. But hopefully I´ll be able to launch both pretty quickly.

This week I haven´t really done much anything on Confusia, but I have thought a lot about a redesign of the main character, which has been a long time coming. Anyhow, you can check out the old works-progress in the links in the sidebar.

Pickmans Model is another project in English, but mostly because I´m not really "writing" it. It´s a pretty damn´d literal adaption of H.P.Lovecrafts classic story, using as much of the original text as I can fit on 16 comics-pages. Being a huge Lovecraft-fan, I´ve always dreamed of comic proper Lovecraft -comics, but this is my first attempt.

This week I´ve finished page 1, and done the whole of page 2, and am currently working on both page 3 and 4.

Bomtur is my biggest project with a publishing deal. It´s a 100+ contemporary action yarn set in Bergen, Norway, with car-chases, hacking, a love-story, and TERROR!(Finally in Norway!).

I´ve been working on this for way to long, but it´s slowly getting somewhere. It is the spiritual successor to Dette Er Et Ran, and I feel I need it to be 10 times better in every way possible. And that takes a lot of perfectionism.

This week I haven´t done quite as much as I would have liked on it, but I´ve redone some important panels in the beginning, and keep writing my way through it.

These are todays unfinished reworked images. They may look a bit finished, but actually the black lines your seeing isn´t the final inks. I´m going to use the digital lines in the coloring, and ink the whole shebang with a brush. I´ve done a few experiments with the technique, and it looks lovely.

Mörkanger is a concept for a comedy-series set in a backward fjord in Norway. Developed by Robin Knutsen and me, it seems that it´s currently on ice. But I keep doing concept art for it, and hopefull we´ll pick it up for full sometime. This week I started one new concept, but it´s to early to show it.

In addition to all these genre-pieces, I also do non-genre work through my autobiographical stuff. Ranging for the depressingly real, to the psychotically surreal, to the silly funny stuff, it´s my way of dealing with... ummmhh... living, and stuff.

This week I did one more silly page, which I´m satisfied with. I´m gonna try doing one of these, ranging from a single panel, to a longer page, each week. But I don´t know if I have the time to translate any of them. Oh well.

Anyhow... That´s what I´ve been working on this art-week. Next week I´ll go more into spesifics.

Enjoy my blog(Or just fuck off).

Who do I think I am?

2009-02-28T22:45:00.003+02:00

(This post will be heavilly editied, tweaked, and added images and links to until it´s a biography I´m pleased with)

I´m Kim Holm, cartoonist.

I´ve worked professionally for a few years now, barely getting by(Mostly due to my ability to live on thin air and nothingness, and sustain ever more debts). I´ve done comics and illustrations for Norwegian magazines such as Nemi, Bizarro, and Tusj, and done art for various local bands and other clients. My main accomplishment so far is the comic-book Dette Er Et Ran, which garnered some acclaim here and there.

Now for a bit of history:

Raised in Bergen, the most beautiful city in the world, I was allegedly born on the 3rd of July 1980 in Kristiansand, Norway, though rumours have it that I was either found in some bushes outside the police-station, or actually raised by wolves. Personally I can´t remember much anything of my life prior to the age of 3, so I just assume I was kidnapped by aliens and that my parents are lying to me because the CIA will kill my unknown twin if they tell me the truth.

I started drawing before I could speak, and drawing comics before I could write. But it wasn´t until I was 8 I knew that comic-books were my calling in life.

It happened when I read my first Frank Miller comic, an issue of Daredevil where the hero played Russian roulette with the villain Bullseye, who was laying in a coma. Interspersed with the main story was a tale that Daredevil told about a young boy obsessed with Daredevil, and the troubles that follow when Daredevil befriended him and found out about his corrupt lawyer father.

The whole tale was a typically unsubtle Miller yarn about violence in entertainment, responsibility, and the like. But for an 8 year old kid it was mind-blowing. It stirred up emotions in me that I had never before felt. And that day I knew I had to dedicate my life to create comics that could create the same revelatory emotions in other people.

For a while I was considering a side-career as either a rock-star or a member of G.I. Joe Action-Force, but I´ve had to put those two on a shelf due to time-constrains.

All through school I did nothing but draw or skip school to draw, to many a teachers frustration.

They tried to tell me "You have to go to school!"

To which I replied "Why?"

"Because it´s good for you"

"Why?"

"Because you´ll need it to get a job!"

"Oh, then you´re saying it´s OK that I draw, since I+m going to be a comic-book creator?"

"NO!! You need options!"

"Well, what can you tell me about being a rock-star or getting into the G.I.Joe Action-Force?"

"Go do your math!"

Yeah, I was an annoying little brat.

So... At age 15 I began self-publishing my vampire-comic "Mens Gud Sover(Whilst God is Sleeping)", inspired by my own slightly less epic take on the role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade. After a few years and 4 issues, the story had gone so far off track that I gave it up. I´m still hopefull that I will get to tell the real story one day.

After that it´s been unfinished project after unfinished project, plagued by a feeling of not being technically good enough to tell what I wanted to, and a growing suspicion against my dream of joining the commercial comics-arena.

So after degenerating into just playing video-games, smoking and drinking, and being a lazy fuck all day, I decided to check my mail one day and found a mail from an editor of a major Norwegian publisher who asked me if I wanted to send him my drawings in case I was right for a project. And so started my professional career. Hard work, my ass!

And now I´m sober and on Crete, trying to draw my way out of the fledgling commercial career.

Why Cartoonarchy?

2009-02-17T14:15:00.008+02:00

(This post will be heavilly editied, tweaked, added videos, links, and pictures to, until it´s a mission-statement I´m pleased with)

If you only come to this blog to read comics... Don´t feel pressed to read this shit. All you need to know is this:

On this blog you will get free comic books.

If, however, you´re wondering a bit more about my intentions behind this blog, and indeed all my comics, then go ahead: Read this shit.

Some say art and politics should not be mixed. I say they´re dickheads.

Making art is in itself a political act, and the sad fact is that whether the intentions are completely non-political or unabashedly radical the major effects of most art is simply to provide a release from the daily insanity of the modern world, and to create more objects we can use our money on, both things fueling the corrupt and crumbling economic system.

So how does an artist avoid.... to paraphrase Bill Hicks.... sucking on Satans cock?

Well, that´s the question I´ve been struggling with all my life. As a good God-fearing Anarchist, I feel there must be some better way of doing stuff. And as far as I can see, the only option available to artists is to use their power to destroy the concept of intellectual property and copyright.

Wha-wha-WHAT? But copyright is there to protect us artists???

No, it isn´t. But we´ll to that soon enough.

First.... Why anarchy?

Well, Alan Moore can explain it more eloquently:

Thank you, Mr. Moore.

So... Why the destruction of the concept of intellectual property?

Because intellectual property is a form of censorship that is currently enslaving the world and because we as artists are making our living creating items that are "protected" by this form of oppression. But by freeing our art, I believe we can help to create a better and more just system, and perhaps walk a tiny step closer to realizing the dream of a world where everyone can decide over themselves.

Now I became interested in copyright through reading about the struggles of comic-book artists like Jack Kirby, and therefore my first opinion on copyright was to support "creators rights".

Now... changing my opinion from believing in the strengthening of these "rights", to the abolishment of them, required quite a lot of mental contortion. But the more I learned about the history and the effects of intellectual property laws, the clearer it became that these "rights" have to go, because they simply are not right.

But for a bit more on why and how, I´ll turn to Eben Moglen:

Thank you, Mr. Moglen. (See also part 2 and part 3)

Ummh....

Where was I?

Yes, I´m nearing the end of this.

So what´s the plan? The plan is to create comics, and experimenting with ways of distributing them without copyright. Right now there´s not much I can share, but I´ll be working to get the print-files ready for my old stuff, translate everything to english, and create new stuff. And I need all the help I can get, so don´t feel shy.

One last why.....

Why comics?

Well, that needs a bit longer explaination... so we´ll have to wait a bit for that...