Parents — making us look like idiots in front of strangers since the day we were born.

Sorry about the downtime on Sunday, by the way. My host seems to be having problems sometimes, usually on Sundays (of course!). At least my site came back up in time for this update … V`(oo)´V

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My sister Ainur has spent the weekend at the Helsinki comics festival, selling Goldenbird and hypno-Mochi badges, as well as the erotic comics anthology Swedish Comic Sin, and discussing Finnish war comics in an all-women discussion panel. And she wasn’t actually cosplaying Samona at all on Saturday (consciously, anyway):

Wish I’d been there too. V^(oo)^V

But next week is the book fair in Gothenburg! I’ll be comic battling on Saturday and participating in two panel discussions on Sunday. More details here …

Fan service for the piggy and doggie lovers!

And now we realise at last that Willie and her dad speak Czech with each other …

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I had lots of drama with the first panel … V`(oo)´;V

At first, I sketched Willie and Sophie about to enter one of the houses on the left side of the street. I wanted to check some reference photos before inking the background of panel 1, so I inked everything else in this page first. As I then looked at photos and floor plans of terraced houses, I realised that if they had the living room/parlour on their left side when entering, the house would have to be on the right side of the street!!

That’s because victorian terraced houses all look like this:

(Sketch borrowed from the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society …)

When terraces were built on a slope, they would have the back rooms above the yards. So terraces on opposite sides of a street that goes up a hill are mirrored.

Since I had already inked panel 2, it would be a pain in the arse to redraw it. I briefly considered drawing panel 1 looking up towards the top of the hill, but that wouldn’t look as nice, so I just flipped Willie and Sophie so that they now go into a house on the right side of the street. Phew!

Anyway, unlike in the sketch above, many terraced houses are divided into two flats – one downstairs and one upstairs, with separate entrances.
That is also the case with Sophie’s squat. It’s loosely based on the terraces in Bensham, but there are lots and lots of streets like this all over Gateshead, and I’m guessing that at least one of them was totally abandoned in 1998.

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Fun links:

Dene Terrace and its neighbouring streets in Benwell, over in Newcastle, are mostly abandoned today. If you, like me, have a perverse fascination for such things, you can visit the area in Google street view.

And here is a very nice page about life in victorian terraces in the early 1900’s.

So I guess Willie likes swarthy guys with big noses and longish hair, in general. :3

Kaveh is based on a certain Kaveh in my school in 11th-12th grade, who I also had a crush on. (He was even cuter than I drew the other Kaveh here. :3 Today he’s some kind of hipster?)

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Anyway, I got a sudden gush of inspiration for making the cover for the future Driftwood book:

Whee!

Well, guess what? The end of July marked the 15th anniversary of Driftwood! (I didn’t mention anything about it at the end of July, because I mistakenly thought its “birthday” was now at the end of August … V`(oo)´V)

I drew the first page at some point near the end of my summer vacation 1996, when I was 15 years old. (The exact date has sadly not been recorded.)
So this means I have been working on this comic for the most part of my life! V^(oo)^V

What is even more disturbing is that by the time I finish it, or when it’s finally printed as a “real book”, it will be about 16 years old. Just like its protagonist.

I was looking at my diary from 1996 in order to try and find the exact date for when I started to draw it, but with no success. However, I did find one quite shocking note. Pretty much exactly nine months before the end of July 1996, I mentioned the dream that was the initial inspiration for Driftwood:

October 24th, 1995
[…] By the way, the other day I had a dream in the spirit of [Loisel’s comic book adaptation of] Peter Pan — a ship came to take me away from this world and to new adventures. Unfortunately I woke up before I had gotten aboard.

During the following nine months, my ideas for the story grew and warped, and I made about fifty million drafts for the beginning. Then one day I guess I had a halfway decent idea for the opening scene, and started to draw it “for real”, in A3 format and both pencils and ink. It was the first comic ever that I actually inked, and as far as I remember the first that I drew in double the print size (or even planned to print, for that matter). And since then I’ve just continued, page after page.

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By the way, I’ve made the final decision to not redraw the first few chapters. Reasons:
– That would take a lot of of time, and I’m already 30, dammit!
– This is only a prequel, and I’m sure everyone wants to read the adventures that follow just as badly as I want to draw them. :3
– It’s a story about growing up, and the way the style matures is part of the story. (Yay, best excuse ever!!!!!! V^(oo)^V)

I’ll still leave the options in the poll to the left, to mock anyone who would vote for them.

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Oh, and today was Read Comics in Public Day. Yay!

Film tip: If you don’t mind late 80’s fashion, low budget filmmaking and lovely geordie accents, you still have eleven days to watch In Fading Light on SideTV, the free Internet television channel of Newcastle upon Tyne based film and photography collective Amber.

In Fading Light is a drama from 1989, set in the declining fishing industry in North Shields. A large part of the film was shot on board a small fishing vessel (a 63 foot seine netter), and the fishing scenes are exceptionally realistic. In fact, the actors were auditioned and trained by local fishermen, and they filmed during an actual storm.
It’s a rather endearing story, and at the same time a fascinating documentary on the fishing industry of the time.