I'm a bit late but thanks for everyone who dropped by at Desucon!! C: Had a really good time for the whole weekend! Next time I'll have a table at Tracon in September, I hope to see you guys there as well.

I have around two months of summer holiday left so I'll spend most of my time drawing Phantomland 3. It's gonna be another huge challenge but I'll fight HURRRRG o/

Also I got myself a tumblr account recently, will mostly post some doodles there so feel free to stalk if you're into that stuff. Link below:

Comic: [link]
Tumblr: [link]
Blog: [link]
Twitter: [link]

I passed the 150k kiriban without even noticing :-D Oh well, thanks anyway guys!

Streaming seems popular these days, would anyone be interested if I did that for a bit too? I don't know much about the tech so is there anything I should know beforehand?  

Also Finns ahoy, I'll have a table at Desucon (Sunday only) and Tracon (both days), maybe Animecon as well if I can manage. See you there!


MORE STUFF
Comic: [link]
Blog: [link]
Twitter: [link]

Attention Finns, me and my excellent roommate ~LEPPU will be sharing a table at Tampere Kuplii on next weekend, 9.-10.4.: [link] Find us at the pienlehtimarssi!
I'll be selling Phantomland as usual :3

Not much else to report.
If anyone catches the 150,000 kiriban I'll draw something in return!

And it's looking pretty awesome on paper, no complaints here!
Check the homepage [link] for mail orders <3<3

I'm still alive. School is a bitch and sadly my top priority right now. As much as I love my hobbies I need to graduate sometime! OTL

Also I've been bored with my drawings lately and can't seem to finish anything I start. Doesn't really help that I've been surrounded by some super talented people ever since ~LEPPU moved in my flat this fall, haha. I need to find me some motivation or this shit won't fly.

I'm trying to get Phantomland #2 finished shortly though! I've almost figured out the problems now. Gee, I hope the third chapter won't give me this much trouble... though it probably will; the further I go with the story the more it seems to expand beyond my control :-D Writing is harrrrrd goddamn

So I was aiming to get Phantomland 2 printed by the Helsinki Comic Festival, right? But problems occurred and it can't be delivered on time... so I decided to cancel the order altogether.
No P2 available at mangapäivä (Sep 11th) unfortunately.
But you can meet me there still, I have a table and apparently they're gonna interview(?!) me about the comic too.

Come and smack me if you will. I'M SO SORRY PLEASE FORGIVE ME

I never actually gave an official release date for this but I really hate letting people down, especially after all the cheers and encouragement I've gotten from you guys over the months, and it's about time I got this shit finished too!

Yet in a certain way this is good, because frankly I wasn't very satisfied with the comic. :-D I rushed way too much this time. Some parts are outright bad, I think. I figure it's a lesser shame to be late than sell a half-assed work, so I'll go back to redraw a few pages now. And I'll be able to feature more extras too.

Hopefully I'll have some good news in a few weeks.

I'll draw something for the one who gets 123,456 <3

[link] (Phantomland homepage)

I've been thinking about some stuff related to my project, but it's hard to make decisions without other people's help. So please help me out a little :-D Any comments on these? Thanks in advance!

Merchandise?
Someday I want to draw a glorious promo illustration with lots of characters and cool poses! If there's a demand, I'll print posters of it. The Cypress logo might also make for a neat badge or keychain, perhaps? What about chibi characters? Uuuhh... I'm not sure I could handle those.

Merchandise could be fun, but I might also feel stupid selling Phantomland stuff as if this were a franchise or something. Because it isn't. Especially when there's only like 1½ issues out so far. :-D I respect Bill Watterson in that sense, since Calvin & Hobbes never existed outside the comic strip. That was a really ballsy stance to have. (Although I really would've loved an official Hobbes plushie at least...)

Mailing list?
Since my work pace isn't as fast as my readers deserve, people end up waiting for months to get the next issue. I guess some of them would forget about the comic altogether. Maybe I should contact those people? I wonder if anyone would be interested in joining a mailing list or somesuch? No spam, only the relevant stuff, obviously.

Extras?
The only extras in issue 1 were a pair of gag strips. Those will come back next time, but I'll probably want to have other stuff also (depending on the pages I have left). Any wishes?
I've been writing short descriptions about the world etc, which I could put there with sketches. Character profiles are also an option, but I find them a bit problematic since I want the story to be read without knowing the plot or characters beforehand. Maybe I could write about the design process instead...  

Guest art?
The inside of the back cover is a color page. I left it blank last time, but I thought it might be cool to put an illustration there in issue 2. Even better if it's drawn by someone else! Maybe I could blackmail some fellow Finnish artist to draw one for me, huhuhu. But then again, I don't know if it would be so "useful" after all (besides stroking my ego and promoting the artist maybe)... I doubt many people would cut the page off or anything, since it would ruin the book. Hmmm. Well, I guess it depends on whether anyone's interested in the job.

I felt this need to spread the word about Flattr. It's a micropayment system currently being developed in Sweden, check out their site for a video introduction: [link]

Basically it's a very simple one-click method to give small donations to your favorite things on the internet. I really hope it kicks off and becomes popular. I already registered myself a beta account and will start "flattring" my favorites as soon as it's possible :3

So what's this llama business exactly? I thought it was some kind of an April Fools' gimmick yet it stuck around apparently. I already missed which users gave me a badge, but thanks anyway <3 I love you guys too

About time I got rid of the old entry!

I don't have all that much to tell you though. The last couple of months I've spent mostly pondering the choices I've made in my life; whether I'm in the right place or going in the right direction. I guess everyone goes through this at some point.

My worries are pretty meaningless though. I have no regrets choosing to study graphic design, but there's still this small voice that keeps telling me it's naïve to expect a decent career out of this; as if I should grow up and figure out some "real" stuff to do. Not that I know what could possibly be more real for me, so... yeah.

It's just that all of my friends seem more mature and dignified than I do, dammit. I'm just some kid who draws silly things.

I still went and started my internship at a local manga publisher though. I wonder if comics could be my future after all, hehehe. Time will tell.

Oh shit, I'm nearing 100,000 hits! I should celebrate it somehow... I'll draw something for the person who screencaps it.

Phantomland issue #1 is still available via mail order, please buy it if you're interested :D More info: [link]

Yeaaaaah!
It's confirmed now, Phantomland #1 will be on sale next weekend at the Helsinki Comic Festival! For more info check out the Phantomland homepage (still in Finnish atm, will change soon).

I'll try to arrange some kind of a mail order system next week. How many of you are interested in it at the moment?

And how long do you think you could wait for the comic to travel in mail? The thing is that shipping costs would be as low as 2€ everywhere if you pick the "economy" class, but depending on the country it might take anywhere from one to three weeks to arrive... :-D I was thinking it'd be less of a hassle for me (and cheaper for you) if everyone's copy was shipped in the same class. Oh well, what do you think?

EDIT: Oh yeah, and I also heard PayPal charges some percentage of money sent between accounts? If it's true, how much is it?

Just a little update to get rid of the last entry...

Working really hard on Phantomland atm so I probably won't be submitting other works for a while. If I'm lucky I'll get the comic printed in time for Helsinki Comic Festival (12-13.9), but I can't really make it a promise or anything. Shit tends to happen after all :D

I'll be flying to London next week. I was supposed to take a friend with me but she got sick and will probably cancel her trip ;_;
Any helpful UK/London residents interested in hanging around with me between monday and thursday?

EDIT: Phew, she got better just in time and the trip went great! Thanks for your help though, guys :3

Maybe I'm just an ungrateful prick but I feel genuinely bothered by the recent popularity of my facial expression tutorial. I mean it's got over 1700 +favs now. What the hell.
The problem is that the tutorial is old and stupid and I don't like it bawww. Usually I'd simply remove stuff like this but now that it's gotten so insanely popular... I don't want to be responsible for the misery of hundreds of people ;_;

Fffff. Should I make a new tutorial to make up for it? But then again, I also have mixed feelings about tutorials nowadays... I believe people should learn this stuff through observing rather than following instructions.

Hi gais,
from the looks of things I'm attending Tampere Kuplii next weekend. I have no clue what I'm doing there but I'm going anyway!
I probably won't be busy at all so I thought it would be cool to meet other folks from DA, have a chat, draw stuff, whatever... I feel totally alienated from the current Finnish artist/comic/whatever scenes so it wouldn't hurt to get to know some new people (and old friends too naturally).
So by all means, look up my face in FB or Galtsu and come say hi if you recognize me! <3 We can schedule meetings too if anyone's interested.

Thanks for the support and encouragement, everyone :3 I've put up my new blog now. Go read it here!

I've had an idea to start this new blog for a while. It wouldn't be about myself but rather about my two cents on the visual side of things; comics, animation, games, films, and most of all drawing. It could be interesting to process my thoughts by writing them down somewhere, but... well. My joke of a self-esteem says no :D Maybe I'm just too humble. I have an intense fear of looking stupid; dedicating an entire blog to my wrong opinions could raise the possibility a few notches.
Despite all this whine, what do you think? Is anyone interested in some meaningless artfaggy drivel by yours truly? I could maybe start with a couple entries and see where it goes, I dunno.

I finally started my comic project!
I no longer care if it turns out lame or badly received; it gets me off my lazy ass to actually do something and that alone is awesome.

It's now called "Phantomland" and preview pages for the Finnish edition can be read here.

My top priority now is to make a self-published issue due next summer's local anime conventions. Apologies for the potential non-Finn readers; I'm not sure if or when you'll get to read the whole thing in English but I promise to translate at least the previews if you're interested.