Tomorrow’s the last day to enter to the lottery – we’re more than excited; thrilled even to see who wins :)
While we’re waiting for that, here is few more photos of Run Freak Run comic thumbnails and Kaija drawing the sketches clean with a bluepen and a lightboard. Also, a teaser for an upcoming chapter! This time, with a giant!
Love always,
Silver
This must be the best line of dialogue that I’ve ever wrote and if not, I’m still really proud of it. Thanks to Kaija for making it amazing.
We recorded the whole session of Kaija drawing this sketch, but unfortunately there were some mistakes made with the camera and the quality became unacceptable for us. We only want to show you guys the best. It’s a bit shame because the process was really interesting, but bygones are bygones and next time we’ll do it good.
I’m quite excited about the whole process video-thing and the interest it has peaked. It’s going to be an interesting new hobby for us to figure out the camera and to then actually produce the videos. We’ve been watching educational art videos and livestreams with a whole new perspective. Most of all, it’ll be very educational for us to make tutorial videos, since it’ll require us to simplify the pipeline for the sake of clarity. We’ve been talking about that quite a bit now and it seems that we’ll head that way. When we were students these video tutorials were one of the biggest inspirations to me and as cool and enticing as it can be to just watch art being made, we’d also like to dig deeper and help someone else in the process.
Here’s a progress photo of what Kaija is working on right now. We show these off quite often on our Facebook-page and they’ll eventually make their way to this blog as well :) The sketches are for an upcoming chapter of which I’m thrilled about; it’s something very different for us mood-wise and I think we’ll be extremely proud to show it and we hope you’re going to like it. :)
I’m a Kickstarter-enthusiast; I think it’s marvelous beyond words and it has helped so many comic-artists who’d otherwise be stuck in a void, not being able to publish their work. Just recently I pledged to NNN by Dan Kim and I also want to take a moment to promo Stripped: The Final Push. It’s a documentary movie about the comics industry; where it was and where it is going right now. If you’re into understanding the web comics as an industry, then this is for you.
Speaking of web comics industry, merchandise is something that web comics do as they grow in readership. We have been thinking of pushing out more options besides the original art pages, but we’re still unsure if we’re there yet. We’d like to show you some designs that we love and we’d really appreciate to hear if there’s interest for T-shirts, hoodies or even posters! If there is, I’m sure we can make them somehow available for you :)
And also, I’d like to remind everyone about the 2-month anniversary lottery. The deadline is this Friday! So, if you haven’t entered and you want a chance in getting some original art, then you know what to do :)
Have a great Wednesday!
Cheers,
Silver
While I was inking the new “100 facebook likes” illustration, Silver sneaked up behind me and recorded a short video over my shoulder. This sparked a conversation about the possibility of making longer inking videos and posting them online.
Neither of us has any experience with this, so you’ll have to be patient while we go through a trial and error process. We’ve already thrown out one video because it turned out to be of such poor quality that it hurt to look at the jumpy and wavy end result. I think this means we’ll be adding a tripod and possibly a new video camera to our grocery list. Until that happens though, we might just experiment with short clips that Silver will be shooting from time to time.
If anyone has a more in depth understanding of video cameras or any good tips we’d be grateful to get the help :)
A little info about the video:
You can see me using white ink to ink the lines on the black background. The ink is “Dr. Ph. Martin’s pen-white” and it’s the first whiteout tool that has worked for me so well, that I’ve started using it simply as white ink when I need clean, white linework done. It’s thicker than normal ink, so the lines come out a tad thicker than the black ones. With some practise and a small nib (maru-pen for example) it works pretty well though.
– Kaija
I can’t express how thankful we are to our readers for helping us get that first 100 Facebook likes. We’re amazed how great it feels to hit that first milestone and connect with 100 new people.
To celebrate that, Kaija drew a new Run Freak Run illustration! I’m thinking that this could be a real cool t-shirt design one day?
It’s one of my favorite things Kaija ever draw, and I’ve been jittery pretty much through the entire process, from her sketches to the inking. I can’t believe she managed to finish it with me jumping around all the time. I don’t want to get too far ahead and promise something on her behalf, but I guess we could do something cool for 500 Facebook-likes too! :)
We started watching the two first episodes of StripSearch: it’s the Survival for webcomics where the winners 15000usd cash prize and integrated into the Penny-Arcade machine.
I think the prizes are pretty cool for a web show and it’s got a great subject matter. I haven’t quite made my mind of the show, but I’m feeling a little disappointed of the pacing and polish quality this far. First I thought that I was being too picky and couldn’t enjoy the show because I’m too used to the high-budget TV-series from HBO and such, but I decided that it’s not it: First of all, it would make me hypocritical, being an indie web comic author. And for second, it’s clearly not the case because I really enjoyed Penny-Arcade: The Series, which probably had a smaller budget but great presentation.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s still fascinating though and while it’s not the next Face Off (prosthetics make-up artist competition), it has a certain charisma that I think viewers find appealing. I’m mainly interested in it because it’s about web comics (surprise), but I’m also fascinated by the contesters themselves; I feel like the show has found the most self-conscious artists alive. There’s not a bit of self-confidence in there: This far everyone one of them is pretty sure they lose.
I’m waiting to see what happens when they actually start episodes with drawing included and some serious drama kicks in; more than once I’ve seen a group of artists tear each other apart when disagreeing about art.
Project Runway is the only design related competition show that I enjoy and recommend. Never the less, I’m going to keep my eye on Stripsearch just out of curiousity for now, I already got a feeling who’s going to win this though.
Lets end this blog post with a small teaser from an upcoming Run Freak Run. Enjoy!
Cheers!
– Silver
This time I’m going to walk you guys through the process of creating The Queen. She was a relatively tricky one, it took me longer than usual to nail her design down.
There’s a funny “click!” feeling in my head when I figure out a character design. Maybe it’s the exact moment you figure out who that person is whom you’ve created. Before the “click” the characters are like a puzzle with infinite solutions, and you’re trying to fit different pieces together, looking if there’s something that will fit or add something interesting to the table. But after that moment of knowing it’s smooth sailing and you have a clear goal to work to.
I had Two in my head from the start, so there was no stumbling and no refining processes. As I said, I wasn’t so lucky with the Queen. My “click” moment with her came exactly between part1 and part2 of the process.
Laters,
– Kaija
Just a moment ago I finished two new RFR poster designs. I’ve had them on my to-do list for two months already, ever since the Christmas holidays, during which I drew couple of pages of thumbnails with possible ideas for illustrations and posters. I took a picture of one of the thumbnail pages for you guys to see :)
I’m especially happy with the chain whip poster, I like that I managed to keep it so simple, no distractions. The other one gives me a nice retro vibe :) All in all I’m happy with today’s results!
The thumbnails for the two finished posters are on the third row from the top, in the middle. I’m not sure which one I’ll do next; I’m itching to get my hands four of these. I’ll keep it a surprise for when they eventually come :)
I also HAVE to shout out about this new webcomic I was reading yesterday. It’s called “Thunderpaw: In the ashes of fire mountain” by Jen Lee and I highly recommed it. I think I was squealing from happiness while I was reading it :D It’s an animated comic about two lost dogs on a journey to find their home while the whole world around them is crumbling to bits. Beautifully drawn, love the style, striking colour scheme and the gifs bring the whole apocalyptic world as well as the dogs alive. Especially the one that’s constantly on the verge of tearing up. The cutest thing ever :)
Until next time!
– Kaija
Run Freak Run has been published online for little over a month now, but it’s already been a year since we started working on it. For us it already feels like a long ride with plenty of ups and downs, first tries and re-tries, and finally knowing enough to move forward without too much stumbling. Surprisingly, that long term consistency has been the most rewarding aspect of last year’s journey, not the small occasional victories and breakthroughs, although those definitely are what keep you moving forward at the time.
We started brainstorming setting ideas during last Christmas holidays. There were Mongolians invading Europe, inquisitor girls with zweihänders, and a lot more that I cannot remember now. In the end, all that led us to a nun who hunts witches, monsters or frankly anything abnormal on the inquisition’s orders.
That’s when I drew the first sketches shown below. She already had the name “Two”, a remnant detail from a previous story idea that fit even better with the new character. It took a couple of tries more from my part to get the details of her dress right, but the essence of the character clicked with both of us right away. We stopped the blue-sky idea generation there and run with Two. Silver started creating a world around her and I moved on to figuring out how I wanted to approach the visuals of the comic.
I think we still had some days left until the end of the holidays at that point. So, you can imagine, if all that happened in about a week, how much we’ve experienced with the project in a year :)
Until next time,
– Kaija
I made a step-by-step of the two poster designs that we have at the moment, as promised last week:
Cheers!
-Kaija
Even during the holidays Kaija is hard at work, inking upcoming Run Freak Run pages like a comic machine. Tune in on Monday for the next page of RFR!
The December Run Freak Run-spotify playlist is here and it’s the perfect music to enjoy the comic.