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Some unplanned sketching

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On Friday Silver found an app for drawing on your iPad, and I’ve taken to it for some reason. For two days straight, instead of absent mindedly picking up the iPad and playing a round of Alto or Two Dots, I’ve gone to draw a new sketch. The app is called “Forge” and it’s been really fun to play around with, so I thought I’d share the love:

Sketches_01

 

If you happen to pick up Forge, I’d love to see what you’ve created with it :) And if you’re interested, I’ll be posting these sketches regularly on instagram and twitter.

https://instagram.com/nonsense_and_sense/

https://twitter.com/KaijaRudkiewicz

 

Smiles,

Kaija

Sneak peek in the newsletter!

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Last Sunday we delivered a promise.

We delivered a promise to give our email subscribers a sneak peek to our next project, and the response we’ve gotten was overwhelmingly positive and exciting. It’s something we’ve been painstakingly working on the little hours when we’re not doing Run Freak Run, and it’s been a tremendously proud experience to see it come together.

I mean, just check it out yourself :)

 

How can we not feel excited after that? :)

It was such an encouraging experience that this Sunday we’re going to do it again, and this time we’re going release more teasers and content to our newsletter subscribers. This time, we’re also going to ask for a limited amount of advance readers to help us bring this project to life.

So, if you haven’t yet subscribed – don’t worry! This Saturday we’re going to re-send the first sneak peek to every one who joined the list after the first sneak peek, and the next day you’ll get the second sneak peek with everyone else!

We’re so adamant on getting you signed up because we never want to lose you as a reader, and we want to have the tools to reach you with all our current and future projects. And trust me, you don’t want to miss them. :)

And just so you know we’re serious, check this out:

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Sign up to our newsletter, and we’ll rock your world!

Love,
Silver

 

Looking forward to hearing what you thought of it! @runfreakrun

Silver’s shitty poems

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For every decent RFR poem, I have to do at least ten bad ones. Here are three from over the years, wonderfully illustrated by me. I hope you love ’em.

 

MARCELLA

Marcella,

He was a rough fella’
Who liked to dress like
A pretty bella.

Tough and sweaty,
Big and hairy,
Build like a male dairy.

Marcella,
Ma bella,
I hope you don’t end up
A lonely fella’.

marcella

 

 

RED SHRIEK

In a wet creek,
There was a Red Shriek,
His teeth reeked
of onions.

Red Shriek,
Onion freak.

What a
stupid creep.

redshriek

 

 

HORTENSIA

Hortensia,
The flower of
Valencia.

She was a fine lady,
Born in sixteen-eighty,
Who ate a lot of
Gravy.

Too much gravy.

And became fat.

So fat.

Hortensia,
The greedy bitch,
Died killing half of
Valencia.

hortensia

 

 

Love,

Silver

Challenge me to a poem showdown @runfreakrun, if you dare.

Help share RFR – Top web comics

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Hi guys. Today we ask you for a little favor. Today we ask you to vote for Run Freak Run in topwebcomics.com. We’ve noticed that we get occasional traffic and new readers through them, and if our rankings would be highers, then we’d be able to reach more.

So, today we ask that you take a second to vote for RFR, and help us find new readers.

Just click below! Boink! And remember, you can do it multiple times!

Thank you in advance,
Silver and Kaija

When we were horizontal

9 Comments on When we were horizontal

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We finally have the first draft of Run Freak Run available for download for free. If you’re curious to see how it was different, please check it out!

Download RFR First draft here.

(Feel free to tip us for Christmas cookies and coffee, comicking makes one hungry!)

Before Run Freak Run was what is now, it went through a few iterations. The first draft was created in horizontal web format, with gradient atmospheric inks. I remembered watching Kaija hand-cut paper masks to each panel, and painfully splatter ink. The effect was beautiful, brilliant and eerie, but ultimately too time-consuming for a project we do in the evenings and weekends. We wanted to publish more than every two weeks, and hence had to approach it differently.

We also rewrote and simplified the story. We’ve been studying storytelling for the past three years now, and while we feel like we’re finally starting to understand something, it’s been through some struggles and millions of rewrites – honestly, we had no idea what were doing in the beginning. 

Kaija actually blogged about this earlier. 

For the first draft of RFR Kaija had drawn 22 pages and I had lettered 16 pages until we decided to put on the break and start over. That was over 3 months of work reset there, but in the end we were happy with the decision. The first chapter of RFR is already quite scarce story wise, and with half the amount of panels per page it was even scarcer. We actually have plans to go over the current first chapter and re-letter it with more dialogue and sound effects (which are currently missing totally *gasp!*), hopefully we’ll be able to do that for early next year.

Great part about doing RFR like this is that it’s a living project. We can go back in and fix things as we see fit and make it a better experience.

Anyways! Check out and download the first draft and enjoy some beautiful art from Kaija!

bloodof

Click to enlarge!

thenshedied

Click to enlarge!

 

Love,

Silver

Tweet, tweet me at @runfreakrun and join our newsletter, pronto!

Grimm’s complete fairytales

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grimsgif

Hellooooooouuuuuu!

Today I want to talk about one of our favorite books, that I thought would go really well with our readers, since like – most of you are into fairy tales and mythologies. The book in question is The Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales and it is magnificent.

It has over 700 pages of short stories collected by the Brothers Grimm, during the early 19th century. The stories are often strange in nature; often magical, divine (God and the angels do a few cameos), sometimes plain weird and always entertaining. It has all the classics from Rapunzel, Snow White and Hansel & Gretel, but also a lot of unknown delights.

I can’t really recommend this book enough, it’s a bible for story lovers and beautifully presented. Many of the stories are illustrated by Arthur Rackham and are just full wonder. Kaija got me this book last year as Christmas present and it’s been a great source of inspiration and references. I don’t know how, but I hope to use a lot of the things from it somewhere, some day.

So please, go get this book, trust me – you’ll love it – Just look at the photos below!

 

grim10

“It’s leather bound and big, and like heroin for a bookphile.”

grim2

“Illustrations by Arthur Rackham. The cat jumping around a late medieval city reminds me of something, hmm… We swear we thought of it first!”

 

grim3

“Thanks to this book, I now know that the woods are full of old creepy ladies.”

 

grim4

“Cinderella’s wild night out. Gurrl’s gonna go crazy.”

 

grim5

“Never mind the logic, it’s beautiful.”

 

grim8

“And then she throws her in to the oven. That’s just cruel. They could have just taken her cane away and she’d be immobilized, but no – burning her seemed just more natural. Crazy kids.”

grim9

“Over 700 pages of wonder.”

 

grim1

“Don’t let your kids get this book, they’ll throw you in the fire too.”

 

Love,

Silver

 

Twitter me or comment below your favorite fairy tale books and collections, I’m always up to talking anything books!

P.S – Please join our newsletter! It’ll make it so much easier for us to share the cool new project we’re working on. We hope to make some first sneak peaks the upcoming month. Join, join, join.

20 days later

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20dayslater_header copy

Ever wondered what happens to neglectful people’s pumpkins after Halloween? Me neither, but today I got to see it anyway. Today, after 20 days, they finally caught my eye while walking past the balcony. First the toothless grandpa grin that one of them was sporting, and then to my horror the mangled face of the other’s.

I gotta say, the wrinkles and the mouths frothing with mould make the pumpkins quite photogenic, but needless to say, after taking couple of pictures they served their last purpose in life.

Can’t wait until next year for a repeat performance!

P1030253 copy

P1030252 copy

 

Cheers,

Kaija

Run Freak Run newsletter!

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subscribe to the RFR newsletter

Hello dear readers! Today we’re going to ask you to subscribe to our newsletter :)

Some of you might have already noticed the brand new pop-up and sidebar signup for it, and now it’s about time we put it on the blog too.

 

So what is this newsletter thingy?

It’s a way for us to send you regular monthly updates on Run Freak Run pages, so you’ll never lose track with how the story is progressing. You’ll also get exclusive sketches, subscriber only art sales, and updates from the blog.

It might sound heavy, but we promise not to spam – we’re way too busy to spam.

And last, you’ll get the first teasers about our new story.

 

What new story?

We’re not quite there yet, but eventually we’ll reach a comfortable place to talk about. The first scoop will come to e-mail subscribers, because that’s how we roll.

Will it have witches?

Oh yes.

And magic?

Unbelievably tasty magic.

What else?

Rain, lots of it.

 

Wait, what about RFR?

Run Freak Run is still going to run without any hiccups. The newsletter will only help us reach our readers easier, and help us deliver you more stories with less hassle. We’re really quite excited about it because it feels like there’s one less barrier between us and our audience.

So, once more to summarize – Please subscribe to our newsletter and help us get you more RFR.

 

subscribe

Happy Halloween 2014

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happyhalloween1

Last year we blogged about how we never really celebrated Halloween, how we never had even carved a pumpkin, and about the rich history behind the tradition.

This year we thought we try it out a little.

So here you go, our first ever carved pumpkins straight from the heart of Berlin. It was super fun and we feel dumb for never trying it before. The pumpkin was surprisingly easy to carve and cut, and emptying it wasn’t even that messy. Lighting it up was especially fun, because it burned the roof a tad and you got this funny roasted smell.

Nevertheless, have a great and spookylicious Halloween dear readers, and we hope to hear about yours. :)

happyhalloween2 happyhalloween3 happyhalloween4

 

Love,

Silver and Kaija

Hello, goodbye ‎Vika Yermolyeva.

2 Comments on Hello, goodbye ‎Vika Yermolyeva.

Vika’s Youtube-channel | Vika’s homepage | Vika’s Facebook-page

 

Now the worst thing about moving away is having to say goodbye to those you call friends.

Sure it’s not a lost battle; as we moved to a new a city, we’ve met a wild bunch of new people. Some of these we will cherish overtime as our loyal friends, others will make nice acquaintances that we’ll call upon in a time of need, and the rest we will probably forget, like the countless others you meet in your day-to-day life. It will be exciting, it will be fun, but also bittersweet, for some friends you’d just want to drag along.

‎Vika Yermolyeva is one of those friends. She is an amazing artist and a musician with the sweetest of hearts, with a track record of impressive feat after another, and fan base so loyal – so large – that I can’t even comprehend.

We met Vika through her husband (also a close friend of ours with a heart made of candy), and while she first seemed shy, we came to know her over the years as wildly talented, funny, sarcastically witty, and a selfless person who just keeps blowing our brains away with one feat after another.

Vika is a Youtube-star, an award winning pianist, who plays rock and metal songs with a classical piano. She makes all the arrangements and sheet music herself, and her work is incredible, and if you’re lucky – you might even catch her gig somewhere.

I hope you like it, I hope you support her work, and I hope you have the greatest of Sundays.

 

 

 

Love,
Silver

Tweet tweet me all your Youtube-friends @runfreakrun and I promise to check them out.