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Friday 30 September 2011

Why This Blog Could Get Interesting

Okay.
So it's not like I've started blogging just because I was a bit bored or something. And I have a perfectly functional analogue diary sitting on my bedside table that I write in sometimes (with a real pen!), so I'm not going to blog about last weekend's family reunion or how worried I am about my cat who got in a fight and now has a limp. I guess one of the reasons I was so keen to start blogging was that I wanted to practice writing in terms of tossing my thoughts around a bit.

Like I said earlier, I make comics, for the most part short and funny ones. But when I sit down to read a comic, I like to snuggle up in my couch with a cup of something hot and disappear in some wonderful world of colours and art and story. Like Bone. Or Maus. (Ok, these are originally black and white, but you catch my drift). Or a volume of Flight. Or Strangers in Paradise, an all-time favourite. I can spend minutes looking at a single panel of any one of these, trying to work out how it was done, or what the author was thinking, and what I would have done if I was the author. Reading a comic isn't just a pastime for me, I can't help but try and learn stuff while I'm at it, whether it's storytelling tricks or colouring techniques or what have you.

So i might tell you right away that I'm hoping to make my own Grand Epic Comic one day. I've already done quite a lot of research for it, but I'm not going to actually tell you what it's about because let's face it - there are people out there who wouldn't think twice about stealing ideas. But I can use this blog to air my head a little, vent some frustration, write about something else altogether.

Also I was wondering if I should try to write the whole comic as a book first, not a proper book of course, more like a manuscript. Comics have a lot in common with filmmaking, and films also start out with manuscripts. Then they move on to storyboards, and what is a storyboard if not a rudimentary comic?

Anyway, this was a rather serious and perhaps dull blog entry, but now it's out there - I want to make an Epic Comic, so maybe now I'll get my ass in gear and do something about it. Here's a picture to lighten things up a bit.


Oh, and today's recommendation: Fisherman's Friend. They really do clear up the pipes something wonderful.



Edit: When I write Grand Epic Comic, I obviously mean graphic novel. With lots and lots of pages. Probably more than one book. Maybe many. Who knows.




This Is What I Do For A Living

Right, so I thought I might have a little show-and-tell today. I make comics, which are then printed in various papers and magazines here in Norway. My longest-running comic to date is Reveland, which translates as "fox land/country" which just sounds lame. "Reveland" also sounds lame, but that's what it was called back when I was twelve and made the first comic about Superfox who saved pretty girls from drowning and suchlike, and I never got around to changing it and now I reckon it's too late.

In the year 2000 I entered a comics contest with an extremely naïve rendition of my fox universe, but then, I was eighteen and an art student and all ironic and clever and things. I never heard from the jury. Three years later, though, I entered again, and this time I was runner-up. That was encouraging, so of course I put my comic in a drawer and didn't look at it again until 2007 (thanks to my chiropractor, who is a great believer in following your dreams and listening to the universe and things) when I got it printed in my local newspaper. Four years later, I'm making four different comics on a regular basis. I quit my day job in January 2009. I worked in a gardening center, but I'll save that story for later.

Here's an example of my comic Reveland:



(I know, that joke is SO old. But it had very little text so it didn't take me long to translate it. I'm super busy you know. That is why I'm writing a blog entry instead of actually working)

I'm also proud to say NONE of my comics have ever been refused for print. Except one, because it was so obscure that the editor didn't understand the joke. It was about that milkshake-song and all the boys to the yard and I made that Scotland Yard, which in the comic was a stick at the Scottish official yard-measure themepark where you could get chilled milk beverages, and --- okay, I guess I understand why they refused that one.

Did I mention I have a baby? He's six months old today. Hooray!

Thursday 29 September 2011

First Entry

Hi there. Hello. Yes. Welcome to my blog! If you read this, you're --- probably very thorough, seeing as it's my first blog entry here, and that means that maybe my blog in the distant future has become quite popular and you wanted to read the whole thing and not just the new entries. So I should probably write something really interesting and funny here to make it worthwhile for you. Yes.

Right. Well, I'm a tall blonde Norwegian, but don't let that put you off. I'm a comics creator, which means I write and draw comics for a living, which is pretty cool. I'm also sometimes a fine artist, in fact I have a fine arts degree, so occacionally I paint something and maybe someone buys it. When they do, I get really happy, because then I get money and also unsold paintings take a lot of storage space.

I just did an internet test that showed that I in no way have Asperger's syndrome, however I do tend to get intensely interested in things and obsess about them, so if you for some reason keep reading my blog over a lengthy period of time you'll probably see evidence of this and then you'll probably be a little annoyed. Don't worry though, I usually lose interest after a while. But this will mean that I might write things like "I WANT TO BE A WRITER SO BAD AND I HAVE AN AMAZING IDEA FOR A BOOK WHICH WILL SELL MORE THAN THE BIBLE AND BE MADE INTO FILMS WHICH WILL WIN ALL THE OSCARS IN THE WORLD", so when that happens, just smile and nod and carry on with whatever you're doing.

For said reason, see above, I won't say that this blog is about anything. Because even though today it might be a blog about comics, tomorrow it might be about cooking. Or babies. Or computers. Or art history. Or cookies. It probably won't be about politics, though. Or mathematics. Or ferrets. Or unicorns and rainbows. Sorry about that.

Anyways, a good blog entry should include a picture, so I've drawn one for you. It's not very good though. Here it is:



Also, a good blog entry should include a recommendation of something. So I recommend you go ahead and read the book Divergent by Veronica Roth. It's really good. Here's a picture of it:



Right, have a nice day, then!

Edit: You might wonder why I called this blog "Have a Dang Cookie". I haven't really got an answer for that. I'll probably change it sometime. When I've thought of something really good.

Sub-meta-edit from the future: It's not called Have A Dang Cookie anymore.

Edit 2: That little drawing I made above? I made that on a Bamboo Pen&Touch Special Edition. It has a little program called Doodler. It's very basic but pretty neat.