my pocket-universe

Rainy Halloween

2009-11-01T08:29:00.001-08:00

Halloween in Manhattan and New York in general is a interesting experience. Nearly everyone on the street is costumes and people brag with their costume creations. Unfortunately we had heavy rainfall this year, and me and Becky had to flee into a Diner and had food there. Afterwards I took some pics of costumes. I, myself, was dressed up as Private Dick. I started to watch old detective movies and came into the mood.

School Trip and Zombie bashing

2009-10-21T08:15:00.000-07:00

Dear friends – I am well and safe in New York, I don’t write a soften because I don’t realize how fast time passes by. Let me sum up the most important things that happened over the past days. Our class did a day trip to the “Norman Rockwell” museum in Stockbridge – Rockwell was a very popular American illustrator and painter from the 1920s-1950s. His paintings are considered as the visualization of the “American dream”, the “American” him or herself, but he also showed some “downsides” and saw the humorous side of life. I enjoyed the trip a lot and I really loved the paintings. Below our class in Stockbridge.

In general, I love the “History of American Illustration” lectures – I learn about illustrators I have never heard about before and I enjoy their styles and the topics they visualize very much. Let me mention some of my favorite so far: William Dana Gibson, Aubrey Beardsley, Winsor Mc Cay, John Held Junior, Howard Pyle, Jessie Willcox Smith, N.C. Wyeth, Thomas Nast and many more.

In life drawing, the exercises are not easy, they are very challenging which I appreciate. I am still not able to use what I learn for my own purpose, but I am still patient and I am sure I will profit.

On Sunday, I had my first game with my all girls RPG group – we just founded it, and had an absolutely fantastic game. The five of us, Mary, Melissa (the game master), Michelle and Lena decided to play “RISUS” an indie roleplaying game system that has six pages of rules. The characters don’t work with attributes and skills, but with “clichés” – for example, my character is a German who immigrated to the US and has the clichés “Private Eye” (includes shooting people, intimidating, wearing a slazy trench coat and attracting femme-fatales), “Alien Parasite” (super healing and dimensional portal opening), and, within others, my favorite: “Saving people in last second (in slo-motion) while screaming Nooooo!”. We put diced in those clichés and roll them when it seems appropriate. Melissa put an awesome game together: Levar from the 80s show “Reading Rainbows” – a show were children is taught how super cool reading is – reads the “Necronomicon” to the children and thereby makes them soulless zombies. We saved the day, but some children had to die or were mutilated. Let me point out that my character was always against actually killing them! But some people always have to behead little zombie-girls (point my finger at Michelles character ;-) ). Below a photo (from left to right: Melissa, Lena, Mary who thinks "If I can't see you, you cant see me" would be a great power and Michelle) from our group after harvesting on the chocolate fun-due! Please notice the TV in the background! ITS A MONSTER!

Of course I couldn’t resist drawing the groups characters – from left to right Sonja (who can make things explode), Leopold (prive eye and dimensional traveler), Zeek the Geek (who can travel trough wires) and Patricia (can see the souls of things and has a samurai sword).

Update! Tunnels!

2009-10-06T07:15:00.000-07:00

Hello friends,

welcome to another short sum-up of things that I have been doing; First of all, I had visitors from Austria for 10 days, Eva and Mira from Vienna. They were pretty good at doing stuff on their own and it was nice to talk Austrian for a while.

Below you see Eva, me, Mira and becky at the “Atlantic Ave Tunnel tour” New Yorks first subway tunnel which was sealed off (and fake-demolished, a corruption affair) at the turn of the 18^th century and then re-detected by Bob Diamond in the 70ies. Of course, my fotos are shitty in this dark enviroment.

My new drawing table and light box arrived two weeks ago….I should use it more.

Especially exciting was the lecture by Peter de Seve, lead character designer of all Iceage characters. I got an original drawing too.

Below, you see Lisa and Joel whom which I played a three-times session of Call of Cthulhu (gmed by Osc) – can you believe, our characters survived INNSMOUTH by just TALKING???!!!

Below foto is by my fellow student Aera – it shows us and Melanie Reim, getting trough every single sketchbook of the class.

I have to admit, im not really drawing a lot next to life drawing session and homework. It seems that my system and brain is shocked by the new stuff Im learning and right now, I dont make any good drawings....its just a phase...ITS JUST A PHASE, RIGHT!!!!???

Godzilla loves Mayhem! Vote for it!

2009-09-29T20:15:00.001-07:00

Please vote for my shirt at threadless!
Godzilla loves Mayhem!

Posted using ShareThis

Various things

2009-09-22T10:22:00.000-07:00

This time a random report, because various little things are happening – for example, today Obama is in New York to have negotiation with people such as Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. So I suppose Manhattan will be locked down.
In school, everything is quite stressful on different levels. It is not that they demand incredible much from us, it is mainly that I am not used being in the system of education again – and postgraduate is something else then undergraduate: Nobody whines, nobody complains, people really WANT to be there and try their best. Also, I am in a constant state of learning right now – about drawing techniques, about historical aspects of illustration, about my thesis project. It’s all quite confusing.
I enjoy having a big library so close by, I just walk 10 minutes and I can work my way through Brooklyn Central library – they do have a lot of books on drawing, illustration and comics. Nice!

Impressions from the last weeks:

Below you see some of my fellow students - I organized a drawing party, because we have to draw hand and feet - we decided to do it together and model for each other.

Becky is intimitated by the evil looking fortuneteller at the Society of Illustrators.
Vanessas garden is a beautiful little work of art with spontanious erruptions of dinner parties.
10 minutes from where I live is the Brooklyn Central libary (the building behind the pillar).
Look, its Guy Delisle! A Canadian comic artist who made "Pjöngjang".
The lady in red is Melanie Reim, our drawing teacher and head of the programm. Here we look at her drawing books.
There is a comic shop right around my corner! "Bergen street comics", a neat litle place.
Comic pordium at the Brooklyn Bookfair!

My art at Gallerie Remixx

2009-09-16T07:30:00.001-07:00

Four pictures from my „Absolutely Free“ exhibition work will be presented at Galerie Remixx from 28th sept. – 13th of octobre – about the gallery (in German): Die "Galerie über den Dächern von Graz" beherbergt Bilder, Skulpturen und Grafiken der klassischen Moderne sowie Werke der transnationalen Avantgarde. Das Angebot an Ausstellungsstücken reicht von internationaler Fotokunst, über wertvolle Bücher und seltene Ausstellungskataloge, bis hin zu Avantgarde-Kunstzeitschriften und Fotobänden. Vier mal im Jahr werden in der galerie remixx Werke von jungen, meist steirischen KünstlerInnen ausgestellt, deren Kunst fasziniert.
Feel free to come by, I wish I could be there to see it.

RPG character for Call of Cthulhu

2009-09-11T13:54:00.000-07:00

Frank Brown, originally Emil Wagner, was born in Vienna/Austria in 1904. Raised in a wealthy family, he was able to develop his artistic talents. His mental contact to the spirit world enabled him to produce extraordinary paintings, which found great response in the occult societies of Austria and Germany. After the death of his father he emmigrated to the US for unknown reasons. His exact whereabouts are unknown to his remaining family.

School & RPGs!

2009-09-05T08:48:00.000-07:00

School

I have to fill about three sketchbooks! That’s my homework for the semester. First, we have to document a street block. We have to draw everything we see there, inside and outside. I’m not sure yet, but I already started with Astor Place and St. Marks street – that’s in Manhattan and part of the Lower Eastside. The hardest thing is to overcome shyness to actually LOOK at things and draw them, and not to care about people who might notice it. The second sketchbook has to be filled with hundreds of hands and feet. That might be the hardest sketchbook, but if I really manage to go through with this, I’ll be able to draw hands and feet! FINALLY! The third sketchbook has to be filled in the life drawing sessions we have every week – about five hours every week! YAY! So, I have a lot of drawing ahead of me.

We also have to write a thesis within 18 months, but we already have to hand in the topic in one month! It already took me long to find a topic for the last thesis, right now I don’t really know yet what I want to write about. It has to be a topic that interests me so much, that I’ll be able to deal with it for 18 months….

Look at al the hip young Fashion students.....

RPGs

Yes…of curse. I’m a dork! I’M back in gaming already. Of course I am! But what shall I do, when coincidently a GGG (Gotham Gaming guilt – a seven time meet up to game in the city) takes place exactly at the time I arrive! And the same game master who was responsible for the fantastic game I played in 2006 (see archives for,that was Deadlands: Holy Rolers September – December 06) sets up a Dungeons and Dragons game! I am a tourist! I have to play D&D here if I get the chance. For all the nerd dork geeks in my circle of friends I will write more about the game – everybody else: AVERT YOUR EYES!

We played a game called “prey” which was most likely written by the GM himself. We, a wizard, an orc barbarian, a monk, a ranger, a druid and me – a rogue – are slaves in a terrible world – description by the GM follows:

In an unprecedented catastrophe, the orc tribes have united under a single leader, a paragon of their race, to conquer the land and enslave its populace. Under this new regime, a caste system was put in place to subjugate all. After their paragon's death, he was deified and now, the caste shamans continue the tradition. You are, each of you, slaves within this harsh new world, hundreds of years later. Owned by the merchant Inaz, you have chafed under the oppression and yearn for freedom, for you and your families. Tonight, your plan to escape comes to fruition, slaves organized, you’re elite team ready, and geared to fight and be free or die trying.

So that what’s happened in the last game: We tried to get free. We actually got a map of the city from the GM and could make up any escape rote we wanted. Actually, I had to make it up within seconds because I was the Rogue - the Rogue always knows the escape routes. So I had to pull out something of my sleeve, which was: We have to escape trough the sewer system! After creating an diversion (we burned down the kitchen), killing a couple of orc guards and the pit master himself, we went underground to face a tunnel trap (classic!) involving a big nasty snake. Our orc barbarian took care about most of the nasty things. At the end, we were all led into a trap by a NPC. We were captured, oh no! Next thing we know is we’re declared prey for the orc hunters: We have one week to get anywhere on the map, and then they start to hunt us down. We had about 10 possibilities to choose from where to go next, but we don’t know yet. We had a lot of fun, that’s all I know. I drew my character – he may look a little bit like a sunny boy, but he’s tuff! Ahm…if you ignore that he only has 6 hit points.

Below is our D&D parti. Sorry for the bad picture quality, but the GM was moving so much!
And yestderday I participated in another of Oscs Call of Cthulhu scenarios. As always, it was funny and scary! But out characters all survived and we will all play together soon. At the foto below you see Osc, next to him his children. His son made this "Spawn of Cthulhu" cupcakes! Incredible!!!
And, as always, a festival took place on the weekend. Here are some impressions of the "Brazilian Day Fastival". Many people!!!! MANY!

Subway sketches #001

2009-09-01T10:57:00.000-07:00

My new scanner is super-fast!!!! Hurray! My workstation is almost completet - chair and drawing table still missing.

New home, school, IKEA

2009-08-30T14:24:00.000-07:00

School has started – that is why it seems that I have disappeared from the surface oft the earth: We had school from 5pm – 10 pm the whole week. No worries, it won’t be always like that; Its was the Bootcamp, an initial session to make acquaintance with everyone and work on a piece of illustration. The assignment was “Robot”, the technique free to choose. The results where all wonderful.
My piece is a new interpretation of the relationship between Godzilla and one of his opponents (I don’t know his name!). It’s supposed to be a cover for a fictive pulpy love-romance cover.

I also enjoy living in the same flat again I used to live in 2006. This time my room is much bigger, but also of course, much more expensive – I hope I will be able to afford it until the end. I live together with people from all over the world again: The nations are Sweden, Germany, Italy, Swiss, Canada and the US. I will introduce my roommates on some point. Below: My room. For those of you who do not know it already: it's 900 $/month. Lets see how long Im able to afford that.

Below are some of my roomates standing in our beautiful kitchen (which is nearly always clean, by the way - from left to right its Barry (US), Nick (US), Nava (Swiss), Katharina (GER)

We had a dinnerparty at the roof because some people are moving out.
On Sunday I took a trip the NY IKEA in Brooklyn to buy some little things. I mainly did this to take the free NYC water taxi. It was very stressful, of course, on Sunday million of people travel to IKEA, especially large families. But I got what I wanted: Mainly Tupperware!
The Watertaxi takes about 15 minutes from Wall Street pier 11 to Red Hook, Brooklyn, where IKEA has its location.
The view from IKEA restaurant to the statue of liberty. Its strange going shopping in the exactely same enviroment like in Austria, but seeing the skyline of NY in the background.
The water taxi leaves the pier.

Stuff and Coney Island

2009-08-21T06:51:00.000-07:00

Hello! As many of you know I have been suffering under the evil influences of a summer cold. My big plans of doing fun stuff with Becky every day were eliminated by bad tempered germs!
Im doing better now, finally – but school starts on Monday, so vacation is over. I did manage to have a first look at my university. It’s a big complex of buildings (A,B,C,D building) all offices are spread out all over the place, so I spend my first day running around in different buildings, getting a visitors pass (security is much higher there than in Austria), visiting the graduate studies office, the international office – always going from 33 degrees (outside) to what felt like 22 degrees (AC inside). I also finally managed to open up a bank account. And I have my student ID! Classes start on Monday, next week will be orientation week. Evening classes from Monday to Thursday.
So here are some impressions of the little trips I made in the last days.

This is the “Frying Pan” – a boat with a bar on it (NYC is SOOO FANCY!)

Time Square has a car free zone now, which makes it much more comfortable to walk there.

This is Pumpkin, Backys cat. It has a degree in “being cute and fluffy”

OK more stuff – Ive been in Coney Island yesterday (it’s a 1 hour subway ride from Queens) which offers a long wooden boardwalk with fast food and fun fairs, freak shows, a sand beach and the New York aquarium. Like good tourists we had ice cream, ate a hot dog, took the wonder wheel and made photos in a photo booth.

Im here!

2009-08-12T10:22:00.001-07:00

Arrival
Not much to say about my arrival, everything went pretty without any problems – after some horrible nine hours with 90ies love movies shown on VHS in the polish plane I landed in the hot New York City. Becky and her mum picked me up and we spend some hours in Chesnutridge, 40 minutes car ride away from the city, to relax and avoid rush-hour.

The High Line
We have not done much yet, since I still suffer from heavy Jetlag (and I do not take it easy) and its very hot outside. We dared to leave the house yesterday after 5 pm, when the sun wasn’t so merciless anymore. Gabriela, Beckys aunt (she is even younger than her!) came by and we visited the “High Line”, and old abandoned railway track above the ground in lower Manhattan which served for trains in the beginning of the 20th century and has been turned into a park. While wandering trough grass and trees, growing between railway tracks, you can look down at New York traffic and enjoy the view.

Yes, Im in New York
I realized it when I saw people dressed in strange cloth combinations, celebrating being different, underlining that in New York you can do whatever you want. I saw my first gay, interracial couple, pointed and laughed at a Yoga class of people who were visible to everybody walking through the High Line park and shook my head at people who would stand in line for one hour to get a Burger at a hip fast food in a park. Also, I have to get used to the air conditioning everywhere – no matter how hot it is, bring your jacket if you want to go inside somewhere, even the subway. The shops at 5th ave are in competition in whos shop is more like the north pole by leaving their doors open (!) while having their ACs on full power, so passing by people are pulled into the shops.
Much to do I have left, that’s why I end my first report now and start caring about “reporting in” to the International Institute of Education. I have to stay “in status” or the FBI will get me!

New York City

2009-07-30T08:49:00.000-07:00

Hey, no posts for over a month! Im a bad girl...
Anyways, most people know it already: Im going to New York City to study a (MA) illustration. Ill be leaving on the 10th of august. Ill give many updates on my experiences on this blog, so stay tuned!

Somethings' Fishy - my new webcomic

2009-06-23T08:42:00.000-07:00

I havent decided yet if Ill keep on using blogspot, I might change to wordpress. We will see. Until then: Enjoy "Something's fishy!"

Back from Munich

2009-06-21T00:48:00.001-07:00

I have just been at the comicfestival Munich from 11th of June until the 14th of June. Exhibitions, publishers who present their comics, evening readings and meeting old and new friends took most of the time. I met Stefan and Jahn Dinter from the Zwerchfell Verlag, Christopher alias "Piwi", creator of Disco Amore, Vero who just published her graphic novel "Kleiner Vogel Rot", Robert and Sebastian who won the I-COM price with "Schicksalsgnom", Naomi Fearn creator of "Zuckerfisch", the fantastic "Jazam-Team" and the Comicgate Magazin Team who won a I-COM Price as well, Christian Moser, creator of Monster des Alltags, Sarah Burrini creator of "Das Leben ist kein Ponyhof", U li Österle, who celebrated his big release of the Harcover release of Hector Umbra, and many many more. I made some bad fotos and hope to receive better ones from the others soon.

Below, Vero!

The main festival room!

The Jazam team!

Piwi and Vero drawing.

More concept art....

2009-06-06T02:30:00.000-07:00

Is it scared? Is it paranoid? Or just staring a hole into the wall? What is it holding? What is it thinking? Or does it just have to fart really hard and tries to hold it back? Who knows...

Xoth Art

2009-06-03T01:35:00.000-07:00

I recently had fun drawing my own fanart for Xoth, also did yome drawings for a possible second part. It fills my heart with joy to put my head into this strange world I created. Enjoy. There is more, but I dont want to give everything away at once....

Nub gets somethings from Shang....
Jacop O' Damsel and his cat....

Tomaten Jo...

2009-05-31T08:59:00.000-07:00

...likes tomatoes. God, I can understand him, I like tomatoes too....This is another illustration for the children's cook book that will hopefully come out later this year. So far I have done about 40 different illustrations for this book.

..and Ottakar likes fish. He chateches it himself in the big great ocean.

BLATT Work

2009-05-22T11:22:00.000-07:00

Regarde! My illustration for the BLATT ÖH Wahlen billboard.

Abolutely Free opens

2009-04-29T03:56:00.000-07:00

The exhibition I mentioned - "Absolutely free - der Woodstock Effekt" - I contributed 11 pieces of Illustration for opens tomorrow (one of it is above), 30.04.2009 at 5 pm for public in the Neutorgasse 45. here the text from the officials:

absolutely free - Der woodstockeffekt

Das 40-Jahr-Jubiläum des Woostockfestivals ist für absolutely free Anlass, das Feld
der Jugend- und Popkulturen zu betrachten und zu hinterfragen. Das legendäre Festival, Höhepunkt und gleichzeitig Ende der Flower-Power- Bewegung, hat sich in den Köpfen und Geistern der Menschen als ein Symbol für die damalige internationale Protestbewegung gegen dekadenten Wohlstand, Konsum und Vietnamkrieg eingebrannt. Woodstock markiert aber auch die Kommerzialisierung von Popkultur und Protest.
Aber wie hat sich das Phänomen Woodstock in der Steiermark ausgewirkt? Hinterlässt
die drei Tage lang erprobte und gelebte Utopie eines neuen Miteinanders von Love,
Peace und Protest auch heute noch Spuren in der Gesellschaft?

absolutely free eröffnet mit einem 4-Tages-Happening.
Nähere Informationen entnehmen Sie dem Programm anbei.

Wir freuen uns auf Ihr Kommen!
absolutely free - Der Woodstockeffekt
Ausstellung und Veranstaltungsreihe
am Landesmuseum Joanneum
1. Mai bis 16. August 2009

Children's Cookbook

2009-04-19T01:49:00.000-07:00

A childrens cookbook with stories+recepies. I make the illustrations. This is one of them - they are pretty harmless, but well, I do not want to scare 6-year olds. :-)

Things I am currently working on...

2009-04-01T10:14:00.001-07:00

Yes I know I am never posting anything but I am working on a lot of things - some of them I cannot post I am afraid because the clients have not published the work yet. One major project was the production of a illustration series (10 pieces) for the "Woodstock" exhibition of the Landesausstellung Joanneum starting in May 2009. See two excerpts below.

I am also doing illustrations for a childrens cookbook, for a campaign by the university Graz and for OMICRON electronics. Since those are all in progress I am afraid I cannot post anything. So things are going good so far. I celebrate two years in the freelancer business, half a year without doing any none-illustration related side jobs.

Festival report

2009-03-09T04:59:00.000-07:00

I just returned from the Linz 09 Next Comic Festival - I must say, I had a lot of fun. Very nice exhibitions, and very interesting lectures. Some of them deserved a lot more audience than they got. The opening at friday was well visited and politicians like Josef Pühringer outed themselves as comicfans. Also, when the presentation of prizes took place I got the go on stage together with two other winners (all in all there were 9 winners in five categories, but since they were partly international only two others could come) Nikolaus Raspotnik and Janina Putzker (17) two very talented artists.

I also was happy to meet Gerhard Haderer, once of my favorite caricaturists and a member of the jury . I remember back when I bought "Think Positive" a collection of his works and kept on showing it around to others because I liked it so much. Maybe you also remember the big fuzz when Haderer was sentenced to a half year prison after he released his book "Das Leben des Jesu" in Greece, but later on the charges were dropped. So all in all, a nice but rainy weekend in Linz.

Gottfried Gusenbauer opens the festival.

Gerhard Haderer talks about the comlexity of painting a foot thats sucked full of water after hours in the bathtube.

I had to take this groupie picture together with Gerhard Haderer.

Cosplay girls/boys are always present at any comicfestival.

This is an excerpt of my winner comic, a 10-paged short story.

At the Next comic Festival Linz

2009-03-04T04:01:00.001-08:00

Ill be there until Sunday evening - if your are in Linz visit my comic presentation at Saturday evening, 8 pm at the Ars Electronica Center. Oh and by the way, now that the webpage of the Next COmic festival announced it, I can tell you too: I won the Next comic competition together with Vladimir Aleksic (with different works tough) in the category "Proffessional". HUZZA! More about that next week.

My comic on your shirt

2009-02-22T05:02:00.000-08:00

I joined up in the "Red Bubble" community and uploaded some of my artwork: They offer to print it on demand on shirts, postcards and stuff like that. I still have to upload some more work, but if you want comic cthulhu on your shirt, now is your chance.