my pocket-universe

Man, do I love demons

2012-02-03T09:08:00.000-08:00

Drawing a couple of really absurd demons before sleeping is awesome. Especially while watching a silly movie. My favorite thing to do is to take a shape/face/object/situation from the movie that grasps my attention somehow and invent a creature from that. It's a good way to relax the brain!

My favorite one is this one:

I like drawing before sleepy time recently

2012-01-27T10:30:00.000-08:00

I listen to a good audio book and draw characters on cheap copy paper. I love drawing on copy paper recently because I cannot withstand the pressure caused by the fresh, new paper of a sketchbook!
Those are some of the best! This page includes Jon Snow, Sam and Ezio from Assasin's Creed.

My art at the Society of Illustrators NY

2012-01-09T11:41:00.000-08:00

The Society of Illustrators NYC hold an annual illustration competition in several different categories. The winners get "gold" and "silver" medals. I didn't win, but I made it into the show in the category "Uncomissioned" which is a great honor. The fact that a slightly untypical piece by me won is interesting - it's a design I did for a Threadless submission, a piece honoring Poe's countless stories involving animals as guilt inducers for the protagonist.

I met a couple of people there who have helped me out a lot during studying at FIT: Dennis Dittrich, who is on the board of directors at the society and teacher for my capstone class, Anelle Miller, current director of the society and my previous teacher in the business class, Katherine Streeter was one of the jurors and she taught an art class for us and Bill Plympton, my ex-boss, won a silver medal for an animated short.
(from left to right, Bill Plympton+Dennis Dirrtich)

I enjoyed the evening a great deal, especially with Evelyn as my art show buddy. I was honored to be among such beautiful art pieces.

Design Process Shirts

2012-01-06T09:30:00.000-08:00

A couple of people have e-mailed me asking about my design process. I tried to put a small documentation together, but I want to point out that my process is always a little different every time, but follows some basic ground rules. Additionally, what I talk about might sound a little complicated but everything makes a lot of sense for me after using it for the past years.

Shirts are also different to the usual illustration I make. They have to have less than eight colors because if they get chosen they will be screenprinted. Therefor, the work process has to be advantageous for color separation - before you hand in the file to the people who produce your shirt, you have to have every color on a separate layer (in Photoshop in my case).

Anyway, let's start. One of the most important things to me is the concept doodle. I think I have never done a design without roughly doodeling it out first. This is vital to accomplish a good composition and to realize if the joke is working on a visual level. I started to hang doodles up my wall and let them sit there for weeks, sometimes month. Ideas which still seem good after a longer time are usually good ideas. Bad ideas seem silly the next day and land in the paper basket.
(Below: This is how my shirts start; As rough drawings, barely readable to anybody but me. But they usually capture composition and mood better than the final pencil sketch)

(Below you see one of my fevorite ideas from doodle to finish. I have a liitle sketchbook in my bag and fill it with little ideas like this. Usually I realize a good idea as a good idea pretty quickly, while bad ideas seem bad really soon as well)

From the doodle, I start sketching a detailed pencil sketch, usually on a pretty big-sized paper, usually A2 (I don't know that in US-size). It's important for me to draw big, so I can draw details without going crazy. The pencil sketch is usually really dirty, has some mistakes in it - but basically I try to draw it as correct as possible to have an easy time inking it. For inking, I use super smooth paper so the multiliner has no interruptions in the line quality. I fix it on top of the pencil sketch with paper clips and trace it on top of a "Light Tracer 2" light box which I bought at Blick Art. It took me a long time to figure out what fine liners to use, but my favorites at the moment are Copic Multiliners (the none-refillable ones) from size 0.5 up and from size 0.1 to 0.5 my favorite are Pigma Microns. Why? Because I have a strong grip and I need pens that can withstand my impatient hand good. And the pens mentioned above are pretty good at that.

The outlines for my shirt designs don't require to be perfect. Important is that all lines are closed, and that I use a fine pen, such as a Micron 0.5. The linework should be clean and clear. I will explain a little more by using my latest design "Exposed!" as an example.

As you can see, all outlines are very clear. The drawing itself isn't perfect, but I usually try to correct errors during the coloring phase. Using the outlines+Magic Wand in Photoshop, I lay out the basic ground color for the design; Shirt color (which I take from Threadless's shirt templates), in this case Navy. I don't always know what shirt color to use from the beginning. Sometimes I change it last second. But let's just assume I knew what I was doing from the beginning here.....which I didn't haha.

As you can see in the picture above, I put all the basic colors on one layer to reduce complexity. I only separate colors at the very end, once I know I'm getting printed, otherwise I don't bother. However, the assumption that one has to do the color separation later should be in your mind all the time so it's easy later.
SO once I'm kinda satisfied with the ground colors (which is usually 2-4 different shades of the shirt color and maybe one poppy color, like the red in this case) I start using textured brushes for a more 3D-traditional effect.

I would go too far if I tried to give you a tutorial on brushes here. Basically, I have one favorite brush which I got from a teacher at FIT a year ago. I use it all the time, and play around with the settings a lot. The most important settings for textured brushes for me are Scattering -> play around with the scattering and Texture -> apply texture to brush and play around with depth and size. One of the things to keep in mind is to not use different transparencies/opacity on the brush, as that doesn't work in screen print. But this is a whole other chapter.....

The basic thing I do is, use the darkest color as a texture in the brighter color and vise versa. That creates the effect of more colors and volume and shading. It's hard to explain. I hope you know what I mean. I keep all differently colored textures on different layers because color separation is not easy with textured colors. I use layer effects such as "Overlay-> color" to try out different colors.
When I am kinda satisfied, I mock the design up with one of the shirt templates I have to put it up for voting at Threadless.

I know this sounds probably all kinda complicated. But I hope I could give a little insight on my process. If I confused you more, I apologize.

The Unseen Helpers up for sale

2011-12-18T10:41:00.000-08:00

One of my most successful scoring designs, The Unseen Helpers, at is now up for sale at Threadless's LABS, an experimental line of shirts which are up for sale for a minimum of 2 weeks, longer if they sell well - so get yours fast in case it will disappear from their page. This, by the way, made about 2000 notes at tumblr :-)

When I met Matt Groening...

2011-12-07T09:11:00.000-08:00

Ok, dear followers, dear interested people, let me tell you something; When I was but a very insecure, little teenager who hesitantly told people that she wanted to become a cartoonist (but wasn't quite sure of that herself), I was on a trip with a group of other teenagers at the east coast and found Matt Groening's older comics "Life in Hell" and "Love is Hell" in a dusty comic book store. In it, irritated, depressed characters like Akbar and Akbar, Binky the rabbit and his son, one-eared Bongo had to fight the stupidity of society every day or were personally involved in being a part of it.

After reading the major anthologies, I literally drew like Matt Groening for about 2 years. Even my topics were very similar. I adored the man. I admired him. I wanted to write him a letter and tell him how much his work had influenced me. I think I gave up on the idea of a letter after a while. Maybe I didn't expect him to answer, ever.
However, nowadays I think I can claim I have developed my own style, but I have always kept the Matt Groening "Simpsons-eyes" and the classic "Simpsons mouth with the round teeth". But I'm pretty sure I can say that Groening's work was significant in me being what I am today.
When I accidentally bumped into him at The Brooklyn Comics and Graphic Festival last weekend, it was a very meaningful moment for me.

The story behind it:
I was wandering between the tables with my comic con buddy Tim. For some reason I had to think about the "Life in Hell" comics by Groening. I told Tim;" Did I ever tell you how much Groening's comics have influenced me when I was a teenager?". He told me:" Yes you did - by the way, did you know he was HERE last year. He might be here this year." I couldn't quite believe that Groening would travel all the way to the East Coast for a tiny comic festival. I looked around. I saw a man standing two tables away who might have been him, but I wasn't sure. Tim googled his picture with his I-Phone. After a second of comparing we realized: It was indeed HIM.

I approached him, and told him what I just told you: That his work played an important role in my cartoonist-life. I think he appreciated that, he gave me a little finished drawing and a "stalker business card". He even asked me if I had work with me, but I didn't, I only had my business card - and he was a little distracted by a girl trying to make him read her scripts (?) or something. I politely waited for a photo opportunity. I am the happiest girl in the world in this picture.
(Below: It's Binky the rabbit from the "Life in Hell" series. I think he gave me this because he appreciated that I knew his old comics and not just the Simpsons and Futurama.)

MEGA San Francisco update

2011-11-25T09:30:00.000-08:00

The Massive Black Inc. workshop

As most of you know, I spend 3 days in Portland OR to give a lecture about my work - see the post above. Since I don't like flying anyway, I drew this little page to illustrate my feelings about airports and flying - especially since the standards on the plane have dropped a lot since I first started flying with 12 (no free meal on a 6 hour flight??? I had to order a lot of wine to digest that (not free either of course)).

After Portland I stepped on a plane to spend the next 7 days in San Francisco.

I had a wonderful time in the Hosteling International downtown hostel (I recommend it highly if you want to save money in a friendly atmosphere - great staff and facilities). The city welcomed me with cloudy and rainy weather, and the first 4 days I had no chance of seeing it anyway because of the Massive Black concept art workshop.

Just a little summary for those who don't know what concept art is: It is the wonderful art that is created before a movie or computer game is produced, in particular productions with imaginary elements (fantasy, horror and sci-fi).

Massive Black is one of those studios hired for tasks like this. They invited other studios along, such as Steambot (located in Canada) and SixmoreVodka (located in Berlin). The artists of those studios filled 4 days with lectures and workshops.

(Portrait painting and life drawing going on at the same time)

(The lecturers are being introduced at one of the stages)

I don't know the exact number, but I would guess around 200 young artists visited the event. I met a lot of young students who's dream it is to work for the industry - many of them very talented people. I specifically want to thank Ash and Amanda, two young artists, who gave me a ride to my hostel after the day ended.

(Below: Amanda (middle) and Ash (right) were good comapny at the workshop)

I attended so many workshop and I took so much advice with me. I learned about speedpainting (loose, digital painting exercises at the computer), tips for the industry, for concept, layout, portfolio, work process, etc.

I learned about how design a couple of weapons really quickly (I followed the digital process as best as possible on paper) and how perspective actually works on a mathematical level.

Below: Coro, one of the founders for Massive Black, shows some quick techniques to design weapons)

(Below: this is just an excerpt of my notes for the perspective workshop. I learned crazy things, man: About ground,- eye,- and horizon level, about measuring points and measuring bar, etc.)

Some of the most important things I took with me is something one can apply to any field in the creative industry: Work with an idea, with a concept - when you create an image (and this applies to concept art in particular) make it believable (even though it is imaginary). This is so true - I see so many artists who are able to create beautiful drawings/renderings, but they don't think about story, function or concept.

(When I listened to Coro giving feedback to artists he was very honest to them. I remember him telling this young guy "Dude, your drawings are beautiful but you can't DESIGN".)

There were many other good advices, but it would take me too long to write them all down. I also must add that I was slightly out of place with my work at this place - most people there render totally realistically. I still get a lot out of concept art - a lot of the principles are applicable to my way to work. And I got a lot of good feedback by people, in particular by the Steambot founders, Joel and David.

In this workshop, we created an image based on a random subject generated by their "Random Subject Generator".

The generator spit out the sentence "Batman jumps prison guard at pavement", so all of us drew this scene. Since I don't trust myself with realistic painting, a did what I was good at. A winner was chosen in the end to win a signed concept art tutorial book by Joel and David, but I had to leave early for my ride home. David told me the next day that he thought I would have won. DARN IT!

That is why he drew me this little drawing in the copy of my book I purchased:

I could go on about this workshop forever. But I don't think anybody has made it that far in the text anyway, so I will post more impressions about the workshop along with drawings. Just this much I can tell you: This workshop made me think.

(Below: portfolio review with David from Steambot)

(Below: Scribble stuff)

(Below: Some other aspiring artists I met at the workshop (or at the afterparty in this case) - from left to right: Flabio (Switzerland), Jan (Germany/USA), Chris (USA))

(An amazing lecture on character design for MAGIC, Silent Hill, Wheel of Time, LOTR-online and many other projects)

(a lecture on how everybody started out in the business)

At the way back to New York I felt inspired and drew a couple of rough layouts:

The city itself

After attending none stop workshops for 4 days, I had only one day to actually see the city. I booked two tours in a row with the hostel, one to Muir Woods the famous, gigantic trees) and one trough the city. I will not write too much, but let some of the pictures talk for themselves.

By far, my favorite stop were the Muir Woods, a 224 ha forest with the Coast Redwood trees (they are the smaller version of the gigantic Redwood trees in another part of the state) - the forest felt like I traveled millions of years back in time and I expected dinosaurs to cross my path....

(A nice viewing spot of the pacific).

(Yes yes yes very touristy)

(More Muir Woods)

Portland, OR

2011-11-20T20:49:00.000-08:00

I finally managed to catch a quiet moment in the hostel I am staying in in San Francisco - close to busy, touristy Union Square. Here is a short report on my stay in Portland;

Well, it was fantastic. As some of you may know I went there by invitation of Laurie, a professor for German at the University of Portland. She had read my comic ("Xoth") a couple of years ago and is highly interested in comics made in Austria. I was more than humbled to stay in a beautiful guest room at the university for three nights and give a lecture to her German students about my work.
(Photo: Laurie's German class asked me German questions to practice)
(Occupy Portland!)
(The students are listening..... to ME!)
(I told the students about how Deix and Harderer shaped my humor. It was hard finding an example picture that wasn't completely offensive to a larger crowd)

What can I say, it went great. I love preparing lectures and put together a 70-slides all pictures presentation about my work, my inspiration, my comic and about Lovecraft. I felt like such a smart ass and the students really seemed to enjoy it and had a good laugh. They even asked plenty of questions in the end. The feedback was really good too.

(The students, me, Laurie and her daughter for a yummy dinner at her house)

The following days I was invited to talk in German to her class and later on we had a fantastic dinner at her house with some students and her family. I didn't see much of the city, just plenty pf bridges, rain, fog and I had a lot of bus-misadventures. I saw some occupiers and had a tiny doughnut at Voodoo Doughnut.

I arrived well in San Francisco for the Massive Black Ink concept workshop and have been going there for the last 2 days. I will write a detailed report on that shortly - haven't seen much of the city yet, except countless homeless people and the horrible bus system. More later.

Off to the west-coast

2011-11-15T09:00:00.001-08:00

I am very excited to announce that I will be leaving for Portland, OR today to give a lecture at the University of Portland (see the event
I will be talking about my comic "Xoth" which I did in 2008 to a group of German students.

At Friday I will carry on to San Francisco to attend the Massive Black Ink art workshop (4 days full of workshops!). I will post a detailed report once I'm back :-D

Two new designs up for voting! :-D

2011-11-09T08:04:00.000-08:00

The Unseen Helper embodies my love for ninjas doing none-ninja-like stuff! :-D

Proud Clouds shows two gay little happy clouds ;-D

Up for voting at Threadless

2011-10-26T17:34:00.001-07:00

Did I mention I love fluffy, epic battles?

Firefly shirt at teefury today (OCT 23rd)

2011-10-23T05:28:00.000-07:00

Don't miss out on my Firefly/Peanuts crossover at teefury today - and if you go to jung-shirts you have the chance to win a Threadless shirt :-D

NYC Comiccon and my geekiest moments

2011-10-17T07:17:00.001-07:00

New York Comic Con is insane! Visited by around 100 000 people it is smaller than San Diego, but it's still insane. I really enjoyed it last year (and was even able to make some contacts).
My favorite moments of this year's comic con and observations where:

One of my favorite cartoon shows "Adventure Time" is huge. They were present everywhere, had free stuff, posters, where official sponsors and a very high % of cos-players where dressed up as Fin and Jake, and Fiona (the female version of Fin).

Nerds are crazy! I was at two panels where weird people asked weird questions which made everybody feel uncomfortable in the room. These are moments where I don't believe in freedom of speech.

Fantasy is huge again - there was a panel about this in which it was pointed out that low fantasy is on the rise (especially thanks for Game of Thrones).
(Below: This Mister T was a little chubby, but he did a great job, My killer rabbit couldn't harm him)

(Below: This R2D2 was the star of comic con. Accompanied by two little children in Jedi costumes, it was an adorable-bomb on the visitors of the con)
(Patrick and Terry wit wonder wo-man)
(Jeff Smith, creator of Bones talks about his history with his creation)

The Conan panel was one of my personal highlights - not only do I have a pathetic geek crush on Jason Momoa, the panel was also hilariously funny. All three of them - (from elf to right) Steven Lang, Rose McGowan (who we know as Page from Charmed) and Jason Momoa (who is also Kahl Drogo in Game of Thrones) were smart, funny and interesting and answered the questions of the audience humorous and interesting. My favorite answers were some of the following:

The three actors were asked which role they would like to play in a movie (their dream role) - Rose McGowan answered exactly what I would have answered - that she would like to play the boys in movies because they have always more fun than the girls. "I'D like to be Batman, Spiderman or Superman - but the problem is, they are all "mans".
When Jason Momoa was asked which of his characters he would like to have dinner with he said:" NOT Kahl Drogo....he is mean. [...] He would probably just bend me over." (which is a joke based on the fact that Kahl Drogo tends to ahve a lot of anal sex with his wife in Game of Thrones). My other favorite answer by him was a reply to what was the greatest physical challenge he faced - his reply, without hesitation: "Horse-riding. I hate motherfucking horses - those bastards don't want me on their back. And this comes from the horse lord..haha."

All of the were very disappointed that the movie didn't do well. I saw it in the movie theaters and actually enjoyed it a lot. I even recommend it. I think it deserves a far better score than it got at imbd.

(Below, the main characters of the Conan movie)

(Star Troopers save me from the rabbit. My first day at the con involved cosplaying)
(It's Mark Hamilton!)
(Tata. My big, pathetic geek moment of the con. I purchased a photo opportunity with Jason Momoa. He makes me blush. I can't help it. I had to do it. I look like such a dork)
(Terry and Michelle in a Star Wars Toy box)

Lovecraft Fantasies in New England

2011-10-09T05:36:00.000-07:00

Taking vacation has maybe been one of the hardest decisions in my illustration life - it's hard to grand yourself a break if you freelance. You are always nervous about missing a job or letting yourself be away from the computer for a while.

But after reaching a point of high tension over the last months - feeling kinda trapped in New York, with all its noise, smell and heat during the summer - I decided to finally take the "big step" and go on my first real vacation ever by myself. And to take this thing even a step further I decided to do something I had never done before: Do a cruise to chilly New England and Canada.

I left the cruise terminal of New York on a rainy afternoon on the 1rst of October. I stepped into my very own room, with my very own shower and toilet and 24 hour room service included. Food would be complementary throughout the whole trip - so no worrying about cooking, like usual. The stops would be Newport (RI, population ca. 24.500), Boston (Massachusetts), population 617.500), Bar Harbor (Maine, population ca. 5000), Saint John (New Brunswick in Canada, population ca. 7000) and Halifax (Nova Scotia in Canada). We couldn't disembark at Saint John due to strong winds and high waves. I want to take the opportunity and thank Jesse Kleitman for being my tour guide in Boston - I really appreciate it.
(Foto below: day at sea - beautiful weather. The waves and the sea around us really fill your heart with serenity)

(Foto below: We cruise into the Boston cruise terminal, pass by gigantic container ships - and in the background: The skyline of Boston)
I enjoyed this trip thoroughly. I was pampered every day, my bed was always made, my food was good, the staff was incredibly nice and everything when I wanted quiet time I got it. I was traveling with 90 % elderly couples from all over the US and met people from California, North Carolina, Florida, Texas, Minnesota, New Jersey and many other states. Most of them already had grand children, so clearly the whole New England cruise thingy is not a thing for young solo travelers.
(Foto below: When we left the cruise terminal in Boston we passed by the Boston airport - we were incredibly close - the planes almost touched the ship when the started and landed....crazy!)

I enjoyed the different cities a lot and had my Lovacraftian fantasies in rainy Bar Harbor - when Lovecraft described the foggy, triste landscape of New England in some of his stories, with the small fisher cottages, the waves brushing against the shore and the dark fish creatures inhabiting them, I had a little cartoon break out in my sketch book where I relieved myself from all my "innocent, stupid tourist meets fish people" fantasies. Though, most inhabitants of the towns I visited were disappointingly nice and not fish-looking at all (YOU LIED TO ME, LOVECRAFT!).

I will let images speak about the rest of the journey - too much text have I written already. All I can say to sum this up is that vacation is great. I want to do this "vacation" thing more often from now on - if I can afford it. I recommend it to every freelance who hasn't dared to leave home base for a while. Even the surprisingly strong rocking of the cruise ship was soothing sometimes. ALSO! I will upload more pictures at my facebook page! So look out there!

(Foto below: The Boston aquarium as a great, gigantic water tank in the middle with a shark!)

(Foto below: Halifax, Peggy's Cova - a famous tourist attraction with only 47 residents. Halifax has seen much disaster: 1917, a lot of the Titanic victims were washed ashore. And when Th Swiss flight 111 crashed in 1998, the same thing happened again. There a re also countless shipwrecks from many centuries around the shore of Halifax)
Drawing below: People in the cruise Casino.

Drawing below: Waking up to the daily sea monster.

Drawing below: A day at sea with string winds and bad weather.

Drawing below: The only time somebody hit on me I was terrible at making excuses.

Drawing below: Day at sea. Waiting for Halifax.

Drawing below: 15$$$$ for a lobster roll??!?!?!!

Threadless collaborations

2011-09-28T07:12:00.000-07:00

I recently collaborated twice in a row for Threadless; Both involve epic battles in extreme conditions :-) Caught between really bad insomnia and stress I haven't managed to update to often. But on request I want to show some of the process of the collaboration.

All in all both collabs had a similar process - I did the concept sketches and the color and my collab partner did the line work. Unfortunately, line art is not my strength, but laying out action is. My collab partners Becky and Alex Solis are masters of the line art.

Collab 01: Epic Space Melee with spyyderray

Collab 02 with alexmdc: Sissy Sea Fight (originally titled "Bitchy Sea Fight" but not politically correct enough hhahahaha); Steps from elft to right: Doodle, concept sketch (me, lineart (Alex), color (me in correspondence with Alex).

Vote here once it's up:

Chicago Threadless meetup

2011-09-16T06:24:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I was at the Threadless meetup in Chicago. Threadless has an annual meetup at their headquarters there. People from all around the country – and the world – come over, enjoy free stuff and listen to lectures about t-related stuff. Form e it was an opportunity to finally meet a lot of the people I have only met online so far. I found out that all of them are super nice and some collaboration will come out of this meetup.
(Below: This is Evan, one of the most active bloggers at Threadless. I made a lot of photos like that...this is at the Threadless party in the evening)
(Group shot: It's me, Aaron (randyotter), Alexmc, Alvaro, fatheed, - sorry, don't know the username of the rest.... :-()
(Paparazzi shot with Buko from Mazedonien, printed a lot of times at Threadless)
(this is Jeremy (L-M-N-O-P at Threadless)- he is like 20 years old and already printed 2 times at Threadless. You go!)
(Alica aka silverqe is talking about her stuff. She is awesoem and printed liek 100000 tim

I also had the chance to see Chicago downtown by myself. I really liked it: The skyscrapers are impressive, the sculptures and architecture too – I like that even though there are highways everywhere, there are still enough safe zones for pedestrians. The museum campus is amazing – the field museum, aquarium and planetarium are all spread over a nice, green area for mainly pedestrians, with a beautiful view at the Chicago skyline. After seeing the planetarium, I rented a bike for an hour and drove around at the shore. Oh, how I have missed comfy bicycling by myself.

Did I mention how much I enjoyed the clean, roommate-less hotel room???!!!

Killer Rabbits on Threadless!

2011-09-01T11:36:00.000-07:00

Hi guys! I haven't posted anything about t-shirts in a while. I am really happy with the one that is up for voting at the moment - I finally got to design something for my big passions, the killer rabbit from Monty Python's Holy Grail.
Vote for it here:

How a collaboration can look like

2011-08-15T07:58:00.001-07:00

I have been talking about this super secret collaboration I am working on with Becky and Dan. Becky is an illustrator herself and Dan is a writer. I have never managed to give a passion project out of my hands before - it's really hard to trust others in a collaboration when you're not used to it. So how did we get this page done in a collaboration:

I want to tell you a bit more about it. But since it's super secret you have to forget everything really quickly after you read it, ok? Ok!

Anyway, the rough outline of our work together looks like this: We had a rough idea of the story a while ago. When we asked Dan to help us with the sript, we started meeting up. At those meetings, Dan is always great help in breaking down our ideas into actual story structure. We do that step by step, but we have a good idea of the full story. The details though are filled in with the time. What is the rough story. Well, let me put it this way: It's a horror-murder-mystery set in a fantasy setting with a female main character and parody elements. Anyway, I don't want to tell much more.

Based on the first script we send each other suggestions in case something might not work visually. I create a storyboard based on the script, as demonstrated here - in this page our main character catches a vandal scribbling a penis on a tavern sign and arrests him. The rough storyboard helps a lot to break everything down visually and is absolutely necessary for the work flow.

We check out the storyboard in a group meeting and try to figure out if it works and if anything is missing. If it's ok, I make the pencils which can look like this - as you can see I add some notes in color for Becky, who is the inker, to ask her to improve certain areas or completely redraw them, to add details or to suggest where to bubble is placed.

Becky then inks it, and I love how she does it. She usually improves the anatomy and the folds in the clothes and all the details. It's a great feeling to know that she will take good care of the pencil. She adds her own stylistic elements without undermining my own. I asked her to work with very clean, closed outlines in order to color it the way I'm used to - so no shadows in the ink phase, they are all added in the color phase which comes next.
The color is added by me. I love working with Becky's outlines, she knows that I like all my outlines closed so I can work with the magic wand as I'm used to. I usually work with at least five layers: Outline, base color, shadow, shine, light effects and sometimes special effects such as fire, fog, smoke are added too.
We haven't added the bubbles and text yet - we will do that once the first batch of drawings is done. But hey, only about 120 pages to go. So you can expect this comic in about 1 1/2 years. But we will keep you updated. This will be BAD ASS.

Somebody made a cake of my art!

2011-07-31T10:41:00.000-07:00

Threadless features a Threadcake contest every year. Cakeartists choose a shirt design and turn it into a cake and can win cash and other stuff for it. I could not believe my eyes when I saw that Rebecca McDowell chose "The Friendly" Spirit as a model for her cake: Seriously, that seems a design impossible to turn into a cake - it has so many details and so many different color nuances. She did it anyway. The result is awesome. See for yourself:

Thanks for choosing my design! It looks gorgeous! Good job!

Fanart and zombies

2011-07-28T18:01:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the late update – things have been crazy at home: we had bed bug alarm in the building. No bed bugs in my room, thankfully so far, but I have been terribly paranoid fort he past two weeks. Additionally, my laptop refused to power up after a DELL technician “repaired” – so no laptop for almost a week and no replacement by the company (seriously, baaad costumer service – except that one lady, she was awesome). Then, after being an extra at a zombie shoot for a documentary (title to be announced) I caught a bad summer cold (no kidding, I got an INFECTION after being at a zombie shoot, hilarious).

Anyways, my art has suffered under the stress of the last weeks, but I’m trying to get back on track. I decided to do a piece of fanart for a book I’m reading. Seriously: Fanart is great because it’s something to be passionate about. The book I’m talking about is “The Lies of Locke Lamora” by Scott Lynch, a newcomer in the fantasy sector. The book features a gang of honorable thieves in a very interesting fantasy city based on middle age and Victorian Venice plus pirates, magic and other awesome stuff.
I made a picture showing the two main characters, Locke and his friend Jean.

How to make Guacamole - comic

2011-07-07T10:19:00.000-07:00

I am going trough all my illustrations from the past five years, and I found this comic I made in 2009 for a cookbook comic published in Austria. It's about me and Avocado Guacamole.

It's in German and I am far too lazy to translate, but you English people just look at the funny pictures and guess the text! :-D

Pattern Design for Threadless

2011-07-05T13:47:00.000-07:00

The lack of update is obviously because my attention was drawn away by Schnitzel and yummy dark bread over the past three weeks. I was in Austria to visit family and friends, and while it was nice, I have not much to tell about it besides that I run around nearly every day to meet friends, ate tons of meat and finally played with my beloved RPG group again.

For the Threadless loves Pattern challenge, I submitted a design today. The title is “Dinaur Hugs” and speaks for itself. It was an interesting project because I tried a tutorial I found on the blog Design Sponge, in which the secret of making seedless patterns was explained. Here are the steps I took:

1. I drew a bunch of dinos hugging, without touching the edge of the paper. 2. I split it in half, exchanged the two halves and put them to the opposite side of the page. 3. I split them again, and repeated the process. 4. I then filled in the middle part, and voila: I had a design which was repeatable. I used Photoshop -> Filter -> Others -> Offset to correct mistakes and to see if it was really repeatable. 5. When I colored it, I took some Dinos out and corrected the lineart.

Vote for it here once it's up:

I collaborated on a shirt design

2011-06-24T01:14:00.000-07:00

As some of you may know, I am in Austria right now to visit friends and family. So not much new on the illustration market Jung. Except, I managed to work on a collaboration with my favorite collaborater, Rebekie Bennington

A while ago I had this idea for a shirt in which subways create the stem of a tree and the leaves are the houses, etc. I made a really nice thumbnail sketch which I haven't scanned in and it is currently in New York on my wall.

I made this sketch of how I imagined it and sent it to Becky.
She then made this awesome line art drawing which was perfect for me to color.
We decided to put it on a cream colored shirt to underline the greatness of the line art.

Please vote for us.
Oh, and a nice little blog entry about Austria will be up soon!

A tiny update

2011-06-06T06:55:00.000-07:00

Holy shit. It’s really over. My thesis is submitted to the libary, my capstone is hung up at the gallery at FIT. I am done with school. I am done with studying. This is an amazing feeling. And another year in New York awaits me. After that, we shall see what comes.

I am not working on so many shits right now. One reason is, that the comic project I am doing with my friend Becky is simply a bit more fun right now. We have also taken another collaborator on board, Daniel, who will most likely help us with writing the whole thing. So for this times update, I’d like to show you some more concept art for the comic.

Below: A monument concept scribble for our cizy.
Below: Becky drew this amazing picture, I colored it.
Below: A concept sketch of one of the main characters.

Poo poo brain

2011-05-14T07:59:00.000-07:00

Do you know the feeling, when you don’t want to draw? I mean you artist people, who make their money with this – do you know those times where a pencil weights a ton and the empty paper shines brighter than the moon into your eyes, and every line you make seems to be out of a horrible, Lovecraftian dimension? We all know it, I assume. So it’s nothing to whine about – but I wanted to share it, because it makes me feel better. Please feel free to comment your experience with “Artist’s block”, or as I call it, “poo-poo brain”.

South Park Fan Art

Nonetheless, I have some new art to present. I made a piece for the South Park Fan Art competition, just because I am a big fan and I wanted to do something that does not have anything to do with job, shirts or school. The real hard part was to choose the topic, theme - my favorite episode or moment. I decided to choose the "Gingers kids" episode, because it is very memorable to me. I made s little documentation here, even though it does not show how often I erased and how often I started over again. Again, I am having a poo-poo brain right now, so that should explain everything.

I started with a thumbnail, which in this case turned out to be very sloppy, but it gave me a good idea of the framing ant the composition (nothing else though, haha!).

After several failed sketches I managed to do this sketch. I was remotely satisfied with it and made the inking, in which I corrected a lot of the mistakes I made in the pencil phase.

After scanned in, I corrected a lot of mistakes I made in the inking stage. Lots of mistake correcting, I tell you.
And in case you are interested in what a control freak I am in Photoshop, look at this picture and the sheer amount of layers. God, how I love layers.

Panthoen Press Illustrations

For my good friends Rob and Jason, who are the founders of Pantheon Press, a little Indie RPG publisher, I made 7 b/w illustrations for their upcoming campaign (I think it will be published in June). This was a very interesting job, because I had to work in black and white and I am actually totally used to color. B/W is really not easy for me, because the lines and the surfaces of the illustration have to be defined much more carefully. Anyway, I am satisfied with the results - here is an excerpt:

Collaborations are awesome

2011-05-07T10:19:00.000-07:00

Ah, work is going good. I finished most of my projects for school, so 3 weeks before graduation I can kind of relax, wish is amazing. I can thank myself for being super stressed out in advance all the time, which I can only resolve by working super hard, super early. It sounds like a good habit, but believe you me, it is more like a neurotic disorder than a good habit.

Capstone

(Below: Little Zoo explores dangerous places)

Anyways. More about my capstone (as requested by Klee). What is it about? Let me give you the overview: When I arrived in New York to study illustration, I was fascinated by the wide variety of art in the children’s book market and decided to work on my first collaboration with a writer (Jason Ellis).
(Below: Zoo and his friend adventuring)

Together we have created the story of “The Little Scribe”, a fantastic tale about a young boy who is an apprentice to the only scribe in the town. This town is a place where ink is a rare commodity and only the mayor is allowed to provide it in order to warn the inhabitants of new dangers awaiting them in the larger world. When a young girl appears out of nowhere, stealing the ink the mayor has provided for the day, the young boy is forced to go on an adventure to gain it back.
(Below: A dark monster threatens the waters around the city)

The setting is a Caribbean fantasy world full of magical creatures, pirates and other colorful characters. In more than 40 colorful illustrations the book follows the boy’s journey through a world where not everything is as it appears.
This project si still in progress, but I have enough illustrations for the exhibition opening up in June. This has been a great experience so far, because I have never researched as much as this for a project before. I also surrounded myself with a lot of very inspiring art by other people. The next steps are to finish this (hopefully over the summer, who knows) and get it published somewhere.

Project Codename: Pepperpot

The other big project is a collaboration with my good friend Becky. This I a very exited about, because this is the first major comic collaboration that I have ever worked on. To sum it up, it is my dream of making a major fantasy comic with a female main character. It supports all my passion for fantasy, gaming and magic stuff. We have a rough story and we have sketched out parts of the world the story will take place in, but I don’t want to tell too much as long as we don’t have at least a part of the piece finished. So far, we have a couple of pages and a very very rough script. But believe me, this will be awesome. And a little sneak peak can be seen here:
(Below: A first model sheet of our heroine)
(Below: City guard, drawing by Becky, coloring by me)
(Below: A little sneak peak to the comic. Pencils me, inkings Becky, coloring me)

Washington!

2011-04-26T08:13:00.001-07:00

Ugh, my updates come slowly at the moment! But it’s the end of my program and stuff is happening. My thesis defense will take place next Saturday and I’m making the final arrangements for the print of my final illustration project for class. A detailed update about that was requested by Klee and I plan to do one soon, promise!

But let me tell you a bit about my little trip to Washington DC to visit my friend Evelyn’s brother. We took a 50 bucks round trip Megabus and spent a lot of time in it (just let me add, that trains are very expensive in the US, around three times the price of a bus or more). But it paid off: Washington was beautiful in the blooming environment of spring and the weather was perfect. I met Evelyn’s brother John and her niece Zoey, really fun and nice people. We spend all Saturday looking at monuments and taking questionable photos with them.

Mister Lincoln enveloped us all with his charme! We all know that the statue is really a giant roboter version of him, but today we were lucky to find him at home base, ready to save the world. (Left to right: Evelyn, Zoey, me)

Left to right: John, Evelyn, Zoey, me
This apocalyptic pic is by John.

The city was so clean and so different to New York. I wonder if they have some kind of mind-control spell over people who enter the city, to make them see only pretty buildings and no decay and flowers everywhere. It must be the answer. John lives in a very cute neighborhood called Georgetown, which according to him serves as the home for families, young couples and college kids who booze their brains out every weekend. Thanks again, for being such a good host.

Drawing my RPG characters

2011-04-14T09:01:00.000-07:00

Some of you know that I am a RPG nerd with all my heart. Playing pen and paper role-playing-games has always inspired me and given me ideas for characters and stories. For a school project I am drawing some of them right now - and maybe plan to offer it as a regular service. The question is, how many people out there like the "cartoony" approach to their characters. Hopefully many.
Below is my character "jacop Tucher" - I have played him in a game in Austria with some friends, in a game called "Das schwarze Auge" /The Dark Eye. He is a bit of a lazy wizard, and I wanted to show him in a very typical moment: Boozing instead of studying and telling a joke.
This is Mara Payne, a character I play in a D&D game with friends. She is a level 17 Rouge and unbelievable epic in all she does - she is a ninja, a shadow in the night and she owns a weasel called Nighterror.

MOCCA report

2011-04-11T07:50:00.001-07:00

Mocca Fest 2011 was a success! There were plenty of visitors, and I passed out at around 1000 flyers (almost every time with a little chat) and I sold at least 80% of the shirts I had (around 45). I want to thank those people who came by my table and I want to thank my friends for helping me out at my table and anyone who offered to help (Beckya and Nicola), and the ones who kicked me off my table so I could have a break, Melissa, Terry, Evelyn and Daniel.
I really enjoyed Mocca – so many young artists, doing Mini-comics, graphic novels, shirts, prints and all kinds of crafty things. I wasn’t able to see any panel discussion, but I’m sure they were fantastic as well. On a promotional level, it was great to talk to completely new people about my work (not just friends, like usual) and if only a small percentage of them keeps me in their minds, it’s already a success.

One of my little helpers, Melissa, and me, handing out flyers!
One thing I really enjoyed was that so many people had seen my shirts on Threadless or Woot. It was a great feeling telling them, yes, I made them. It’s good to see those Threadless buyers face to face. Another fantastic thing is that I actually sold my comic Xoth!, ven though it was in German I sold 3 copies. I shouldn’t forget how much I love comics. Sometimes it’s easy to do so when so much more profit comes from shirts.
(Below: Evelyn and Terry, my minions of doom!)
I also found out about some great artists. One of my favorites was right opposite me, a guy called Scott C. who did design for the computer game Psychonaut. His stuff was simply stunning, and precicely my kind of humor. I left some money at his table. But I was glad to do so. There were a lot of other talented people there, and what I appreciated most was that so many of the exhibitors walked around themselves and bought stuff. It shows that there is a great, general interest in other people’s work in this community.
(Below, the art print I bought from Scott C.)

(Below: Charming our way trough the festival)

(Below: No, they totally didn't know I was taking a picture.)
(Look at that! Sombody is wearing my shirt! No, I didn't know him because he is another Fulbright student named Joe! ;-))

And my personal festival after party on Saturday: Schnapps and Käsespätzle at Lorelei's in the Lower Eastside!

And most of you know it already, but another (!) highlight of my weekend was meeting the main cast of the current season of Dr. Who at Barnes and Nobles at Friday.Thanks again to Backy for telling me about this. I went there last minute and was able to get in line, far after Backy had already gotten her signature. She had worn the Dr. Who shirt that recently got printed at Woot, so when it was my turn, Matt SMith, Karen Gillian and Arthur Darvill had already seen my shirt. So when I turned up and pointed out that I made that shirt to honor Dr. Who, he looked puzzeled and amazed and asked me where he could get it! No matter if he is that nice to everyone or not, it was a great moment.
(Below: Matt Smith: You made that shirt????!!! Me: ..... (*is he talking with me?????*)

Jung-comics/shirts goes Mocca 2011

2011-04-02T09:11:00.001-07:00

Hear hear! Jung-comics/shirts will be at table E11 the comic festival Mocca 2011 next weekend, Saturday the 9th and Sunday the 10th of April to promote and sell postcards, prints and shirts. Enjoy my latest art work, shirt designs and get a little drawing for yourself.

Mocca will be open 11 am – 6 pm and takes place at the Lexington Avenue Armory, 68 Lexington Ave (Between 25th &26th Streets), New York City.

(Mocca festival poster designed by Peter Kuper)

What's going on?

2011-03-22T11:11:00.001-07:00

Apologies for the mild lack of posting. There aren’t many news at the moment, although – wait – yes, there are: I will be attending MOCCA 2011 in Manhattan, 9th-10th of April. I will be selling shirts and posters and prints there and talk and doodle and promote myself. More about this at the beginning of April.

Below: I will sell plenty of "Squinja" shirts at Mocca. They are also available at Threadless (and quickly selling out!!!!)

I also keep on designing shirts every week – I have settled down on about one new design every week, more is not possible next to school and regular work. But hey, what can I say: Since about half a year my shirts are paying for my life. This is exactly what I hoped for about 18 months ago. I even prayed for this (to Cthulhu and the cookie monster)! It happened, man!

I am also happy to announce that in the near future, my first collaboration will be printed: Revenge of the Damsels, a collab between me and the fantastic Rebekie Bennington. Stay tuned.

Transmetropolitan Dr. Sketchy

2011-02-27T17:47:00.001-08:00

Ok, some of you might not know, but Transmetropolitan is one of my favorite comics and changed my young artist life when I was around 16 years old. To celebrate the release of the Transmetropolitan art book, life-drawing Dr. Sketchy at a bar in the Lower East Side was tribute to Transmetropolitan!

The models were really really good. Jiz Lee was Spider Jerusalem and Ryan Keely was Channon Yarrow – I missed Yelena, but it was awesome anyway. I even won a prize with my drawing of Spider getting sexual favors by Sexoboto 4000 (see below).

Those are the original models, shot by Dr. Sketchy:

Me and the models: They did such a good job!!!!!

Monsters and Fantasy worlds

2011-02-26T08:40:00.000-08:00

Saturday is update day – enjoy a couple of new monster designs below. The funny thing is, that when I started out drawing monsters they looked more like demons, and now they turn more and more into creatures which could exist on another planet or in microscopic realms. When I draw them, it always starts with the fascination for a form, or the dynamisms of a curve. From there, the creature develops.

Below, more pages of my capstone project which is going along fine. To remind some of you: It is a storybook about a young boy living in a fantasy world (piraty-island-style) experiencing a fantastic adventure.

New shirts + new sketches

2011-02-08T08:40:00.001-08:00

It's a good month! Two new shirts are available, Nevermore! at Design by Humans and What Lies Beneath at Threadless. Nevermore is probably one of my favorite Designs, so don't miss to grab one fast!

Here are some new sketches - thankfully, I have started to use my sketchbook on a regular basis now - I finally start to like to look at it again. And I feel like I can draw whatever bullshit comes into my mind. Those are new demons I made, though they are more like alien mutant creatues....

And some random shit!

More monsters for you

2011-01-25T09:31:00.000-08:00

Heh I haven't stopped drawing demons and monsters. It seems that I need to get in a certain mood to do it and that certain mood seems to appear about once every two weeks or so. So below, see my new monsters - I ahve to see, drawing those is my ventile for total weird shit :-D haha.

So, those fellas below, I haven't really thought about them much. The first one seems to be into licking, helpless, cute creatures. He probably licks them until they die. The one in the left corner has little, human bodies for arms and is so ashamed for it that it hides in a dark cave all day. Its eyeballs float in its brainliquid. The one on the right, bottom, is half palnt, half goblin. I call it Bobbafetz.
This one I should put up on wikipedia.
No thoughts here....

This I actually drew while I listened to the audiobook of "Song of Ice and Fire" - those books get me in a very "fantasy-y" mood.

Shirts, capstones and other projects!

2011-01-20T08:57:00.001-08:00

Have been a little bad about blog updates. Well, but I have been working on some stuff. I know most of you are updated on the new shirt designs I produce, but here are some news anyway. J!NX just printed one of my favorites, “Gimme some sugar”, unfortunately only on men’s shirts, but I guess their buyers are mostly male. I plan to send Bruce Campbell one of them and id I’m lucky, I can get him to take a picture with it.

Here are some other designs I recently worked on, plus some of the production progress. One of my favorites must be the collaboration did with Becky for the design “Revenge of the Damsels” – a month ago, I wrote her an e-mail saying “Hey, I want to make this design where all the fairy tale damsels clash with their enemies in an epic battle, but I don’t know how to draw this”. So she agreed to collab with me and once I had the composition sketch for her, she was super quick in sending me this awesome line-art drawing. I did most of the coloring, and volia, the design was done.
Two other designs I did were “Counting Sheep” and “The Ueberpirate”, both of which are done with scoring. See documentation for the progress below.

I also want to show you some of the pieces I am doing for my final project, the capstone. Again, it’s a children’s book with the written word by Jason Ellis – friend, and genius writer. It will be the story about a young scribe experiencing an adventure in a piraty-fantasy city! YAY! I won’t post a documentation here because it’s far too much work – but enjoy two of my finished pieces.

Last but not least, I am involved in a project honoring the comic book Transmetropolitan. From the publisher:"It’s been eight years since the cyberpunk/political series ended it’s run at Vertigo Comics. To mark the occasion, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has teamed up with the book’s creators to produce a hardcover charity art book, limited to a few thousand hand-numbered copies." Becky and I are contributing to this great project - both of us grew up with the comic. A little sneak peak can be seen here, in this article about the project.
Below is a detail shot of my piece.

Detroit

2010-12-31T08:26:00.001-08:00

I owe you a little blog report – this time, no art! I haven’t been drawing for the last week! All I did was rest, eat and relax. I feel a wee bit shame for not picking up the pen for so long. But well, I guess I am just not one of those artists who feel the urge to draw every second of their life.

I spend my last week in Detroit, Michigan. Melissa’s mum invited me and we stayed at her house for a week. I was treated like one of theirs, did not have to care about food appearing in front of me every day and my clothes were magically returned washed like in a chanted castle. It was great – I also was surrounded by cute tiny people (aka: a baby and a toddler, Alexis and Abby – daughter’s of Jenny, Melissa’s sister) which took getting used to, but in the end I gave up to the constant cuteness attacks.
(below: Melissa and her niece Alexis, a cute litte bundle of smiles. They might be communicating telephaticly)
(Below:Alexis (left) and Abby (right) in their first car)

I already posted some fotos at facebook, but I wanted to write a short summary of my impressions here on my blog. First of all, the city: Considered the center for the automobile industry, Detroit has the nickname Motor City – it is also the city in which Henry Ford built his first car. Even though the city bloomed in the first half of the 20th century, economical downfall, ethnic riots and depression depopulated parts of the city (from before the 1950, 1.8 Million people to half that number today).
When Melissa and I drove to the Detroit Institute of Art (which was very nice by the way), we passed by countless abandoned buildings, family homes as well as public buildings. I expected to see some of this, but I was overwhelmed with the sheer number of empty buildings, some of which were burned out too. One can imagine that this is hard on the people who have lived there all their life.

(Below: This is my little collection of decay - I shot all of this from the car within 5 minutes of driving, so one can only imagine how many others there are)

If you are just visiting, like me, you might be able to see some beauty and story-telling quality in urban decay, but one must imagine, there are people living in some of those houses and others haven’t left yet and are surrounded by empty hulls that once served whole families to live. I wish I could have taken some fotos from the inside, but the area was not safe and some buildings were fenced off.
We also visited downtown Detroit, which felt weird too. One thing that jumped into my eye at once was to so called “People Mover” (built in the early 1980ies), a monorail that circles downtown (always clockwise), automatically, no conductor. It passes by skyscrapers, old abandoned buildings and dirty city roofs and felt like a 50ies version of a futuristic city. All downtown felt like that. When we used it, it was nearly empty – imagine it, a fully-automated monorail driving trough quiet, empty skyscraper-landscapes. Awesome.

Anyways, besides that the landscape of Michigan was vast Highways, streets, chain restaurants and shopping malls. It’s kind of fascinating, if it wasn’t kind of depressing – for the people living here too. Melissa fled to New York and I am glad she did or I would have never met her! :-D
(Below: at the peopel mover, next to the skyline of Canada)
(Below: a random ancounter at "The Spirit of Detroit (comissioned 1955)")
(Below: We always knew one of the Star Gates led to Detroit)
(Gotta love the skyline)

Other things we did included visiting Frankenmuth, “Michigan’s Little Bavaria” – a former German settlement, now a German Disneyland to go into candy and meat coma. We dined in the Austrian room, which was kind of awesome – we sat directly under the banner for Styria, which made me feel a bit patriotic.
(Below: all fotos made in the Henry Ford Muesum)
Diner 1950ies
Spectators at air show
old records
old school room
listeing to War of the Worlds
1920ies airplane

Frankenmuth:

What I dreamed this week and "100 demons"

2010-12-17T08:36:00.000-08:00

I had put one of my more insane dreams into comic form. Also, I heard about a drawing excercise called "100 demons" by Lynda Barry and started to draw some of my own. There is no rule behind it: I don't know how aften I will post them or if I will reach 100. It's just for fun. This might be my last post before I go to Detroit next week to visit Melissa's family.

Below: My dream. Yes, I am one crazy bastard. Don't think lesser of me after reading this. And yes, I mispelled David's name, I am aware of that!
This is my first demon. A catfish. Cute, right?
This one makes me put ketchup on all my eggs!
It lives under my bed!

I scribbled like a crazy person - with comic!

2010-12-14T10:34:00.000-08:00

OMG! I actually have strated doodleling like crazy again. I haven't done this for...I don't know... 6 years? Mini comics, situation comedy...I don't even know if it's funny. But it's sure as hell fun to draw it. I hope it's not just a phase, but means my return to the "scribble comics" world. Here are some of the new ones I made:

Below: Look at me! I made an observasion and turned it into a comic! Yay for me! (Click on it to read it)

Below: From my new series "Things that make me aggressive" (Click on it to read it)
Below: From my new series "Things that make me aggressive" (Click on it to read it)
Below: kitchen objects about tu have fun.
Below: stuff
Below: Observations from my storyboard workshop.
Below: Subway people.
Below: Harry Dresden, a character from the book I'm reading.

Comic Festival and doodeling!

2010-12-12T09:32:00.001-08:00

Last weekend I visited the Brooklyn Comics and Graphic Festival with my friend Tim.
Various small publishers and artists exhibited their crafty products, their mini-comics and shirts, their art prints and more. It was a joy to look at all the hand-made stuff and I was amazed on how well-visited the festival was (ok, it was in a tiny room). At 1pm comic creators Charles Burns and Lynda Barry had a podium discussion together. It was a joy to listen to them, especially Lynda stole the whole show – she made the audience laugh more than once and admitted her crush on Charles Burns when they went to Highschool together. One of my favorite quotes from her was something like “My publisher said: Go home, have a hot bath and a beer and don’t come back for three days – until now, I think this advice can be applied to almost any situation.”
I also really appreciated her saying:”There are more girls in comics now. Girls with balls. I like girls with balls.” So do I, Lynda…so do I.

Below: I get an original drawing by the awesome Kate Beaton! She is a model for me in terms of using web 2.0 for self promotion.
Tim talks to Charles Burns and aks him about a recent publication.
(Very small in the background) Lynda Barry and Charles Burns talk about their work and friendship.

I made this drawing of Lynda and Charles when they were on stage….

Ok, here is a secret: I haven’t really drawin into a sketchbook for over a year now. You may think “What does she mean= She draws all the time.” Well, that is right, but all drawings I do are for my jobs, for school or for other people in general. I haven’t done the whole “just for fun” sketchbook thingy in forever. What really motivated me was listening to Lynda Barry’s playful approach to drawing, but also people like Kate Beaton with her cute and awesome characters, cartoons like Adventure Time and my classes with teachers like Melanie Reim, Wendy Popp, Peter Kuper and Katherine Streeter: All those things motivate me. To draw for fun, to draw draw draw and not think too much. So I hope I will stick to that and do it more often. Here are some of my first results….
This is probably one of my favorite RPG characters as a kid - Jacop Tucher, mage at age 6.

This I call "Geeky kids doing geeky stuff"
"I farted"
This is part 01 of my series "Sexually aroused objects" and is pending for approval at threadless.

Art art art.

2010-12-04T07:54:00.000-08:00

Every Tuesday I have a class called "Illustration Specialization". We had three different teachers during the last four months. I have barely put any work up here because I felt a bit shy about it, mainly because I experiemented a lot in those classes. I decided to put some stuff up, especially because our last class will take place next week.

Our first teacher was illustrator Wendy Popp. I already posted those illustration, but just as a reminder, I will do it again - in her class I experimented with illustrations for my children's book.

I started out with thumbnails:

Then I proceeded to the illustrations (sketch phase is left out here) As you can see, I usually change quite a bit from thumbnail to finish, but the basics are the same:

After Wendy, we had Graphic Novelist Peter Kuper.
This is my take on the Jabberwaky in his class.

And for the last couple of classes we had Katherine Streeter who makes beautiful collage illustration/mixed media. In her class, I did this piece about the Natural Museum of History - and the joy of the dinosaurs there! :-)
It starts out as a rough thumbnail.....
The sketch phase took about 3-4 hours.
Inking it took a bit, about 2 hours.

This is the first colored, but possibly not the final version.

The things I did in NY last week

2010-11-21T07:29:00.000-08:00

While New York drowns in beautiful autumn colors, time passes by so quickly that I feel like the adventurer riding a time machine in Orson Welles same-named story. I am still not ready to present my first capstone piece, but soon, I promise.

Some things I did over the last weeks: Last weekend I went to the Amber Theater Experience with Evelyn. Situated in Brooklyn, th Yes Theater, I decided to go for the full package and got a 3-course meal while being entertained by artists – belly dancers, acrobats and musicians. Every penny I paid for this was worth it. Great music, very good food, beautiful decoration and very pretty and talented artists.

The last two Fridays I finally got to play some RPGs again. We gathered the craziest people we could (Melissa, Cary, Brandon, Evelyn and later Jason and Dan). The game was RISUS, an indie game which is all about silliness and stunts and good fun. And that it was, that is all I can say.
(Below: Melissa, Evelyn and Cary in a dramatic scene involving a dying, talking box....)
(Below: The second session, fltr: Brandon, me, Melissa, Daniel, Jason)

Guess who visited me in NY? Nobody else but Timothy Bieler, who I haven't seen in about 6 years. We know from Graz and I visited him in INdia in 2003. Since he is the lonesome traveler kind of type, we haven't seen in forever. SOme people might even remember a certain comic I made about him.... :-)
(Below: Walk in Prospect Park after a nice meal - Lynn, Timothy, me)

Artwise, I still do my weekly illustration for G7, the weekly newspaper published in Graz. I like this job, it’s good fun, and I get another writer’s text every week. Sometimes it’s hard to react accordingly on some text – some of them a pretty lose, very subjective have no classic, narrative structure and represent the very typical way of Austrian writing. But I see it as a challenge.

On the Spot Drawings

2010-11-08T07:27:00.000-08:00

I admit it: I am a bit scared of going out and drawing from life. I need a perfect position, a perfect pen, I need to sit down and people peering over my shoulder make me nervous. Also, the empty sheet usually scared me too. Since I started participating in my teacher's life drawing class on Thursday mornings, I feel better and better about it. Yes, the key is to overcome the fear by doing it over and over again, and I think I might slowly get to the spot where drawing on the spot doesn't scare me anymore...at least not that much. Here are a couple of examples of the work I did over the last week...
Below: Central Park Zoo: Ice Bears

Below: Central Park Zoo: Rain Forrest House

Below: Central Park Zoo: Rain Forrest House

Below: South See Port
Below: MET
Below: MET, boys listening to a tour guide
Below: Met, painting on a Vase from ca. 4000 BD.

Some first Halloween impressions

2010-10-31T08:46:00.000-07:00

Cary and Brandon

Melissa and I, kick ass style
Cary and Melissa

Melissa and me. It looks like Im part of the poster.

Ready to beat up you butt...
Level up!!!
Battle about to emerge....
Pre-Halloween make-uping

Randomness+steampunk is the new goth

2010-10-25T07:22:00.001-07:00

I don't have so many news, but I do have a new camera which I want to introduce to you by showing you some pics I made with it. I love it - I can finally take pics in dark rooms or at night and I love the 16:9 format. Thanks to David Auner for the recommendation.

Well, one important fact: At the 29th of Octobre Teefury is printing “Little Red Fighting Hood” for only 24 hours. Don’t forget about that in case you want the shirt!

Below: Steampunk Fashion SHow in DUMBO, Brooklyn at SUnday. Steampunk is the new goth, it seems. If you don't know what steampunk is, you better learn it quickly, because it's becoming a new pop culture phenomenon.
Steampunk Models look angry and unhappy.
They look happy. Nice.
Look at the neat little insects to the right.
Random pics: Me, Evelyn and Jason in the Lower Eastside.
Lower Eastside.
New camera goggle test.
it's a dog....BEHIND A WHEEL!!!
Melissas cat is chasing something behind her back in her new home in New Jersey.

How the NY Comiccon blew my mind

2010-10-11T08:54:00.000-07:00

When the New York Comiccon came closer, I didn’t plan much. I didn’t prepare a portfolio, because I didn’t feel ready and I wanted to enjoy the con without the pressure of creating contacts etc. Then, additionally, I got a nasty cold during the week before the con. It got better, enough to visit all three days of the con under the influence of ibuprofen. I seriously did NOT know what could expect. What I found was this:

Two huge, gigantic halls packed with unbelievable amounts of people, 50% of them dressed up, some of them to a point of dedication that seriously impressed me. In the US, it’s not just the Anime fans that dress up. It’s almost everybody! All visitors had childish joy in their eyes, and how could you not?! Blinky lights everywhere, video game consoles, great merchandise at every corner, music, predetaors, batmans, supermans, transformers, steam-punk-groupies, Ugly-Dolls-people, Ghostbusters, multiple versions of Ash, oh I should stop now to even try to mention all of them. Artists presented their work in the artists’ alley, some of them professionally working in the field, others doing it as a passion next to a full-time, none-art related job.

Friday (a first peak)

Anyways, let’s try to go through this chronologically (and I am writing this while I should be working on school related projects!). On Friday, I did a first sneak peak with tons of tissues in my bag and just watched the sheer amount of crazy madness going on. I felt like a child in an amusement park immediately and had my first talk with a Brooklyn artist Gia-Boa with roots in the Vietnam, who’s stuff I really liked for its dynamic, composition and color-feeling. I moved on to visit my ex-boss Bill Plympton who was giving a little drawing to anyone who talked to him and advertised the premier of his new movie Idiots and Angles. Later, I decided that I needed at least an improvised portfolio to have SOMETHING in case SOMEONE came along who would prove a perfect match for my style.
(Below: Bill Plympton, my es-boss)
(WTF???!!)

Saturday (Stalking Battle Star Stars and seeing lead artists from VERTIGO)

In the morning I sat on the computer, putting together my favorite illustrations from the last two years. I went to my Saturday class at my school, bought a letter-siized portfolio and printed all my work at the computer class printer. Voila! My Speed-portfolio was dinished. I asked nicely if I could leave early from class for the comiccon that took place only 10 blocks away. My teachers dismissed me, and I was free to go back into the madness. I had my first look into the autograph-alley, where stars from Sci-Fi series Battle Star Galactica where signing. I took my picture from Katee Sackhoff(Starbuck) who was really eager to stop people from filming her (photos where ok) and refused to shake hands due to the flu season. Then, Christopher Judge who plays Teal'c in Star Gate– he didn’t have a line, because all the nerds where drooling over Katee Sackhoff! I was about to get an autograph when I found out it was 30$! Have to say though, he looked really good!
(Below: Christopher Judge)
(Katee Sackhoff)
(James Marsters)

After satisfying my need to stalk stars that day I went to the DC VERTIGO panel – for all who don’t know, Vertigo is a sub-level publisher of DC and they publish more adult themed comics set in the Sci-Fi, fantasy, horror, thriller and mystery genre. They were always my favorite US-publisher; I have read a lot of their publications. The panel was actually just about the publications to come, and not a discussion about their program in general. Still, it was amazing to see artists such as Azzarello who wrote 100 Bullets and Brian Wood responsible for the amazing series DMZ up close.
(Below: The Vertigo Panel)

Ok, I didn’t manage to talk to anyone yet and show my portfolio, but that was my grande scheme for Sunday. To be honest: I didn’t know where my style belonged in the US-market – the big publishers have a very defined style that has a long history in the US, realistic, bombastic, very often super-hero based, very colorful and not cute at all. My style is heavily influenced by European comic artists and by traditional animation, a style that people here in the US sometimes have no connection with (most comic fans here don’t know most of the French comic super stars). With hose thoughts making my, once more, insecure, I decided to wait what Sunday would bring.

Sunday (The best Photo ever, M. Night Shyamalan about his movies and encounter with Secret of Kells creators – oh, and the most immature decision ever in terms of spending money on something useless)

I don’t even know where to start. Sunday was probably to most amazing day of all three. I felt terrible in the morning; my body hated me for doing this to it when I actually really needed rest. But there was no way around going to the con for a third day, because I had to very defined things in mind I wanted to do that day:

One: Take a picture with B-movie star Bruce Campbell
Two: Meet the creators of my favorite animated feature “Secret of Kells” and show them my portfolio

I can be very, very persistent and determined if I want to and if I have a chance which I might never get again. So I met up with Becky at around 10:30 and the first thing I wanted to find out was Campbell’s signing hours. Well, what can you say! He was there right now, so I freaked out, screamed, jumped on the spot (You people have to understand: HE RULES! HE RULES SO MUCH!) and took pics of him signing.

I decided to come by later and MAYBE take a pic with him together. I visited the very popular steam-punk costume shop with Becky without the intention to buy anything. When I left the shop I had purchased the most expensive coat in my life – a so called “Brown coat”, based on the very same coat worn my Nathan Fillion in Firefly. YES, I OWN A BROWN COAT!!! Which is only cool for people who love Firefly, but you others be impressed anyway!!!

Becky left, and encouraged by my new, awesome coat I decided to have a look at what Bruce Campbell was doing. He had just finished signing, and a shy fan tried to make a picture with him, but Bruce simply ignored him and walked away. The slightly bitchy lady who was probably taking care of the stars during their signing hour (her face was slightly cliché in terms of Botox treatment) looked at me slightly mocking and shrugged her shoulders with a sardonic smile. “Fuck you bitch” I thought, and started to follow Bruce Campbell trough the masses. He was easy to spot: Tall, wearing a white suite and moving as confident and fast as you would expect from the guy who played Ash! I noticed that he was getting closer to a side exit and I saw my chances to take a pic with him slip away! “That’s it,” I though, “that’s the moment of truth, the moment the embrace my girl-balls and the chance to prove myself!” “MISTER CAMPBELL”, I called out, “would you mind taking one last picture?” I KNEW he couldn’t say no right now, I had put on my nicest smile and tried to glow with admiration. He said yes, insisted on doing it in the stairway though so that no other fans would bother him. “Look into the camera, Darling”, he said, “you’re gonna like this photo.” Later, when I looked at it, I couldn’t’ stop laughing.

Embraced with the power of the Campbell, I floated over the festival floor to go to a panel discussion with movie director M.Night Shyamalan about his movie Unbreakable released 10 years ago. I managed to get a seat in the first row and was curious about what he had to say and if he would say something about his latest fails in the movie industry. People in the room where nice – most of them where dedicated Unbreakable fans. I expected at least some “Boos” for him, but everyone was nice and polite. I didn’t expect Shyamalan to be so honest and personal about his career. He talked about how the bad reception of Unbreakable made him doubt himself and made him constantly ask himself the question of why it didn’t work out. He stated that this self-doubt and questioning led to some bad decisions. I seriously liked him more after this panel, even though he had totally screwed up “Aang – the last Airbender”.

What came next was the AMC premier of a clip of the new TV series “The Walking Dead” with directors and creators, something that many fans were very eager to see. The series is based on a comic series I had read years ago, I really liked it but stopped reading it after a while. This was taking place in the same room as M.Night’s panel, so I just stayed there.

But they didn’t start on time, so I had to leave to go to a panel discussion of the creators of my favorite animated feature of the last years, The Secret of Kells, an astonishing movie made in Ireland. I seriously love this movie. It has everything, a great story, beautiful art, beautiful character designs, and all based on the art of book illumination of Celtic art in the dark ages. The creator, one of them illustrator and comic artist Tomm Moore talked about the process of their work and immediately were likable, friendly and answered any question with appreciated honesty. That encouraged my to go up in the ending and ask if I could show Tomm Moore my portfolio. Before the panel I had prayed that they would be nice people, and they were! Tomm Moore agreed at once, and after signing DVDs for fans he had a look. The first thing he said was “Oh, that’s a relief, I hate when you open portfolios and they are bad, you have to be nice!” which was the best first compliment I could get. He looked through it and gave me self-confidence for the rest of the year by commenting on it. He also said he would love to see someone like me for an internship in their studio in Ireland. I was more than happy.
(Tomm Moore, illustrator and movie director)

It was Sunday, 4 pm, and I had done everything I wanted to do, even better: My expectations had been exceeded. Oh, and of course: My new BROWN COAT!

Working working working

2010-10-04T07:31:00.000-07:00

There are three major projects occupying my time at the moment: my capstone is the first. The capstone is the big, final project we have to hand in for our degree, a practical project which has to consist of a number of illustrations. I plan to do an illustrated narrative set in a oriental fantasy landscape, but so far I am still fighting with myself on how to tell my story. It's really not easy developing a story that works and not to get caught up in dead ends. What I have so far are some test illustrations (some of them you have seen already) but there is a new one below.

Another major project is coming up with shirt ideas. Now that I am getting printed at various places, I have raised the bar for myself, which is not necessarily good because it kind of makes me scared to work on more. Will I succeed this time? Is it all coincidence or am I actually getting better? It's kind of sad, but true that artists need encouragement all the time, just like little kittens who need to use the litter box for the first time. That's why I scream it out of the window: I AM AN ARTIST AND I AM INSECURE!
Whoa. Now I feel better.

The third project is the thesis. Writing in English is so very hard for me and I feel like I will be banned from the country if I don't prove every fact in there with a highly respected book. But I will do it somehow. Just have to stop playing computer games so that I have more time. Playing "Black Mirror 2" right now, a classic point-click adventure produced in Germany. Those German still make very good classic adventures, I have to say. And Black Mirror has a really exciting story. Here we are...instead of talking about my thesis I am now talking about computer games....but there are SO MANY good ones out there that I still have to play....

Oh, and by the way: I also have a life sometimes. Last weekend I got very drunken with my friend Melissa. Since she is swimming almost every day, she can bear much more alcohol. I got drunken way before her!

Oh and: SECRET: There might be a wencomic coming up from me. But I will work months in advance before I actually start publishing them. But here is a sneak peak anyway: :-D

I got my shirt

2010-09-30T12:19:00.000-07:00

"Identitätsprobleme" sold at "A Better Tomorrow"

Artsy week-end

2010-09-26T16:16:00.001-07:00

What a weekend. On Saturday I had a lecture at the society of illustrators given by the fantastic artist Yuko Shimizu, who talked about her experience as an artist and her very bad relationship to her home country Japan. After that I want to the exhibition of Nara Yoshimoto who creates this famous art of cute children who do something creepy, such as smoking cigarettes. From the exhibition I learned that there is a name for the “cute creepy” in Japan, it’s kowa kiwaii and disgusting cute and creepy is “kimo kowa kawaii” – I kinda always wanted to know that because this art form is very popular at the moment.

Later I went back to the Society of illustrators to see a lecture given by illustrators Sam Weber, Toma Hanuka and Shimizu who talked about their experience as artists. I really enjoyed the lecture, there were so many young students (me including) who listened with shiny eyes, uncertain of their artistic future. A funny side-information is that I have gamed with Sam Weber once because he is in my friend Tim’s gaming group.
(Below: The illustrators, from ltr: Hanuka, Shimizu, Weber)

The next day I decided to go to the DUMBO art festival because the Threadless “Everywhere-Tour” had a book-signing there and I wanted to get the book anyway (it’s about the history of Threadless). I was super-nervous, of course, because I was curious to meet other Threadless artists and maybe even staff members from Chicago.

So what I got was actually much better: Founder Jake Nickell was there, and my sensitive plan to talk to people and maybe tell them that I was getting printed on Threadless fell apart, because what I basically did was: Shake their hand, blurt out “HI, I’M ANNA-MARIA, IM GETTING PRINTED AT THREADLESS!” while blushing and behaving all like a groupie. And what was even more awesome was that the founder of Threadless asked me to sign his Threadless book! I drew him a little Godzilla and I didn’t mess up completely! Then I bought my copy and got it signed by him (see picture). I am all proud but I also feel slightly disgusted by being such a show-off sometimes. I also met Kristen, who models for threadless, works the social networking there (like facebook), and run a workshop at the DUMBO artsfestival on how to turn your shirt into something new. I made a really sloppy tank top out of one threadless shirt, I am just so impatient when it comes to crafting things…
(Foto below: The aorkshop to turn shirts into something new; AT the very right is Kristen, who works for threadless - you might now her from some of the shirt fotos in the shop)
(Foto below:This is Jake Nickell, one of the founders of Threadless. I signed him a copy!)(Below: my signatur from Jake Nickell for my copy of the book)

(Below: The questionable result of what I did in thw workshop. Unfortunatly the shirt lost 1 inch on each side by cutting and re-knotting it which made it a bit smaaaaallll....)
Since we are already talking about it, score on my latest design on threadless, will ya?
Polo...with dinosaurs is up for scoring!

The curious life of an illustrator in NYC

2010-09-20T07:30:00.000-07:00

T-shirt news:

Awesome awesome things are happening in the world of shirts for me. Four different contest sites have agreed to print four different design in the upcoming weeks. I think I mentioned some of two posts ago, but one has become available today at "A Better Tomorrow" where I won the design contest.

At the end of this month, two more designs should be available - around the end of september, both teefury and shirt woot will print me.

(Little Red Fighting Hood at teefury around the end of september)

(Unexpected news at shirt woot around the end of september)
Life, school, etc.
I never really told you what the heck I am up to all the time. Let me give you a little summary of how my usual week looks like. First of all, school started; I have a class on Tuesday evening (Illustration speczialisation, we will have a couple of different teachers in this class), Art documentation (drawing outside, yay!) on Thursday mornings and Digital illustration on Saturday from 12-5pm.

(Foto above by my classmate Elena)
Besides that, I have to work on my thesis (still about monsters in illustrations) and my capstone project. It slowly looks like my capstone will be a mix of a graphic novel and an illustrated storybook. More about that once I know more.

(Above: One of my first "test" illustrations for my capstone)

Kontraproduktion
I am also now the proud member of KONTRAPRODUKTION, the new company founded by Max Werschitz and Nick Gruber. Please check out the websites, it’s really pretty – and I am featured as the lead illustrator. The job for the Austrian weekly newspaper G7 goes on and I have to say it’s one of the most interesting jobs I had in a while; very exciting, challenging and mind-stirring. It’s a challenge to get a different writing style every week and to have to create a visual interpretation. I admit, sometimes I am not satisfied with the result, but I try to learn from that.

(Above: three different illustrations for Austrian weekly newspaper G7)

NY can be overwhelming with possibilities. Last year, I didn’t really manage to take advantage of the opportunities it offers. This year, I try to see more exhibitions, more openings and try to speak to more people. I can only try to do my best. It’s not easy being a “people-person”. One of my new favorite blogs is “Escape from Illustration Island”, a blog that regularly writes articles on the topic.

As for my private life, I manage more and more to shape my life almost if I had a regular job I was going to every day. I try to work on my stress problems (yes, I admit it. I am a good candidate for burn-out) by just relaxing more about everything. I manage to go to the gym a couple of times a week and I manage to spend the weekend with nice people. The darn honking of cars doesn't freak me out as much anymore. And I truly love NY now that the summer is over.

More Art!

2010-08-27T06:04:00.000-07:00

Oh my, am I really updating this blog within 3 days? Yes! I want to share some of my latest illustrations with you. I am currently working on character designs and concept art for a project for school.

Above are ther fist scribbles for my characters. I don't want to tell too much before I haven't worked on it more, but I am eager to try a slighty different style for this: Very flat figures, almost no shadows, and texture. Those are the colored versions of the figures.

I am higly inspired by cartoons such as Samurai Jack and The Secret of Kells. I love the beautiful, 2-dimensional backgrounds in those and I am looking for a way to integrate this into my style. We will see. More to come.

Going crazy with designs!

2010-08-25T18:27:00.000-07:00

I recently have been going crazy with designs, mainly shirt designs. A year ago I started participating in the threadless competition. What started out as a game, turned more serious and serious, since it provided a challenge and new ways to think about design. Over the last two months, I am finally having some success with this. Teefury has printed me, will print me again soon and shirt woot just accepted a design for late September. Here are some of my latest designs, printed and unprinted.
It's a long journey home (currently scored at threadless)
A Day in the Life (finished scoring at threadless with a score of 3,5)
Nevermore! (currently being scored at threadless)
Little Red Fighting Hood (will be sold at teefury in late september)
Unexpected news (will be sold at shirt woot in late september)

Animation video for scholarship - your vote helps

2010-08-20T11:19:00.000-07:00

Below you see my application video for the Absolventia scholarship 2010 - this scholarship will help me to afford the second year in New York. If you like the video, feel free to vote for me at the Absolventia page.
I know I ask you for your votes a lot. That is why I want to, sincerly, humbly, thank everybody who supported me so far and I really appreciate it. The video is also a little thank you for votes, to give you a minute of entertainment.

vacation in Ashville, NC

2010-08-12T06:24:00.000-07:00

Besides working like a crazy person on shirt designs and on my new domain jung-shirts.com (spread the word!) I have finally managed to go on vacation! Here is a little report about my experiences, but I also realized I barely post any art at the moment. I promise, this will change – the next post is gonna be an arty one!

I just returned from Ashville in North Carolina, about 2 hours with the plane from New York – around 80 000 people live in this small town surrounded by hills, and it is a an average small town in the south of the USA; The city is very touristy, has many art shops, students and a lot of restaurants. I flew there with Becky to visit her mum Claudia and her stepfather Rich. Claudia has just moved there to work as a nurse in the huge, local hospital complex – supposedly nursery is very high standard in this region. We spend a lot of time with relaxing, hanging out in the city, going to yummy yummy restaurants and watching movies in the evening. I left my laptop at home, so this was truly a new experience for me. Enjoy the pictures.

Below you see the beautiful beautiful sight we had on the flight back to New York - the plane flew directly over Manhatten. I was so exited, I forgot that I was nervous. THis is Central Park from above!
Manhatten, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhatten Bridge from above. And Brooklyn to the right, the financial district below.
I saw this flag in front of a house in Ashville and was relieved to see something else than an American flag once in a while. Hail, Snoopy!
On the left is Chris, from "Better Tours of Ashville". We decided to do the "Pub Crawl Tour", which means 4 pubs in a row. Chris told stories about Ashville and about the pubs. In this pub, there was an old bank vault from the 30ies in the back where supposedly two bank robbers suffocated.
I found the Bat Cave in North Carolina. But, seriously Batman, now EVERYONE will find it!
This is the view from Chimney Rock, a sightseeing tourist attraction close to Ashville with view over the landscape.
This green stuff covering everything is called Kudzu and covers all plant life in NC - imported from Japan in 1876, it was supposed to help farmers, but it spread so rapidly that it's also called "foot-a-minute" plant.
The ten commandments for your garden!
Barbeque is BIG in NC. Fried everything, pulled pork and chicken in thick sauces, fat onion rings, potatoe salat and bisquits, here you get it. And what you'll get too is a "I hope y'all come back" from the waitress. I love "y'all"
This is the new house Claudia and Rich life in, 10 minutes walk from the city center. Left is Rich, then Claudia and Becky.

4th of July: Hot Dog Madness!

2010-07-06T07:06:00.000-07:00

I spent the very hot 4th of July at the I.F.O.C.E. (Nathan's International July Fourth Hot Dog Eating Contest) with my Spanish roommates. It takes place at Coney Island, and is a mix of gluttonous madness and patriotic gibberish. The champion Johnny Chesnut (the most American name you will find after Jack Smith) won by eating 54 Hot Dogs in 10 minutes. Former champion Kobayashi was arrested in front of my eyes and dragged off by the police because he entered the stage without permission – he had refused to sign a contract that would have forced him to give away the exclusive rights to Nathan’s. After the contest (thank god nobody threw up on stage) which I only watched by looking at a big screen because of the massive amount of people, and after silently saying “me” after the moderator screamed the question “Who doesn’t think the USA isn’t the greatest nation in the world?!” we had a Hot Dog by Nathan’s which was surprisingly yummy.

After that, I met up with Melissa and her boyfriend Chuck to watch “”Conan the Barbarian” at my place (which we refrigerated with my AC), and after drinking Austrian Schnaps and eating Sushi we watched the fireworks at the Hudson River from the roof. Beautiful

A man in a robot suit in Coney Island - it had about 34 degrees celsius.

Antonio, my roomate and me - deliberately trying to protect myself from the sun.
The Hot Dog contest. The world record was 86 Hot Dogs in 10 minutes.
People masses.
More people masses.
Looong lines for the Hot Dogs.
My roomates enjoying what they stood in line for for half an hour in the direct sun.
Hot Dog.
Fireworks at the Hudson River. This beautiful picture was taken by Chuck Lau. Check out his website.

New York, my hot, steaming friend!

2010-06-28T08:10:00.001-07:00

Today morning I built in my air conditioner and turned it on, whcih is a huge thing for me because I am an AC-hater since I arrove in New York. But I just couldn’t think straight anymore. It’s been 33 degrees celsius since many days, and my room seems to be only a couple of degrees under that. I need to work in my room the whole day and I NEED to be COOLER for that. Here I am defending myself for being an environmental criminal!

Anyways. I enjoy being back in New York, even though the humid heat here creates the feeling of an alternate dimension, somehow it reminds me of being in India back in 2003, especially when the bad smells of NYC hit you like a dead squirrel thrown by an unwashed crazy man. But NYC in the summer, shit, it’ like in one of these uncountable songs where they sing….well, about NYC in the summer. I created a huge list of stuff I want to do, and I bet the heat will crush my plans most of the times. I really am a good transmitter for it. Yesterday evening somebody could have made a steak on my stomach (don’t get any crazy ideas!)

Free Concerts, D&D and the Dyke parade

So I’ll try to keep you updated about the fun things I do. My first REAL weekend in NY included going to a free concert in Prospect Park held by Kid Koala on an open air space. Beautiful, nice and free. I inline-skated there and back home, and I danced my ass of in the VIP area to which I viciously gained access too (well, I asked friendly…). Next day, I had a nice D&D game with friends and ran into the Lesbian Parade (called the “Dyke March”) with a lot of nice, joyful lesbians. I was so carried away that I even screamed at a religious Jesus fanatic who passed by and said “God hates Lesbians”. I think the SCREW YOU I threw in his face will not change his opinion. But it felt good!

I am working on various little projects for work right now, so I have stuff to do! Actually, quite a lot. And when school starts again I will most likely disappear from the surface of earth a bit, but I will try to limit that as best as possible. Thanks for listening. Oh, and don’t forget to vote for my latest trheadless design if you haven’t already done so.

Look at me, being all sporty with my nerdy protection-pads.

The "Celebrate Brooklyn" free concerts take place all summer...
Here I enjoy my 4$ scoops of Maple syrup+ Bacon icecream. yes, BACON!!!
Kid Koala performs, I loved it, sort of drum and basy rock DJ stuff, and he is a graphic novelist.
Melissa and I looking all serious for the Dyke parade, which we run into after playing D&D.
The Hymne of America with new lyrics.
More Dyke March action!
These girls blocked traffic. It said "TWAT team" on their shirts.

Below is one of my favorite pieces in the "HP Lovecraft exhibition" which I visited with Tim at the weekend at the Observatory. This piece is by Fufu Frauenwahl.

Graz

2010-06-09T08:09:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Austria at the 25th of May and experienced a mild culture shock. It’s so quiet compared to NY, no crazy honking and much less people. I needed one day or so, but I adapted
surprisingly fast and for the first time in years I was able to relax – far away from my workplace, at my mum’s place in Graz. The weather was pretty cold and rainy for the first two weeks. Now we have truly amazing summer weather since a couple of days. I already met many of my friends, and with none of them it seemed that I had been gone for almost a year. With most of them it seemed like we had seen yesterday, and I had a very good time so far.

I have been at the marriage of two of my oldest friends, Felix who I have known for more than 20 years and Annina, who I have known since about 14 years. It was a wonderful day with an awesome “Bride Kidnapping” ( a tradition where the bride is kidnapped to another place and the best man has to sell her free by paying for all the drinks the people drink there) and I met so many of my friends there. Congratulations to them again and may their new life in Norway be fulfilling and enjoyable.

I also went to the Comicsalon in Erlangen, Germany where I met many of the friends I only see once a year. Publisher Zwerchfeel, which published Xoth, had some awesome new publications which sold out pretty fast. All in all, a big success – also, the second edition of Xoth was sold there, with 10 extra pages of comic around the occult investigator Mary J. Brown.

On the 18th of June I will travel back to NY – many things to do await me there, and I look forward to start a new school year. I look forward to many successful projects (hopefully) and to learning even more. I also hope to finally set my foot in some doors, and to gather new contacts and insight in the business. One year can be over so fast.

Felix and Annina!

I took over Graz. again.
Me and brother.
Graz is so small! But it has many nice red roofs! REDROOF!
Uhm, whut's in that cannon! My last words! (Huahahahaha!)
Me and Su practising Rainbowspotting!
Bride kidnapping. Evil brother, he is behind everything!

Report, year 01

2010-05-23T11:54:00.000-07:00

Before I am going to Austria for three weeks, I thought it would be nice to write a little report about my first year in New York. I will definitely return to New York to do my second year to finish my MA in illustration, and I am glad to say that I never doubted my decision to come here.

School is over; all projects have been handed in. In the end, it wasn’t even super stressful and my “old trick” of starting early with everything has proven to be a life saver in the end. I finished the historical overview of my thesis about monsters in illustration, produced three pieces of work for the digital painting class and painted an oil painting of a monster as my final project in the oil painting class. It surly has been all about monsters for me this year. I suppose I just love the topic (NO, really?!). Next year will be much more stressful than the first year – at least that’s what it looks like from the schedule they gave us. But I am eager for what comes, and very curious what the classes will bring. I am especially curious about the writing class we’ll have in July – I can’t wait to practice fictional writing, which is very important for the scripting of my graphic novels.

Below: A digital/traditional hybrid - finally painted with acrylics.
Below: My second peice for the digital painting class.

I also want to recap the theater project I was in: Basically it made the month of April and May the best months of my stay here. I loved the rehearsals, I loved the people who were involved and every single show was a success. I had forgotten how much I liked silly and goofy acting. I finally got a grab on some pictures of the last show (thank you Mathew Brown!) to give you an impression. I also want to sum up the characters I played in the show: 1. I played the head of a two headed monster, Ladi-Dadi and got killed by Ozam the Barbarian within the first 5 minutes of the play. 2. I played an innocent townswoman, who looks at the Queen funny – result: Beheading. 3. The bearded townsman has 10 seconds on stage before he is condemned to death by the queen. 4. I play one of the guards who dare to oppose Ozam. Death by stabbing in the chest. 5. I am one of the singing ninjas who dares to oppose Ozam. Death by ninja stars. 6. Townsperson who witnesses the Potizzly fight. I escape with my life before the queen can kill me again. 7. Lizardwoman: Together with my fellow lizardpeople I escape imprisonment with Ozam and kill the last guard. 8. The bearded man returns to dance on stage with the cast! The feedback of the audience was, without exception, very good. This play will surely and hopefully return after its last show on Wednesday.

Ladi-Dadi debates on how to devour its next victims. Ltr: Jason (Dadi), me (Ladi)
Ladi-Dadi gets its final blow by Ozam. Ouch. Ltr: Evelyn (Ozam),Jason (Dadi), me (Ladi)
The townspeople at the slave-auction. Ltr: Tim (guatd01), Meg (townsperson), me (townsperson with wig), Jason (guard02), Jason K. (the savage Mok)
Auction! Ltr: Meg, Tim, me Jason, Ming (auctioneer)
The lizard harem scene was one of my favorite, as it included some of the most explicid lyrics. Int he back: Ozam in chains! In the front. me as one of the lizard women, dancing!
In this scene, I finally get to kill someone! In the back, the super high priest, at the floor Jason (guard) and me on the right, stabbing him (huzza!). The lyrics in that scene: Ouch, that guy, they put his ass down hard and now they're actually killing the last town guard.
Ltr: Jason K. (mok), Tatiana (playing Christine the accountant who magically transforms into a Barbarian), Jonathan (Plunder Mic, the thief), Evelyn (Ozam).
Meg and I transforming into Barbarians in the end.

The super evil Queen (played by Monica) singing about rapesecutioners and goats in her bedroom.

NY: I really do love this city. I have been in so many – I have been in London, in New Delhi, Paris, Dundee, Vienna, Berlin, Munich, Glasgow, Rome, Venice, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Barcelona, Prague, Frankfurt oh, and not to forget, Salzburg. But New York beats them all. I am not sure what it is. I love the architecture – vast skyscrapers in Manhattan, tiny houses in Queens and Brooklyn, comic-book like water towers on dirty roofs, the psychedelic subway tunnels and the metallic towers that support them above ground. I love the view, when the Q or the J train drive over the bridges between Manhattan and Brooklyn, I love the old factories at the water front and the abandoned churches between inhabited houses. I enjoy the mentality of New Yorkers. There is a calmness in all this hectic every day life, and an acceptance. It was also an experience to meet some people who where there at 9.11 and to see how they are dealing with it. The great majority has never lost their respect for cultural diversity, and most New Yorkers I met hated Bush as much as we did. And even though New York can slowly get under your skin, with all the honking, the warm humid air in the summer, its stinky alleys, steaming streets, the crazy car drivers and the prevented terror attacks it’s a city I could imagine to stay. Here are some impressions from the last year:

Excursion to the Norman Rockwell Museum, novembre 2009
Decembre Blizzard
Felix and his dad Matthias visiting, I think novembre (?)
My favorite character of the play, the bearded man and Monica as the evil Queen holding the unfortunaty cardboard goat.
Gaming on the balcony: One of the very best RPGs with the girls gaming group, on the roof of my apartment: Cary, our only male guest, is imitating a turtle.
Gaming at Recess: One of the best games was this one, Lady Blackbird - a steampunk adventure.
Barcade with the nerds. On the left: Melissa.
Ingrid and Viktor visiting!
My first room party! Melissa, me and Brandon (and Cary not in the picture)
Second Blizzard in February (or third?)

BARBARIAN!

2010-05-12T07:59:00.000-07:00

As EVERYONE knows already I am in a Barbarian play! Three more performances, I am not in the last one! This is the text from the play page:

Follow Ozam the Barbarian and her free-wheeling party of adventurers as they sing and rap their way to bawdy glory, in Barbarian!, the first fantasy hip-hopera.

A Barbarian can be anyone who is uncivilized, anyone who goes against the grain, anyone who shuns the status quo and marches to the beat of their own drummer. In the real world, anyone meeting that description will be ground into mash by the heels of society. But in a fantasy, a barbarian may triumph.

Join with us barbarians, as we push the boundaries of genre and taste. Behold our wild combats, contemplate our outrageous lyrics, and immerse yourself in our fantasy kingdom. Come see the show, and have a horde of fun.

Barbarian! Will have 4 performances
See it every Wednesday in May, doors open at 7pm
at the Under St. Mark’s Theater, 94 St. Mark’s Pl.,
between 1st ave and Avenue A

Tickets are $15 in advance, $20 at the door

ANd I also made some fanart! Scene 1, where I die a terrible death as Ladidai. And Scene 5, where I play one of the lizard woman.

Sunday at the Brooklyn Museum!

2010-04-25T15:15:00.001-07:00

A mix of Ancient Agyptian art and African tribal art. I have to say, some of these figures are simply awesome, especially the tribal masks are great inspiration for weird comic characters.

I'm officially a Bronx zoo fan!

2010-04-23T09:02:00.000-07:00

Last sunday, beautiful weather! And next time I will post drawings, I swear! I also never remember the names of the animals.

Below: A squirrel stealing a Pretzel!

Me and him, we understand each other!
This one was spitting out and re-eating its food for the third time. The children and me were very amused.
Monkey.
Relaxed.

Revenge of the Tremors (Raketenwürmer)!
Stick insext, as big as my hand!
This one too!
Pussy cat. Puuurrrr!
Monkey. again.
They had graudated with honors in being super-super cute!

New news!

2010-04-14T09:46:00.000-07:00

Theater Madness!
As mentioned in a post before I am cast member of a play that will take place every Wednesday in May in New York. It’s off-off-off-off Broadway – a project by Jason Ellis and Co., who is a member of nerdNYC, a message board for people such as me. The play’s title: Barbarian! It’s a story about a wandering, singing barbarian who kicks ass and saves male damsels in distress. I am honored to die several different deaths in the play while playing a two-headed monster, a townsperson, a guard, a ninja and a lizard woman. Below is the poster I designed for the play (this time with typography by Jason Ellis)!

School Madness!
I have loads to do for school: I have to finish three pieces for the Digital painting class, an oil painting for the traditional painting class and I have to finish my historical overview for the thesis. I think I will manage, and so far I still enjoy all of the classes. See some of my oil paintings below: Please keep in Mind that they are all exercises, and that I am still not comfortable with traditional media at all.
Below is the piece I am currently working on for digital painting class - it shows the different steps I undertook. It's not finished yet - about 60% are finsihed.

Illustrating for Kleine Zeitung’s G7
I am the new illustrator for the G7 magazine of the Kleine Zeitung, a new weekly magazine published in Graz. Have a look at it. I think my illustration is usually to be found at the last page together with an awesome article my different authors. So keep a look-out! Below is the illustration for the first issue, which accompanied an article by actress and writer Pia Hierzegger.

Xoth – Reprinted!
Xoth will be reprinted. Another 500 pieces in soft cover will be printed in time for the Comicfestival Erlangen 2010 in June. I created a new cover for this edition PLUS a Xoth spin-off short will be put into the new edition! I will post more details as soon as I know them! I am really happy with the new cover though!

Graz, I’m coming!
I will come and visit good old Graz 25th of May-18th of June. During that time, my room in NY is available for rent, so contact me if you’re interested. I don’t know yet where to get a phone from in Graz but you can always reach me via e-mail! Also, I won’t be in Graz 3th June-5thJune, because I will visit the comic festival in Erlangen! I can’t wait to see all of you and have a drink in good old Parkhouse!

Random pics from NY!

I have a vendetta with the people who dress up as statue of liberty! I know they want me dead! But you won't get me the easy way, motherf****&%

Melissa and are posing with our new threadless zombie shirts.

Brunch with Cary, Melissa and Brandon.
Ms. Jung at the Timequare!

Look who was here!

2010-04-06T06:27:00.000-07:00

Papa and Ingrid!
Me being sick most of the time wasn't a problem, they took good care of themselves. And they bought me clothes! THANK YOU!

Things!

2010-03-28T08:05:00.000-07:00

I am very sorry for this delayed update. Let me start off with whining: I have a cold. That’s not special yet, I know, but I have been suffering under this cold now for three weeks – it’s on its peak now, which wouldn’t be as terrible if my father Viktor and my stepmother Ingrid wouldn’t be visiting me right now! I haven’t seen them in 8 months – I was so eager to spend my spring break with them.They visited me last saturday! The first time family members coma over to see my room in New York!

I have been working on some artwork lately! It's not that I forgot about drawing or anything! The piece below is a piece of work I did for digital painting class:

And this piece I did for the NerdNYC Barbarians musical. I will be a monster in the play!

As for other news, I am a member of the zoos in New York now. I bought an annual pass for all zoos+aquarium in New York. Last weekend I visited the Central Park Zoo two times, one time with Becky, the other time with Melissa and Brendon.

Threadless submission #19

2010-03-05T11:05:00.000-08:00

Didn't I say I don't give up:
I eat Pirates for breakfast

SNOW!!!!

2010-02-26T07:48:00.000-08:00

Third Blizzard this winter - expected to grow up to 30 inches until tomorrow. Fun!

Spoonoff!!!!

2010-02-20T09:05:00.000-08:00

What happens when two girls fight over a comic? That's right: A SPOON-OFF! The backstory is, that Mary, who also took the pictures, had the whole collection of Warren Ellis Transmetropolitan as a give away for free. Melissa and I both wanted them! So we had to take care of this the old-fashioned way. Click on image for an enlarged view - thanks to Mary for taking the pictures and to Becky and Michelle to overview the fight! Any spelling mistake in the text is on purpose!

New illustration: documentation

2010-02-15T08:08:00.000-08:00

I decided to post a documentation about my latest threadless submission (which should be up for scoring shortly). It's for a special competition "One day without a shoe...", so the topic is basically children who can't afford to have shoes. This is a very untypical style for me - but I'm in the mood for experiments.

I started out with a very rough sketch. I had the idea for the illustration in my mind and tried to thumbnail it on paper. I was very sadisfied with my first try (which rarely happens) and my personal inspiration for this was illustrator James Jean.

The next step was a precisce sketch. I left out the ubmrella because I decided it was too distracting and too bold. By that point, I had decided to make the final sketch digital (the first time ever) with a graphic tablet.

The final version is supposed to be printed on sand color. I tried a lot with backgrounds, but finally decided to keep the illustration very clean and clear, so the basic idea of the nacked feet would translate.

Nerding, gaming, boozin' (reboot)

2010-02-01T08:35:00.000-08:00

Attention: The next paragraphs are pure pure pure nerdiness. For the “average” person all of ths will be “Kauderwelsch”.
What can a nerd like me do to have a fantastic weekend! That’s right:

Start off with a fantastic evening at Barcade, a Bar/Arcade hall in Williamsburg. The nerds from nerdnyc.com met up there to socialice before the big gaming event Recess was about to start at the next day. I met many new people, and Melissa, our gaming buddy Cary and his girlfriend accompanied me. After two Ginger+Gin I totally sucked at most games Aracde games I played, I usually died within 1 minute. Whatever, I had loads of fun! I had very geeky chats about various topics, such as comics and why the hell a knight would run around on a graveyard and fight zombies while losing his armor (that was the Arcade game Goblins and Ghosts).
After this, we went to eat delicious Burgers at “DuMonts” and I can without a doubt say, one of the best Burgers I ever ate! Everybody around me drunkenly confirmed me (“Dude, that is the BEST burger ever!”).
Below: Laura (left corner) me and Melissa are feeling funky after good burgers! (photo by Sarah)
Many people eating many meat!
At Barcarde: Astroide art!
Lisa (left) and Melissa are rocking the astroids!
I fail terrible at a shooting game in the jungle.
Melissa fights ghosts and goblins.

Saturday I arrived at 11 am at Bric in Manhatten to participate in the RPG/Boardgame/Socializing event “Recess” arranged by the nerd community. This time, very special, two day instead of one day! I met so many people I had recently only know trough their names at the message board and I found out that they were all awesome and nice! Over the course of the next two days I played four games, had a lot of chats with people and watched people drunkenly playing a bowling kind of game with marbles. I played Cthulhu Invictus with my first New York GM ever, Osk – I played Spelljammer (Dungeons and Dragons in space with floating ships) whuich was mastered by the brothers John and George, the first time ever I saw game masters working back to back, merging their games from time to time! I played Mouseguard with Matt as a GM – I had read the comic Mouseguard a while ago, and I loved it! The game was fun. My absolute favorite game was “lady Blackbird”. It’s a game/setting that’s basically explained within one page – very open, very fun – and as one of my fellow players Sarah called it” Steampunk/Firefly version of Princess pride”. We were 4 female players in this game and one guy, Brennan, the GM, brought his 12 years old daughter Lilith to game – and she is probably the youngest palyer I have ever played with, and she was a pure pro! She is gonna be a “Über-Gamer” when she is older!
Brennan, Sarah, Lilith and Sarah 2 are playing "lady Blackbird" with me!
I show Lilith my magic D20 which rolls many 1s (which is very bad in D&D) - photo by Sarah!
John and Geroge, back to back GMing (photo by Rob)

This also gives me the opportunity to introduce two of my regular gaming groups (I have to take pictures of the others):
1.Burning Wheel group: Phil (the GM), Sarah (his girlfriend), me, Kristen and Steve (and Melissa who just joined us and is not on the picture yet). We paly a Sci Fi campaigns, and whoever want to know more about it, Phil is writing very very long summaries on the nerdboard.
2.Shadowrun – Jason (the GM), Rob, Karen (his wife), Donna, Saif, Michael and Eric. We have a lot of fun when we play!
In this foto: Kristen, Phil, Sarah, Steve and me on top.
Jason, Rob, Karen, Michael, Eric and Donna

Older stuff:

I visited the New York Aquarium to draw recently and I enjoyed it a lot. I found out that I really enjoy visiting zoos and aquariums in general, much more actually than any art gallery. I am considering getting a year pass for all the zoos here, to visit them regularly, I just love to watch those freaky animals doing whatever they do. At the photo you see one of my favorite animals in the aquarium, the jellyfish!

Identity problems

2010-01-29T20:35:00.001-08:00

My new threadles submission! If you vote for it, I promise you sexy nerd girl fotos of my evening at Barcade (boozing and Aracarde games!).Threadless submission # 16

Catching up....

2010-01-16T15:00:00.000-08:00

I had a bad conscience for weeks because I never REALLY updated this blog with news from my life here – I have mainly bombed you guys with threadless designs, I hope you are not tired with it yet!

Anyways, what have I been doing over the last weeks? All my assignments for the fall semester went well, and after it was over I spend two nice, quiet weeks with relaxing. Christmas I spent at Becky’s mum’s house (Claudia) and once more, we had a wonderful dinner.

New Years Eve was loads of fun. I went to the nerd’s party again, which means tons of board games, guitar hero and a lot of people who get your pop cultural references.
This fotos are by Becky's rommate, Kat and are from Christmas at Claudia's house!

This fotos are by Sarah (my Burning Wheel collague) and are from nerd's new years eve:

School

The winter module ( a three week course that takes places 4 times a week) has started – it’s called “Visualizing the conceptual process”. The basic idea for the course is to make a mini-project every evening, and to realize on of them at the end. First I wasn’t sure about the course, because I already had a lot of “concept courses” back in the FH Salzburg. But the second week was already much more interesting than the first, and now I am enjoying the creative process every evening.

After that, the spring semester will start at the first of February. My courses for that are a painting class (I can’t wait for this one – I barely ever use none-digital colors, so I am curious if this course will challenge me a lot) and a digital coloring/drawing class (yay!). I also additionally have to do an “independent studies project, for which I chose to start a new, long term comic project setteled around my heroine Mary J. Brown (occult investigator!).

The first picture is by Elena (my classmate) and shows us at my conceptual class (in the front is Juliane, from Berlin, she is also a Fulbright student). The second picture is by Song Hee, and shows us at our life drawing class (which is now over).

RPG

I also would like to introduce my current Role-playing groups to you – I plan to take pictures of them during the next games. I’ll give you a quick overview.: I play a monthly game of RISUS with an all-girls group (Mary, Michelle, Melissa, Lena and Becky) – that is probably the pulpiest game of all of them. It’s the one were we all play occult investigators who have to fight enemies like “Vamperaci” ( a vamp version of Liverace) and the Necronomicon.
Another group is the D&D group (Melissa (from RISUS), Cary, Kai, Frank, Michelle (from RISUS) and other players who I haven’t met yet). We just finished an epic game with various resurrections, imploding people and multi-headed dragons and demons. This game is two-weekly.

A very new group is the Burning Wheel group (Phil, Kristen, Sarah, and Steve) - a very story-centered game in a Sci-Fi universe created by the GM Phil. The first game went very well. We basically (to explain it fast and simple) play a group of people slightly resembling to the Firefly crew who work for a giant UN-like organization, and who find out that there is a conspiracy with an ultra-xenophobe society is going on. I play a former terrorist who transformed into a peace negotiator.

I will try to give the people who are interested a better summary soon, first I want to take pictures of my groups. It sounds like I am playing unbelievably much, but it actually comes down to the same amount of time I spend gaming in Austria.

Merry Christmas + update

2009-12-23T09:36:00.000-08:00

I present to you my chistmas card for the year 2009. Also, an update in the illustration section on jung-comics. And finally, a new design for threadless, pending for apporval.

"The Town Musicians of Beirut"

NYC BLIZZARD

2009-12-20T07:27:00.000-08:00

Combine a blizzard and two Wiskey drinking chicks and you have madness! And wet butts. And a "Muskelkater" the next day.

Life Drawing at the SOI #2

2009-12-02T08:07:00.000-08:00

Hurray, I was motivated again this week. And again, I enjoyed using the long 20 minutes poses to draw the room. Good excercise. I was sitting at a pedestal, that is why everyone is slightly below me. I also managed to get a small table, so I was able to use ink and brush this time.

Life Drawing at the SOI

2009-11-24T20:39:00.000-08:00

The Society of Illustrators offers life drawing two times a week along with live Jazz music for 7 Dollars/3 hours. I like it a lot, only that Melanie, our drawing teacher, enabled us to draw really fast. That is why in the 20 minutes pose I got bored and drew the whole room :-) - you will notice that there are mainly older guys with glasses and beards in the audience :-D

This is the sketch I made, afterwards I worked a bit with Photoshop on it:

Up for scoring at threadless:

2009-11-16T08:35:00.000-08:00

THIS is the new submission I made, it will be up for scoring soon:
Alone in the Forrest.

I am very sorry for this - you might notice, that you have already scored for this design: I was resubmitting it a week ago because of an typing error, and asked them to remove version one. They followed my wish, and I am thankful, but all the previous votes and comments got lost - so if its not too much to ask, please vote and comment again! THANK YOU!
So please score again, if its not too much!

GOD DAMNIT! DRAWINGS!

2009-11-11T09:51:00.000-08:00

I decided to FINALLY post more drawings: I admit it. I AM INSECURE ABOUT MY STUFF at the moment. I know its normal, I know thats a phase. Whatever, here are some drawings: Some of them are "On the spot" drawings in Manhatten, others are life drawings (usually 1-2 minutes poses) and others are just for fun.

As in other news: The children's cookbook has been published. I post the Pressetext in German! Order it HERE!!! DO IT!

Wer kennt sie nicht, die Diskussionen mit den Kindern um das Essen. Vor allem, wenn es darum geht, etwas Abwechslung, etwas Neues, Frisches oder gar Gesundes in den Speiseplan zu bringen, endet so mancher Versuch mit Haareraufen. "Dieses Brot, das schmeckt mir nicht, das Gemüse mag ich nicht, meine Suppe ess’ ich nicht ....". Dabei könnte doch alles ganz anders sein, denn eigentlich sind Kinder ja neugierig und für gewöhnlich auch hungrig!
Und tatsächlich lassen sich Kinder leicht animieren, etwas Neues zu probieren. Zum Beispiel mit fantasievollen Gerichten und Geschichten, wie sie in den „Märchenhaften Rezepten von Nellie & Nick“ erzählt werden. Und vor allem, indem man die Sprösslinge beim Kochen mithelfen lässt.

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).