Comic Invasion Berlin!

I'm tabling at Comic Invasion Berlin next weekend, y'all! It will be my first actual comic arts festival and I am totally excited. Come see me at table 25a from 12:00 until the hour I keel over! I will have my minis, stickers, some original art and will be doing sketches too.

That's my bird up there dodging UFO laser fire, by the way.

Socializing

[ Against Me! - Stop! ]

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I spruced up my store page a bit and added some original art on my Etsy! Have a look (also there's a shiny button on the sidebar you can click)!

How I Met Your Municipales

I don't know what hit me harder last week... Valls being made Prime Minister, or the How I Met Your Mother finale.

Seriously though, it was a one-two punch of WTF.

[ Mickey 3D - Matador ]

MOS #10

[Soundtrack: Marvin - "Closer" (Live at Intersoup)]

Version française.

Here's my dad at the Tacheles in April 2010:

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So, DUDES -- after a long-a** hiatus, Master of Survival is back!!

There are about six episodes left to go, plus some bonus comics. How fast the comic updates depends greatly on you. It goes like this: via my Patreon page, you can pledge to donate one dollar or more per episode of Master of Survival (or filler comic between updates). The higher the pledges are, the more I can afford to focus on updating.

Patrons get charged every month depending on how many new comics I've posted (expect no more than 4 and no less than 3), and have access to weekly-ish, exclusive blog posts about whatever I'm working on.

A note on the habitual translation of the episodes: nearly all forthcoming episodes are written in English, and will be translated into French when time permits. Any episode written in French will be posted in English and French simultaneously.

That's enough on my end, I hope you enjoy the second instalment of this comic and I look forward to giving you more new pages!

Verknallt

I don't get it, it just keeps happening.

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I've added a reward tier to my Patreon page! Patrons who pledge $2 or more per comic now get all five of my comic PDFs for free as a thank-you. If you can't be bothered to clog your hard drive, you can also pledge to donate as low as $1 per comic to help keep them going.

I also keep a sort of progress log on Patreon with process shots and updates. If you're into that kind of thing and you've always wanted to throw small amounts of money at me, it's a pretty sweet deal!

  [ Bloc Party - Kreuzberg ]

Talking

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Hey-o, did you know that if you want to support this blog directly, you can now do so on Patreon? You can pledge $1 or more per comic that I post, and as a reward you get access to exclusive updates from the drawing board. Even a $1 pledge goes a long way and I would super super appreciate it.

There's also a date for the next Master of Survival update somewhere on there that I've otherwise been super-quiet about :V

Also, I'm curating the I AM EUROPE Twitter account this week - check it out!

[ Alkaline Trio - Mercy Me ]

Before/After

Spoiler alert: anywhere upwards of three people is too many.

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You now have an opportunity to support my comics with monthly microdonations on Patreon! By pledging$1 or more per comic that I post in a month*, you get exclusive access to behind the scenes material AND the warm fuzzy feeling of supporting someone doing stuff that you like. I mean, I hope that I'm doing stuff that you like. Am I?

*That would be comics posted on Tuesdays, like this one -- not sketch dumps, announcements or fanart. Although if you like those you can just up your pledge a bit! Also, whether or not anyone pledges anything I will still be posting comics. The only difference is that with enough financial support I can update more regularly than I currently am!

[ Alkaline Trio - Time To Waste ]

Sunday Sketchpost: Woods

A little something I found in my sketchbook over the weekend and that I really, really like.

[ Chris Pureka - Shipwreck ]

Wednesday Workpost: GTD Personalentwicklung

Last December I was asked to illustrate a greeting card for GTD-Personalentwicklung, a small Berlin-based organisation specializing in human resources development. I  highly enjoyed the assignment, and it gave me the opportunity to do something you don't often see here - use colors!

This is the illustration I created for the card; you can see the full visual on my Behance portfolio as well as on the German site Dasauge.de.

Auf, auf!

[ Death Cab For Cutie - Lightness ]

Friday Sketchpost: Joe Czarnecki presents The Icarus Project

Last weekend was Berlin-dwelling guitarist Joe Czarnecki's first concert in two years. I've been a fan of his work since moving here and was super-happy to hear new music and old classics, some of them revisited.

Of course, if you want to practice drawing hands, why not use a tapping guitarist's hands for reference? It's not like they move or anything.

Joe's album Watch Now is one of my favorite records, right up there on my list of indispensable instrumental guitar music along with Kaki King and Kelli Rudick. Check it out!

[ Joe Czarnecki - Ocean (live) ]

National Hug Day

We often listen to Flux FM at my part-time job. You should too, as it is probably the best alternative radio station ever.

[ Rufus Wainwright - Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen cover) ] ]

Hourly Comics Day 2014

Hanging Loose: Keeping It Classy

Don't drink and discuss dating with deutsch dudes, peeps, it can only end in tears.

[ Dandylion - Never Look Down ]

Hanging Loose: Kidneys

Two impossible girls go 'round the outside, 'round the outside, 'round the outside

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 STICKERS!!!

There are currently stickers in my store! And until Feb. 1, they only cost 1.99€ + shipping! Great for decorating your laptop with an expression of young urban cartoonist angst. Grab'em while they're physically manifest!

[ Death Cab For Cutie - Title and Registration ] 

2013 Recap

And thus (pretty much) concludes the madness that was 2013!

I forgot to mention this, which happened while I was in Paris the second time:

(That's the current French Prime Minister and we were in the backyard of Matignon, FYI.)

In 2014, on the personal art front, I plan on continuing drawing Master of Survival and writing Noémie, aller-retour/hin und zurück. I will also be traveling a lot for various things, which will lead to new travel journals, postcards and more exclusive art goodies to get your hands on! More will be announced in the next couple of months as travel plans unfold, so keep your eagle eyes open.

Also, as is my wont, I've compiled a small recap of the year in entertainment, visible below this cut. May 2014 bring new obsessions and hefty doses of doodling, the latter to rejoice over, the former to your possible dismay.

[ #3 Song of the Year  
#2 Song of the Year
#1 Song of the Year ]

Mixtape Monday: Car Drive 2013

A personal fact I have mentioned before: in addition to writing and drawing squiggly figures in my journal, I have also been making mixes since the dawn of time -- well, since I attended junior high and came into possession of a tape player. Being a storyteller at heart, I always strive to compose some kind of sense into the ordering of the songs - a sort of soundtrack, if you will. I find I have achieved success when the mix either gets my narrative point across or makes someone happy. (If both happen, it is doubly awesome!)

I will use the occasional Mixtape Monday post to present to you some of the mixes I am particularly proud of, and the artwork that inevitably goes with it. I open this category with the most recent edition of Car Drive, a yearly mix I force my family to listen to in the car when we drive out to the Swedish countryside. (My sister ended up "quite liking it" however, so I have reached my above-mentioned goal.)

Car Drive serves to round up (mostly) new music that either caught my attention or defined a particular moment in the eponymous year. As such, this is is truly an aural personal recap of 2013. (The comic recap is coming tomorrow!)

If you so desire, you can wrap your ears around this mix on Spotify.

 

Hanging Loose: Mellandagsrea

*Mellandagsrea is a sale that happens between Christmas and New Year's (the "days in the middle").

[ Theophilus London feat. Sara Quin - Why Even Try ]

Hanging Loose: Role Reversal

Hey guys! I'm putting my comics time this month towards drawing Master of Survival and writing Noémie, so to tide you over I've got some comics drawn over the holidays in my trusty journal. I call these "Hanging Loose".

I am also doing a recap of 2013 that will be up within a week. Happy New Year!

P.S. Click on the picture for a bonus sibling interaction GIF!

[ Alkaline Trio - Time To Waste ]