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Wanna see art? I can has art!
2 min read
It has been brought to my attention that people don't know I'm still active online. (Hi everyone who came to meet me at Tracon last weekend!)
I am still alive! Still online, still haven't abandoned drawing or devArt or anything. I'm still around!
I probably seem more quiet in here because I like to keep deviantArt as a place for nice looking scanned art, but I haven't really had many chances to scan much lately. I have a pretty physically demanding full time day job these days, with long commutes, and I don't usually like to turn on the computer at the end of the day, as working on computer feels like work, and I rather not work after working full days at a warehouse. (and my scanner is very inconveniently on the opposite side of my one-room apartment than the computer these days, which is extra bothersome)
But I still draw! And I do share my drawings online whenever I do, it's just that it's so much easier to just snap a quick photo on my phone and shove it on twitter than go through the whole scanning and digital clean up process, so most of my newer stuff get's to see the interwebs through social media.
While I still do intend to upload my art here, one day, when I get some free time (I'm apparently too good at my day job, my contract was supposed to be just temporary seasonal help, but here I am, after a whole year, with another half a year at least in front of me. So hard having stable job and comfortable income) it might be easier to just follow me elsewhere for a more active/recent art feed, for now.
If you want to see my more recent art in its phone quality glory, you can head over to either of these places:
- Twitter: twitter.com/Paperiapina
- Tumblr: papermonkeyism.tumblr.com/
I am still alive! Still online, still haven't abandoned drawing or devArt or anything. I'm still around!
I probably seem more quiet in here because I like to keep deviantArt as a place for nice looking scanned art, but I haven't really had many chances to scan much lately. I have a pretty physically demanding full time day job these days, with long commutes, and I don't usually like to turn on the computer at the end of the day, as working on computer feels like work, and I rather not work after working full days at a warehouse. (and my scanner is very inconveniently on the opposite side of my one-room apartment than the computer these days, which is extra bothersome)
But I still draw! And I do share my drawings online whenever I do, it's just that it's so much easier to just snap a quick photo on my phone and shove it on twitter than go through the whole scanning and digital clean up process, so most of my newer stuff get's to see the interwebs through social media.
While I still do intend to upload my art here, one day, when I get some free time (I'm apparently too good at my day job, my contract was supposed to be just temporary seasonal help, but here I am, after a whole year, with another half a year at least in front of me. So hard having stable job and comfortable income) it might be easier to just follow me elsewhere for a more active/recent art feed, for now.
If you want to see my more recent art in its phone quality glory, you can head over to either of these places:
- Twitter: twitter.com/Paperiapina
- Tumblr: papermonkeyism.tumblr.com/
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Been a while, huh?
3 min read
Hi everyone! Long time no see!
Just wanted to pop in to let you know where I've disappeared to. In case you were wondering, I'm still here! Mostly kind of lurking lately, but I still come here fairly often to see what's going on. I just haven't been hanging at the computer much this past year.
Last January me and my mom combined our strengths and cleaned up my apartment, which was great (as my den was kiiiiind of a dumpster), but it had the surprising abd unforeseen side effect that it kind of changed my entire life rhythm from spending most of my free time every day at the computer, to only turning the machine on maybe once or twice a month to pay bills. Like, it was a strange change of life for me, I've spent so many years practically glued to the display screen and suddenly I just... Didn't.
Also my computer kind of fried itself last month, and I won't be getting it back untill after the holidays, so I'm currently kind of stuck on mobile.
Also I got a full time day job last August, that will last untill the end of March at least, so that's also a thing! I like having enough money to pay the bills, even if it's cut my free time tragically short.
I still hang online a lot, but I just mostly do it via phone now. And there's one big downside to that: I can't scan stuff with my phone. As DevArt has always been a place to put better quality art for me (or at least better quality scans of my doodles), I haven't really had chances to update my gallery much. I expect there might be a bit of a flood of new art once I get my computer back, but in the meantime, if you like seeing my art, and don't mind them being phone photos, you can see the newer stuff over at my Twitter (twitter.com/Paperiapina) or Tumblr (papermonkeyism.tumblr.com)*.
Twitter is mostly just art, with very little else, while Tumblr is where my brain leaks all the stuff it comes up with.
Anyway, thanks for hanging around! And sorry for the silence, I really don't know what happened.
- E. "Papermonkey" Jokinen
* I know tumblr is kind of in the process of shooting itself on the foot, big time, but Pillowfort isn't open yet, I have been on tumblr since 2012 and I have no place else to dump all my random thoughts into.
Just wanted to pop in to let you know where I've disappeared to. In case you were wondering, I'm still here! Mostly kind of lurking lately, but I still come here fairly often to see what's going on. I just haven't been hanging at the computer much this past year.
Last January me and my mom combined our strengths and cleaned up my apartment, which was great (as my den was kiiiiind of a dumpster), but it had the surprising abd unforeseen side effect that it kind of changed my entire life rhythm from spending most of my free time every day at the computer, to only turning the machine on maybe once or twice a month to pay bills. Like, it was a strange change of life for me, I've spent so many years practically glued to the display screen and suddenly I just... Didn't.
Also my computer kind of fried itself last month, and I won't be getting it back untill after the holidays, so I'm currently kind of stuck on mobile.
Also I got a full time day job last August, that will last untill the end of March at least, so that's also a thing! I like having enough money to pay the bills, even if it's cut my free time tragically short.
I still hang online a lot, but I just mostly do it via phone now. And there's one big downside to that: I can't scan stuff with my phone. As DevArt has always been a place to put better quality art for me (or at least better quality scans of my doodles), I haven't really had chances to update my gallery much. I expect there might be a bit of a flood of new art once I get my computer back, but in the meantime, if you like seeing my art, and don't mind them being phone photos, you can see the newer stuff over at my Twitter (twitter.com/Paperiapina) or Tumblr (papermonkeyism.tumblr.com)*.
Twitter is mostly just art, with very little else, while Tumblr is where my brain leaks all the stuff it comes up with.
Anyway, thanks for hanging around! And sorry for the silence, I really don't know what happened.
- E. "Papermonkey" Jokinen
* I know tumblr is kind of in the process of shooting itself on the foot, big time, but Pillowfort isn't open yet, I have been on tumblr since 2012 and I have no place else to dump all my random thoughts into.
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So... Ten years, huh.
6 min read
27th July 2007, the first page of Wurr was uploaded online.
I have multiple feelings about this, and I don't know what to do with all of them. There's some confusing and conflicting for sure. There's good ones (wow, I've actually been able to commit to a story for this long!) and some less than good ones (I have about half as many pages as the time suggests).
I kind of wanted to do something big to celebrate the occasion, but, uh, I kinda forgot (I swear it was just June a moment ago, where did it go?). But, you know. Ten years.
It's weird to think this was originally just a moment's inspiration. All other stories I'd had never had gotten anywhere despite having years of planning behind them. Wurr just came as an idea of "hey, what if" and then like a week later I had a comic.
Originally it was supposed to be just the first three pages, and nothing more, but it soon grew up when I started bouncing ideas on how I could use this world. Which is kind of funny in itself, originally the three pages were supposed to be a high fantasy thing, with orcs and elves (I had -and still have- lots of feelings about high fantasy and the pretty racist premise of it when you stop to think about it for too long. I mean I absolutely love fantasy, but the black and white good vs evil set up feels cheap and I DIGRESS), and I only turned it into a canine story because at the time I couldn't draw humany faces worth a damn. And then the story just took off.
A lot has changed since then, though. The characters were pretty much stereotype templates at the beginning (The Hero TM (Iacar), the Funny One (Morri) the Timid One (Hafmar) the Nerdy One (Iralbe), the Female TM... Did you know that Surama was supposed to be an elegant and mysterious woman? Pfffft, yeah. That lasted exactly untill the first time she opened her mouth). No wonder I had trouble writing them in the beginning, when they weren't actually interesting to me. (Also forever regret not making Morri female.)
I didn't really have a story when I started, beyond "I want these characters to get out of the Crater" (which was supposed to happen within the first ten pages. Hah!). The whole Niftynose episode was an ass pull to keep the story going, and I have regrets about it, but what can you do. In the early days Wurr was supposed to be a straight up fantasy story with actual magic and stuff. There were WIZARDS! And the dogs were lead by a corrupt military, and they bred giant monster birds that they harvested wings from, which they then connected to their elite soldiers to have an air force, except that Black Touch was the source of magic, which could twist its users to hellhounds too, but the dogs' government was lying to its own citizens about the hellhounds and...
And at some point I realized that in order to run from the "good vs evil" premise I had actually just bent over backwards to have the exact same premise myself, but with the good and evil halves swapped. So yeah, I rewrote the whole thing. (Also that's why Niftynose shoots lightning from his nose. It's not biologically possible, but he was written into the story back when Actual Magic was still a thing in the setting, and it's too late to change it now.)
This is kind of also the reason why in the first couple of years I only updated like one page every three months. There was no script, no proper story let alone an ending to write towards, so I was stuck all the time. I can actually point to a page where I drew couple of filler panels, because it was taking me a month to get a single panel drawn as I didn't know where I was going.
In the end I left my own interests guide the worldbuilding (prehistory/early history and cultures are fascinating!).
After having drawn the comic for two years I went to Liminka School of Arts for a year long comic making course, and suddenly I found inspiration (and peer pressure) to get working on the comic for real. Around this point I also finally figured out the plot of the comic with the help of my Brainstorm Buddy, and for the first time I had an ending to aim at.
Also thanks for my Liminka buddies for pressuring me to print the first book of Wurr. I never would have done it without them.
A lot has changed since the early days. Mostly my methods of writing (I actually plan my pages before drawing now) and of course the story itself. There's no more magic, but I find myself more invested in the world without it. The characters have grown their third dimensions, so to speak, and I'm just plain having more fun.
I still occasionally struggle with the writing (I cannot concentrate unless I get out of the house, which wasn't a problem back when I was still studying. Surviving through three different art school meant countless lectures that were absolutely the best thing to get work done on a comic. I'm still kind of adjusting to not having an access to that now that I've graduated.) but at least I have actual goals now.
So here's to ten years! *raises a cup of tea*
Let's hope it doesn't take me another decade to finish it.
(Also huge thank yous to everyone who keeps reading the comic! There's no way I could have stuck with it this long without knowing you were there.)
I have multiple feelings about this, and I don't know what to do with all of them. There's some confusing and conflicting for sure. There's good ones (wow, I've actually been able to commit to a story for this long!) and some less than good ones (I have about half as many pages as the time suggests).
I kind of wanted to do something big to celebrate the occasion, but, uh, I kinda forgot (I swear it was just June a moment ago, where did it go?). But, you know. Ten years.
It's weird to think this was originally just a moment's inspiration. All other stories I'd had never had gotten anywhere despite having years of planning behind them. Wurr just came as an idea of "hey, what if" and then like a week later I had a comic.
Originally it was supposed to be just the first three pages, and nothing more, but it soon grew up when I started bouncing ideas on how I could use this world. Which is kind of funny in itself, originally the three pages were supposed to be a high fantasy thing, with orcs and elves (I had -and still have- lots of feelings about high fantasy and the pretty racist premise of it when you stop to think about it for too long. I mean I absolutely love fantasy, but the black and white good vs evil set up feels cheap and I DIGRESS), and I only turned it into a canine story because at the time I couldn't draw humany faces worth a damn. And then the story just took off.
A lot has changed since then, though. The characters were pretty much stereotype templates at the beginning (The Hero TM (Iacar), the Funny One (Morri) the Timid One (Hafmar) the Nerdy One (Iralbe), the Female TM... Did you know that Surama was supposed to be an elegant and mysterious woman? Pfffft, yeah. That lasted exactly untill the first time she opened her mouth). No wonder I had trouble writing them in the beginning, when they weren't actually interesting to me. (Also forever regret not making Morri female.)
I didn't really have a story when I started, beyond "I want these characters to get out of the Crater" (which was supposed to happen within the first ten pages. Hah!). The whole Niftynose episode was an ass pull to keep the story going, and I have regrets about it, but what can you do. In the early days Wurr was supposed to be a straight up fantasy story with actual magic and stuff. There were WIZARDS! And the dogs were lead by a corrupt military, and they bred giant monster birds that they harvested wings from, which they then connected to their elite soldiers to have an air force, except that Black Touch was the source of magic, which could twist its users to hellhounds too, but the dogs' government was lying to its own citizens about the hellhounds and...
And at some point I realized that in order to run from the "good vs evil" premise I had actually just bent over backwards to have the exact same premise myself, but with the good and evil halves swapped. So yeah, I rewrote the whole thing. (Also that's why Niftynose shoots lightning from his nose. It's not biologically possible, but he was written into the story back when Actual Magic was still a thing in the setting, and it's too late to change it now.)
This is kind of also the reason why in the first couple of years I only updated like one page every three months. There was no script, no proper story let alone an ending to write towards, so I was stuck all the time. I can actually point to a page where I drew couple of filler panels, because it was taking me a month to get a single panel drawn as I didn't know where I was going.
In the end I left my own interests guide the worldbuilding (prehistory/early history and cultures are fascinating!).
After having drawn the comic for two years I went to Liminka School of Arts for a year long comic making course, and suddenly I found inspiration (and peer pressure) to get working on the comic for real. Around this point I also finally figured out the plot of the comic with the help of my Brainstorm Buddy, and for the first time I had an ending to aim at.
Also thanks for my Liminka buddies for pressuring me to print the first book of Wurr. I never would have done it without them.
A lot has changed since the early days. Mostly my methods of writing (I actually plan my pages before drawing now) and of course the story itself. There's no more magic, but I find myself more invested in the world without it. The characters have grown their third dimensions, so to speak, and I'm just plain having more fun.
I still occasionally struggle with the writing (I cannot concentrate unless I get out of the house, which wasn't a problem back when I was still studying. Surviving through three different art school meant countless lectures that were absolutely the best thing to get work done on a comic. I'm still kind of adjusting to not having an access to that now that I've graduated.) but at least I have actual goals now.
So here's to ten years! *raises a cup of tea*
Let's hope it doesn't take me another decade to finish it.
(Also huge thank yous to everyone who keeps reading the comic! There's no way I could have stuck with it this long without knowing you were there.)
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Back!
1 min read
I'm officially back from visiting my family for the midsummer. Sorry my absence was extended some, my dad got sick so I stuck around to help around now that my mom has a job and wasn't able to help. Birthday was had, haven't really adjusted to the new number yet, lots of relaxing and being at peace with everything (my folks' place is RIDICULOUSLY IDYLLIC).
I also got my new project (called The Herd. Or alternatively: "the dinosaur calendar project thingy") brainstormed into a pretty nice state while I was there, and I'm pretty excited to be able to get to work on it properly soon! It'll be a series of calendars that will be collected into an art book later on. Lots of art with a loose slice-of-life style "story/plot/idk?" to tie it together. Kinda sorta "this is how these characters live" and "stuff that happens to them".
So I hope you like dinosaurs because I'm going to spam you with some!
I also got my new project (called The Herd. Or alternatively: "the dinosaur calendar project thingy") brainstormed into a pretty nice state while I was there, and I'm pretty excited to be able to get to work on it properly soon! It'll be a series of calendars that will be collected into an art book later on. Lots of art with a loose slice-of-life style "story/plot/idk?" to tie it together. Kinda sorta "this is how these characters live" and "stuff that happens to them".
So I hope you like dinosaurs because I'm going to spam you with some!
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Wurr (and stuff) update
2 min read
Hi!
I'm sorry to say that I probably won't manage to get the next page of Wurr out this week. I'm leaving tomorrow to visit my family for a while, probably a week or two, for the midsummer (and also to be present at my own birthday), and I'm afraid the next page is going to take more work than what I have hours available (I'm blaming the unemployment office for that one, because I'm forced to go on a job applying training class tomorrow instead of having any time to actually work).
I will likely be posting WIP photos of the page on my tumblr and twitter (I have a twitter now, btw! It's brand new), but my parents don't have proper computers or editing programs to get the pages online in any kind of acceptable quality. I'm so sorry, and I hope I can make it up with a multiple page update once I get back.
There's been a lot going on in my life lately. I don't want to get my hopes up just in case things end up going south, but if everything works well, I might be able to make my art my actual job sometime in the not-even-horribly-distant future! Because of this I've been busy making some preparations, and if everything goes smoothly, it would mean that the English edition of the first book of Wurr would have it's first print before the end of the year. I'm also working on getting the dinosaur calendar project thingy's first calendar out before the year changes.
I'm pretty confused by everything happening, and also slightly horrified, but also a little excited.
But right now I'm mostly sorry and a little guilty that I'm going to miss another page update.
I'm sorry to say that I probably won't manage to get the next page of Wurr out this week. I'm leaving tomorrow to visit my family for a while, probably a week or two, for the midsummer (and also to be present at my own birthday), and I'm afraid the next page is going to take more work than what I have hours available (I'm blaming the unemployment office for that one, because I'm forced to go on a job applying training class tomorrow instead of having any time to actually work).
I will likely be posting WIP photos of the page on my tumblr and twitter (I have a twitter now, btw! It's brand new), but my parents don't have proper computers or editing programs to get the pages online in any kind of acceptable quality. I'm so sorry, and I hope I can make it up with a multiple page update once I get back.
There's been a lot going on in my life lately. I don't want to get my hopes up just in case things end up going south, but if everything works well, I might be able to make my art my actual job sometime in the not-even-horribly-distant future! Because of this I've been busy making some preparations, and if everything goes smoothly, it would mean that the English edition of the first book of Wurr would have it's first print before the end of the year. I'm also working on getting the dinosaur calendar project thingy's first calendar out before the year changes.
I'm pretty confused by everything happening, and also slightly horrified, but also a little excited.
But right now I'm mostly sorry and a little guilty that I'm going to miss another page update.
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