"Happy New Year!"? I really should push the Update Journal button a bit more often. Oh well, here's an update. Oh, and it refuses to change my mood emoticon from "Jolly"...

I have now finished my three years of Game Design at Gotland University. Or, almost.. There's a paper left to hand in, but that's all. This fall I start art school! It's going to be awesome, I'm really looking forward to it.

During the summer, I'm once again taking summer classes. This year, it's concept art. We're going to develope a concept during ten weeks, ending up with images of two main characters, a number of props and weapons, an envirnment shot and a storyboard (of a scene in the story, I hope. The whole story seems a bit much).

Anyway, I thought I'd post my story idea here, a little preview of what art might show up here in a not so distant future.

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A world that never was, or a world that could have been

A parallel universe, not unlike our own world but still different. A steampunk inspired world, developing and growing rapidly with a bright future ahead. A new continent is found, a new world to explore.

The Explorers, a group of people from the Big City in the Old World. Crossing the ocean in their airship and eager to uncover the secrets hidden on the New Continent. They encounter the Tribe, remnants of an ancient civilization that built its power on magic rather than technology. There are also the Spirits. Weakened and exiled in the Old World, they still reign free and strong on the New Continent. Not malevolent, but unpredictable and dangerous, Tribe and Explorers alike have reason to fear the wrath of the Spirits.

The Story

The Explorers are exited to find people in the New World, and are eager to make friends with them and learn about their culture. The Tribe however, are very hesitant, even hostile, towards the Explorers. Change and new things are not something appreciated within the Tribe, they stick to the old habits and traditions that have been the same for centuries. They realize though that they need to learn more about the Explorers, to find how much of a threat they pose and how best to get rid of them.

Sent on the mission to learn more about them is the Girl. She is fairly young, this will be a kind of Rite of Passage for her, to aid in the protection of the Tribe. She is too afraid to approach the entire group of Explorers. Instead she decides to separate one of them from the others with help of a spirit and some magic. The one she picks is the Boy. He isn't exactly one of the Explorers, he is on the trip as an engineer, taking care of the engines and other machines on the airship. Taking a walk a bit too far from the camp, he falls into the Girl's trap and gets lost in the forest.

The Girl reveals herself to the Boy and they attempt to get to know each other. The Girl is hindered by her fears of the unknown, she looks down at the boy and doesn't treat him well. He struggles to win her trust, both because of his curiosity about the exotic girl and because he depends on her to bring him back safely to the Explorers.

A disaster happens, which upsets the Spirits. The Girl is in danger, and the Boy saves her. She is starting to understand that her prejudice about the Boy might have been wrong. But the Spirits are still upset, they threaten the entire Tribe. The Boy thinks of a way that the Explorers could save the Spirits. After managing to persuade the Girl to try his idea, and to persuade the Explorers to help, the Tribe is saved.

The Tribe learns to trust the newcomers and to let them learn about the New World. The Girl and the Boy realizes how much they have come to care about each other. The Boy promises to show the Girl the old world, and the story ends with them sailing back across the ocean in the airship.

Happy new year everyone! I hope you had a great christmas(or whatever you happen to celebrate during the winter )

I'm up in the far north visiting my parents, I'm going back to Visby later this week. My youngest cousin, his parents and the japanese exchange student they have living with them this year came up for new years eve too. The house is full of people and it's really nice.

In Sweden we have a tradition of making new year vows. You promise to change something about yourself and your life, for example to stop smoking of stuff like that. Is that something swedish, or do people in other countries do it too?

Anyway, on the point. I thought here was a good place to post my vows. If I keep them secret, then there would be no pressure on me to hold them, right?

The first thing is to start taking my art more seriously. I will work for at least an hour each day (and if I miss one day, I make up for it by working two hours the next day.).

I will learn how to make homepages and create a real online portfolio for myself.

I will create enough serious, well worked pictures to actually have a portfolio to show people.

I will start taking serious commissions.

I will stop hanging around people who call themselves friends, but don't respect me and do nothing but hurt me.

I will not seek conflict with the aforementioned people, it wouldn't do anyone any good. Instead, I will avoid contact with them as much as possible.

I will take better care of my real friends. The people who actually care, but whom I easily forget about and treat badly.


I think that's about it. I thought of something more last night, but now I can't remember what it was so I guess it wasn't that important. I will add more later if needed.

So, you've been working for days on a new picture. It was diffiult, you tried out new things and struggled a lot with it, and in the end you feel quite proud of it. What do you do now? You want to show it to the world, but who do you show it to? Your non-artsy friends, who probably would like anything you draw, even if you knew you didn't do as well as you could have. Thos who will tell you how awesome you are and how much they love you picture. Or do you go to the artist friends? Those who hardly care at all, and only will point out everything you did wrong?

Sure, the right thing to do would be to go to the artists, right? they will point out your mistakes, so that you can learn and improve. But sometimes you want to hear that you did good too, right?

I want to hear the truth, so that I can become better, but sometimes I wonder if I'm too sensitive. I don't want everything to be sugarcoated and fluffy just because it would make me happy, but I get kind of upset when all someone has to say is negative things, especially about pictures I've really worked hard on.

I don't know where I was going with this. I'm certainly not telling you to only say the good things about my art. Absolutely not! But still, be gentle.

And maybe a question too, how do you handle overly negative criticism?

I command you to immediately go and watch these movies!

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If there is such a thing as magic in this world, I believe a great deal of it can be found in music. I'm very easily affected by music, and watching it being created is truly wonderful. If you can play an instrument and are willing to play for me, you immediately have my love and worship. Perhaps it is bad that I let myself be affected so strongly by it? Or does it show some unknown affinity for this world's magic? Oh, I should stop rambling about this, just go and watch those videos!

But if you for some unknown reason want to know more about my wierd theories on magic and reality, feel free to ask..

So, the first course of the semester started today. "From concept sketch to game III" The project we will be doing during it sounds really interesting. We are to get a theme of some sort and make up a game about it. THe things we have to hand in in the end are a turnaround of an existing character from the theme, that will be the protagonist of the game. We will also make up and draw a turnaround of a boss and sidekick for the game, all from our imagination, but something that fits the theme. And the last part, making a "screenshot" from one of the levels of our imaginary game.

And guess what theme I got? Invader Zim!

I'm so happy with that, since I really love Invader Zim, and most of the other themes where really uninteresting. So now I just have to learn to draw in that style, that will be quite interesting... ^_^