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The winter card is relevant to the Small Trolls pages that I've posted so far. ♥

Fjoldi don't bury their dead if they can avoid it, they're cremated. They therefore don't have gravestones or cemeteries, nor do they make a habit of mourning their dead. Instead they celebrate the memories they have of the people who have passed beyond the veil. It's something we'll revisit as a concept in Tistow too later on.

Happy Winter!

Happy midwinter everyone! ♥ Here's this year's winter card's design. I've unfornately not got the actual physical cards yet, but I'll share pictures as soon as they get here.

I hope y'all have a lovely time, snow or not. ♥

I've also ordered a spring card ready for next year, but there's still quite a while to go before I can share that one. x3

Page 50 - inks

Well, in part. Missing one BG and the bottom panel. I reeaaally like coming up with background characters to draw (even if half of the time they end up behind bubbles).

There's a cameo appearance on this from one of our Patreon supporters, Mikey. ♥ Like in YIH, he's a copper in Tistow as well.

This spread also introduces a new character, Georgie. 

Wilds - silhouettes

I occasionally do silhouettes of character designs to determine whether or not I can tell each character apart just off them. It's always been quite important to me to get some kind of idea of a character's personality just from their general shape and posture.

Wild gods of Tistow.

Cap'n Sotka

Captain is a white peacock that lives on the farm where I help out with horses and ponies. He's fun to observe and he's given me many ideas for Sotka's antics. Unfortunately he's a bit difficult to photograph so I took a little bit of time to browse for reference pictures of peacocks being peacocks.

So this is a practice on their anatomy and attempt to translate that to what Sotka would look like.

Sotka is a wild god like Woodcarver, just very... bratty and urchinlike.

Sotka - 7-12 - roughs

Gosh these are a bit rough. The comp's themselves work, but say, page 9 I'll definitely need to rethink Sotka's pose and angle.

Sotka - 1-2 - inks & bases

..Ignore the terribly coloured SFX ahaha. I decided not to ink too much of the BGs as I would like to try and see how airy I can make things feel, so I'll be painting most of it. I'd still like there to be tons of depth, so we'll have to see how this'll turn out.

I've been watching Captain (white peacock at the farm) potter about in the cold and rainy weather recently. And his little hunched up poses, leg shifts, perches and short flights have inspired me to try and give Sotka a similar charac...

Sotka & Jáhko - pages 1-6 - roughs

Small Trolls stuff! This is the 'short' that I mentioned a while back. The comic is 22 pages long and features Sotka and Jáhko.

The story was originally going to take place before Jáhko meets Veeti, but I decided to place this moment after the 1st Chapter has already happened. He's around 10 in this.

I'm umming and arring about posting all the roughs here already. They all look more or less like this at the moment.

Eustace - Bonus comic - roughs

I drew this setup earlier this year but never got around to actually uploading it here (it's a rough so I'm not 100% sure how clear it is what's going on exactly. But we're on Jack's loft). I'd like to use it as a bonus comic later on in Tistow, once we've established who Eustace was (he's been mentioned only by name so far by Mrs. Goodwill).

There are no 'undead' or 'zombies' in the story. We do however have an awful lot of memories that Jack can tap into and observe. Bit like a record playin...

Queen of rats

♥

49 - colours

Almost there! But not quite done. This did make me think I might like to change some bits on the previous page colour wise, hah.

I'm so sorry Alfie.

48-49

Progress shot! I've actually more or less re-colored the right side page now. Trying to get the mood to match the left side better.

I've been watching development diaries of Hellblade tonight while I've worked on this. Tistow takes inspiration from the Celts in some aspects and I've always found their history interesting. So playing a game with a mix of both Celtic and Norse was a real treat! I absolutely loved Senua's Sacrifice and it's definitely my favourite game and I'd recommend it to any...

Page 48 - Progress

This page was a challenge. One of the things I'm quite content with in general, is working with values in BW. However like I've mentioned before, when it comes to turning them into colours there seems to be some kind of disconnection. I've getting easier though. It's not perfect but I had fun with this page in the end.

I've shared the progress of this before, but here's the whole comp. There's not a huge deal of inking on this page because everything's meant to be left a little.. Impressionist...

Happy winter - painting notes

Happy yuletide everyone. ♥

I have a few notes about this sketch colouring wise. I'm quite pleased with some bits and pieces. They might be a bit hard to spot but I had great fun putting some of this new information into use.

I've done a ton of studies on colour recently and some of the things I struggled with previously was ambient lighting and relative colour. So for this piece, I worked entirely on relative colours rather than pure ones.

What that means in this case, that inste...

Nay kisses

Felt poorly this weekend, so here's somethin' awkward sweet an' proper pissin' soft like.

Address reminder for Christmas cards

Hi everyone!

Just a last reminder to all active patrons to update your address if you haven't already. ♥

Best regards,

Elli

48 - 1 - colour WIP

Work in Progress of page 48. Characters aren't quite done but the BG is getting there.

One thing that I've changed about the progress while I've practiced painting, is the fact I merge most of my layers. It kinda stops me from overworking them and forces me to start with a bit more solid base. If I have to make amendments, I just need to do everything on top.

Characters still have their own layer, but even they're merged to just the one layer. The whole proces does make me feel a bit mor...

Sketchcote

One of the value practices I've been doing to work on my colours (funnily enough, even though this is BW, it's helped) and shapes. I've done a lot of studies on paintings in general recently and will continue to do so. Hell of a lot of failed batches of sketches are included.

In between

Concept stuff! ♥

47 - step by step

This page was a very trying one. It's really tested my patience and skill. It did force me to do a lot of painting studies though and I feel much better about colouring now. I feel like I've still got a lot to learn but I'm having fun with it now at least!

The composition I'm happy with, but the whole page went through numerous different colour themes before I setteld with this one. I wanted to try something different when it comes to colouring characters.

Keek! - Page 47

I've had an absolutely horrible time with this page colouring wise and it's the reason I've not updated on the website. I've spent the time getting other work done instead and lots and lots of colour studies.

The studies have included a lot of painting and I'll share some of those experiments with you here on Patreon! Some of them were failures evidently but that's the only way to learn!

Kurre

Concept art. ♥ I've mentioned this before, quite a long time ago now, that my grandma, mum and I have occasionally discussed turning one of Nanny Hammarström's books into either a comic or a children's picture book. To those who don't know, Nanny was a relative of ours, she was a teacher and an author of number of children's books.

The main story we've talked about doing is called 'Squirrel's first summer'. Hence this little fella! The plan is to do both a Finnish and English version of it ...

Missy

Concept art of a character I can tell you very little about. But she'll appear in this current chapter and plays an important role in the story. ♥ I look forward to drawing her.

Beth and Jack

You might remember this, from almost 2 years ago now!

Beth's been sitting on the bench for quite a long time now, but I've finally had the chance to do newer concept art of her. She's going to become more relevant in chapter 2. ♥

Odie previews

Got a permission from Aaron to post couple of Odie pages here. ♥ Left one is from issue 1 and the second one is from issue 2.

Secret pond

Little something to pass the time inbetween jobs.

I've been pretty swamped with work this month and I've still got catching up to do before it ends. I'm finding it a bit challenging to find the time for everything.

Christmas plans for Patrons (and rats)

Hey everyone!

I have some Christmas card plans for our Patrons! This is something we've done every year previously and I'd like to continue the tradition. So all I'd like to ask, is that you make sure your address on Patreon is correct so that I can send you a little gift in the post. ♥

Happy thanksgiving to our pals across the pond!

Cheers

Elli

Arriving in Tistow - art blocks

Uh, spoilers potentially? I mean, if I had not taken a break from updating, we'd long have confirmed who Alfie's mum is. 

Alfie and Morrie are both Taela and we have a lot of diary related stuff from Morrie's POV prepared for later. I've been holding onto them because I hoped we would've been further in the story updates wise by now, but I might just make all those entries available on Patreon beforehand anyway.

And Jack & Anna just to cheer me up. I like drawing them doing ever...

Foal sketches - Stream progress

I'm so happy with these lot. ♥ I had a lot of fun during tonight's stream.

We had folk chipping in on picking colours for them. Really good fun and made me very happy that people were taking part.

You can find the stream here if you'd like to join in the future!

https://www.twitch.tv/alwaysrats

11-14 - colour WIP

Gosh there's still so much to do on these. I've really struggled to get them done and the mood right. 

I've been working on them during the Livestreams but I feel a bit awkward about doing more of them during the streams as they're taking such a long time to finish. :( 

 It'll get there.