AlwaysRats

Not a big dragon. Drake, in fact.

We've been posting Jáhko as a dragon recently. Well, Veeti has his ambitions too.

But it is made an evident fact that Veeti isn't quite as talented when it comes to changing into beasts.

- Mika

Copperbeast - Wallpaper download

Here is a Progress PDF of this picture being done in 28 steps! If you're a $3 patron, you can go grab it. :3 

Well, I haven't really gotten to doing something this ambitious in ages! Elli and I had a chat about the biggest dreams Jáhko and Veeti have, it became into this sketch I made, and we thought I should finish it.

I have always been obsessed with being able to paint drago...

Copperbeast - Progress PDF

PDF download here! If you want to see the 28 steps of how I got around to painting this, that's there. x3 (If you have a PDF reader that lets you to click to the next page instead of scrolling, that would be ideal to see the progress properly)

Well, I haven't really gotten to doing something this ambitious in ages! Elli and I had a chat about th...

Small Trolls - 46

With text this time! We'll try to stagger the next update a little bit but we're so looking forward to giving you 47.

Bit of info here that I wish we could've shared with you ages ago. Though most of you Patrons know this already.

Thank you again everyone for supporting us and being so patient. ♥ We're really glad to be back to working on this comic.

Sister's Dress

And here's Veeti doing some secret tailoring stuff at about 12 years of age, which gets him excited about tailoring! When it earlier was a chore and a pain his mum pressed on to him, now he's excited to learn to make his best craft.

The Harmonsuo family have a business in dress making and are trying to grow their market further out of their own land, and Veeti will be one of the kids to push that forward.

- Mika

Soot and gaslighting

Another Sotka. The grey and turquoise hues work much better than the original warm browns. It feels like it fits him better as a character.

Jol - sketches

Right, last one. Then we've got a good chunk of these wildlings to deal with. There's a tiny detail on this guy you might recognise and connect with an old illustration.

I've been going through old sketches and refining bits and pieces for Small Trolls. But I'm sticking these sketches under the Tistow tag.

Sotka - revised colours

Had another go at colouring Sotka. Decided to change its colours from earthy to more fitting sky, soot and gaslight one. You've seen Tytti and Woodcarver so far as more humanoid creatures, so here's Sotka as well!

Bit more sooty dragon. ♥

Tytti & Woodcarver

As.. People. Of sorts.

Little collab from both of us! Mika drew Tytti and Elli drew Woodcarver.

Tytti's realm is the watery grave of Death, known to the Fjoldi as Saivo. Very stern maiden of the lake. She doesn't hand out swords. We think.

Woodcarver, the languid Gardener of the world. He sits around in his forests and mountains, carving servants out of wood and stone. ..In the hopes one of them will become an intern who can one day take over his job so he can have a little holiday...

Sotka

Concept art of this little ratbag in the sky. Sotka is one of the dragon creatures in Tistow. It's a mischievous little sprite, loves to observe people and finds life on earth endlessly entertaining. 

It'll try to influence the ongoings of mortals in discreet and obscure ways. Typically something the other wild gods are not too fond of.

Small Trolls Page 46 sketch

More! We were late getting last month's page complete, but we wanted to make the sketch for the next one, and finish both in tandem!

Here's the sketch for the earlier page in case someone missed it 

- Mika

Cast Scribbles

I started this as a practice for characters I don't draw much, yet, but ended up adding to it. They've all got their traits set but I've not actually drawn half of the cast as much as uh.. ...Well. Jack.

We're still missing a bunch of characters from this. Alfie, Mrs. Goodwill and the Hooks (who you've seen some sketches of on Patreon) and a couple of urchins and.. Some disreputable sorts that I don't want to talk too much about yet.

This was a fun and relaxed lot of scribbles to do.

Glacier Gear

Väinölä might be the land of eternal Summer, but there might be a chance that won't work out while these three are visiting Kalevala's lands. Mmmaybe.

Anyway, it's about time I begin to think about the winter portion of the story, starting with the character design and getup as the first thing.

- Mika

YIH Chapter 9 progress update, 30% done

Hello 'ello!

 BTW, I hope you all will enjoy your rewards who are getting them! I sent out 17 letters and 33 traditional artworks this Monday, which is a crazy amount of support from you guys.
***

Right, I've been posting a lot of these previews on Twitter or on Year In Hereafter website, but I thought I'd make a bigger update here just to give a general idea of the progress.

So, currently the pagecount is 92. I'm thinking there might be a few more, because...

Hound of the wilds

Jotting down some notes and sketches for bonus comic material. You've met Stállu's hound so far. This fella's not dissimilar.

Old pals

Don't think I've ever shared a sketch of these two together in the YIH AU.

We figured it's likely that Anna's the one that introduced Jaakko to the barracks, where they both tended to the goats, cleaned tack and mucked out. Until Sulo made Jaakko his apprentice. Anna still works at the yard, as you've seen in the comic.

-Elli-

Ch 2 - Page 8 - inks & colours

I've fallen a wee bit behind on finishing pages because of other commitments. But here's 8! 

One thing I love about Tistow is experimenting with all kinds of different things. And lately, since I've not had time for it, I've been a bit unhappy. But we'll get there. There so much more to come and I'm really keen to get further into the story.

I loved colouring that middle panel. Overall I'm really glad I redrew this whole page, it turned out so much nicer than the first draft.

Witches Shrines (Year In Hereafter)

These single stones are scattered throughout Väinölä, and their purpose remains unknown. What these were built for, by whom, when, nothing's certain. But no person thinks fondly of them.

They're built in peculiar places. They're mostly concealed in remote nature, preferably close to or within a body of water.

***

They all share similar traits: The stone is always tall, top-heavy, and they all have a hole carved into them.
They're decorated with bones of birds and bigger anim...

Ch 2 - Page 8 - sketches

Since I mentioned this before, here's what 8 is gonna look like. Still got to tidy everything up with pencils before I can move on to inks.

Revised page - 7 - colours

Gosh this turned out a bit different than I intended. There's a couple of things that still need fixing. Namely Alfie's boat.

And Anna's dress. What is that hole in her patterns..

Page 8 went through a complete redesign. I juggled panels that I had actually finished so I could still use them on page 9 (I really like them and they work in the context they're going to be used really well anyway) but page 8 is not anything it was meant to originally be. I'll share that with you a bit later!...

Sketch Request Submissions

That time of the week! You're welcome to submit as many as you like and we'll pick a few of them to draw. ♥ 

Sketch Requests #5

Here we are, we're taking a break from sketch requests this week and we'll be getting back to them next week if nothing comes up. :3 Thank you again everyone, I had a lot of fun with these!

Michael Hawk:
- Ieva trying out Mika's phone, would like to see what she thinks about technology
(Well she definitely thinks the music is scary)

- Nigthshade playing around with the boys
(Yay ♥ This was nice)

Scott Harwood:
- <...

Small Trolls Page 45 sketch

Hooray! We got the ball rolling for new entries, thank you all~
Working pipeline is the same: Elli does the main scriptwork, inks and lettering, Mika handles paneling, sketching and colouring. There will be some exceptions at some points just to change it up a bit.

We had a bit of an exciting dance of whether we truly were gonna cross the initial goal at the start of the month, or if we were going to run a few dollars dry. In the end, we decided to not let that few dollars stop us from revi...

YIH Ch 8 Cover + Chapter progress breakdown

There's the progress for the cover artwork. Below here will be a big blurb about how much time Chapter 8 took to make, and about things that made my work a lot easier this time round.

(And nope, no more pages, I've been careful to pick the pages that wouldn't spoil too much, and that's how much I dared to put in)

How long did the artwork take to make?

Because the chapter wasn't longer than 30 pages, I managed to do each phase at once. In other words I...

Patrons of Small Trolls as trolls quite small

Our dear friend and a long-time patron, mister Flik, tossed us a request in the latest "Sketch request" post, suggesting us to draw random patrons as small trolls.

While it's a lovely idea, we do want to look out that nobody gets hurt feelings not getting picked. In order to do that, we'd have to draw everyone willing, or nobody at all.
... That's an idea. Why not!

We could feature either a caricature of you, or an original character, what...

Sketch request submissions

That time of the week! You're welcome to submit as many as you like and we'll pick a few of them to draw. ♥

Missus Harmonsuo

Sketch request by Hawk Hunting, "That powerhouse sorceress whose name I forgot, so i just call her Mrs. Harmonsuo"

x3 And here you have her~ She's very green.

- Mika

YIH CHP 8 PAGE: 364 WIP

  Sketches, inks and raw colours for page 364 of Year In Hereafter!  

  - Mika  

Sketch request submissions

That time of the week! You're welcome to submit as many as you like and we'll pick a few of them to draw. ♥ 

Tower - rough

Before I lose this for good. This feels a bit ambitious but it's something I'm going to very. Slowly. Work on over a longer period of time. Whenever I have a moment.

This is more or less all of the more important (Tistow based) members of the cast in one illustration. I'm going for a bit of a Les Mis inspired barricade. 

I want to add a bunch of little details in and around the characters that represent their rank, occupation, identity and personality.