AlwaysRats

Kekri

Some YIH lore today relevant to the 9th chapter!

During the Harvesting Festival there are a few different names to the 7 days of celebration.
When otherwise Kalevala knows no years, no months, no weekdays, this is one of the few exceptions where they have a 7 day long "calendar."

This sketch is for the third day of the festival, "Kekri". The purpose of the day is to cherish the gods and nameless spirits of hunting, fishing, farming and harvesting. Kekri is the on...

Updated map

The finalised map that'll be included in both the digital and physical copies of the 1st chapter. ♥ I've updated this for the website as well, but here's a downloadable full res version for y'all.

The coffee/tea stain.. I took a piece of paper and made two cups of tea just to get the stain and scan it. So it's authentic at least!

Year In Hereafter Vol 1 Crowfunding plans

Mikael here, hi! We haven't been able to be terribly active here at the time! Both have been busy with things that we can't update on Patreon, and I don't quite want to spoil what's to come in YIH, so I won't be posting you with preview material just yet. Chapter 8: Shout is coming along nicely tho!

To the main thing:

Originally, I was intending to do my first crowfunding for the first two volumes, dating this plan to be later 2019 w...

"To Lapland" updated!

Hello there!

It's been a while since I uploaded this little extra chapter here, not all of you newer patrons might've even noticed it!

There has been some graphical enhancements to this one and a few spelling corrections, but no major changes.

Additively, instead of just having a long-scroll format PDF, there's also a wide spread alternative available now! Basically, you'll have two pages open before you constantly, if you wish to view the wideview version.

I'm return...

Tank it!

I'm a wee paladin, tall and stout~

He screams and shouts alright.

Mika asked for some more actiony Jaakko sketches. Here he is in some battle gear.

-Elli-

Hello hello!

We just got new postcards ordered up and should be receiving them during next week, if post services are working. So, I don't have the items in my hands and I can't take pictures of them, but I'll do that as soon as they arrive.

What this means is that it's time to send some fresh and new prints to all of you who have cumulatively supported us with at least $10 dollars!

There are 22 recipients this year and we are very, very happy about that.
Last year we had around 12 peopl...

Tistow - World map - WIP

I promised a map and here it is. A work in progress map but these are the first 2 pages of the comic book (and PSD) just to give you an idea where everything is.

We didn't want to clutter the map for the first chapter too much, so we've only got few of the more important cities and countries listed.

Oakbottom Sea freezes over in the winter months, making it impossible to use it as a sea route. Lot's of shipwrecks there. To avoid the deathly sea, the Raestille Canal serves as a shortcut t...

Kirkald Boarding School

In the little hamlet of Heahtta there's hardly other schooling than the essential skill of reading and basic mathematics.

After their schooling, the children continue to learn from their parents, and through their craft. Fewer girls attend than boys, as the girls are taught their chores and useful skills by their own mothers, and then married off.
Jáhko belongs to this demographic of those children. However, Veeti being the second eldest of the sons, is required to get further educati...

Morrie - Taelic colours

This was a Patron request! ♥ I've shown a little child Morrie wearing her Taelic colours, but realised I have not completed one of her as an adult. Cheers Yuu for prodding me to finish it!

Morrie's recently been introduced in the comic and we found out she's Taelic. A map of the regions should be the next thing for us to show you.

Tael is a large nation that consists of several different provinces and each have their own cultures, traditions and beliefs, but are ruled by a single monar...

Veeti

Quick scribble of an adult Veeti for the Kickstarter extra comic. Tried to work out his tunic details.

You'll see these patterns flying around in the first chapter but I'll leave it for you guys to find them.  The patterns also appear in YIH!

- Elli -

Tutorial content question

Have a gote boy.

We do have an actual question for y'all!

Too long, didn't read: What tutorials would you like to see?

Drop a comment in the box or email us and we'll make a note of it!

We do a lot of step-by-step stuff, but we've had folk request tutorials and ask us questions regarding certain aspects of our work. We can't claim to be experts at anything but we love what we do and would love to be able to help people out.

We're a bit ...

Flower Crowns

Relating to this post right here, we got more flowery goodness for you all!
Jaakko is too much of a man for a crown made of 'em though. 

There are full resolution versions available if you'd like to grab either for a phone background or something like that!

It has been a while since we've made proper Small Trolls art in the old fashion, lineart by Elli and colours by Mikael. The...

Lily of the valley

Step by step of the lily illustration! 

I'm really pleased with Anna in this one, she looks how I'd like and I hope I can replicate her in the comic in the future just as nicely fghffgjkgfh.

Lily of the valley stands for happiness and luck. And I wanted to draw a happy sketch of these two after a rather miserable January. I'd love to make a square postcard out of this as a Patron reward.

Done in both Photoshop and Clip Studio. I tend to do inks in Clip and colours in PS.

Cemetery walk

'Wild' places in Tistow are a rare treat. You can be sure Jack will seek them out though at the earliest opportunity. There's a lot I'd like to explore with this story wise, as nature conservation is a subject very close to my heart. Much like in Small Trolls, mushrooms and wisps play a big part in Tistow.

I really enjoyed doing this. I've not been very well but this was such a calming and fun scribble to experiment with.

The colours looked completely different originally and unforuntate...

Festive dressing of the Kalevala folk

Helloo! Long time no see. Here's our Tistow Cameo Anna in her YIH appearance, dressing a little bit differently from how we usually see any characters throughout Kalevala. And there's a reason for that. :3

We'll start creeping closer to a major event of the story, which is the Harvest Festival Season, "Sadonkorjuun Tanssit". (Translates to "Harvesting Dance")

This festival is an event of a few days. The preparations for the festival start alongside harvesting, and the ma...

Skulls and a holey scarf

Happy Holidays and all that stuff!

Here's Jáhko and Veeti exchanging gifts. Little shamanboy Jáhko gives small skulls and dried flowers to Veeti, and he gets back a scarf that Veeti knitted all by himself. A few loops went missing leaving holes in the making of it.

- Mikael

Howling caves

A little scene of Ieva and Anna in their Year In Hereafter existence going through a little adventure. And when there's snow, there's cause for concern. Dangers loom in the dark nights and triumph in cold and ice.

Not to mention the folk of Väinölä are generally a little ill-equipped to deal with winter. Fur trimmings and layers have to be hastily attached to existing clothing to make them even somewhat resistant to the cold biting wind and snow.

Doesn't stop these two, who don't much...

Year In Hereafter: Chapter 7 previews

As you can see, we take a look at most of the maincast, jump around locations, and we'll add 3 new additions, two of which are very dear cameos. And then there's an elf.

Chapter 7 will introduce and feature Suzzen, "Sussu", from Bookwyrms, and Anna from our Tistow. 

We'll have 54 pages overall, of which 42 pages are done. There will be a whole lot of rain. 2017-12-22 09:38:01 +0000 UTC View Post

Patreon overhaul

Wee bit bigger news this time for everyone! We're going to make some changes to the way our reward tiers work come January. There's a couple of reasons for this.

The galleries/tags have swollen a fair bit in the time we've been running this profile. There's an awful lot of content and it's the reason we've been doing regular Archive posts to mitigate the awkward scrolling through. So we're looking at making this easier somehow for y'all. We'll let you know what happens with that. A lot of the ...