I have drawn a lot in my unfulfilling, empty life. When I was 14 years old, I was certain I wanted to be a cartoonist/comic book artist. Or "serietecknare" in Swedish. Somewhere down the road, I abandoned my dream of becoming a cartoonist.
At the age of 20, I decided to move far away to study graphics in computer games. It really intrigued me then, but I don't think I really knew what I was doing. Besides from partying with nerds and spending time with a good friend who was way more talented than me (in 3D graphics) I actually learned a whole lot about drawing, painting and tablets and photoshop. I really tried hard to get better, practicing a lot by studying other people's art and real life.
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| Digital painting at the time I started studying game art in 2009. |
These images could give you an idea of my progress. You could argue that I used a less advanced Wacom tablet before I started studying but my traditional art skills also improved during this time, thanks to actually studying anatomy and just drawing a lot, all the time. I really enjoyed getting better.
However, I sucked at 3D and really struggled to keep up. Since concept art is really hard to compete in, I gave up in becoming a graphics artist. I still thought I had some talent and that I could make it on the side of my other career. That never happened. Turns out you need an extraordinary amount of drive, talent and also putting in tons of hours into it. I just didn't had what it took to make it. I started studying architecture and engineering instead.
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| Digital painting three years after starting computer graphics. (Drawn with photo reference) |
I took inspiration from Lina Heidenstam's "Maran" (The mare), which I read a couple of years earlier. That comic revived my interest in comics that had been on hiatus for quite some time. I was just totally blown away. It was an erotic comic, beautifully drawn and the story was great. It was supposedly feminist, but mostly in a sexually liberating way and not in the 72 genders way. I had never seen anything like it. Other sources of inspiration was Gilbert Hernandez, Bill Willingham's Ironwood.
At the prospect of earning a few bucks on my fantasy porn, fulfilling my teenage dream and having fun at the same time, I worked day and night doing 12 pages, which took weeks to make. I stayed up all night, had a horrible diet and hardly met other people than my dad. I felt awful. I also felt kind of dirty and perverted. It would be weird to explain what I was doing to other people. "Oh you work a day job? No, I draw porn all day" I had some support from the swedish comics forum. They mostly appreciated the work, and some of them probably still follow the comic. One of them is Åke Rosenius, which is known for drawing a comic parodying Conan the Barbarian which was published in Swedish role playing magazines and still is to this day (It is called Birger Barbaren). Hi Åke, if you are reading this! ;) I saw Åke's illustrations in a table top RPG, and to think that he reads my comic still blows my mind. That is motivation enough to keep the comic going, I think.
Hopefully you are enjoying RTWP if you are on this page. I can confess to you that my motivation has gone down since 2014 when I thought I could make money doing the comic. Now I do it as therapy for my 14 year old self, who never became a cartoonist (Well, I kind of am, not in the way I thought though). I enjoy it of course, but I can't tell most people about it, I would certainly be fired if any employer knew about it. I guess. I also is a bit ashamed of it sometimes. Why would you draw a comic for your own masturbation? Seems to be stretching it. But, I am a proud pervert, and will never stop being perverted! Live perverted or die!
Next time, I will continue to talk about some behind the scenes stuff.
