Ever since Emy made that adorable Sister Claire fanart for me, I’ve been wanting to thank her with a fanart of my own. Today I finally had time to read through her webcomic, "Trying Human," and I highly recommend it. Her artwork just gets better and better, and I love the character designs too. Oh, and it’s about aliens. What more could you want? XD
I like 8′s design a lot. I was also amused how she kind of seems the opposite of Gabrielle- dark color palette, short hair- despite also being designed as a "sexy business suit" type. I really wanted to put them in a picture together, and this was what happened. Both girls in their environment! Well… sort of.
P.S. This is a censored version of the original picture, where Gabrielle was topless. I figured I could keep that one as a donation incentive or something. XD
8 belongs to Emy, Gabrielle belongs to me! (Mwahaha)
First order of business: As you may have inferred from the recently posted picture, Sister Claire fans have an official name now! You are all ACOLYTES. >8D
ac·o·lyte (āk’ə-līt’)
n.
One who assists the celebrant in the performance of liturgical rites.
A devoted follower or attendant.
Also, here are the awesome memes people completed on Deviantart! If you want to do them yourself, I’ll post another round if I get any more. Thanks for submitting, my dear Acolytes! <3 I love them!
I know that Valentine’s Day is a Hallmark holiday targeted at couples and designed to guilt them into buying tons of stuff for each other. But that’s no reason for single people (or guilty couples, for that matter!) to be down! We can celebrate the holiday however we want. Dide you know that in many cultures, today is know as “Friendship Day?”
From now on, I’m going to dedicate every Valentine’s day to expressing my love for something, and I encourage you to do it too! It can be someone (or something) that really inspires you, something that is very important to you somehow, or just something you want an excuse to rave about. Show it to the world! And spread the love. =)
Comic characters making a cameo in this page, in order of appearance:
I promised and update, and after recovering for a day, here it is! I spent 4 days in Angouleme, France, for the biggest yearly comic convention in Europe. Prepare for the longest post ever made in Sister Claire.com history! >8D
For the majority of the time, I was meeting up with editors and comic publishers to introduce Sister Claire (and in some cases, concept art for Nightingale) in hopes of getting published. As you know, I’ve been working on Sister Claire for over a year now, so I had a lot more material to show for that. I brought 4 preview books and t-shirts, which were all given away to the most interested publishers. I met with a lot of big name publishers, most of whom were not interested. Publishers usually have a very specific idea in mind for what they are looking for, so this wasn’t a surprise to me. Nonetheless, I waited patiently and showed my work to every editor who would see me.
As a result, even if not everyone showed interest in publishing me, I made some unexpected contacts with some really cool people, including C.G. Marra from Passenger Press, an Italian publisher who is making an all-girl anthology soon. I’ll be in contact with him about doing a 6-8 page comic in Sister Claire style. =)
Sadly I didn't have any time to go to any of their meetups, but I'm sure it was really swingin'.
I met Tim Fish, Paige Braddock, and Abby Denson at the GLBT booth. They were all really sweet and interesting to talk to, particularly on the subject of the first gay superhero in Marvel finally being allowed to have a boyfriend. It was also nice to talk to them after 2 days of speaking on French and Italian, it was nice to have a moment in English again… XD
Thank you so much Mr. Grant! T_T You're a cool dude.
As for other artists I met, perhaps the most famous was Alan Grant, the writer of Tank Girl. I chatted with him for almost half an hour while I waited for my chance to meet some editors from Ankama. He was the one who stood up and waved at me when someone was finally free to speak to me!
Speaking of which, there’s pretty much NOTHING published by Ankama that I don’t love. (But my faves would be Maliki, Muthafukas, and of course now the french version of Tank Girl!) I think my Sister Claire style really matches their theme. I hope I’ll have more good news to bring soon regarding this soon. ;D
The waiting area to speak to Soleil editors looked like a fashion runway.
While waiting 30 minutes in line to meet the editors of Soleil (who looked at my stuff for about 3 seconds before brushing me off… lol, c’est la vie.) I met a very talented artist from Argentina named Alejandro Marmontel. He does some really nice digital painted coloring for a collaboration comic. This dude is totally gonna be famous someday. O_O
There was a public reading room where people could vote on their favorite comics and listen to live interviews of the nominated artists/writers.
In the above picture room, there was also a public “drawing board” where visitors could leave messages and drawings. Of course I couldn’t pass up the pimping opportunity:
Claire left her heart in Angouleme...
Similarly, at a Wacom tablet exhibition I took it upon myself to do a little demonstration, leaving behind an unfinished sketch of Nightingale:
On the subject of Nightingale, I had a particularly interesting meeting with the heads of Tekneo, who have developed an application to bring comics to the iPhone and other portables. I was very excited to sample their technology, because they are incorporating slight animation, but more importantly, sound into the modified comics. This got me wondering… what if Nightingale was published on this platform, with audio supplements to make it accessible to blind people? It’s been long plaguing me that my comic, which focuses on a blind superheroine, is ironically inaccessible to the very people it’s meant to educate the public about. If I could team up with them to make the first blind-accessible “comic”, that would be pretty revolutionary! They seemed equally hooked by the idea, so we’ll be keeping in touch about this. The first release of Nightingale may end up not in print, but an interactive, portable platform! <8D
I also met some strange characters wandering about the city- some were more recognizable than others. I even picked a fight with the biggest one!
Also, possibly the biggest surprise wasn’t even at the comic festival itself. My host had a disko in her basement. No, really… with a full bar and everything. I made this little video while I was zoning out in between two conversing people.
He referenced a lot of other awesome webcomics too! I’m thrilled to have one of my characters in a lineup alongside Agatha from GirlGenius and Zii from Menage a 3! It’s kind of like seeing my little girl all grown up and hanging out with movie stars! Aww, Claire, you do your creepy creator-mama proud!
More Sister Claire artwork, drawn in the styles that inspired me!
Gabrielle-Arthur de Pins Style by ~Yamino on deviantART
Arthur de Pins is an illustrator I learned about when I moved here to Belgium. The first trip I made to a Belgian comic store, I bought all of his books. =P He’s most famous for his series called “Pêches Mignons”:
It’s a play on words, because “pêche” can either mean “peach” or “sin.” XD I love styles that can mix cuteness and sexyness together, so naturally he rapidly became of my favorite artists.
This whole image was made in Illustrator, just like his work is. I can’t believe how freaking LONG it took. If course, I did have to teach myself some tricks which I never knew how to use before, like masking. It was surprisingly easy once I figured out how to do it, just very time consuming. I can’t imagine how he makes so much artwork this way! The upside is, now I have a vector file that I can scale to any size! I think I’ll put this in large format on my wall eventually. XD
Not much to add to this… the picture pretty much says it all. I have always been a huge PPG fan, and I’m pretty sure it’s influenced every comic I’ve made. This show was what inspired my first ever comic! It was a PPG fancomic, with two Mary Sue characters (one was a self-insert, Brownie, who makes a few cameos in Sister Claire!) and the other was my brother, “Bruiser.” Oh man, highschool times was crazy times…
On the first day, I made friends with Marissa Delbressine. As far as I know, she doesn’t have a DA account, but you can see some of her very talented work on her portfolio site (it’s still under construction: http://mindmapped.nl/
Setsunacutey: I also met her at the same table as Marissa. Together with some other friends (whose contact details I can’t find! I’m sorry. T_T) they were there to represent their Dutch Doujinshi circle, OpenMinded. I will probably be participating in their upcoming yuri anthology in the near future, and maybe their others too, if my wrist allows.
Tikopets: She draws really cute animals, and has even worked for some digital pet sites. She’s also got a portfolio site here: http://www.webbelart.be/ Worth checking out!
Of course, my friend Hassan who runs UtopiaComics was there, but he was so incredibly busy selling things that I didn’t get more than a few seconds to talk with him.
Dude, and this Oct. 25 I’m going to BD Collines again as a guest artist, and the day before that I’m going to TRY to get to Liege for ASIANIM4. F.A.C.T.S. was a cakewalk… free table, every Dutch person speaking fluent English… But Liege is like über French French, and I can’t expect many people there to speak English. So, I’ll have to practice my rusty Français. Bof, j’ai besoin de faire du pratique, non?
I ordered a portable printer so that in the future I can print out sketches/colored art for people on demand and on the spot, but it won’t be here for another 2-3 weeks at least. In the meantime though, I figured out how to attach my laptop to my brother’s old, unused monitor, so people can watch me draw on another screen turned towards them, while I work away on my laptop.
Three items of business today! First off, for those of you who are into icons for forums/Livejournal/etc, I have just posted over 200 Sister Claire icons on my art blog. Check it out! =D
Next item of business: This picture.
…I don’t think it really needs much more commentary, do you? XD How oddly appropriate for this chapter of Sister Claire! Wanna buy it?
And finally, I want to tell everyone about my good friend Maya and her AMAZING artwork. She currently lives in Japan and has worked on several videogames, one of which includes Black Sigil for Nintendo DS (which i also wrote some dialogues for! Whoo!) She’s an all-around awesome person, and you can check out her portfolio site here:
She’s my biggest inspiration for digital painting, I love how loose and energetic and emotional all her drawings are. Gorgeous stuff! And yet, she has this crazy idea that she’s not that good at drawing. If you disagree, I suggest leaving her a little comment on her guestbook. We artists gotta support each other! =)
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