Got internet up and running about an hour ago.
Sitting in our new house. When I say house, I do really mean a ‘flat’, but it’s so big it seriously feels like a house. Everyone who’s seen it so far have said: Woah.

We’re on the bottom floor. We’ve got two bathrooms (one with a stand up shower and the other with a bathtub. Luxury!). We’ve got a fantastic landlord and landlady who live above us. They even let me borrow their wireless internet yesterday to do some reference research for my project.

We’ve been invited to a neighbourhood party in a few weeks.

It’s all very very nice. And relaxing! I can finally stomp around as much as I like without feeling like I’m inconveniencing anyone! I can have loud music! I can sing and dance! I can do capoeira!

If I wasn’t so exhausted after the move, I’d be doing all those things right now :)

Will try to get some photos of the place when it’s been cleared up and we’ve settled in. Might take some when we have a house-warming party.

Lots of love! <3

What happened yesterday only *just* started to sink in.

I was planning on posting on my blog as soon as possible, but I just didn’t have the brain capacity to write anything else than:

OH. MY. GOD.

I will try to tell this in the right order and as descriptive as possible, but in all honesty, it was a bit of a blur. Maybe because I had only slept about 4 hours, or maybe because everything was happening so fast.

*deep breath*

Right. Let me start with the day before. Friday. I had at this point drawn and painted a lot of small things to show to Paul Gravett for our second tutorial. I was nervous as heck, seeing as I didn’t really think I had enough finished pieces and I just wanted to get as much out of the meeting as possible.

Me and Rich went to Uni with our stuff and sat down with him for our personal tutorials. Afterwards Rich said something on the lines of: ‘You were taking to him for AGES!’

I guess I had! But I just wanted to get as much feedback as possible… And I did! We went through rough Nebo pages, panel by panel, talking about composition, painting, atmosphere, characters, writing etc etc. I could go on for ages. That man is just a haven of knowledge.

We also looked at my quick short narratives done for the RP adventure I’m playing online (if you want to see them, just go to my Art Blog and browse. All of them are pretty much unfinished except Bramble Woods (further down on the blog page. The one in blue and orange). Paul went through everything with me, helping me out with the pacing and adding the tension I love between the characters. I could write fifteen pages about how appreciative I am of the help he’s given me, but I fear I would sound pretty fan-girly! :D

In the end me and Rich got his card (zomg!!) and were told to keep in touch with our progress and so forth. Then he continued to ask us if we were going to the Bristol SmallPress con which was the next day (yesterday). We said we would.

The SmallPress expo is a convention for indie and self published comics. It’s exactly the field I’m trying to get into. Not mainstream. :) Here’s a link if you’re interested: Small Press. Paul said he would be there and would be doing a talk with Kevin O’Neill (the artist of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) at 2pm. Me and Rich promised we would come.

I was walking on clouds after the tutorial with Paul and was focusing on trying to remember everything he had said. The same evening I sat down to play a bit of Arelith (the RP server). I didn’t expect to get so hooked, but when the time ticked over to 7am the following morning and I was STILL AWAKE playing, I cursed at myself and went to bed. I woke up at sometimes before 12 and realized I had almost slept away the entire morning of the SmallPress con. After some more cursing and stress, I met up with Rich and quickly headed down to the hotel where the convention was being held. The moment we stepped out of the lift on the 5th floor, we were passed by Paul Gravett going: ‘Oh hey guys! I’m doing the talk now!’

Talk about timing. We followed him to a side room where chairs and a projector had been set up. Me and Rich sat down on the front row.

Kevin O’Neill entered.

It’s always amazing to see the face and the character behind the artwork. Kevin is a *big* name in the industry. I won’t go on about that. I was sketching them as they spoke. In the end we got to ask questions and I asked him what medium he used for one of his work. He explained to me that it was mostly dip pen. I’m just amazed by what he does. When the talk was finished, Paul approached me and asked me to show him the sketch I had done. I was a bit embarrassed, but showed him. I think we had a little laugh about it. :P

The talk was done. Me and Rich had an entire convention to explore, and so we did. I will be brief about that, but I talked to a lot of people, had a lot of laughs (comic people are SO WEIRD. I’m hoooooome!). I regretted not having a proper card. I got lots of free stuff for apparently being ‘enthusiastic’. :)

Now.

*takes a deep breath*

What happened next is something that I will struggle to write down properly for you, but I will try.

I had brought some of my sketches with me. We approached a table and looked at their graphic novels. They turned out to be a publishing company called: Insomnia Publications. After a bit of nudging by Rich and expressed interest by the man standing behind the table, I agreed to bring my sketches out, feeling very uncertain. The response I got from him wasn’t like anything I had expected. My sketches were shown to another guy closeby (also involved in the publishing company). After a long conversation about everything from colour matching and character emotion to speechbubbles, I was approached by a lady who gently guided me to a separate room. Rich came with me (thank god. I was not confident). At this point it was all starting to go a bit blurry.

We sat down on a sofa in the corner and I brought my sketches out again. I had work from all stages. Very sketchy rough stuff to finished artwork. We talked about it and I was receiving comments that I don’t think I’ve ever heard before. She told me she thought I had an innate sense of colour and composition. She said something about them looking for people that were different and that I fit the bill. She talked about matching me up with writers or letting me do my own thing. She even went through how the royalties work for the published work (and I hadn’t even said anything about a job). I honestly cannot remember half of the stuff she said because I was simply so stunned. But in a nutshell, she was talking about giving me a shot at creating artwork for them.

When this talk was done, I thanked her and excused myself. I went to the loo and closed the door behind me. Not to exaggerate, but I think the shock was setting in at this point. I found myself leaning against the closed door trying to calm down my breathing.

It was getting late and the convention would soon be over. I had given the lady (her name being Nick, the Creative Director) a makeshift card with my details and she had given me a professional card back in return. I walked up to their table to say my thanks and head off, but was stopped by another guy who was talking to the first person I had shown my work to. He apologized (as Brits do) and asked if he could see my portfolio as well. So I dug my drawings out of my bag again and put it down on the table. This guy was shocked to hear I did not use reference for most of my work. I reference tricky things like hands and arms (which are cruical to get right), but most of the other stuff is from my head. I was hearing words like: ‘amazing’ ‘brilliant’ ‘fantastic’ continuously, feeling very light headed and unsure what to respond back other than ‘thank you’.

During this talk, Nick, the lady I had spoken to before, had slipped one of my drawings under my nose and walked off.

She came back with yet another new face, this one holding my artwork and looking at me.
He introduced himself as the Art Director of the company. I think I might as well have been closed to fainting at this point.

What came next was a long long conversation in which my artwork and layouts were scrutinized and commented on (very constructively). The people looked at eachother and said things like: “We should have her illustrate (insert title I can’t remember)!”

The art director turned to me and said: “I will definitely, definitely keep in touch.”

The man behind the table whom I had shown my drawings to first, exclaimed: ‘A girl with an attitude! We need one of those!’

As the meeting ended and the Art Director had to go somewhere else I was weak at the knees.

I thanked them, gathered my stuff, walked outside and sat down on the patch of grass in front of the Hotel.

As soon as I got home through my front door I just started crying. :P

I’m such an emotional twat.

Im right now sitting in bed with a hot water bottle and a mars bar, sweating and shifting around uncomfortably now and then. Yes, it’s the period pains. Gotta love ‘em.

Because of them I have now missed a talk by Simon Gurr that I really wanted to go to.

I will resist the urge to go drown myself in the bath and instead actually use this time to update the blog.

A lot has happened recently, both good and bad things. Let’s start with the neighbours.

I mentioned earlier that we’ve had some problems with them. Let me elaborate on that. Basically, they approached us twice, complaining that we were being loud in the evenings (no kids, not what you think). The first time they complained was at 2am in the morning. I was in bed, asleep and Tom was up in the next room playing Left4Dead (or talking to his mum in Canada. One of the two). Suddenly our main door buzzer goes off. Let me at this point inform you that we live on the top floor of a house, so the buzzer is located *outside*. I wake up. Tom gets up to answer it, but there’s noone there. We come to the conclusion that it must have been a passing drunk.

I fall asleep again, but soon our door is being knocked on. Tom gets up to answer it only to be met by our neighbour being slightly aggressive and complaining about being woken up. We both think that he must have been woken up by the same door buzz earlier. Drunks or kids tend to want to buzz and then run. :P

But to our surprise, he says that he is kept awake by Tom’s typing.

That’s right.

Typing.
On the computer. On a keyboard.

To be fair it wasn’t only typing. Tom was apparently also talking and having the computer fans on. We still thought he had been woken up by the door buzzer, but sort of still nodded and thought we’d just go with it. Later on, the next day or so, we find out that the person who had buzzed the door that night was actually our neighbour who had in a fit of anger gone down all the stairs, outside and then buzzed our door to wake us up (instead of just coming straight to us). This is what alarmed me. It just seemed so odd and unusually aggressive.

A few days later, maybe a week, I was up late with Tom playing on an online RP server called Arelith (more about that later) while also doing work. We always play with headphones on and never shout or run around after 11. I was sitting by the computer. So was Tom. Someone knocks on our door. We look at eachother puzzled, but soon realize who it must be. This time, I go to answer it.

I am face to face with my neighbour at 5am in the morning, who tells me to stop whatever I’m doing in the computer room. I am shocked by this as I always try to be considerate towards others in these situations. I tell her that I am on the computer and by the drawing board, painting. I cannot possibly be making any noise… But apparently just the sound of me walking around and the sound of us typing is enough to keep them awake. At this point I am starting to get suspicious and Tom arrives, appearing annoyed (I dont blame him). I sense that tensions start to rise and quickly tell everyone that we can talk about it the next day. Argument averted, we all retreat back to where we came from. Now I literally tip-toe around the place. Looking back I realize just how ridiculous it is to have to do this in my own home.

Anyway. The following day me and Tom go down to the neighbours to have a proper talk about it all and actually *listen* to the apparent noise we’re making. Tom would go up to our computer room and walk around and type while I would be down in the neighbours bedroom, listening to it. To get an idea about the situation from their perspective. In their defense, I could hear footsteps. It is an old victorian house from the 1600s or something similar and I’ve lived in houses dating from 2000 that I can still hear footsteps above. It’s part of living in a flat. But I sure as heck could not hear any typing.

We gathered up to talk about it, trying different approaches to solving the problem. Me and Tom didn’t really want to move as we really love the flat and love the area, so we were willing to compromise in order to keep the neighbours happy. We spoke about moving our computer room to the next room, but that would mean that our bedroom would replace the work room, and god, if they can hear typing, I don’t want to think about what they could hear other than that… :) Privacy = Zero. So that option was just a no-no. So we thought about moving our computers into the livingroom which is on the other side and far away from their bedroom, but at this point they said something alarming. They stated that they didn’t want to hear us typing all day instead.

How can they even try to choose where we are allowed to be in our own house, during the DAY? Fair enough during the night if the soundproofing is bad, but if we’re talking daytime socializing, nobody can come in and tell us we can’t be in a certain room in our own home. I finally started to realize that we may be dealing with something slightly unreasonable here.

Then passive aggressive threats began boiling to the surface. About Tom not being allowed to be self employed at home. That they could report us to the landlord. Just the thought that someone would accuse Tom of doing something illegally is enough to offend me on a very personal level. I was starting to get annoyed. Tom was already annoyed at this point (not surprised really). But I realized that we would not get anywhere with the discussion. We had honestly tried, but it had not worked out. I quickly excused ourselves and gently pushed Tom back up to our flat. He was not happy. Neither was I.

We talked about it and came to the conclusion that we just couldn’t stay and keep up good relations. So we immediately started looking for other places to live. The same day we went to two estate agents and arranged viewings. Our current agent tried to make us change our mind about leaving by promising that they would look into the sound proofing problem, but I knew that if we were to find a better place to live, we would simply move.

I can’t stand drama and will avoid it at almost any cost these days. I see it as a waste of energy and a distraction from enjoying my life. It would be drama to stay. So me and Tom made the decision to look for a new home.

Ooops. Long post! Sorry! I just really needed to vent this! Been on my mind for ages :D

Anyway! Moving on! We went to a few viewings, found this absolutely stunning place on the ground floor, 1 min from our current flat. The new place is about twice as big as our current one and even has two bathrooms(!) We met our landlord and landlady that will live above us and were delighted to find out that not only were they incredibly friendly, but they also did not really have any issues with typing-noises! *laugh*

Our new landlady and landlord have two kids, one is around 2 and the other even younger I think. We haven’t met them yet, but they are apparently very nice. I was also encouraged to show my artwork to them as ‘market research’ :D

The new place is a dream. We will be moving in three weeks time.

NOW! On to something different!

I got my results back from the Macmillan Childrens book competition. Unfortunately I didn’t make it in which of course is disappointing, but not surprising. I’ve learned tons from doing the pop up book and will most likely enter again next year. Must not be discouraged by rejection!

I’ve handed in my essay for this year and feel relieved to have it over and done with.

I’ve started playing on an online Neverwinter Nights RP server called Arelith and find myself absolutely loving it. I can’t remember if I’ve been whining on this blog about my lack of RP here. I used to be in a very active tabletop RP group in Sweden and loved it to bits. When I moved to England I felt like I missed it and couldn’t really get properly into another tabletop game the same way. This online server is incredible though. The people are fantastic and the adventures are awesome! I’m also learning lots more English from it all. This is also the reason why my art blog has lots of doodles from the server. It feels like old times when I was at home in Sweden with a sketchbook in front of the computer or with friends in a tabletop game.

Ow ow. Period pains coming back now.

Hopefully that’s a good update. :)