Studio Qassim 2009

Illustratörcentrum (http://illustratorcentrum.se/) publishes annually a catalogue of its members. Each participant gets one page each to show off their work. I turned to my dear friend Alfred Gunnarsson (the hippest graphic designer in town: http://www.salmiakmedia.se/) to help me make a nice layout. Many thanks, Alfred! I posted my page to Illustratörcentrum today.

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Looking at this little compilation makes me reflect on Studio Qassim. Where was I 1,5 year ago and where am I now? Actually, I don’t think I’m that far from where I want to be. Through Studio Qassim I’ve done comics, illustration and animation. I even managed to get some puppetry in there. The only thing missing would be games. So I guess I have to make a game then, just for the sake of it… 🙂

Anyway, looking back at my first year as a company, regardless of the tough times (believe me, it’s been tough at times) I seem to be on the right track at least. I got around. I managed to pay my bills. I even managed to have some fun every now and then. What I need to do now is to grow, as an artist and as a business. Hey! I’m working on it…

The sky is the limit, folks! See ya around!

Puppet Snowman – the video!

Here’s the video!. It was shot from the back of the auditorium with a simple digital camera, so don’t expect any high defintion extreme close ups. It’s still a little bit out of synch – I tried my best – but it’ll do for now. Unfortunately for my English blog-readers the sketch is in Swedish, but it’s just a bunch of lousy jokes on the word “snow” anyway, so you can probably follow. Enjoy!

Puppet Snowman Sketch!

14 Dec 2008 I made one of my rare puppet performances at Bobbe Big Band’s christmas concert. It was a sketch featuring Carl-Johan Lennartsson, one of the song soloists, and a snowman.

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Photo by Martin Nilsson. I created the puppet by transforming one of my music video puppets. Thus it started out yellow…

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Photo by Tobias Lennartsson. Gradually the puppet took on the appearance of a snowman. The trickiest part was to dye it white. I emptied three cans of white (one can of spray paint and two cans of textile paint), and still a light tone of pee yellow remained…

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Tadaa! Photo by Tobias Lennartsson.

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Photo by Christian Berling. During the performance Christian’s excellent lightning whitened the snowman even further.

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Photo by Christian Berling. The story behind the sketch was Carl-Johan Lennartsson playing the role as a soldier on his way back from doing service far away from home (His first number was “I’ll be home for christmas”). While waiting for public transportation of some kind in the middle of nowhere he’s overwhelmed with homesickness. If only there was some snow around, christmas spirit wouldn’t feel so distant. Enter the hallucination: an annoying snowman assaulting him with bad snow jokes. In the end Carl-Johan hates snow! He goes crazy and sings “Let it Snow”…

There is a video recording of the sketch, but the sound is out of synch. As soon as I’ve fixed this problem I’ll post the video on Youtube.

Pig-tures for Hans

I have a German fan! His name is Hans. He’s a 59 year old chef. His wife Ulrike collects “pig-tures”, cartoon pigs made by comic artists from around the world. He sent me a long very kind and sweet e-mail asking me to draw a pig for his wife. This is so far out it could be someone pulling my leg (Jimmy, is this one of your practical jokes?). If so, it was so well done that I’m happy to fall for it. 🙂

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Here’s an Elvis pig for Ulrike!

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Regardless if Hans and Ulrike are for real, I’ve been wanting to find a technique suitable to make “luxury cartoons” if the occasion should arise. So I used this fine request to try some stuff out. Which one of the pigs do YOU prefer?