Madness

A few weeks ago, I was invited to draw a cover illustration for a regional Berlin magazine called Maulbeerblatt. Which is totally unrelated, but fitting to my move to Berlin this past weekend. The issue's theme was "madness," so I drew this:

Here's what it looks like without the title etc.:

Berlin is great so far, by the way!

Comic Collab: Black and White

It's Comic Collab time again, and this month's topic is "Black and White." Fortunately, this also coincides with #inktober, so I made a little something that works for both of these events (because I'm lazy).

It's nothing special, really, just a little ink drawing of two of my Hipsters characters:

Check out all of the cool stuff the other Comic Collab artists made:

• Schlogger
• Isla Volante
• Sylvaroth
• Skizzenblog
• Rainer Unsinn
• BTW
• Comic Creator Conspiracy
• Kritzelkomplex
• Adrian vom Baur
• Pepperworth
• Team-O
• Dramatized Depiction
• Schisslaweng
• Katrin Felder
• Doppeltim
• Hillerkiller
• Pandago
• Flausen

Beetlebum guest comic

Superstar webcartoonist Jojo "Beetlebum" Kretzschmar is on vacation in New England for a little bit, and asked some of his lesser known friends to draw guest comics for his blog while he is away. Since I only know New England from Stephen King novels and didn't have much to say about it, I made a comic about autobiographical webcomics instead. Or, more specifically, about why I don't (usually) make them.

I decided to draw the whole thing non-digitally, but kind of chose too small of a format and am not that happy with the results. Anyway, here it is (German version only):

24HCD Strikes Again!

A week ago, I once again went to Leipzig to draw a 24 hour comic with some of my dearest cartoonist friends. To mix things up a little, I decided to pre-script the comic this time. I originally thought this would save me some time, but the opposite turned out to be the case: because the script was so long and wordy, I had to fit more panels onto each page and more dialogue into each panel, thus requiring a lot more time and effort.
When it became clear that I couldn't finish it in time, I decided to just finish the lettering and scribbles and leave the pencil inks for later. That way, I at least managed to have 24 pages on the wall, even if many of them weren't quite final. In the week since, I've already finished most of them, but you're gonna have to wait a little while longer to read the comic, because I want to color it and then probably publish it in a little book together with Offline Dating, to which this one is a direct sequel.

Here are some work-in-progress pics you may have already seen on my Instagram or Twitter:

2015, Fuck Yeah!

Once again, the inimitable Schlogger called upon all German webcartoonists to make another exceptional illustrated calendar. This year, 69 artists participated - one for each week, plus some bonus illus.

I got the last week of July and drew this:

You can already pre-oder the calendar at Kwimbi. (You can see some of the other illus there)

Affection Play's First Album!

I don't have much new comics & illustration stuff to show you right now, but I've got something else: my band's first album! In case you didn't know: I'm the singer & keyboarder, and write most of the lyrics.

We originally recorded these songs two years ago, but the mixing etc. took a little bit longer than expected. Anyway, it's done now, and can be downloaded from Bandcamp (pay what you want!) or listened to at Soundcloud.

I designed the cover art, too.

If you like the music at all, please follow Affection Play on facebook!

Reading in Leipzig

On September 6, I'll be at the Comicgarten Leipzig, selling & signing some comix at the JAZAM!/Mondo table. If all goes well, I should have some copies of the 2nd printing of "48 Stunden Angst" by then.

If the Comicgarten alone isn't a good enough reason for you to come to Leipzig, I will also participate in an awesome comic reading that night. I will be reading "Hipsters in Hell" (probably a bigger chunk of it than in Erlangen) and "C'est Angoulême, bitches!" - almost all of the artists from the latter will be there, each one reading their own part. All of them will also be reading some of their own comics.
I really enjoyed the reading I did in Erlangen and got a ton of positive feedback, so I'm looking forward to doing it again! Let me know if you have any ideas about where I could do more Hipsters readings.

Info about the when & where can be found on this cool Flyer by Hillerkiller:

The Hipsters book, once again

Wait... you still don't have a copy of "Hipsters Versus..." yet? I'm talking about this beauty:

Here's one of the brand-new chapter illustrations from the book. There are three more like this one in it!

And here's where you can buy it: Kwimbi | JAZAM! | Amazon.de | Hummelcomic

If you have a comic shop, you can get it via PPM. If you are a regular customer at a comic shop, please ask them to order it!

Also: if you want to review it, do an interview, a podcast, an article, a signing, a reading, or whatever, please let me know!

24h comic: "Offline Dating"

Last April, I went to Leipzig to draw my third-ever 24-hour comic. I blogged about it at the time, but being somewhat busy with JAZAM! vol. 9 and the Hipsters book, I never got around to actually showing you the comic. These last few weeks, though, I had some free time on my hands, and so I scanned and colored it and uploaded the comic to facebook, twitter, and tumblr, one page at a time.

Now that I'm done, you can read it in one piece, all 24 full-color pages, either in German on facebook, or in English by clicking on the following image:

#SailorMoon

Yesterday morning, Schlogger and nine other German webcomic and manga artists published this neat Sailor Moon homage art collab pic, inspired by the new Sailor Moon Crystal tv show:

But then, my friend Doppeltim was peeved about not being asked to participate in the project, and posted his own Sailor character on twitter. Not long after, Jojo "Beetlebum" Kretzschmar and myself had joined him, kicking off an avalanche of Sailor Moon-inspired self portraits that were added to the original pic. Here's the three of us:

And here's what it looks like now, approximately one day later:

The meme is still going strong on Twitter right now. Check #smfmp to see more recent ones.


EDIT: Beetlebum is now compiling hi-res versions of all the characters here:

Erlangen report 2014

I'm back from Internationaler Comic-Salon Erlangen - tired, but happy. The festival was amazing, even more so than usually! I had a brilliant time with all of the wonderful comics people, sold & signed dozens of Hipsters and JAZAM! books, did a live reading of 'Hipsters in Hell' (with Schlogger), fought an epic art battle (against Schlogger), bought cool comics, rocked my socks off on the dance floor with some of my favorite cartoonists, drank too much, slept too little, and then continued the festival business anyway. In short: I had a blast. Creative batteries fully charged.

Comic-Salon Erlangen 2014

Starting this thursday, I'll be at Comic-Salon Erlangen, Germany's biggest, best, and most important comics event.

Most of the time, you'll be able to find me at the JAZAM!/Mondo booth (no. 42):

Here are some specific dates at which I'll be signing JAZAM!'s and Hipsters books:

Thursday:
at JAZAM! (42): 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm | 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
at Zwerchfell (97): 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm

Friday:
at JAZAM! (42): 10:00 am - 11:00 am
at Comic Solidarity (80): 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm

Saturday:
at JAZAM! (42): 11:00 am - 12:00 pm | 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
at Zwerchfell (97): 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm

Sunday:
at JAZAM! (42): 11:00 am - 1:00 pm | 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm | 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm

On Friday night, there will also be a short live reading of part of "Hipsters in Hell," which Schlogger and I are doing at the BITSTORM event at the Dartmoor Inn. As part of this, I will also be involved in some kind of "Comic Battle." Find out more at the BITSTORM website.

If you want to stay informed about everything that's going on while I'm there (likely including drunk tweets and comic jams), you should follow me on Twitter!

Angry Birds Epic and other games

I don't know if I've mentioned this around here before, but my day job consists mainly of drawing/painting/designing stuff for video games. The release of the latest (and, to date, biggest) game I've worked on, Angry Birds Epic, seemed like a good opportunity to point you to some of the other games I have contributed to over the last couple of years. For most of these, I have done a mix of user interface design, characters, backgrounds, and icons/items. In all but one case (Apnoe), the art direction wasn't done by me and I therefore had very little influence on the style and overall look of the games. But since the guy who art-directed most of these games is really good, that's not so bad.

Mobile Games

These are all iTunes links. Most of these are also available for Android and other systems, but I'm too lazy right now to look up the links.

Angry Birds Epic
Demolition Dash
Happy Hills
Happy Hills 2: Bombs Away!
John Woo's BloodStroke
Hoppetee!
Sara's Cooking Class
Sara's Cooking Class: Vacation
Towers & Dungeons
Word Wonders: The Tower of Babel
Apnoe

Browser Games

Warstory: Europe in Flames
Aktiv mit MS - kognitives Training
Bands
Skylancer: Battle for Horizon (offline)
Mission: Genesis (offline)

I'm totally addicted to Angry Birds Epic right now, so I'd absolutely recommend that you at least check that one out - even if you're not a fan of the previous Angry Birds games. I think the Happy Hills games, Bloodstroke, Word Wonders, and Towers & Dungeons are also well worth looking at if you like casual games.

my new comics

Here’s how you can buy my new comics:

JAZAM! vol. 9 - Helden: Kwimbi | JAZAM!
HIPSTERS versus…: Kwimbi | JAZAM! | Amazon.de
C’est Angoulême, bitches!: Kwimbi
cool stickers: only in Erlangen

At Kwimbi, all of the books come with a signature and drawing!

The Hipsters book should also be available in German comic shops soon. Please ask your dealer to order it if they haven't already!

HIPSTERS vs. Helmut the Psycho Killer

Wha… another Hipsters comic?!

This one-off strip is actually a guest comic for Christopher Tauber & Ingo Römling’s cool horror parody webcomic Survivor Girl (which you should totally check out), but I think it also works on its own.

German version

HIPSTERS - the book

Now that I'm done with the Hipsters webcomic, I'm putting out the whole thing (the German version) as an 80-page softcover book, which you can now pre-order at Kwimbi.

You can also order "C'est Angoulême, bitches!", by the way.

HIPSTERS in Hell, pts. 51 & 52 & 53 & 54 - The End.

Coming up next: Hipsters in Space! – Nah, I’m just messing with you. This was actually my last Hipsters strip ever!

For now, anyway.

I’m actually doing a Hipsters guest comic for another webcomic that I’m going to post here and there’s a possibility that I’m going to occasionally do stand-alone Hipsters strips if I get any good ideas. 

The reason I don’t want to continue with the regular Hipsters webcomic right now is simply that I feel there are only so many hipster jokes you can make, and I’ve probably made most of them a couple of times by now. Also, I want to try some new and different things. There’s a good chance that I’ll start either a new webcomic or a graphic novel project within the next couple of months, so please continue to follow this blog (+ my Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc.) if you want to stay up-to-date about my future projects.

German version of pt. 51 & German version of pt. 52 & German version of pt. 53 & German version of pt. 54

C'est Angoulême, bitches!

When a group of my friends and I went to the Festival International de la Bande Dessinée d'Angoulême in January, we spent a lot of our time there drawing an epic comic jam chronicling our experiences, enhanced by some fictional elements (massive monster cats, magical baguettes, the like). Because we really liked how the comic turned out, we reworked it a little bit, drew a nifty cover illustration, and made it into a cool little pamphlet, which we will be selling at ComicInvasionBerlin next weekend.

24h Comic Day 2014.1

Yesterday and today, I participated in my third 24h Comic Day event in Leipzig, once again producing 24 comic pages in less than 24 hours. (21h, to be precise.) I'll scan the story and clean it up once I'm done with JAZAM! and Hipsters, but here's a preview of the original pages:

A closer look at the first three pages:

And this is me after drawing for 20+ hours:

(photo by Dimitar Stoykow)

Super Realtor

My work on JAZAM! is probably going to keep me too busy to do a new Hipsters strip this week. But while you wait, you can have a look at the first page of my JAZAM! comic. It’s a 5-page superhero comic set in the exciting world of real estate! (the title translates to “Super Realtor”)

HIPSTERS in Hell, pts. 47 & 48 & 49 & 50

German version of pt. 47 & German version of pt. 48 & German version of pt. 49 & German version of pt. 50

HIPSTERS in Hell, pts. 44 & 45 & 46

German version of pt. 44 & German version of pt. 45 & German version of pt. 46

Also, check out my new newsletter!

HIPSTERS in Hell, pts. 39 & 40 & 41 & 42 & 43

German version of pt. 39 & German version of pt. 40 & German version of pt. 41 & German version of pt. 42 & German version of pt. 43