- with a vengeance

So, it would seem that the last post I did here was on the 25th of December. Quite a little chunk of time, huh? A lot of stuff has happened during the last three months. After dropping out of animation school I got accepted into the design school, that didn't feel right, so dropped out of that one too. Started freelancing (barely) roughly three months ago. Had a long time where I didn't really draw anything. I didn't feel like it at all, it scared me a bit, but I got over it again. Been working for a creative company the last couple of months drawing (supposedly) funny fruit illustrations used for advertising. Got some really cool comic gigs recently that I've been spending most of my energy on. Three of them are solo projects while the last one is for an anthology featuring sprouting folks in danish comics.
For the danish readers out there (and for those who might swing by here for some reason) there's the biannual comic book festival here in Copenhagen between the 21st and the 23rd of May. I will have my first published work there, and will be signing and sketching in a stand two of the days for a couple of hours, and will most likely hang around there all the time like a sweaty little nerd.

Here's the cover of one of the comics I made for the festival. It's quite small, 13 x 13 cm, 22 pages in b/w. I had a high fever when I made it so it's even stranger than my regular work.

And the back cover.


A drawing I did for my buddy Glenn for his birthday of one of his favorite rappers, MF Doom.


An uptight bureaucrat, safe in his car with a his hamster friend.


Some random man who apparently was hiding inside my head.


Me, Thomas and Glenn if we were cloned or somehow made a baby. Please don't ask me why I did this.


My short opening part of the ongoing online comic, Spera. There's some really cool people on this gig so do check it out.




My dream is to one day produce an art book solely consisting of toilet sketches. Who wouldn't pay for that?


A couple of sketches neurotically taped together. Here we have good old Haddock, some loco ese, Japanese fetus man, floating tofu and surprised fella.


This is basically all I did when I had my creative drought. Small sketches of faces - taping the good ones together. I have impractically many pages like this one. You might notice Jermaine and Bret in there somewhere.

A Jewish bike messenger.


Observing a drunk bum for later reference.


Glenn doodling Ultraman.


Son of a great German artist.


Ink wash experiment.


Ongoing struggle to find a look for a comic I wrote a while back which is now being published by Nobrow before Christmas.


Same as above. Beard design.


A painting I did on a postcard for my girlfriend. The halo was golden.


I bought almost all of the old Tin Tin albums a couple of months ago. They're in English and all hand lettered. Crazy shit. Not that this is a character from Tin Tin, but it's certainly inspired by it.


Inmate about to stab some other scum in the face.


And if you have any comments in the form of actual questions and since blogger isn't ideal for two way communication, please do throw me an email instead: miggelsommer@gmail.com
Thanks for reading,
- mikkel

a short comic

Here's a short comic I finished two days ago. At the moment, I'm trying to practice more on making comics than drawing illustrations. Though it's practically the same thing, drawing comics just seems much tougher. I tend to play (mess) around with the design and the look for way too much time, and end up not finishing it, because of the pressure put on me by no one but myself.
So I challenged myself, which always is a good thing to do. Drawing in your safe zone feels really good, but you don't really move anywhere.
So what I did was, I gave myself half an hour to come up with a story and write it down. Then, with some two inch thumbnails and no detailed sketches, I had to draw the six pages in one evening. And then another evening to color the whole thing.

Here's the lines first. Trying to keep it a little loose and simple and not to think too much.


And here's the colors without the lines. Trying again to keep it simple and working more in flats.


And here's the final comic.

pimpin'

Done for the ''weekly'' blog theme. I'm behind in my schedule. It hurts.

Here's the sketches. The bottom left one was the first sketch. The big one is just to figure out the composition. And the two small ones were done to try out the values and the shading.


The ink.


And done.

decadence decadence

old russian fairytale

A one page comic (hardly even a real comic when you think about it) for the buddy blog.
Here's the penciled clean-up:


Flats:


And the rest:

mr. elephant etc.

Character design for a series of mini-comics I'm working on about this dude, Mr. Elephant.


Mixed stuff.


Character design for another short comic.


A quick ink of me and my two buddies who are running the 'burning wet dinosaurs' blog with me.

birdmen & smackheads

Hey again. Trying to figure out what I'm doing at the moment when it comes to drawing. The style, the lines, the colors... so many choices and I'm one of those people who can't really decide anything.

Here's a little something I did to prepare myself for possible future jobs in newspapers. A politician, their queen, another politician, some lame rapper and finally, the Antichrist.


I've written a short comic about to brothers to practice on my storytelling. Trying hard to figure out the look. Feels like I might have hit something right here.


Finally I have a light table again. Feels like ages since I've drawn with ink. Feels really nice. This is for the ongoing buddy blog, burning wet dinosaurs. (Thanks for a great weekend guys;)

big time party poopers

I did this illustration yesterday. It's for a book coming out soon about my generation and how they see themselves and each other. So many characters, I thought I was gonna die. But I didn't) It was a blast to do.

summer's over, time for ''work''

I'm back. Had a great summer! Hope you guys had a good one to)
Started design school around a month ago and recently decided to drop out. I'm really tired of schools just weighing on me and attending them because it's the ''right thing'' to do. So I just started freelancing full time and it feels great! I almost haven't been drawing all summer, so it's a bit tough on the brain starting again. So here's some random and some not so random work that I've done over the last couple of weeks.

This is for the burning wet dinosaurs starting again. I mean, who doesn't love street fighter)


Cd cover for the Artems.


Research on old school prison guards.


New design for spider-man... when it's cold in NY.


Research for a short comic I'm doing.

better late than never

A late cover for a short comic I did a while ago: broken bones
It just got published in a free comic magazine.

camomile

two of my good friends and me made a short animated film a couple of weeks ago. Here it is http://www.vimeo.com/5109510. We had a week to do pre-production and then 4 days to do around 35 seconds of finished animation. My focus was on the storyboard, the character design, the color palettes, the backgrounds and the cleanup. The other two guys did all the animation, recorded the sounds, edited the film and all the rest of the finishing touch-ups.

Here's a chunk of the storyboard. Quick and sloppy work, but it works fine.


Character design.


One of the backgrounds. A vertical pan.


A color test

pancakes are nice

my favourite asylum

drawing fantasy = masturbating

Yep... for the weekly blog again. For details: link

burning wet dinosaurs

Me and two of my mates just started a blog where we pick a weekly theme in turn, and then hopefully produce a drawing each every day of the week. This weeks theme is bubble goose stand-off. link

buckets of gratitude

Just wanted to say thanks for all the new comments and to all the new followers. Blogspot is a really crappy place for replying comments ...oh, and here's a zombie. For old times sake. Thanks again.