Intermission in Austria

Last year, on Frankfurt Bookfair, I was invited to have a signing session at the Vienna Comix comic convention in Vienna, Austria. It was my first signing event on a comic convention ever and, as you can see above, my work was even featured prominently on the convention posters. It was really a great event and I was surprised how many fans I've got in Austria. My story even seems to be liked among the imperial troops from a galaxy far far away!

I really enjoyed the convention. I met and talked to great people and I even received a fantastic fan artwork:

Many thanks to Önder Tasdelen for this wonderful original pencil artwork featuring all the main characters of the first 5 chapters of the Wormworld Saga. I'll keep it in a save place!

The convention issued a limited edition of 111 numbered prints of the last panel of Chapter 1 that were only available at that day on the convention:

I received 20 of these prints for my own disposal and created a special limited edition with Wormseal stamp that is now available in the Wormworld Shop as long as stock lasts.

Vienna Comix wasn't the only reason for me to travel to Austria. My friends from Video2Brain invited me to record new video training material at their studio in Graz. And man did I record! I spent nearly two weeks in the studio and my first task was to create a long comprehensive introduction to digital painting in Photoshop. In 8 hours this training will contain a detailed description of each and every tool that I use in the digital painting process and the techniques are later demonstrated in three illustration projects - a digital drawing (of a sailing ship), a colored digital drawing (a dwarf portrait) and a digital painting ("The White Palace on the Red Planet"):

The second big task was to produce a comprehensive video training about the creation of a comic page. For this training I had the idea to create a page from an imaginary "Captain Orion" comic. In 8 hours this training is going to show the complete creation of the page including rough composition scribbles, preliminary drawing, inking, coloring and layout of the word balloons:

And then, on my last day in Graz, I was able to record a very special video. My task was to create a painting completely out of thin air, without talking too much about my painting technique but concentrating on the creative process. I started with a completely abstract composition and discovered a scene that was hiding inside it. The painting that came to life in this video is "The City at Ruby Mountain" and you will hear me talking mostly about the story of that place that unfolds in my brain while I'm painting. This creative journey was completely documented in a 2 hours video and I'm really looking forward to it. The only downside to all that is, that the trainings were recorded in German language only. Right at the moment I can't say anything about possible translations.

Now I'm back home and before I'm going to start my work on Chapter 6 I will make another adjustment to the Wormworld Saga website that I've been planning for quite some time now. If everything works out like intended, it will be a huge thing. I'll keep you updated!