Comic 8: Very very late! But GOOD NEWS!

You may be wondering why exactly there's a RAINBOW BURSTIN OUTTA MAH BRAINS!
I'll tell you why.
Because I was HIRED to do an INTERNSHIP with TWISTED FILMS!!! :D
WOOOHOOOOOO!
And the reason that this is such awesome news for me, as most of you (who might read this) already know, I've been living in Finland for almost a year now (5 more days and it will be 1 year exactly!) searching high and low for jobs in my field (Animation) and after much research and getting one freelance job from Twisted Films which was already so exciting, the hope of finding an internship for a more "permanent" position was very slim, especially when talking about "permanent" (can't really use that word with work nowadays because of the economy, but the intention is to keep me working there!) animation jobs, like you know, going to an office and being given work to do on my very own computer there. The chances of that happening were so very slim... but it happened!!!
And just to give you an idea of how slim that chance was exactly; 95% of animation work in Finland is freelance work, and of those 5% of staff-hiring animation studios, ~98% of them are Finnish and require fluent Finnish for the job, and with that small percent chance already, add in the fact that I am a foreigner here with no other work experience in Finland (other than that one project I did for them) then you realize this is REALLY a once in a lifetime chance for me!! I'm so excited and feel so privileged :D And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is why I am squeezing my kitty with glee while rainbows burst out of the trap door in my head :D (And those aren't chopsticks in my hair, they're meant to be the trap doors, but i guess they can be chopsticks if you really insist.)

Funnily enough, I started a drawing today for a post here, and while doing that drawing I got the call about the internship, so this is very recent news for me :D

But here is the comic I was busy drawing before the big news:

First of all, we noticed that the wooden towel rack was becoming unusually tatty. The knobs seemed to be breaking into peaces and getting quite rough and we didn't know why...
(We should have known better.)



One morning I heard strange ripping and struggling sounds in the bathroom... I go to see, and guess who is clinging to the top of the towel rack, his back paws shredding the towels, and frantically chewing on the knobs! Why on earth would that be something fun to do?! I have no clue... But now we are forced to hang our towels loosely on the knobs, which means that everytime we go to the bathroom, the towels are all over the floor... Sigh... Totoro is becoming more naughty and more cute by the minute.



Totoro you crazy kitty you!

Here's a nice photo of His Royal Mischiefness for you that Sonja took! :D



Ta for now!

P.S. My hair is black again! But I have two red bits left underneath that I am going to bleach the life out of and dye all kinds of colours, woohoo :D

Comic 7: Vigilanteh Kitteh!

After a long time with no comics, my tablet is working again and I finally had some free time to do a new comic, but it doesn't cover all the happenings in the past week! Perhaps I'll do that on Thursday, since I will be going to see the new Harry Potter with Anu (and maybe Sonja too) tomorrow, and on Wednesday I have an appointment with the employment office.
Haha, it's a bit difficult to type with a very cute and cuddly Totoro on my lap begging me for attention and sitting up at the desk like a little person :D
Anyhoo I shall now explain these comics a bit.

This one is quite self explanatory. Totoro was fooling around with the fan (which had my Finntroll flag hanging over it to make it look better since we don't have anywhere to store the fan out of sight) while I was making a cheese bread thing for myself. Next minute I hear loud clattering.
I look over and Totoro is hanging from the fan by his front paws and the flag is wrapped around his neck like a cape, and he just stares at me for a moment, it was quite hilarious! :D



The next cartoon is explaining the little drama about the paper-wire-roses. I had a little bouquet of them wrapped around my candle for decoration, and when we moved some stuff around, Totoro suddenly took notice of them... I woke up in the morning and found the candle and the holder lying on the floor, no roses to be seen. I figured Totoro must've got a hold of them, but then I started freaking out what might happen to him if he eats paper and wire! Argh! D:
I tried to hunt them down, checked Totoro's mouth and poked his belly to see if he reacted painfully, and searched high and low for those little roses, and I didn't find a single one.
After some time, Totoro was fine and I forgot about the little roses.
About a week or so later, while tidying up a signature Totoro disaster, from which he had fled the scene, I noticed a curly red and green thing, and it was a single paper-wire-rose! I found it funny, and kept it aside. 3 times after that, each time Totoro left the scene of a mess, there he left another single twisted rose... I found it hilarious! Like that movie, V for Vendetta, where he always left a rare rose at the scene of his crime. It made me imagine Totoro as a secret Vigilante with the same trademark, heehee.



And that's all for now! I'm tired and I'm going to cuddle this kitty to bits.
Tata!

(P.S. I don't feel like reading all this over, so please excuse any retarded typos :P )

Oh bother

Well, so much for the daily thing... I had a bit of a busy week, and now that I've got some free time, the bloody pen tablet driver keeps on giving me errors and telling me to restart the computer over and over again.... sigh. So, without a tablet to draw with, there is once again no comic for today, boohoo :(

I shall share a bit of news though! Firstly, This week I made a comic to be put into the Finnish Siberian Cat Club magazine which will be published around Christmas (I think)! Included in the strip are 2 touched up versions of pictures already here on my blog, but there's another 2 in it that haven't been seen yet, but I think I shall keep those off the net until it's been published :) I don't know if there's any legal issues with it yet but I would rather just play it safe. 

Secondly, last night I made dinner for 8 people! I've never made dinner for any occasion before, so I was nervous. Thank the universe I had Sonja helping me so much :D I made sushi and chicken shiitake ramen and sonja baked a yummmmy apple pie! Next week it's Sonja's turn, so I'm gonna help her too! :)

Thirdly, I finally dyed my hair red again, but it was such a dark red that I might as well not have bleached it in the first place ... I'm just hoping it washes out a bit, even though I do like this dark red a lot, I'd rather the "bleachment" did not go to waste 8(

And while writing this, I decided to do a shitty drawing with my mouse to show that I am at least trying to keep up :D And don't be fooled by the smooth lines in this one, I put the line smoothery function pret-ty high, hahaha.

Hope you has a beri nice day!

Comic 5 and 6: A cheap idea

To help myself get back on track with daily comics, I decided to post a few old comics I've made. Sorry to those who have already seen them! It's sort of cheating I know, but it's not like yesterday or today were very eventful anyhow. So here you go!

In this comic I am with Anu on the bus, on the way to her place with Totoro so that he could spend some time with her cats to try and prevent it becoming an unfamiliar experience for him to be with other kitties. But, on the bus, there was a rather scary woman; snorting, burping and grunting while sitting opposite us, and happened to notice Totoro in his catbag. I wasn't sure what she said through her slurping, but I defenitely heard "kissha". She wouldn't stop staring at him with rather unsettlingly focused beady eyes. I thought she might want to take him home to make a roast of him O_O I've never seen someone burp, snort, slurp and heave their breath like that before, and smiling aimlessly all the while... Very unusual.

P.S. "Kissha" = "Kissa" which means cat in Finnish. Also, I am not anti-large-people. But this woman was excessively overweight, precisely what you would call "morbidly obese"!




In this comic, I was trying to portray a funny misunderstanding I had in an MSN chat with my friend Heike. I asked what she had been doing that day, and one of the things she said was "trolling in Fruit 'n Veg". Now, in my vocabulary, the term "trolling" in internet speak means "to go around making unnecessary mean comments to other people / other people's posts. But, in an online game called "World of Warcraft" commonly known as "WoW", the word trolling means "to hang around with no real mission or accomplishment". Heike is an avid WoW player, so when she said "trolling" she meant in the hanging around sense. I, on the other hand, thought she meant the other meaning, and I was trying to imagine why she would be trolling in a vegetable shop... This picture was the result :D I should point out that Heike hates tomatoes with a passion, and quite likes her spinach and cabbage greens. Hehe.

P.S. Heike is not a Nazi, it's just an arm band she has. And "ffs" is internet short-hand for "for fuck's sake" .




This picture is simply my overboard excited reaction to the possibility of me fostering an imported Silver Siberian female cat for Aino (she is the owner of the Talvivaaran cattery who I got Totoro from) sometime in the future! 8D




And last but not least, these are cartoons I made of me and Sonja as SUPAHIRO'S (Super heroes) for our Facebook profile pictures.
We are the SUPAHIRO MIDNIGHT BAKERS! because we have ended up baking in the middle of the night together a few times now, hehe. I am "Running Butter" and she is "Angry Eater!" :D

Comic 4: I'm delaaaayed

This comic is still for the 4th of Nov, I'm not keeping up with the daily thing very well it seems! D: I'll try fix that tomorrow... Or later today, I'll see. Yesterday I was doing a test colouring for a comic book page, so if I get chosen I will get some monies! 8)

Anyhoo. On Thursday I went to the library café with my friend Anu. She is the owner of Totoro's mom, Siiri :D
We both like cats a lot, so we talk a lot about cats of course. I wonder if people might think we're crazy cat ladies if they listened in on our conversations, though I don't really mind if they do haha. Anu is a translator (in training, but almost complete) which is lucky for me, because she is helping me learn Finnish and I can ask her things about the language that most Finns can't seem to answer. She took out some Finnish books from the library for me to borrow, so now I have some proper reading material to help me learn! I'm still no good at it just yet, but I'm on my way.

This is us having a discussion about our cats; Remu scratching up things that Anu has set aside to be put away, such as the folded up carpet; and Totoro sweeping smooth things just because he seems to like the feeling on his paws. It's a little bit obsessive, but extremely cute :D




We were walking in a mall and we saw a beautiful HUGE St Bernard dog. It was all black and looked like a bear! But after walking past, we discussed the matter of dogs being nice to see and pat, but we wouldn't own one, and also that cats are the best hehehe :D



After that, I went to see Sonja and we ate tastey icecream and chocolate muffins ^___^ We also spoke about the next Kokki Kerho and decided that we will make the dinner for our turn at her place, because they have more space and cutlery, and we will make the sushi as a starter, Chicken Ramen for mains, and apple pie with icecream for dessert 8) I can't wait 8D NOMNOMNOM

Comic 3: After 1am on Nov 5th

I skipped making a comic on the 3rd since we went to a dinner party, and so "today" (ie. the 4th) i was going to make 2 comics, but now I am tired and I have only made a comic for the 3rd of Nov and it's now already the 5th, argh, and my english is very tired and bad. Excuse that.

So, on Wednesday evening we went to our friends' "Kokki Kerho" (cooking club) which we decided to join in on. It was at Miikka and Katri's place and they made a reeeeally tastey dinner for us! A fancy salad starter, roast beef and potato wedges with bean and bacon salad for mains, and vanilla buns with hot chocolate topped up with some toffee liqueur and cream. OMNOMNOM! :D



The others who were there with us included:

Sonja Sonjuska Sonjäääää :D

Sonja and I went looking for Katri and Miikka's ferrets, and then we found "Tifa" and Sonja held her up high, and when she did, Tifa became very curious about the light fitting and tried to give it a sniff, which ended up making her look extremely straight and stiff because of the way she was moving. I'd wished I could have taken a picture, but alas, a silly drawing will have to do :D

P.S. "Fretti" is the Finnish word for ferret.




Lauri and Juppe...


We played a card game called Fluxx, which was unusual, and Lauri would have won if he was paying attention to his cards, but in the end it was Juppe who won :D

And last but not least,
Pekka and Vesku


Vesku is my husband's nickname, and Pekka is his best friend, and Sonja's fiancé.
Pekka is so shy and quiet when he's sober, but the wine started flowing when Miikka brought out his own home made brand, and once that starts, Pekka transforms into a rather outgoing and funny character, with much, much wisdom to share :D Vesku is also usually quite a quiet one, but he too began to take on rather comedic characteristics


Oh right, I was also there. And for some reason my mind brought up the oddest of topics to talk about it one awkward moment of silence; topics such as getting brain worms from eating sushi, and flesh eating bacteria from bumping a table. I then proceeded to show everyone the bruise on my leg that is shaped like the mouth of "Rilakkuma", one of Sonja's favourite Japanese characters.
It was definitely worth the good giggle I got from Sonja hehe :D
Oh, and for the record, I wasn't drunk. Sometimes I'm just a little quirky.



And... perhaps sushi-brain-worms wasn't the best topic to bring up. Next week it's our turn to host the dinner, and I'm going to be making sushi... Hahahaha.

In the end it was a mighty grand evening with my wonderful Finnish friends! Even though I did end up going to sleep in a bit of a mood...

Comic 2: Is it a comic?

I've been calling it a comic, but most of the time I only draw one frame. Is it still a comic if it's one frame?

Oh well, too bad.

Yeh, today's one is another one with mah kitteh! Not much has happened today yet. Perhaps I'll make another comic a bit later.
Not that things will be much more exciting later...

Anyhoo.

Sometimes Totoro likes to cuddle with me on the bed and contorts himself into all kinds of funny shapes. An odd but very cute habit he has is to put his paws on my lips while I'm giving him a tickle. I swear my eyes get all twinkly when he's like that. What a cutey :3